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The comparatively small number of lodgers who come three times or more and who upon investigation appear to be men who are not of the tramp or vagrant class, but are temporarily out of employment, are allowed to come to the lodging-house for a somewhat longer period. Quite a proportion find temporary employment at low wages in the city institutions, others succeed in finding private employment. Recently an arrangement has been effected with the Charity Organization Society by which men of this class are supplied by the lodging-house with wood-yard tickets, enabling them to earn enough each day at the Charity Organization Society wood-yard to pay for lodgings and meals and leaving them a considerable part of the day for further effort to find employment.

The New York City Lodging-House has no "work test." Experience has led most of those familiar with its workings to believe that the investigation made by its visitors and the possibility of commitment have been much more satisfactory in determining the future treatment of the lodgers than a work test would have been.

III.

The third problem in municipal charities may be stated thus: What should be the standard of clothing, food, and care in the municipal almshouse? Shall it have the regime of the prison, or shall it be a hospital, or is it possible to make it a home? If it is to be a home, how far can it be made comfortable, clean, sanitary, and how varied can the food be and how good the clothing, without making it "too attractive"? The answer to these questions is being found in the solution of the second problem stated above. The elimination of the able-bodied element from the almshouse, together with the segregation of certain classes of defectives now commonly sent to State institutions, is making the almshouse a home for the aged and infirm, or at least a place where none but the aged and infirm are cared for, and which should be homelike. If the applications are carefully investigated, so that only those who are actually unable to earn a livelihood and whose immediate relatives are actually unable to maintain them, and who are unable to do any regular and ordinary work, are allowed to enter the institution, the danger of its becoming "attractive" is minimized. We can all assent to higher standards of care, better food, better clothing, and a more comfortable place for the really infirm, incurable, and senile than we would favor if able-bodied were also to share in such provision. (1)

One of the first facts in the situation to be recognized is that the population of a home for the aged and infirm in a large city is a very diversified population. It has little homogeneity, aside from the two facts of physical disability and destitution. It represents many nationalities, many religions, many previous occupations, and many different standards of life. It includes all varieties of disease that afflict the aged, and in all degrees. It represents all attitudes towards its caretaker -- the city. It is a little city in itself. It will, if left to itself, and if its circumstances permit, break up into many smaller groups on lines of nationality, tastes, and character. This suggests the lines along which the administration, to be successful, should be directed. The buildings should be so constructed and the labor so directed as to allow some opportunity for natural groupings, and in particular so as to allow each inmate, able to do even a little work, to do that which he is most able to do. While there will be no able-bodied element in our almshouse population if it is thoroughly investigated and wisely judged upon admission, there will also be comparatively few who are absolutely helpless. The man who can do only half a day's work by working all day, the man who can only work half of each day, the man who has the use of hands but who walks with great difficulty or not at all, -- all these, with hundreds of others, are as certainly debarred from participation in the ordinary industrial life of the community as though they were absolutely helpless. Yet very many of them can do some work, can contribute in some degree towards the orderly operation of the institution in which they are cared for or towards the production of some article required in that or some other city institution. While considerable progress has been made in utilizing the labor of some of the inmates of our large municipal almshouses, much remains to be accomplished in this direction. Greater resourcefulness than is usually found in an institution of this class is required, however, for devising and carrying to success further efforts of this character.