and especially cause the girls to be taught domestic avocations and industries. The managers have power to give out for adoption or bind as apprentices, in their discretion, or return to parents or friends if deemed for the best interest of the children.

This Act contemplates the establishment of such schools in such places, at such times and under such circumstances, as their need comes to be felt, and provides for their control and conduct by the people interested in their establishment, and those who would, by personal attention and service, contribute to their success. It also provides that women alone, or women and men, but not men alone, may incorporate themselves under the statute.

The Chief Justice of the State (Ryan), in an able opinion upon the constitutionality of the Act, says: "Thus no industrial school can be without the sex which is by nature best qualified for the nurture of children. Such charities are best committed to women, in whole or in part; and in such lies the truest and noblest scope for the public activities of women, in the time which they can spare from their primary domestic duties. Such a statute, so framed and so guarded, is not an arbitrary assumption of meddlesome authority outside of the proper function of legislation, but is evidence that public charity is here losing the offensive and oppressive character sometimes attributed to it."

In every community there are people with time and inclination. to do something towards making the world better, to help in purifying and elevating our civilization, and advancing the highest interests of those among whom they live. They neither have nor desire political influence or place, but are ready to give of their talent and time to work for such benevolent or charitable purposes as may lie within the circle of their lives. These are largely women, with no higher duty of domestic life demanding their first thought: widows, unmarried women, or women without children, with ability, and often money, and a conscientious desire to do something that will fill their own lives, and make for the good of humanity. These do often inaugurate and successfully conduct benevolent enterprises, that fail to accomplish the highest possibilities for want of authority and means to continue the growing magnitude of their undertaking. By co-operating with such, the State could often accomplish more of good than in any other manner; and why this is "outside the scope of the proper function of legislation" is, to my thought, inexplicable. It would seem that the

nearer we can bring the government to the people, and secure their personal interest in it, the more nearly we have reached the intent of the grand declaration, "that government exists by the consent of the governed," and the more likely we shall be to perpetuate the security and stability of a government that rests on such a foundation. That the right of suffrage, or its exercise, gives the exclusive right to participation in public interest, I cannot believe is claimed by any; but the principle that the state may not give any aid to, or co-operate with, private citizens for such purposes, would actually exclude nearly all women from any part in those tasks of charity, prevention, and reform, that constitute so much of the best work of the world.

In Milwaukee, a school was organized under the provisions of this Act, conducted by ladies, with a board of gentlemen councillors, and has been in existence over four years. During this time it has had under its care nearly two hundred children of various conditions and characters; some, also, who have not come under police supervision, and are received as charity pupils, at the solicitation of parents or guardians. Indeed, so little is the school considered a penal institution, or any odium attached to it, that the managers are more troubled to keep refractory and undisciplined children out than to bring them in. Guardians and parents appreciate the separation from evil influences, and beg to have children whom they cannot keep from corrupting influences received, and in many cases offer to pay for their support.

The statutes of Wisconsin forbid the sending to the " 'poorhouses any children fitted for family life." In pursuance of this law, the children of the Milwaukee-county poorhouse were committed to the school. The County Board of Supervisors refused to pay the board of these children, and a suit was brought against them in consequence of such refusal. The decision sustained the school; and the supervisors appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, which sustained the action of the school, and affirmed the decision of the court below, the Chief Justice adding, that "the general scope of these statutes reflect honor upon the legislature which passed them, and upon the State."

In 1878 the legislature granted an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars for a building for this school, conditionally upon the school conveying to the State suitable grounds for the erection of buildings. The city of Milwaukee donated to the State nearly eight acres, beautifully located, commanding a fine view of the

lake; and a commodious building has been erected, and, since January last, occupied by the school.

The Board of Managers, through committees, supervises, controls, and keeps itself informed of, all the affairs of the institution. The by-laws require some of them to visit the school once in every two days, and it is usually visited by some one of them every day. All the purchasing is done by them; all bills audited, first by the chairman of the committee making the purchase, and finally, by the chairman of the executive committee. This committee, which meets every week, comprises in its make-up the chairman of each committee and the officers of the board. All the events of the week are passed in review, and the entire conduct and affairs of the school are known and considered by it. The superintendent is required to keep a daily journal, which is read at these weekly meetings, and approved or criticised, as the case may be. Each child is known by some of the managers, and comes into close relations with them. All are known by the children, who feel that they have friends who care for them and watch over their interests, and to whom they can go for help and counsel. Boys under ten are admitted, because there is no other refuge offered those who are under this age, and, if not provided with homes before they reach that age, are transferred or recommitted to the State Industrial School for boys. Whole families have, in several instances, been committed by the courts, one or both the parents having been sentenced to some penal institution; and but for this school the magistrates would have been puzzled to make provision for the destitute waifs that human laws and social needs had deprived of their natural protectors. The managers

believe they are proving what they set forth in their memorial as their motive for asking an appropriation, that they sought, first, to benefit the children; second, to benefit the State. The children of some families of criminals have been received so young that they can have no memories of evil or wrong, and the older ones so entirely removed from the associations of their birth, that they seem to have forgotten them, and already give promise of becoming desirable and useful citizens. Some such have been adopted into homes, their names changed, and the unfortunate heritage of a bad name and worse surroundings lost.

Can or will any State authority, or any body of men, do these things? and may not the attempt to conduct such institutions by such remote and cumbrous machinery, such an ignoring of natural

laws and conditions, be the reason why prevention and preventive measures have failed to accomplish their intent? It has been a man's attempt at woman's work, and of course a failure. When the Creator endowed woman with the sacred functions of motherhood, he added the instincts of mother-love, and the instinctive perception of child-nature, that she can no more impart to man than she can her softer voice or more delicate figure. Let the state, as does society, give to her rearing its outcasts, those that have been deprived, by the accidents or imperfections of our social conditions, of true and honorable mother-care, — and help her, with your wiser, cooler judgment, to keep her sympathies from controlling hers. Let the state, with all the masculine wit and wisdom it can command, restrain and hedge in with provisos, precautions, and supervisions, the appropriation and expenditure of money; give to women, or women and men, but never to men alone, the organization, control, and detail of all institutions that have for their purpose the rearing or saving of young children. The benefit of that experience, that can be learned so well nowhere else as in their own homes, beside the cradles of their own children, the state can never buy, but they are willing to give. Their unpaid labor, and, still more, their savings and economies, will reduce the cost of such institutions below the estimates of any official stewards; and the gifts of labor and love they would give would, we believe, civilize the streetArabs, and Christianize the home heathen, more effectually and truly than any system lacking these can ever do. We would have not such large and unwieldy institutions, with the intricate machinery of state, but smaller, more home-like places, where each child is known by a Christian name, and forms attachments, and is the object of them, and life would be more nearly like the true and lost home, and more in accord with nature's wise provision.

FAMILY HOMES FOR PAUPER AND DEPENDENT CHILDREN. BY MRS. CLARA T. LEONARD OF SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

It is not necessary, in a paper of this kind, to enter into a long preliminary dissertation upon dependent children, their increasing number, their condition in almshouses or in private asylums. The members of this Conference doubtless appreciate fully the fact, that in our country everywhere, even in the States where

most has been done for the benefit of the poor, we are rearing paupers and criminals on an alarmingly large scale. The exigencies of the time demand some new method of dealing with dependent children, which shall be more effectual in training them to be good citizens than any that we have hitherto practised. There is a growing conviction among philanthropists, that asylums and institutions of all kinds for the reception of children, should be only temporary places for their detention, so far as is possible. Children cannot be well reared in masses. The gradual acquirement of practical knowledge and of manual dexterity, so essential to future usefulness, is hardly possible where the number of children in a house is largely disproportioned to that of adults. In an ordinarily well regulated family, there is such a diversity of sex, age, and ability, that the younger and less capable are educated by the more experienced; imitate them, and are influenced by them, unconsciously and continually. The affections, and the moral nature also, are cultivated in family life, and are suppressed and blighted in institution life. In every way the child has great advantages in an average family over children trained in large masses. In comparing results, we find the smaller the institution, and the more it is directed by individual and voluntary oversight, the better is its work. Large public institutions, under official superintendence, usually, if not invariably, turn out paupers and criminals by the hundred. Many of these children might have been made good citizens under a more natural form of life. Their failure is not so much from inherited defects, as from the fact that moral stamina has been destroyed by a machine-life, which creates a spirit of dependence, and stultifies the affections and moral qualities.

In small private asylums, conducted by benevolent women, more attention is paid to the individual needs and capacities of children, and more care is taken to place them early in good homes, and to look after them in those homes. Consequently a far greater proportion of the children placed out from private asylums succeed in life, than of those from public ones.

Writing from my own stand-point in Massachusetts, and having been long familiar with the practical operation of our State charities, which are perhaps more extensive proportionally than those of any other State, I am compelled to admit that we have, as yet, by no means attained to great success in our official dealings with dependent children. Many good men have labored for