Much of the poor-relief legislation in the United States has taken the form of restriction put upon the migration of paupers. The earlier settlement laws are attempts to regulate the migration of paupers from village to village; the later settlement laws, attempts to regulate interstate migration. In our recent national contract-iabor, Chineseexclusion, and other immigration laws we see attempts to regulate the international migration of dependent or incompetent persons liable to become public charges. New York city and Boston have long been the chief landing places of such persons. It seemed fitting, therefore, in a paper dealing with the poor-laws of these states to add in an appendix our national laws on immigration and contract-labor. PREFACE, TABLE OF CONTENTS. State poor, Local examiners, Superintendents of alien passengers, . Board of alien commissioners, . Rates of board allowed by the commonwealth, Lack of uniformity in the returns made by the towns, 1851-1895... State almshouses, . Relief outside the almshouses,. Institutional charity, Board of alien commissioners, PAGE 6-11 15-19 21-68 21-26 22 25 52 ENGLISH POOR-LAW.1 2 Late in the fourteenth century, 1388, under Richard II,2 beggars were forbidden by statute to leave the place where they then were. In this and in subsequent acts severe penalties were enacted against vagrancy—for a first offence, whipping; for the second, loss of ears; for the third, hanging. As the penalties were too severe to be enforced these statutes became dead letters. They are, however, indications of that transformation from a system of agriculture in which each laborer was fixed to the soil he cultivated, and from a system of non-competitive petty handicraft, to a regime of hired labor -a transformation which is still going on to-day. Whatever good may come out of this transformation in the long run, certainly special, if temporary, evil tendencies have accompanied it, not the least of which was the appearance in England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of a very considerable class of sturdy beggars. The closing of the commons, the localization of industries, the growth of commerce, and the accumulation of capital brought into existence a class of laborers before unknown-a class of hired laborers freed from the soil and seeking work away from home wherever work might be found. Laborers were For a fuller account of English Poor-Law see "The English PoorLaw System Past and Present," Dr. P. F. Aschroft; also, "An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory," by W. J. Ashley, M. A., Part II, chapter v. 212 Richard II, chapters 7 and 8. |