yond the condition of experiment, and may be reasonably declared a success. This school has very nearly relieved the poorhouses of the children that were so uncomfortable in and so ruined by them heretofore. Over three hundred bright-faced and happy little boys and girls await in this school adoption into families, and are meantime enjoying the best of educational advantages.

It only remains to mention the State prisons. Within the last year the State has added to its penal establishments a house of correction and reformatory at Ionia. This institution is intended for convicts between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. It will have a capacity for five hundred prisoners, the cells for whom are now about half finished, and about two hundred of them occupied. Like the new asylum, this structure is a marvel of economy in building, and will cost, when complete, about three hundred thousand dollars.

In addition to the above Report concerning Michigan, Mr. Lord at the afternoon session of May 21, made, from brief notes, a general and verbal report on "The Work of the Year in Charitable Administration," but in consequence of a misunderstanding the stenographer has failed to preserve what was said. In discussing the report, Prof. Wayland and Mr. Byers spoke. The substance of their remarks is given above, under the heads "Connecticut" and "Ohio." Mrs. L. R. Wardner spoke in regard to the Industrial School under her charge at Cairo, and her remarks will be found on a subsequent page.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

MAY 21, 1878.

The

After the report of Business Committee, and from the several States, (above given) and a report by Mr. H. W. Lord on Work of the Year" had been made at the opening of the afternoon session, a brief debate followed on Mr. Lord's report. Mr. F. B. Sanborn then read the first paper on Medical Charities and Out-Door Relief, as follows:

MEDICAL OUT-DOOR RELIEF IN MASSACHUSETTS.

BY DR. HENRY B. WHEELWRIGHT OF NEWBURYPORT.
[Read May 21, 1878.]

It is proposed to discuss, in this paper, the subject of the relief of the out-door poor, especially in its medical relations, and to detail the efforts and experience of Massachusetts in this direction for the last thirteen years. It aims to be a contribution to the sum of our general knowledge of the management of pauperism, and must not be understood as advocating a policy to be insisted on in all places and under all conditions.

The best method of caring for the poor has been the puzzle of centuries. The wisest thinkers have never developed it. The most experienced and practical workers have never agreed about it. When one thinks he has got it, it evades him like Proteus. It appears to depend on times and circumstances, on the condition of society, the traditions, the temper, the habits and modes of living, of a people. A plan which will work well in the sparsely-settled country may not answer at all in the crowded city. The specific for a virtuous community may fail utterly where vice has the upper hand. In fact, such are the freaks of fortune, so sudden and unaccountable the exigencies of human life, so mysterious the courses of nature and the ways of the pestilence, that the claim to have provided adequately for all, or even the attempt to do so, would intrude presumptuously upon the province of omniscient wisdom. Hence no rigid system, fettered closely by unyielding laws, is likely to succeed with an extended and heterogeneous population. It must be flexible, and adaptable to all sorts of emergencies, or so simple and general as to leave all difficulties, as they arise, to the discretion of its administrators. And after all, no matter what the plan, it is your executive men, rather than your systems or your laws, that will achieve success.

Public provision for the poor in New England dates back to its earliest settlement. Our ancestors had lived under the operation of the newly-enacted poor-laws of England. On this topic, the Act known as the forty-third of Elizabeth was the sum of their knowledge, as it was the boundary of their ideas, and so naturally became the basis of their future legislation. This was modified, however, by the changed conditions of a newly-settled country, and, as time passed on, by the costly experience of nearly two centuries. This statute of Elizabeth was an attempt of the wisest

of that day to bring order out of the confusion of the three preceding reigns. When, about 1539, Henry VIII. confiscated the church property, and broke up the monasteries and other religious houses, he turned loose upon his realm a crowd of shiftless, homeless, and penniless persons of all degrees, from the titled ecclesiastic to the lowest mendicant. Destitute of trades or skilled labor, either not knowing how or not caring to do ordinary manual work, at a time when monkish learning was well-nigh useless to win bread, and the lowest grades of toil were full, they became perforce an army of vagrants, and an intolerable nuisance. The remedies attempted were characteristic of the imperious king: first to whip, next to mutilate, and then to hang. But this race of "sturdy and valiant beggars," as the old statute quaintly styles them, survived even this heroic treatment. Ears were cropped in vain, and equally futile were the stocks and whipping-posts in the market-places, and the gibbets along the highways. They must tramp, steal, or starve.

Next came the attempt to assign them to given districts, and place them under local supervision; but all these efforts were crude and inefficient, till the sagacious statesmen of Elizabeth, in 1601, improving and consolidating previous legislation, devised a policy under which, greatly expanded and bettered by the experience of successive generations, though with many faults still unamended, England has lived for nearly three centuries. It established a parish system; it created overseers of the poor, and defined their duties; it made work compulsory, and required the overseers to provide it; and, finally, from its germ of local support with local supervision, there grew up gradually methods by which every man might secure and transmit to his children a permanent right to public relief, if necessary, in any municipality. The statutes providing these methods are known as the "laws of settlement."

Statutes identical with these in principle, but modified in their details to suit the needs of a new country and the peculiar ideas of their framers, were soon adopted by the men of New England. These have been altered and added to, from time to time, so that now their provisions are alike in no two States, and they form altogether a curious piece of patchwork. They are important to our subject only as effecting a division of the poor into two classes: the settled or domestic poor, and the non-settled or State paupers.

The former, in Massachusetts, are solely under the charge of their own municipalities. The State laws affecting them are very few and simple, and the will of their fellow-citizens decides the

form of their support. Each town chooses its own methods, under the general laws, and solves, if it can, its own difficulties. It is of the latter class (State paupers) that our subject treats, in respect to their relief and control in Massachusetts.

It is impossible to ascertain precisely or even approximately the aggregate of the non-settled population of that State. The opinions of experts differ widely; but from the experience of twenty years among the poor in all its cities and towns, I judge it to be nearly or quite one-half the total population, or, in round numbers, 800,000. Supposing it, as some insist, to be but half that number, the ratios that follow must be doubled.

To show the burden of pauperism assumed by the State as such, I give the following figures for 1877; premising that, in speaking of the inmates of the institutions, we mean all the different persons who were relieved within them, whether for a day, or the entire year. Among those aided outside we include all the resident members of the family, who shared, directly or indirectly, in the relief. Thus, compared with a non-settled population of 800,000 : The number of State paupers in the lunatic hospitals and State almshouses for 1877 was

The number of State sick poor relieved at their homes was,
The number of above, including their dependent families,

1 The number not sick relieved at home was believed to be ..

Total receiving in-door relief

Total receiving out-door relief
Total receiving relief.

4,984 or 1 to 160

4,100 or 1 to 195

16,000 or 1 to 50

6,200 or 1 to 129

4,984 or 1 to 160

26,300 or 1 to 30

31,300 or 1 to 25

Thus, supposing our assumption of 800,000 to be correct, one in each twenty-five and a half of the non-settled population has received relief from the State at some time during the year 1877; or, in other words, one in each fifty-four of our entire population of 1,700,000 has been for some portion of the year a State pauper.

We have no room to discuss all the various methods by which this mass of dependants might be dealt with; but among them I will specify, (1) voluntary charity, without interference by law; (2) compulsory, or legal charity alone; (3) legal charity, with the unrestrained giving of private alms; (4) legal charity, with such an organization of relief given by societies and individuals

1 The act authorizing the relief of the worthy poor not sick at their homes went into effect in June, 1877; and from that date to Dec. 31, 1,550 families claimed aid, which, at four to a family, would make 6,200. For an entire year the number would have been much larger.

as will insure co-operative action by public officials and private almoners.

The third method now prevails in Massachusetts, and her legal charity is administered through the medium of the almshouse, with the check of the workhouse, and through outside relief (supplied by special officers) only in certain cases, and under the most stringent guards. Whether this system tends to promote pauperization will be seen in the following pages. For ourselves, we hope for an advance to the fourth method, toward which cheering progress is making on both sides of the Atlantic, and which we understand is to be fully presented to your body in a subsequent paper.

Let me now proceed to detail the experience of Massachusetts for the last thirteen years with the class (receiving outside relief) known as "the sick State poor." Our statement will naturally include:

1st, The origin of the present Massachusetts policy.

2d, Its intents.

3d, Its methods.

4th, Its results.

1. Its Origin.

To understand its origin it is necessary to review briefly the dealings of Massachusetts with her unsettled poor from 1794 to the present time. This interval may be divided into three periods. The first, of sixty years, terminated in 1854, during which period the unsettled poor were supported in the towns, and a partial reimbursement was made by the State for those who were wholly supported, and those unfit for any labor. They were controlled by the local authorities, with only a brief and fitful supervision by the State. This arrangement gave rise to constant complaints and bickerings, but was endured by two generations as an inevitable evil. Its results were at once ludicrous and painful. With a keen eye to the "main chance," and the intent to get the most with the least effort, the pauper persistently sought the sunniest nooks and the best-spread tables. This producing a gross inequality of burden and expense, the aggrieved towns, with equal persistence, sought to rid themselves of the pest, or, failing in that, to console themselves out of the State treasury. Thus, as there was no power to remove from the State, the paupers were hustled into another town, which retaliated by returning them, or by "dropping" them in still another; and this process was re