The legislature had generously responded to the recommendations of the Board of Charities.

Dr. Wilbur said the result of many years of experiment had decided that idiot-asylums should be educational, and the object of the education should be preparation for some form of labor. The question then arose, what should be done with idiots after they had left the educational institutions, and with idiots too low to be educated. In New York it seemed probable that a secondary institution would be established for the care of such cases. In her visits to county poorhouses, Mrs. Lowell had found many feebleminded women and girls who were the mothers of illegitimate children. The State was asked to afford the means of establishing an asylum for them. This had been done, and the institution was now in its second year with about 75 inmates, whose annual maintenance was very low, being only about $120.

MASSACHUSETTS. -BY MR. SPAULDING.

Mr. W. F. Spaulding of Massachusetts, Secretary of the new Board of Prison Commissioners, said that in his State the charitable and penal institutions were separate. The last legislature had established a consolidated commission called the Board of Health, Charities, and Lunacy. Only Saturday last the commission had been appointed, and were soon to enter upon their duties, in regard to which he would refer the Conference to the report of Mr. Sanborn, to be presented later in the day. This commission would go into operation July 1, and take charge of all the public charities of the State.

Recently there was an effort to abolish the Reform School for Girls at Lancaster. It had not been doing the work for which it was intended. It was intended to take care of girls, but had come to be used for the older female offenders. The abolition of the school was defeated, and the school would be restored to its original uses.

Under the new Prison Act, there was a commission of three men and two women having the supervision of all prisons, including the two State prisons, with power to transfer convicts. In the appointment of this and the other new commissions, politics did not figure at all.

The Women's Prison at Sherborn is wholly administered by women, and is decidedly successful. Only ten per cent of the discharged convicts return to prison, and they are short-term

convicts. The commissioners had been trying to secure longer sentences, especially for women. Many women were committed for drunkenness, and short periods of incarceration did no good. The last legislature authorized sentences for from four months to two years. The long sentences had already an excellent deterrent effect. In Massachusetts the maximum of criminal population seemed to have been reached. At present the criminal population was five per cent less than the previous year, the first time for some years that a reduction had appeared.

OHIO. -BY DR. BYERS AND GEN. BRINKERHOFF.

Dr. Byers, Secretary of the Board of Charities, reported the work of that Board, referring to the address of Gen. Brinkerhoff to the legislature, which would be presented to the Conference. One of the recommendations of the Board was the building of an epileptic-asylum, and another was the bringing together of all the idiots in the State. It was believed that these recommendations could be carried out with little, if any, addition to the total yearly

expense.

The General Assembly was about enacting laws that would eliminate partisan political interference in the administration of public charities. It was proposed that after 1883 each institution should be managed by four trustees, two from each of the political parties, with the governor for the chairman of the board. The State Board of Charities would then be organized in the same way.

Gen. Brinkerhoff said the address referred to by Dr. Byers expressed the opinions of the Board, and covered the whole ground. The asylums and penitentiaries of the State were crowded, and the governor had recommended the addition of new buildings. A deaf-and-dumb asylum would be erected, and the Board was trying to secure the erection of an asylum for the chronic insane.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

JUNE 10.

The Conference was called to order at three P.M.; and Mr. Lord of Michigan, from the Committee on Permanent Organization, reported the following officers, who were elected: Chairman, Gen. R. Brinkerhoff of Ohio,

Secretaries, Charles S. Hoyt of New York, F. B. Sanborn of Massachusetts, A. G. Byers of Ohio, J. L. Milligan of Pennsylvania, Fred. H. Wines of Illinois, Henry W. Lord of Michigan, T. D. Kanouse of Wisconsin.

Gen. Brinkerhoff was then conducted to the chair, and introduced by the retiring Chairman, Hon. G. S. Robinson.

On motion, a vote of thanks was tendered to the retiring Chairman for the courteous and efficient performance of the duties intrusted to him. On motion of Rev. J. L. Milligan, the Conference agreed to accept an invitation of the ladies of the Illinois Social Science Association to a reception to be held on Thursday evening, June 12, after the close of the business of the evening. Gen. Brinkerhoff, on taking the chair, made a few remarks, expressing his sense of the importance of the work undertaken.

The reports of the Secretaries of the Conference of 1878 (Mr. F. B. Sanborn, Rev. A. G. Byers, and Rev. J. L. Milligan), on the laws and their administration during the past year, were then read. Mr. Sanborn's report covered the New England States and New York, that of Mr. Milligan the States south of New York, while Dr. Byers reported for the Western States.

I. THE YEAR'S WORK IN ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLA

TION.

BY F. B. SANBORN OF MASSACHUSETTS, A SECRETARY OF THE

CONFERENCE.

- In divid

MR. CHAIRMAN, AND MEMBERS OF THE CONFEREnce, ing the work assigned to the three secretaries of the Cincinnati Conference, respecting the legislation and administration in charitable and penal affairs since that Conference adjourned in May, 1878, it fell to my lot to report on the New-England States and New York, while Dr. Byers was to take Ohio and the Northwestern States, and Mr. Milligan was to report on Pennsylvania and the more Southern States. In conformity with this division of labor, I now present my report for the seven States, including between eight and nine millions of inhabitants, in which public charities and prison discipline have longest been the subject of legislation, and have perhaps been most systematically and persistently regulated by official administration. If to these were added the State of Pennsylvania, upon which I may occasionally remark, my province would be the whole older portion of the

United States, in which, from density of population, exposure to direct immigration, and other circumstances, the problems of public charity earliest assumed, and have most steadily maintained, magnitude and variety. In the Southern States, from the prevalence of slavery, and the comparative absence of immigration and of great cities; in the Western States, from the recency of their settlement and the great opportunities for labor and selfsupport, these problems have not, until within the past twenty years, assumed much magnitude. At present, however, from the facility of communication between one section and another, and from the immense development of manufacturing and commercial industry, the latter involving railroad-transportation and all the complicated questions that affect railroads and canals, and the navigation of inland lakes and rivers, — the conditions of pauperism and crime which prevail in one part of the country are shared and equalized with other parts of the country to an extent never known before the civil war. In popular belief, and, to a considerable degree, in fact, the tramp is a person who thus equalizes and distributes the wretchedness and vice of one community to the people of another. Hence we see in the past year, as for several preceding years, many laws passed, and much strictness of administration adopted, to check or exterminate the tramp.

This sort of legislation has been particularly noticeable in New England and New York. New Hampshire, in the summer of 1878, passed a very strict law against vagrancy, making it a Stateprison offence, and requiring little evidence to convict a tramp. Although the severity of this law has been much censured in some quarters, and is probably too great to allow it to remain in active force for many years, it still seems to have had the effect that was intended, and to have greatly diminished the number of tramps in New Hampshire. This is the testimony of several residents of that State whom I have questioned, and is the opinion of the State government. In Connecticut, where the chief cities of Hartford and New Haven adopted in 1878 a system of dealing strictly with tramps by city ordinance, the effect was to turn them aside from the cities to the country towns. In consequence of this, the representatives of these rural towns, in the present year, passed a State law, which is now beginning to be enforced throughout Connecticut, with results similar to those noticed in New Hampshire. New York also, at the close of its recent legislative session, passed a severe law against tramps, which was promptly

vetoed by Governor ROBINSON; and I believe Pennsylvania has again increased, this year, the strictness of her laws to repress vagrancy. Partly in consequence of this legislation, and more by reason of the revival of industry in the whole country, the number of tramps in all the Eastern States is much less now than it was in 1878.

Laws of this kind, by their unequal operation, point strongly to the utility of a uniform system of legislation, and, so far as possible, of administering the laws in regard to the whole range of public charity and correction. It will be long before the forty States of our Union adopt such uniformity; but there has been for fifteen years or more a tendency in that direction, the most obvious result of which has been the creation in so many States of official boards to regulate what the State government itself has to do with public charity. The same tendency is perceptible, and has lately manifested itself more rapidly, in regard to sanitary matters, by the establishment of State Boards of Health in about twenty States since 1869, and finally, under the pressure of the yellow-fever excitement of 1878, by the organization of a National Board of Health at Washington. This movement in Massachusetts has, within the past year,' connected itself with the other for the creation of boards of charities; and we now have a joint Board of Health and Charities, created by law and appointed by the governor, with added powers and duties, upon which it will enter in July next. This feature of legislation in Massachusetts is the most important that I have to report from that State, and may claim, perhaps, an explanation of some length, in course of which may be presented (as I have been asked to do) a brief exposition of the reasons for creating in any State the organization known as a Board of Public Charities.

Massachusetts was the first State to establish such a board. She did so in 1863, at the recommendation of her most distinguished governor of recent years, the late JOHN A. ANDREW, by whose appointment I held, for the first five years, the secretaryship of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities. The boards created in New York in 1867, in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Illinois in 1869, and in Michigan and Wisconsin in 1871, were all, to some extent, modelled after the Massachusetts board, though with many variations and some improvements. Other boards were temporarily established in Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio; and in the last-named State the Board of Charities has