The Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity, or, as it is popularly called, the Charity Organisation Society, has for its object the scientific supervision of charity dispensation, in the deep-rooted conviction that slovenly and indiscriminate almsgiving is a most pernicious bane to society, and calculated to foster rather than diminish indigence. Personal inquiry is the keynote of the Society’s mode of operation. Trained, experienced, and apt persons—both honorary and paid—exhaustively investigate all cases of indigence brought under the Society’s notice. In each instance, one important point is established at the outset of the investigation, namely, whether the individual concerned must of necessity—through physical or other disability—habitually depend for sustenance upon the resources of others, or whether he or she possesses the latent means of self-support, which may be brought into action—under the fostering influence of personal guidance in moral and material things—after the temporary condition of poverty has been met by the judicious application of charity. Cases of the former description are relegated to the action of the poor-law—therein lying its true function; cases of the latter kind are taken in hand by the Society. But its action is not that of an individual charitable institution concerned merely with the distribution of its own resources. It acts as an intermediary between those who need charity and those who are anxious to devote money to charitable purposes. Hence, in the discharge of its functions, it places itself in connection both with benevolent individuals and benevolent bodies, seeking to secure the best relief for the different cases of destitution which come under its notice and at the same time to prevent ‘overlapping’ in charity dispensation. Where, however, it finds that a case of destitution cannot effectively be relieved from other sources, the Society brings its own funds into requisition. As to its function of ‘repressing mendicity,’ this it discharges by promoting the detection and prosecution of impostors.