The County Board
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THE COUNTY BOARD
Cook County's Board of Commissioners is essentially a philanthropic organization. While it performs other important duties, its chief function is the administration of the charity service.
President of the Board of Cook County Commissioners
No other government enters into such intimate relations with its people. When poverty overwhelms a family the County government brings relief. When sickness and poverty combine to render a citizen helpless the County opens to him the doors of its hospitals. When bodily infirmity takes away the means of earning a livelihood the County gives him a home. When the widow is unable to provide for her children the County Board helps her support them. When the children are homeless or their parents can not give them proper care the County becomes a father to them. When the blind are without means of support the County Board reaches out helping hand. When money, friends, relatives and health have left the house, the County government enters the door.
During the year 1915 the County Board spent more than $2,000 000 in giving aid to 20,000 families — 200,000 persons. Nearly all these thousands were given assistance through the County agent who is the chief executive officer of the charity service. Every family given relief, every patient entering the County Hospital, every consumptive sent to the tuberculosis hospitals, every person admitted to the Infirmary, every widow or blind man given a pension, has had the approval of the county agent.
The charity service is administered under the law known as the Pauper Act, which makes it the duty of the county "to relieve and support all poor and indigent persons lawfully resident there in." These poor and indigent persons the act defines to be those who "shall be unable to earn a livelihood in consequence of any bodily infirmity, idiocy, insanity, lunacy or other unavoidable cause," and who have no relatives within the specified degrees of kinship able to support them. Recent legislation has relieved the County of the care of the insane and feeble-minded, but it has added pensions for the blind and widows with young children. The Pauper Act also requires the County Board to provide medical service for the indigent poor. The law gives the County agent "general supervision and charge of all matters in relation to the care and support of the poor."
To enable it to carry out the requirements of the act, the County Board established a County Hospital to care for the sick who are unable to obtain proper medical service at their homes. Where adequate care can be given at their homes, in cases of temporary illness, assistant County physicians visit the family. Where the indigent poor are homeless or can not be cared for at their homes, they are admitted to the Infirmary.
The county agent investigates all applications for relief and decides whether it shall be given at the home or in the Infirmary. If he finds the applicant has relatives who are able to support him and are required to do so under the law, the County agent requests the relative to support the indigent person. If the relative refuses to give the support required, the County agent brings suit in the County Court to compel him to obey the law. During the year 1915, the County Court collected for or caused to be paid direct to beneficiaries more than $75.000.
Cook County supplies shoes for school children whose parents cannot buy them; furnishes artificial limbs and eyes, glasses, crutches and other articles that will enable the maimed and helpless
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to become self-supporting; buries the dead, cares especially for indigent veteran soldiers; extradites husbands who abandon their wives and sends to their homes or homes of relatives in other counties or states persons who are non-residents or without family or friends and liable to become public charges.
The Juvenile Court supplements the charity service by providing for children who are homeless and without proper care, or whose parents or relatives cannot control them. Homes are found for the dependent, and the wayward are placed in institutions or in charge of probation officers who exercise a parental supervision over them in their homes. This department investigates applications for pensions paid to widows with families of small children dependent on ton them, where the application is passed on favorably, fixes the amount of the pension.
The recently organized social service department goes still further and carries the County’s good offices into wider fields of benevolence. It unites broken families; looks after children temporarily without care because of illness of parents; concerns itself with personal needs of the County charges and performs helpful services for them. This department supplements and adds a human and empathetic element to the charity service as prescribed by the statutes.
The powers and duties of the County Board do not stop with the charity service. It levies taxes, maintains the courts and the various administrative departments of the County, aids the construction of roads and bridges and supervises the public schools in the country districts. The County Board maintains a Court House, a jail and criminal court building, the County Hospital and an Infirmary plant and county farm.
The new forest preserve law has made the County Board the Forest Preserve District Board of Commissioners, and authorized it to spend $11,000,000 for forest lands in Cook County. Only $1,000,000 has been provided for this purpose, however, through a recent sale of bonds.
The County Board is a big business corporation as well as a large philanthropic organization. It spends $11,000,000 a year for the maintenance of the County Government and carrying on its charity service.
ROBERT M. SWEITZER
County Clerk of Cook County
Is to the manor born; a native Chicagoan, raised and educated the most progressive, enterprising cosmopolitan city in the world.
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A man with a thorough business training, having served for many years in an important branch in one of the leading firms of the County (John V. Farwell Co.).
On his advent into public office he determined to institute strictly business methods, an innovation as compared with the laxity apparent in many branches of the public service.
He is now in the prime of life, and in perfect physical condition, which he attributes in great part to his love of athletics in his youth, and of which he is still a generous patron.
Mr. Robert M. Sweitzer took for a life partner a Chicago girl (nee Miss Alice K. Kevil), and they blessed with an interesting family of three, one boy and two girls.
Their home is at No. 2958 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago.
HON. DANIEL HERLIHY
Honorable Daniel Herlihy, Senator of the Twenty-fifth District, is father of three tax bills, one of which nets to Cook County returns from $400,000 to $500,000 per year in back taxes for Cook County. One item brought in alone the sum of $56,000.
The bills which he presented and passed in the House are numbers 465, which is the most important, 466 and 256. Senator Herlihy is also Chief of the Election Department of Cook County.