Mar. 4.
We dealt yesterday with the position taken up by the Charity Organization Committee in its appeal for an Industrial Municipal Home; which position is briefly this: that there are certain indigest foreigners for whom the community must accept responsibility; and that the simplest and cheapest way of dealing with them is to make their maintenance a fixed charge on municipal expenditure, as is done by means of @ poor rate in western towns. The Council replies that it cannot recognize that duty of the community to provide in-door relief on which the Com-that the Council, unlike the Conguls, has no powers to compel the obedience of inmates to the rules of an industrial home; that if the casual ward has to some extent failed as a means of dealing with paupers, this is certainly no argument for experimenting with a similar establishment on a more ambitious scale, but rather the reverse; and that the effect of such an institution would be, inevitably, to attract to Shanghai @ crowd of cosmopolitan paupers to become pomenent burden on the rates.
he second argument is anticipated by the Committee's hint of a promise from certain foreign Consuls that they will aid the Council in keeping all necessary order among inmates of the Home. The third objection would, we imagine, be met by the reply that casual ward and an industrial home would cater for two entirely distinct classes. The first of the Council's arguments might conceivably be overcome by a vote at a Ratepayers' Meeting. But the fourth will unquestionably cause many to hesitate. There is no means of preventing foreigners from coming to Shanghai. They may do so with excellent prospects of work, or with none. They may fall ill. In the long run they swamp the industrial home and another one has to be built.
and the reflexion that the Charity. Organization Committee is not the only body ocoupied with the relief of foreign paupers the strongest argument against granting the Committee's applicetion, even if it be no more than our old friend the argument of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.