Among the Board of Public Welfare departments is the Recreation Department of the board which maintains supervision over all public dances in the city. Licenses must be secured for all such dances, and an inspector is present to see that dance hall rules are complied with. These rules bar the sale of liquor, provide that dance halls be properly lighted, forbid “shadow” and “moonlight” dancing, stipulate that all dances must close at twelve o’clock unless a special permit is secured, and provide that no girls under seventeen shall attend public dances unless attended by parent or guardian. Failure to comply with these rules results in a revocation of the dance permit. During the first year of inspection. more than 300 young girls were sent from dance halls and their parents notified. That inspection has resulted in raising the standard of the dances is attested by the owners of dance halls themselves. It has also increased instead of diminished the attendance at these dances. Similar permits were required for carnivals, pool halls and theaters.

The federal and state governments now provide cash assistance to needy adults who are aged, blind, or disabled through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. A person who is 65 years of age or older, legally blind, or permanently or totally disabled, and who meets prescribed income and resource requirements, can receive a basic federal cash grant of up to $264.70 per month. In FY 1981, some four million persons received SSI payments, amounting to $8.3 billion in state and federal funds. The states’ share, composed of mandatory and optional supplements, was approximately 22 percent, or $1.8 billion.

Title X of the Social Security Act of 1935 authorized federal funds to be distributed to the states for financial assistance to the needy blind residents of their state. The first authorization was for an appropriation of $3,000,000 for the fiscal year ending June 1936; and and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was established by the Social Security Act of 1935 as a grant program to enable states to provide cash welfare payments for needy children who had been deprived of parental support or care because their father or mother was absent from the home, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed.