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reaching so many destitute, homeless wanderers, and bringing them into the atmosphere of a Christian home, and under the purifying, refining influences to which they have so readily yielded. One needs but to see these dear girls in the school-room, the sewingroom, in their daily rounds of duties, so cheerfully and perfectly rendered, - to satisfy himself that we have laid the foundation for a structure that shall become a monument for good, through time into eternity. It was at first our thought to unite the work, taking both boys and girls into the school; but, after careful investigation, and consultation with many persons having large experience in this class of institutions, it was decided that it would be unwise to connect the two. As the State was appropriating thirty thousand dollars a year for the support of a reform or industrial school for boys at Pontiac, Ill., we decided to take only girls, under eighteen years of age, sound in mind and body.

The foregoing reports show that there has been much more attention given to dependent boys than to the same class of girls; and a summary of the number of both receiving the benefits of these institutions shows 35,765 boys and 4,967 girls.

There had been established, up to 1876, thirty reform and industrial schools, in nineteen of the States of the Union, the remaining States and Territories having no such institutions. The provision made for reformatories is for boys mainly fifteen of these institutions are for boys alone; and four, including the one in this State, for girls; twelve for boys, with a small department for girls. In most of these, the boys are taught a good, lucrative trade, given a new suit of clothes, and twenty-five dollars, on leaving the institution. The girls are taught to cook the very plainest food, mend the coarsest clothes, and wash and iron; but it is very rarely that they are given a trade, or come out of the institution skilled in any industry; for that reason, when they go into the world they cannot earn a living, and the end is often starvation or prostitution.

In many of these institutions, as in Maryland, Wisconsin, and Illinois, the girls are crowded out, to make room for the boys.

Is this large disproportion due to the fact that there are so many more boys than girls born to the depraved and unfortunate? I think not, as the statistics show, in our Eastern States at least, that female children preponderate. Or is it because a large number of these female children grow up to lives of virtue and rectitude? If you look into the statistics of the depraved,

the vicious, and those who are living lives of immorality, you will find, I think, the number of women equal, or nearly equal, to the number of men.

Is it not because the State and the law-makers have failed to see the self-evident truth, that each unprincipled, impure girl left to grow up, and become a mother, is likely to increase her kind three to five fold?

Galton, in his work on heredity, makes this statement, founded on wide and carefully-made comparisons, that, in production of character, original constitution is a much more important factor than either education or surroundings.

Said a great man of the past, Show me the mothers of a nation, and I will tell you what its men are like."

If, in a few short years, the descendants of two unfortunate pauper sisters can be counted to the number of one thousand persons, and it is said that only twenty-two of the whole number did not become a tax upon the State as paupers and criminals, the rest costing the State $1,823,000, without reckoning the pauperism, idiocy, insanity, and money squandered in strong drink, it is time to pause and think.

Not until our law-makers see that it is much cheaper to care for the dependent girls who are soon to become the mothers of a large number of the men of this nation; not till they realize that these girls have an equal right with boys to the care and training given at public expense, will justice be done, and wisdom have her

way.

In this lies the difference: those who perpetrate crimes, such as murder, theft, arson, &c., are tried and condemned, and the facts are made public; while immorality and kindred vices, into which the majority of this class of girls drift, escape public notice, until the resources of outraged nature are exhausted, and, diseased, morally and physically, they not unfrequently sink into the unwept grave of the suicide, or the more deplorable living tomb of a lunatic asylum, leaving a progeny inheriting all their vices.

May we, of the present generation, impress deeply upon the minds of the youth of this nation the evident truth, that prevention of crime is better than effort at reform, whether successful or not; and may the sentiment grow until the removable causes of degradation and vice are known only in the written history of the human race.

LOUISE ROCKWOOD WARDner.

After the reading of these four papers, a short debate followed, in which Mrs. Marian V. Dudley of Wisconsin, Mr. Letchworth, Mr. A. D. Hendrickson, and Mr. A. E. Elmore of Wisconsin took part.

THIRD DAY'S SESSION.

THURSDAY MORNING, June 12.

The Conference re-assembled at ten A.M., Gen. Brinkerhoff in the chair. On motion of Mr. Henry W. Lord, the name of the Conference was changed so as to read "The Conference of Charities and Correction." Gen. Francis A. Walker was then given the floor to make a statement as to statistical information to be obtained in the census of 1880. Rev. Fred. H. Wines, appointed by the Interior Department to control the statistics of crime and misfortune, was unanimously approved and commended.

The papers of Mrs. C. R. Lowell of New York, Mr. Low, Dr. Reynolds, and Mr. Pellew, were then read as follows:

I. ONE MEANS OF PREVENTING PAUPERISM.

BY MRS. C. R. LOWELL OF NEW YORK.

THE legislature of New York, by concurrent resolution of May 27-29, 1873, directed the State Board of Charities to examine into the causes of the increase of crime, pauperism, and insanity in that State. In compliance with this resolution, an examination, which occupied the Secretary of the Board, with the assistance of various commissioners, for the greater part of two years, was made into the antecedents of every inmate of the poorhouses of the State, and the result submitted to the legislature in the Tenth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities. Even a casual perusal of that report will convince the reader that one of the most important and most dangerous causes of the increase of crime, pauperism, and insanity, is the unrestrained liberty allowed to vagrant and degraded women. The following are the records of a few only of the women found in the various poorhouses, women who from early girlhood have been tossed from poorhouse to jail, and from jail to poorhouse, until the last trace of womanhood in them has been destroyed:

66

In the Albany County poorhouse, a single woman, forty years

old, of foreign birth, and nine years in the United States, the mother of seven illegitimate children; the woman degraded and debased, and soon again to become a mother."

"In the Chautauqua County poorhouse, a woman, fifty-five years old, admitted when twenty-two as a vagrant; said to have been married, but the whereabouts of her husband is unknown; has been discharged from the house, and returned repeatedly, for the past thirty-three years, during which time she has had six illegitimate children."

"In the Cortland County poorhouse, an unmarried woman, twenty-seven years old, with her infant child; has been the mother of four illegitimate children, and four of her sisters have also had illegitimate children. The woman fairly intelligent and educated, but thoroughly debased and vagrant."

"In the Essex County poorhouse, a black woman, widowed, aged forty-nine years, and her daughter, single, aged twenty-four years, and her grandson, a mulatto, four years old, illegitimate, and born in the house. The first has been the mother of ten children, seven illegitimate; the second has had three illegitimate children. Both women are intemperate and thoroughly depraved, and quite certain to remain public burdens, each having already been nineteen years in the house. A widowed woman, twentyfour years old, and two children aged respectively four and five years, both illegitimate and feeble-minded and born in the poorhouse, the latter being a mulatto. The woman was sent to the house when six years old, was afterwards placed out but soon returned, and has spent most of her time in this and other poorhouses; has also had three brothers and one sister who were paupers, and is soon again to become a mother; is thoroughly debased, and will probably remain, with her children, a burden through life."

"In the Green County poorhouse, a vagrant unmarried woman, forty years old, and first an inmate when twenty-one years of age; goes out from time to time, but soon returns, and will doubtless continue a public burden through life; has five illegitimate children. An unmarried girl, eighteen years of age, having two illegitimate children, the youngest of whom, an infant, was born in the house; was early orphaned, and entered the poorhouse when only seven years of age; her mother a pauper, and she has had one brother and two sisters also paupers; is thoroughly debased, and offers but little hope of reformation."

"In the Genesee County poorhouse, a single woman, aged twenty-six years, admitted when eighteen years old; has three illegitimate children with her, aged respectively seven years, three years, and eight months, all of whom were born in the house; and also another child, bound out; was orphaned in early life, and, being neglected, soon became vagrant and idle, and will probably continue to be a public burden."

"In the Herkimer County poorhouse, a single woman aged sixty-four years, twenty of which have been spent in the poorhouse; has had six illegitimate children, four of whom have been paupers."

"In the Montgomery County poorhouse, a woman twenty years old, illegitimate, uneducated, and vagrant; has two children in the house, aged respectively three years and six months, both illegitimate, and the latter born in the institution; recently married an intemperate crippled man, formerly a pauper, and the county will doubtless be further burdened with additional progeny."

"In the Oswego County poorhouse, an unmarried woman, twenty-nine years of age, born in the poorhouse of a neighboring county; has had five illegitimate children, one of whom only is living; the father, mother, and five sisters have been paupers ; is ignorant, shiftless, and vagrant, and gives no hope of reformation."

"In the Otsego County poorhouse, a widowed woman aged thirty-five years, three times married (first when only thirteen), a vagrant, and has spent twelve years in poorhouses; has seven living children, three of whom have been paupers, and she seems likely to burden the public with additional progeny."

"In the Ontario County poorhouse, a married woman twentysix years of age, frequently in jail for intoxication, two years an inmate, with a male child three years old and an infant girl aged two months; led a vagrant life in childhood, the father, mother, and four sisters being paupers; is debased and thoroughly degraded by sensual and immoral practices and gives but little hope of reformation; the husband said to be able, but declines to provide for her support. A girl eighteen years of age, unmarried, and only three months in the house; is well connected, prepossessing in appearance, but shameless in conduct; was early orphaned, and has led a roving, vagrant life; is soon to become a mother, and offers no hope of reformation."

"In the Orange County poorhouse, a woman, widowed, eighty

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