It was obvious that the first thought of both beggar and criminal, or the supposed criminal forced to come that way, was charity and correction, one at the door of the alms station and the other at the door of the police station. But he who has been shoulder to shoulder with the victims of these two municipal institutions and has read through the pleading, parched lips and tear-stained faces of the victims of both these places, has learned an immutable lesson and can not refrain from crying out for a better and a greater social life. One who observes will quickly see throughout our nation how closely allied--in all their phases--are Charity and Prisons and Missions. While the church is lifting one thousand out of the gutter, society, by a destructive social system and evil influences, is pushing ten thousand in. Charity keeps many from actually starving to death, yet the ever-increasing number of our needy is even "greater than man can number." What is the price we pay? My practical work with this board was that of investigator, that is, I was sent out to see if the applicant for aid were really worthy, to see that the Charity Board was not being robbed by dishonest mendicants. Charity organizations seemed to be not so much concerned with the relief of the helpless as with protecting the well-to-do from imposition on the part of those who claim they are in distress. I was given approximately eighty questions to ask. I was expected to follow up these questions--many of them questions of reference--for the purpose of ascertaining whether the applicants for aid were really telling the truth. I rebelled a little at first at the thought of conducting this third degree inquisition. It was even repulsive for me to enter the door of the humblest home and state I was from the Charity Board. I would so much rather have said that I was from the city Department of Public Service for Labor. From my first day, however, I continued to see visions,--not visions of great numbers, not of saints, but of thousands of workingmen's vacant homes, deserted for lack of work due to the inability of these workingmen to earn a living. I saw the truth most forcibly revealed that again the foundation of all business was a comfortable existence and an opportunity to earn those comforts and the right of existence by labor, and that people must have that privilege or be forced to go where it _can_ be had. I saw many of those who remained struggling to tide themselves over, hoping for a better day. Many were helpless for lack of means to get away, and had therefore become dependents of the State and city.