Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor

The AICP was established in 1843 as an offshoot of the New York City Mission Society  It pre-dated other well-known charitable organizations such as the Children's Aid Society, founded in 1854, the State Charities Aid Association (1872) and the Charity Organization Society (1884). The directors of the new charity, made up of some of the city's richest people, believed that the existence of the city's apparently permanent indigent population was not due to economic conditions or adversity, but instead could be best explained by some fault in the poor themselves, which the AICP was determined to fix. Robert Milham Hartley, formerly secretary of the New-York City Temperance Society for 10 years, was chosen as the AICP's first executive secretary. By the early 1850s, the AICP was the most influential charity in New York, and its program was soon imitated in many other American cities. The association stressed character building as a way to end poverty, and took steps to insure that only the "deserving" poor received charity: idlers, malingerers and vagrants were to be sent to workhouses to do hard labor, while the depraved and debased were to be locked up in penitentiaries was a warning to others not to follow their path. and in 1939, the two organizations formally combined to form the Community Service Society of New York. On November 6, 1931, the Peacock Ball was held as a fundraiser for the Association, headed by Ruth Vanderbilt Twombly. 3,000 people attended the event. Guests included notables of stage, screen, and radio, including Rudy Vallée, Marion Harris, and Nick Lucas. It was held in the newly constructed Waldorf-Astoria and broadcast live over WJZ Radio. == Initiatives ==

As part of its advocacy of sanitary reform, the Association participated in an initiative to construct of public baths in 1852; in 1892; and in 1904, when Elizabeth Milbank Anderson donated funds for the Milbank Memorial Bath on 38th Street. The organization championed the Metropolitan Health Act of 1866 and other legislation which promoted a new sanitary regime in the city, and joined with other reformers in advocating a large park to become the "lungs" of the city, an effort with eventually culminated in the creation of Central Park. The committee also advocated for gardens as a way to develop skills in the hopes that gardeners would relocate to the country. The garden was located in Long Island City on 7,200 city lots donated by William Steinway. Allotments for the roughly 100 families who tended the land ranged from one-quarter of an acre to eight acres. By the end of the first season, the program was deemed a success growing $11,000 worth of produce with a clear profit margin for farmers. In 1898, the AICP published a report about the gardening program as an ideal solution to unemployment and listed similar projects in nineteen cities. == Notable people ==

Robert Milham Hartley was Secretary and Agent of the Association from the 1840s to the 1870s. Leading social workers who acquired their early training at the AICP included John A. Kingsbury, later on the Commission of Public Charities (1914–1917) and Harry L. Hopkins the future director of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, part of the New Deal. ==References==