On the other hand, the Commissioners appointed to revise the poor laws of Massachusetts, after stating that the national provision in their State for the unsettled poor has existed ever since the year 1675, recommend its abolition, by arguments, a portion of which we shall extract, as affording an instructive picture of the worst forms of North American pauperism: (pp. 59, 60, 61.)
It will appear (say the Commissioners), that of the whole number more or less assisted during the last year, that is, of 12,331 poor, 5927 were State’s poor, and 6063 were town’s poor; making the excess of town’s over State’s poor to have been only 497. The proportion which, it will be perceived, that the State’s poor bear to the town’s poor, is itself a fact of startling interest. We have not the means of ascertaining the actual growth of this class of the poor. But if it may be estimated by a comparison of the State’s allowance for them in 1792-3, the amount of which, in round numbers, was $14,000, with the amount of the allowance twenty-seven years afterwards, that is, in 1820, when it was $72,000, it suggests matter for very serious consideration. So sensitive, indeed, to the increasing weight of the burthen had the legislature become even in 1798, when the allowance was but $27,000 that “an Act” was passed, “specifying the kind of evidence required to accompany accounts exhibited for the support of the poor of the Commonwealth.” In 1821, with a view to still further relief from the evil, the law limited its allowance to 90 cents a week for adults, and to 50 cents for children; and again, for the same end, it was enacted, in 1823, that “no one over twelve, and under sixty years of age, and in good health, should be considered a State pauper.” The allowance is now reduced to 70 cents per week for adults, and proportionally for children; and in the cases in which the poor of this class have become an integral part of the population of towns, and in which, from week to week, through protracted sickness, or from any cause, they are for the year supported by public bounty, the expense for them is sometimes greater than this allowance. But this is comparatively a small proportion of the State’s poor: far the largest part, as has been made to appear, consists of those who are but occasionally assisted, and, in some instances, of those of whom there seems to be good reason to infer, from the expense accounts, that they make a return in the product of their labour to those who have the charge of them, which might well exonerate the Commonwealth from any disbursements for their support. Even 70 cents a week, therefore, or any definable allowance, we believe, has a direct tendency to increase this class of the poor; for a charity will not generally be very resolutely withheld, where it is known that, if dispensed, it will soon be refunded. And we leave it to every one to judge whether almsgiving, under the influence of this motive, and to a single and defined class, has not a direct tendency at once to the increase of its numbers, and to a proportionate earnestness of importunity for it.