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YATES REPORT (Excerpt for RENSSELAER County) |
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1032
PITTSTOWN.
This
town has no interest in the house of industry established in this
county.
[Letter from the supervisor.] STEPHENTOWN.
The practice in this town
for
some years past has been to
agree on a
time and place,
for
what they call
selling the poor, when the overseers meet and dispose of them to
those who will keep
them
the lowest for one year, taking care however that they do not get into
families where they will be
abused. It is found to be the most convenient and
cheapest
way,
in
which the poor
in
this town can be supported. [ Letter from the supervisor of
Stephentown.] House
of
Industry in the county of
Rensselaer.
Under the act of the legislature,
entitled "an act relative to the poor,"
passed March 3d, 1820, and
in virtue of the powers therein contained, the
supervisors of Troy, Schaghticoke,
Greenbush and Brunswick,
proceeded
to
purchase a farm of 140 acres: situate about two miles
from
the city of Troy, for which they paid $4,200; and to erect thereon a
large and substantial brick house and other necessary buildings, which
cost $5,064. The necessary preparations were completed so as to admit
paupers into the house in September, 1821.
Since which, provision for the poor in the
respective towns, has been
discontinued in all cases where the situation of the pauper world
admit of his or her removal to the house of industry, and the language
of the overseer of the poor in the respective towns, to persons calling
on him for
assistance,
is
“If you
need assistance and support, the house of
Industry is your place; there is a comfortable house, food and clothing,
and there is constant employment for you; -- there your children will be
provided for and instructed, and suitable measures taken to have them
brought up to business."
The overseers
of the
poor
in each of these, and in
Sand Lake, which has now purchased into
the establishment,
now deal out nothing to poor persons, except in cases of sudden
sickness, where the subject could not be removed, or in some instances,
where a
load of wood or some trifling assistance, would
be an
important
relief to an industrious family, and help them through a hard winter.
The superintendents of
this
institution, appointed under the act by the supervisors,
have found
the plan of the establishment to answer their most sanguine
expectations; -- they
believe that hereafter no tax for the support of the poor will be necessary
in
the towns connected with the institution; and
that if the same system is extended into every
county and town throughout the state, taxes for support of the poor
can be dispensed with, and the
progress and increase or pauperism can be in great
measure arrested. As individuals in in the different towns, become poor,
and from infirmity or otherwise are unable to support themselves they
can be placed in the house of industry owned by the county, and the
concerns |
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