of the poor in Brookline, Mass., - Mrs. Cabot and Mrs. Codman; and from other benevolent ladies in Boston. We cannot claim any originality in our plan, as it has been suggested for many years past by the Massachusetts Board of State Charities in their Annual Reports. Dr. Howe and Mr. Sanborn, in the earlier reports of this Board, have dwelt upon the need of bringing children early into family life, and also upon the need of voluntary co-operation with officials by benevolent women in visitation of dependent children in private families. The later reports of the Board, especially the fifteenth and last, further urge the same necessity for voluntary aid. The general sentiment of the more educated portion of the community is against the aggregation of children in large numbers for a long time in institutions, and is in favor of family-homes, under careful restrictions. Many judicious philanthropists also favor the placing out in families of juvenile delinquents of a certain class. I believe that a good number of the latter would improve in an orderly family, and find the best training and reformation there. Juvenile delinquents come, for the most part, from wretched and ill-governed homes. Their aggregation in large numbers only increases their evil propensities. They need dispersion even more than merely dependent children do. To sum up, 1. Institution life, both public and private, should be recognized only as a temporary make-shift or stepping-stone to a family-life. 2. The younger the child when it enters the family, the more hopeful will be its future in life. The longer the child remains in the institution, the greater will be the prospect that it will be a public burden always. 3. In order to bring dependent children at an early age into family-life, it will be necessary to pay a small sum for their maintenance for a time, in many cases. 4. To prevent the neglect or abuse of children by mercenary or unprincipled persons, who take them only for gain, careful supervision and visitation are indispensable. 5. Official visitation alone will never be found effectual. It must be supplemented by voluntary visitation from suitable and authorized persons, actuated by benevolent motives. 6. Local committees will be most efficient in performing this visitation, because they will have better facilities for knowing what occurs in their own neighborhood, and will avoid the expense of travel. 7. A central board for the association, whether it be of a county or state, is necessary, to receive reports, and to see that rules are obeyed. Also to furnish a bureau of registration and reference. 8. A small sum may be paid for board; but families who will take children without payment should always be carefully sought. The payment should cease as early as practicable, and the spirit of gain in the whole matter should be carefully guarded against. 9. Religious toleration and concession must be practised, in order to make the work adequate to the needs of the time. SPRINGFIELD, MASS., May 26th, 1879. CLARA T. LEONARD. GIRLS IN REFORMATORIES. BY MRS. L. R. WARDNER, OF ANNA, ILL. If we look back in the history of our nation a hundred, fifty, or even twenty-five years, and consider the condition of the poor, more especially the dependent children, we can see a great advance. Still there is much, very much, to be done. Public sentiment is to be aroused and interest excited; and I know of no way in which the great mass of the people can be reached so effectually, as by the publication of the results attained in conventions of philanthropists, and students of social science. Discussions of this nature are not only awaking a wide-spread and deep interest among men, but women also, arousing from their extreme conservatism, are realizing that here is a work for them to do, as well as for their fathers, husbands, and brothers. A very large amount of time and labor, as well as money, has been expended in attempts to counteract the effects of evil, while almost nothing has been done to remove the primary cause; the policy of philanthropists and social-scientists has seemed to be, to care for and reclaim the confirmed criminal, rather than to prevent crime. In doing even this, the world moves, and men and women have waked to the consciousness that each is in an important sense his brother's keeper. What are the history and characteristics of pauperism? Who are paupers, and from whom do they descend? It has been found that a very large proportion of this class are the direct descendants of paupers. The parents, grandparents, and even great-grand parents, have been inmates of the same or other poorhouses, workhouses, or prisons, and the females inmates of dens of pollution reaching the lowest depths of degradation. Is this strange in regard to women, when we consider how much harder it is for a woman than for a man to resist contaminating influences? There is a large number of dependent children, whose circumstances of birth, parentage, and want of good home-influences, are such as to deprive them of the advantages of our public schools, particularly in those states where there is no law of compulsory education, and who are rapidly preparing to fill our prisons, workhouses, poorhouses, and, more deplorable still, the houses of ill-fame. Who has not seen the tender and delicate features of childhood marred by neglect and dirt, with bare feet, clothing ragged and filthy, not the sort of a child one loves to take in one's arms and kiss; and yet even your delicate child, proud father or tender mother, deprived of your protecting care, might have descended to so low and dreadful a condition: for many of these poor children have no father or mother, — not even a brother or sister. Home is a meaningless word to them: their days are passed in the streets and alleys, their bed at night is an empty box or hatchway, their food is gathered from the refuse of the shops, their companions are degraded and vicious. Such are the conditions which, as certainly as spring brings the bursting of the bud, or as grain follows seed-time and harvest, will make of these poor children vagrants and outcasts at seven years of age, thieves at ten, ruffians at twelve, and inmates of penal institutions or houses of prostitution at fifteen or earlier. Who has not seen them, with pinched, livid, starved faces, begrimed with dirt, and in a condition which renders them entirely unfit to associate with more fortunate children, their language showing their mental and moral to be no better than their bodily condition? and who, seeing them, has not felt his heart swell with pity, and asked himself what hope is there for them if they are not cared for and removed from such associations and influences before it is too late? Does it seem that society could have any more pressing Christian or moral duty, or one of greater importance in an economical point of view, than to care for these waifs and outcasts? It is sure to have this to do in the end, at a much greater cost, in its jails and workhouses. Is it not best to do it in the beginning, while we can save a soul for the future man or woman, and a citizen to the commonwealth? Would it not be the better plan to purify the fountain, and to devote our labor to the prevention of sin and crime, rather than to the more difficult and less hopeful task of reforming criminals? I find it asserted in an address delivered by the Hon. C. D. Randall, before the National Prison Reform Congress, in New York, 1876, that in the Cincinnati Prison Reform Congress there were thirty-seven declarations of principles, only one of which recommended preventive measures. How many, in your opinion, of the degraded, unprincipled men and women of the world, would have become such if they had had good, virtuous, Christian, well-trained, and disciplined mothers? Upon whom does this great responsibility rest? Is it not the duty of the state, and is it not far more wise, as well as more economical, to take charge of, care for, and control these dependent children, girls as well as boys, taking them, not only from the poorhouses, where all become contaminated mentally, physically, and morally, but from the streets of our great and small cities, and even from the vile, unprincipled, debauched, drunken parents, who are rearing them by teaching and example to a familiarity with vice, that will sooner or later take them beyond the reach of help; and put them in positions and amid influences that will educate them to good citizenship? All of them may not be saved; but many may be checked in a downward career, and become, at least, self-sustaining. To show how much has been accomplished for this class in a comparatively short time, I read from a letter of the late lamented Miss Mary Carpenter of England: "At last, after thirty years of apparently fruitless effort on my part, the Government has accepted the necessity of searching into the hidden recesses, and caring for the very lowest before they have become criminals. The year 1876 has been in many respects a very important one in the history of the Certified Industrial School system, which aims, as is well known, not at reforming the juvenile criminal, but at preventing the ranks of the criminal classes from becoming recruited by those children who, from want of proper guardianship, are liable to frequent bad company, and thus, too often, to come within the jurisdiction of the police magistrate. According to the last report of the Inspector of Industrial Schools, only one-third of the children committed to these schools in 1875 had both parents alive and able to take care of them; while the subsequent history of those who had been discharged in the three previous years showed, that 79.2 per cent were known to be doing well, and that only 5.3 per cent had been convicted of crime. But for the timely intervention of such schools, it is certain that a very large proportion of these six thousand children (i. e., at the rate of two thousand per annum) would have swelled the returns from our jails and prisons, and not a few would have become habitual criminals. The improvement that has taken place is remarkable. In 1836, with a population of 15,000,000, 10,125 were sentenced to imprisonment, 3,611 to penal servitude, and 4,273 to transportation to Australia; whereas, in 1875, with a population of 23,500,000, only 9,282 were sentenced to imprisonment, and 1,639 to penal servitude." -- There has been a great amount of labor and money expended to reclaim this class of dependent boys; and I beg leave to show you by the statement of some perhaps uninteresting facts in regard to institutions devoted to the reformation of delinquent and dependent children, how much more widespread the sympathy and efforts of the public have been in the case of boys than of girls. I wish to ask this plain question, and I hope there are persons present who will discuss the matter fully, giving us the benefit of their experience and observation: Shall we not, in taking the large number of young girls who are filling our city streets and alleys, our almshouses, and worse places, miscalled homes, - shall we not, in protecting and sheltering them from temptation, guiding, controlling, and training them to become useful, good, independent women, and virtuous wives and mothers, reach the very fountain from which flow the evils we desire to arrest ? At the risk of being tedious, I will give you some statistics of a considerable number of educational and industrial institutions, quoting largely from the valuable report made by Mrs. Canfield, connected with the Bureau of Education at Washington, in 1875: Providence Reform-School. Since its organization in 1850, this institution has received a total number of 2,227 pupils, 1,770 boys, 457 girls, about 60 per cent of whom are known to have become orderly and useful members of society. Wisconsin Industrial School for Boys, Waukesha. Whole number since opening in 1861 to 1878, 5,110; of this number, 129 were girls. Since 1871, boys only have been admitted (average age of boys admitted, 12 years); it being found, on trial, to be impracticable to unite the work for boys and girls in the same institution. House of Refuge for Boys, Baltimore. Was established in 1855, and has had 2,421 inmates. Girls were excluded by a recent act of the General Assembly. Louisville House of Refuge for Boys and Girls. Number of |