Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor

[1] The Association was one of the most active and innovative charity organizations in New York, pioneering many private-public partnerships in education, healthcare and social services.

The AICP was established in 1843 as an offshoot of the New York City Mission Society [1] due to the stress put on that organization's charitable activities as a result of the Panic of 1837 and the depression which followed.

[1] Hartley proposed to solve the problem of poverty by encouraging poor people to move to the country; “Escape then from the city .

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.

The organization was instrumental in putting truancy laws in place to effect this program, empowering the police and other agencies to arrest or detain vagrant children between the ages of five and fourteen for evaluation and placement.

From this time on, the AICP merged with the COS in all but name,[8] and in 1939, the two organizations formally combined to form the Community Service Society of New York.

[18] In 1898, the AICP published a report about the gardening program as an ideal solution to unemployment and listed similar projects in nineteen cities.

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.