ABSTRACT
Local governments in the United States are beleaguered with financial problems: education, and sanitation maintenance, welfare programs, along with many other lesser but collectively significant costs, all place a strain on communities, almost all of which derive the bulk of their revenue from a property tax. General Assembly ordered each town to elect an overseer of the poor to assist in "maintaining the impotent". In the seventeenth century, relief was such a minor problem that the town meeting usually handled all cases itself; the overseer had little discretionary powers and merely implemented the meeting's orders. The normal method was for the town meeting to authorize payment to some willing person who would in turn provide care for the person needing assistance. The "binding out" of poor children as apprentices was widely practiced and colony legislation in 1742 strengthened the town councils' powers to do so.
