The care of the dependent classes in Columbia, Missouri

Abstract

It would seem at first thought that Columbia would have no serious charity problem, that it is so advantageously situated that poverty and dependency would be reduced to a minimum. The city has a population of 13,122, most of whom are native born. There are no large factories to employ any great number of laborers, hence the foreign population is very small. Columbia's boast is that it is a city whose cief business is education; it is the seat of the state university and has besides the great state school two junior colleges for girls. The city is situation in one of the best agricultural districts of the state. However, notwithstanding all of these advantages there is found here, in minature, many of the conditions that obtain in the poorer districts of the larger cities, bad housing bad sanitation, and unemployment. The purpose of the study here undertaken were four fold: 1. To discovr as accurately as possible the size and nature of the charity problem of the city. 2. To find out what was being done for the different dependent groups. 3. To investigate the work of the different agencies offering relief so as to ascertain how well they were meeting the situation. 2. To make some suggestions that might improve the efficiency of the different agencies studied.