DOCUMENT No. 11.

BOARD OF ALDERMEN,

JULY 15, 1844.

The Committee on Charity and Alms House, to whom was referred the subject in relation to the reorganization of the Pauper Department of the Alms House, &c., &c., presented the following Report thereon; which was laid on the table, and directed to be printed for the use of the members.

THE Committee on Charity and the Alms House, to whom were referred the communication of the Alms House Commissioners, and a plan for the reorganization of the Pauper Department of the Alms House, presented by the "New-York Association for the improvement of the condition of the poor," beg leave to

REPORT:

That they have examined the communications submitted to them, and have repeatedly visited the various institutions connected with the Alms House Department, with the view of in

quiring into the abuses therein existing, and the reformations capable of being introduced. In making their report, they will assume the Board to possess such a knowledge in regard to these institutions, derived from the reports on file in the Departments, and from personal examination, as will supersede the necessity of any preliminary detail.

Your Committee deem it their duty, in the first place, to direct your attention to an evil of very great moment, which can be effectually remedied only by the action of the Federal Legislature. Something remedial may perhaps be accomplished by a more strict enforcement, than has hitherto been effected, of the existing laws; but if any inference as to their adequacy can be drawn from the results exhibited under their operation, it is obvious that we must look for further and higher legislation to cure the grievances of which we complain.

On the first day of July instant, the number of white adults in our Alms House, Lunatic Asylum, and Penitentiary, was two thousand seven hundred and ninety. Of this number one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one were foreigners, and nine hundred and nine only were native Americaus. More than twothirds foreigners! and the same proportion undoubtedly exists among the inmates of our prisons and other establishments connected with the Alms House department. The disbursements of the city in support of this establishment during the year ending the thirty-first of December, 1843, amounted to $251,000, without reference to the interest on the vast sums expended and invested in the necessary grounds and buildings. During the same period there was received by the city, from the provision made for the support of bonded passengers, the sum of $7,342 78; and for commutation fees of alien immigrants the sum of $5,922 50: amounting to $13,265 28-the whole of which we will place to the credit of alien pauperism.

From these data it may be readily demonstrated that the City

of New-York is directly taxed to the amount of $150,000 a year for the support of alien paupers and vagrants!

Is this burthen justly thrown entirely upon the tax-paying citizens of New-York? Is the evil of which they complain altogether beyond the reach of remedial legislation? Your Committee are of opinion that it is clearly within the ability and the duty of the Federal Government to remedy the evil, and to relieve the City of New-York from this oppressive and unequal taxation. It does not fall within the province of your Committee to go more largely into this matter, nor to point out the precise mode by which the object might be accomplished. It would be by one, probably, of a series of similar measures upon a subject to which the public mind of the whole country has been recently directed, with an earnestness and determination that will compel the prompt and decisive action of Congress. If the oppressive taxation to which the City of New-York is now subjected, for the support of alien paupers and vagrants, could be brought to the attention of that body in the connection to which we have alluded, we have little doubt that means could be readily devised to diminish or distribute and equalize the burthen, if not to arrest the excessive pauper immigration which induces it.

Before touching any of the subordinate evils existing in the Alms House department, your Committee feel it their duty to allude to an abuse which has not escaped the attention of the public. It cannot be denied that the Alms House establishment at Bellevue has been made subservient to party purposes; and that sturdy paupers, abundantly able to maintain themselves by honest labor, have been supported there winter after winter in idleness, at the expense of the tax-paying citizens, and, as would seem, for no other purpose than that of securing suffrages for the dominant party. The State election in the fall is no sooner over, than crowds of able-bodied paupers throng our Alms House. They are clothed, fed, and lodged well, during the

inclement season of the year; and in the spring, without having contributed a penny in money or labor for their winter's entertainment, they are marched up to the polls to vote away the rights and property of the self-supporting laborers and independent citizens.

For this evil there appears to be no effective remedy, independently of the influence of a corrected public opinion upon the misguided partisans who have hitherto countenanced and encouraged such shameless abuses. The laws, which make all citizens voters, contemplate that all who are able to work should support themselves by their own labor; and were never framed for a state of things in which poor-houses should be maintained for the manufacture of voters, and pauperism should be encouraged for the sake of its suffrages. We have an unquestionable right to annex any reasonable conditions to the enjoyment of our public as our private charity. The demagogue may disguise it or palliate it as he may, no man of ordinary intelligence can deny that it is onerous and unjust to the self-supporting laborers of the city -that numbers of irresponsible, nameless, able-bodied paupers, more than two-thirds of them of foreign birth, should be sent out from our Alms Houses to the polls, and exercise the same rights and privileges of citizenship with those at whose expense they have been maintained. Your Committee would therefore recommend the adoption of such regulations as may tend in some measure to secure the city against the danger and disgrace of being governed by an administration elected by the tenants of an alms house. Your Committee would also suggest the propriety of adopting such further regulations as may be necessary to keep the able-bodied paupers in constant employment. It matters little what that employment may be-whether within the walls of the establishment or without-whether in repairing the roads, cleaning the streets, hammering stone, or in the labors of agriculture. It is laid down by all those who have most attentively considered this subject, that "when the wants of any destitute