_Public and Private Charity._ As has already been indicated, the ordinary line to be observed between private charity and public relief is that to private charity should be given the more delicate and difficult tasks, such as readjusting the temporarily dependent persons, the care of, in some cases, dependent children and the like, while to public charity should be given the cases which need permanent relief in institutions. This is only a conventional line, however, between private charity and public relief. As has already been pointed out, the state can conceivably, also, undertake the more delicate and difficult tasks of charitable aid, and probably it should do so as rapidly as it demonstrates its fitness to undertake this work, as the state, when once it has achieved certain standards, is a more certain and reliable agency than private institutions or societies. But there is in philanthropic work, a large place for the private society or institution. There will probably always be debatable cases which may better be looked after by private agencies than by public. There is, therefore, in every well-developed community, room for both public and private agencies, although there should be close coöperation where both exist one with the other. The church, through all its history, has undertaken philanthropic work with notable success, and it would be regrettable if the philanthropic activities of the church were to cease at this time, when they are needed as never before, in spite of the large development of public philanthropy. Church charity should, however, be made as scientific as any other form of charity, and should be carefully coördinated with the work of the state and other secular agencies. Among the secular agencies we have already mentioned the charity organization society as typifying in many ways the highest type of philanthropic activity of the present. It would seem that this society, organizing as it does all the philanthropic forces and agencies of the community, could scarcely be displaced by state activity; and that there would remain to this society, as well as many other private philanthropic societies, a very large field of activity in the future. State activity in the field of charity is, therefore, to be encouraged, but it must not be supposed that such activity can take the place of private charity.