ONE of the first lessons we learned at Hull-
House was that private beneficence is totally in-
adequate to deal with the vast numbers of the
city's disinherited. We also quickly came to
realize that there are certain types of wretched-
ness from which every private philanthropy
shrinks and which are cared for only in those
wards of the county hospital provided for the
wrecks of vicious living or in the city's isolation
hospital for smallpox patients.

I have heard a broken-hearted mother exclaim
when her erring daughter came home at last too
broken and diseased to be taken into the family
she had disgraced, "There is no place for her
but the top floor of the County Hospital; they
will have to take her there, and this only after
every possible expedient had been tried or sug-
gested. This aspect of governmental responsi-
bility was unforgetably borne in upon me during
the smallpox epidemic following the World's Fair,
when one of the residents, Mrs. Kelley, as State
Factory Inspector was much concerned in dis-
covering and destroying clothing which was being

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