All the facts in his possession would be used in support of the bill now before the United States Senate for the placing of all war charities under Federal supervision.

Desirable as such control is, it occurs the work is a bit belated. Enacting more or less drastic laws after millions have been collected doesn't occur as being of much use unless the provisions are made retroactive and the vagabonds Mr. Bullock says he has evidence against can be arrested, made to disgorge, and punished.

It is an extraordinary thing, but undeniable, that it is hard, if not absolutely impossible, to punish a grafter once he has his loot in his pocket.

[Editorial favoring United States Senate bill, 4792, printed in the Brooklyn Times, Oct. 13, 1918.]

A PRUDENT MEASURE.

The Military Committee of the Senate has before it the measure introduced by Senator Ashurst, of Arizona, for the regulation of war charities. It is a prudent and patriotic measure, designed for the protection of honest effort in behalf of our soldiers and sailors, and those of our allies, and should be enacted. Possibly it is too late now to undo the bulk of the wrong committed by the ghouls who exploited the splendid generosity of the American people. The bill was framed by the American Victory League of this city, after the inquiry conducted by District Attorney Swann indicated the terrible malversation of funds collected by private agencies without proper supervision and control. Before submitting the measure the league consulted with Secre tary Lane, of the Interior Department; Raymond D. Fosdick, of the War Camp Activities Committee; Third Assistant Secretary of War Keppel, and Assistant Attorney General Brown.

The Ashurst bill requires a filing with the Attorney General of the financial statements of all agencies not officially authorized, and empowers the Department of Justice to fix the percentage of the receipts that shall go to the expense of collection and maintenance of the organizations. The district attorney in Manhattan found that pitiable percentages of the vast sums realized from public generosity were going to the objects of the public affection and sympathy, and that in addition to beguiling the public at large those who profited by this sort of enterprise were obtaining the patronage of distinguished men and women who believed the activities honest and generous and properly con

ducted.

Some of the societies collapsed under inquiry, and some, in which the control was in deceived persons of honest intention, were re-formed, and the bad elements eliminated. There is a constant new growth, however, and it is to repress those that are bad and protect those that are truly benevolent that the proposed statute is designed. It need not be said that the great organizations that have worked in cooperation with the Government were not involved in this inquiry, but only the mushroom societies in which smooth and plausible rascals succeeded in interesting generous and worthy persons whom they used as tools.

[Editorial favoring United States Senate bill 4792, printed in the New York Journal,

Oct. 10, 1918.]

FEDERAL SUPERVISION OF CHARITIES—IT WILL RELIEVE WORTHY ORGANIZATIONS

FROM SUSPICION BRED OF THOSE THAT ARE FRAUDULENT.

Senator Ashurst's bill for the governmental supervision of organizations designed to collect money for the use and benefit of our armed forces or those of any of our allies, or to render philanthropic or benevolent services to such frces, is one that should promptly be enacted into law.

In accordance with the happy-go-lucky procedure which too often charac terizes American attempts to deal with great public problems we have per mitted private organizations to solicit funds from our people for all kinds of charitable purposes, ranging from fatherless French children to hungry Poles. Perhaps all of the ostensible purposes of these charities were worthy. Possibly only by wide and general solicitation of funds could grave distress be averted in the regions or from the classes they sought to serve.

REGULATING COLLECTION OF MONEY.

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But the hasty passer-by in the street who gave up his dime or his dollar to the insinuating solicitor who accosted him had but little idea of what became of that money later.

And there has been no regularly constituted authority by which those collecting these funds could be supervised and checked in their expenditure of them. It is asserted that outside of the group of recognized charities, which are to be associated in one general drive next month, outside of the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Y. M. H. A., Salvation Army, Y. W. C. A., and American Library Association, other charitable associations have collected not less than $100,000,000 in this country during the war.

Many of these serve most worthy ends. Indeed, most of them operate for thoroughly praiseworthy purposes. It would be a calamity if the funds pouring in for their use were checked.

But unless some method is adopted to assure the public that these funds are employed for worthy purposes, this flood will be checked, and the worthy charity will be starved because suspicion has attached to all.

In some instances the methods of these collecting agencies arouse just antagonism, although the end sought may be commendable.

Other organizations have had their purposes and the ends indicated by their titles wholly changed by those who have secured control of their machinery. Such a case is that of the National Security League, which was founded to conduct a propaganda for more thorough military preparedness and, after the war was upon us, to urge universal military service and the prosecution of that conflict to the point of victory. Falling into the control of reactionaries and franchise grabbers of the sort typified by Alton B. Parker and Elihu Root, it has become wholly diverted from its original laudable purposes.

Clinging to its old title, the National Security League still secures financial support from many good and patriotic citizens who believe that it is still' intended to advance the military and naval interests of the Nation. Many whose names are now identified with it would withdraw if they knew from official reports the uses which are now being made of its funds and its wide influence.

While District Attorney Swann, with characteristic efficiency, has employed all the authority legally at his command to investigate these societies, fix their character, and to restore public confidence in those that merit it, he, too, feels that Federal legislation is necessary.

Without it even those who amidst the enormous pressure of appeals for aid to-day still respond willingly and liberally to the requests for charitable aid can feel no certainty that the cause for which appeals are issued is worthy or that the funds they contribute are honestly administered and for the good of that cause alone.

Under Senator Ashurst's bill the records of every such organization would at all times be filed with the Federal Department of Justice and open to public investigation, while that department would be vested with authority to supervise and control its methods, the amount of moneys it may collect, and the manner of their expenditure.

Alike for the protection of the charitable, the strengthening of worthy war charities, and the extirpation of organizations operated under false colors, this bill should be made a law.

[Editorial favoring legislation for control of war charities, printed in the New York World, Jan. 15, 1919.]

GRAFT IN THE NAME OF CHARITY.

The sufferings of innocent victims of the war offered to guilty greed a golden opportunity. Nothing was more certain than that thieves would seek profit by exploiting compassion. Nothing was more likely than that honest men and women would innocently aid their purposes; or that unbusinesslike persons would incur waste in war charities by excessive commissions and disproportionate expenditures. All these things happened; and New York was their great center because of its wealth and generosity.

The World is well satisfied with the results thus far of its campaign against corrupt charity plotters and its endeavors to check or reform the methods of inefficient good will. Some men have been convicted. Some wasteful en

terprises have been terminated. Some undertakings, better managed, have been subjected to accountings.

The report of Assistant District Attorney Kilroe, after an investigation prompted by the World's exposures, makes public a mass of material affecting bogus and ill-managed charities. It is accompanied by expert drafts of three laws, local, State and national, which if enacted by the aldermen, the legislature and Congress, would go far to block in the future any scandals as have been revealed in the recent past.

The war is not over. Sufferings due to the war are, in the case of many millions, still at their height. The people are entitled to the protection these projects of laws would afford.

[Editorial from the Globe and Commercial Advertiser, New York, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 1919.}

WAR CHARITY GRAFT.

Assistant District Attorney Kilroe in the course of his investigations into war charity scandals looked into the activities of 534 different organizations. Of these 384 were put out of business as a result. Mr. Kilroe further estimates that between $3,000,000,000 and $4,000,000,000 was raised in this country for war benefit purposes, more than $50,000,000 of which has been fraudulently misappropriated or diverted from the funds sent to Europe.

It is no wonder that Mr. Kilroe, therefore, should favor legislation for the control of war charities and patriotic societies so that the fraud, graft, and waste which have characterized many in the past will be elimniated. Briefly Mr. Kilroe's program includes:

1. A Federal law placing patriotic societies and war relief organizations under the supervision and control of a special bureau of the Department of the Interior.

2. A State law placing the same class of organizations under the control of a special bureau in the office of the Secretary of State, from which bureau every war relief committee or similar organization would have to obtain a license.

3. A city ordinance prohibiting the soliciting of funds, the sale of buttons. tags, and merchandise on the streets or in other public places for charity, exceptions to be made in the case of strictly religious bodies.

With such strict supervision over charitable activities it is likely that many persons who have been making more than comfortable livings by preying on a warm-hearted public will have to bend their energies in some other direction. Social ambition, greed, or downright dishonesty prompted the promoting of many of the 7,500 charity schemes that were active in this city during the war. How lucrative the graft in New York alone has been may be judged from Mr. Kilroe's estimate that as much as 65 per cent of the total moneys collected here has been frittered away.

Mr. Kilroe's idea to have a check-up in the money sent into the war zone does not seem to be practicable. Such a procedure would be rather expensive, and it is doubtful if any useful purpose would be served by throwing more good money after bad. The fact that millions of dollars have been misused has been established. The chief thing now to do is to see that such wholesale grafting will be impossible in the future.

[Editorial from the Evening Post, New York, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 1919.]

CHARITY NOT SWEET.

When medieval church relief flourished, the first trick taught a thief was to put a penny in the poor-box and extract a crown. In the days of Mrs. Jellyby's project for teaching the natives of Borrioboola-Gha to turn pianoforte legs and establish an export trade, there were neither scientific principles of charitable relief, elaborate auditing systems, nor inquisitive law officers. The crop of war charities that sprang up after 1914 was certain to show many descendants of both the medieval thief and Mrs. Jellyby. The district attorney estimates that 20,000 relief agencies have been active; and in 1916 a single foreign-relief body reported that 5.000 charitable organizations north of the Mexican line were cooperating with it. The district attorney's classification of New York's relief

roster is simple. There were honest and efficient societies, wastrel charities, foolish charities, profiteering societies, frauds, and "hundred per cent boys." The distinction between the last two is that the frauds maintained a virtuous look by pouring only 99.44 per cent into their own pockets.

The public has no one but itself to thank if $3,000,000 were stolen here in less than a year, and much greater sums wasted. Ever since rum and Bibles were given to the Indians, Americans have thrown the gates wide to impostors. Two years ago Robert W. Kelso, of Boston, remarked that our manner of licensing charities implied: "Go ahead with your enterprise. You need never report to this Government what you do or how you do it, how much you beg, how much you spend, or the result. It's nobody's business but your own." To start a charity it is hardly necessary to do more than it was a half-century ago to start as lawyer or doctor: hire deskroom and a hat-peg, and have your name painted on the door. The public is delighted to have great numbers of charities flourishing. The river scoundrel in " Huckleberry Finn" played on a clear American weakness when he posed before the woods camp meeting as a reformed pirate from the Indian Ocean eager to return and convert his crew, and carried away a hatful of money. The noble American impulse of generosity abhors scientific giving. If we hear that a charity has a careful bookkeeper and earnest secretary, our hand is numbed; but if an oily rascal rattles a placard and a box under our nose, out comes our dollar, and we feel that the recording angel is setting down a good deed to our credit. "That's the American of it"; we are not calculating penny-pinchers when asked to give. If an agent insists on showing his unimpeachable credentials, we snort, "Bless my soul, do you think me a Schrooge?"

And how delightful it is for the charity organizers! No one can feel aught but indignant at the "hundred per cent boys." But the agent who insists that, as general benefactor of the race, he should have his perquisite-what of him? He collects hundreds weekly for Peruvian aborigines, or Igorrote orphans; should such a philanthropist not live at the best hotels on porterhouse, truffles, and wine? He can take his 60 cents out of every dollar; what no one knows hurts nobody; and in the end the Igorrotes do get something. Another area in the field is the exercising ground of society aspirants. The Rhinegelts and Westergoulds are acting as patronesses and honorary vice presidents to this or that charity, are they? Well, Mrs. Aspirant, who has money, too, will start her own charity. She can talk so soulfully about it to her friends, can have so much put in the papers about it, and so, martyr-like, will enjoy the labor of arranging benefit teas. Spending much money and taking much, she is vastly relieved when it proves possible to send Europe a small check without bothering her husband to meet a deficit. In even the humbler social circles this game is played. The district attorney found one picturesque lady who had a delightful time going to swell dining places with a group of satellites, having a good meal followed by a harangue on her dear charity to all in the room, and paying the combined meal check out of what she collected.

Our robust American definition of the lowest meanness is that it would steal pennies from a blind man. Of such meanness are those guilty who would rob the war orphan of his bread and the war-maimed of his crutch, by theivishness, ignorance, or carelessness in conducting a charity. Before the war State laws for the better supervision of charities were being warmly urged. A. G. Warner's standard work on " Charities" estimates at least 10,000 charities normally in the United States, collecting $200,000,000 annually. Only seven States have made any proper requirement as to an investigation of worthiness before incorporation is granted. Only 10 States require the licensing of even charitable agencies concerned with the care of children. Proper State demands for initial investigation and continuing supervision should spread over the entire Union. The cities also can do much; and such private agencies as the chamber of commerce, nearly 200 of which now investigate and approve or disapprove local charities, ought to extend these activities. But the chief responsibility lies with the State legislatures. Till they meet it, men can only be careful to give to none but the reputable and approved charities.

Senator WEEKS. Is this bill, S. 4972, a bill that you advocate the passage of in its present form?

Mr. DONOVAN. There is a substitute that Senator Ashurst, who was interested in it, suggested to Mr. Kilroe and myself, and we have

offered it here. It was prepared by Prof. Chamberlain, chief of the legislative drafting research board of Columbia University.

I am very grateful for the courteous hearing you have given us this morning, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you finished, Mr. Bullock?

Mr. BULLOCK. These communications are communications from various war charitable organizations expressing approval of the bill, but I have found that there is not a single man or woman who has contributed to war charities that is not in favor of this legislation, and that practically includes everybody, gentlemen, in the United States except those who have been interested in war welfare work. This original bill was the bill I drafted after talking with Mr. Fosdick and Mr. Kepple, and then I came down here about a month ago and saw Mr. Kepple, and he suggested modifications to conform to conditions growing out of the armistice.

The CHAIRMAN. Those modifications are embodied in the proposed substitute?

Mr. BULLOCK. They are in the proposed substitute.

(Thereupon at 11.45 o'clock a. m. the committee adjourned to meet subject to the call of the chairman.)

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