ating the "poor laws." Indeed, it may be said that one of the
main purposes of these special types of aid is to remove the
humiliation usually attendant upon application for public as-
sistance. These laws for the blind, aged, etc., are generally
based on the assumption that certain classes have a right to
public assistance and that the aid furnished under them is not
really relief at all.

The first general pension law for the blind was passed in
Ohio in 1898 through an amendment to the state poor laws.
By 1929 twenty-two states had enacted legislation providing
this special type of assistance. Old-age assistance is a compara-
tively new form of aid. Alaska made provision for old-age
pensions in 1915, but the first state to enact valid legislation was
Montana in 1923. Private institutions for the care of dependent
and neglected children and orphans were established early in
the eighteenth century. State laws concerning public care of
children in institutions, however, were mainly enacted during
the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first mothers' aid
law, providing for aid to dependent children in their own
homes, was enacted in Missouri in 1911. Progress in the field
was rapid and forty states had passed this type of legislation
by 1920.

The statutory status of public relief in 1929 may therefore
be briefly summarized as follows: All forty-eight states had
poor relief laws. Old-age assistance was on the statute books
of only ten states; blind assistance had been enacted in twenty-
two states. All but five states had provisions for aid to depend-
ent children in their own homes, and all but three had laws
making possible the care of dependent children in foster homes
and institutions. Generally speaking, with the exception of care
of dependent children by state agencies or institutions, the local
political subdivisions of the states were charged with the re-
sponsibility for administering and financing the various types
of aid. State participation in administration and financing was
most apparent in the category of dependent children because of
the general practice of housing such children in state institu-

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