THE ORDINARY EXPENSES OF VARIOUS PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTIONS FOR 1879; THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF INMATES, THE WHOLE POPULATION, AND THE COST PER CAPITA.

In addition to the above expenses, there was $322,752.75 paid for outdoor relief; and $246,745.02 paid for the township poor, in almshouses and outside,-at the rate of $2.00 a week.

Rev. J. L. MILLIGAN of Allegheny, Pennsylvania: I have nothing special to add to what Dr. Luther has said in regard to the matters penal and reformatory, as well as to the care of the insane of Western Pennsylvania, but simply to state this, concerning the penal institutions. We are building a new Western Penitentiary, three miles from the old one, down the Ohio river, and we expect that with the help of the Board of State Charities we shall have a model prison, on the associated labor plan, within a very few years. We have been getting on very quietly and very well. All our prisoners are employed. We believe in remunerative labor. We have now a less number of prisoners in Western Pennsylvania than we have had at the same season of the year for the past few years; and the care of the Board of State Charities in regard to our penal institutions has been continued with efficiency and with some very marked characteristics in the past year. Their last Annual Report, however, contains some calculations which do not do the Western Penitentiary full justice. But as to the whole of the general subjects which we came here to discuss, Pennsylvania stands almost where she stood last year.

*The Harrisburg, Dixmont and Danville Hospitals, only, are here meant.

I am not so well prepared as I should be. The member of our Board whose duty it was to make the report is not present. Wisconsin has two insane hospitals. The State Hospital has cost for construction $672,000,-provides for 560 patients, and the current expenses last year were $102,000.

The Northern Hospital cost $680,840,- provides for 555 patients, current expenses last year $120,278. We have an Industrial (reform) School for boys; the buildings have cost about $170,000. It cares for 425 boys, and the current expenses last year were $56,000. Our State Prison contains a convict population of about 300. We had an institution for the education of the blind, which was burned in 1874, and rebuilt at a cost of $160,000. It provides for about 75 pupils, and the current expenses last year were $18,000. The Institution for the Deaf and Dumb cares for about 150 pupils, at an annual cost of about $30,000. The main building was burned last year, and detached buildings are being erected to supply its place.

We have no particular change to report in the charities of Wisconsin; matters are improving from year to year. The last Legislature changed the law under which persons were committed to our insane hospitals by providing for a trial by jury. There was an impression abroad among our people that injustice was done in some cases; that the law was taken advantage of by designing persons, to commit those not insane. The law now provides for a trial by jury on the application of the person supposed to be insane, or any friend or relative of such person; but not in all cases; the law is not mandatory, except when an application is made to the county judge for a jury. The Legislature adopted the views of the State Board of Charities in this regard, and although it has been three months or more since the law went into effect, I have not heard of a single jury trial, and it has allayed the public apprehension that persons not insane may be committed to our hospitals. The State Hospital, by a re-arrangement of some of its parts, and a small enlargement last year, was given an increased capacity of about 120. The Milwaukee County Asylum, just completed and occupied, has a capacity for about 300 insane patients, so that the pressure upon our hospitals has been removed. Yet with the increase of insanity, additional room will soon be needed.

C

It is becoming a serious question with us, what shall be done with our insane, and also whether we have reached the wisest method of caring for them? There are some insane yet remaining in the poorhouses, and after a personal visit to all the poorhouses of the State twice, during the last two years, I am satisfied that, as a rule, the class of insane remaining in them are as well cared for, at a small expense, as the same class are in our hospitals. I would remark here, incidentally, that our poorhouses have been greatly improved since the organization of the State Board of Charities and Reform. They now rank with the average homes of the people in cleanliness, good order, and economy of management; buildings have been improved, overseers have been changed, and a humane class of men and women are now in charge. It is true we have had some trouble. Some of the county boards are so economical that they run into stinginess; our State Board, in its reports, does not hesitate to tell the truth, and oftentimes it is not flattering to the county boards: but our reports circulate among the people, and in some cases the entire administration of the poorhouses has been changed. Our work has been mainly directed to the improvement of the jails and poorhouses of the State. While we have general supervision of the State institutions, they are under the special control of local boards of trustees and managers. We simply supervise them, in a general way; but we have made it a rule to visit all the jails and poorhouses, either by a member of the board or its secretary, each year, and report their condition. Our visits are never announced beforehand. The influence exerted has been very marked, and the parties interested watch anxiously for our report, and are solicitous that these county institutions should merit a good word from us. While the State Board has no further power than to report and recommend what it thinks ought to be done, I think that, except in a few special cases, the moral power we exert goes further in carrying out the views of the Board than would special provisions of law.

Our Industrial School for Girls, organized some years ago by the ladies of Milwaukee, is now in a building erected by an appropriation from the State Treasury, the city of Milwaukee donating the grounds. The Superintendent of the School is with us as a member of this Conference. The Legislature last winter made an appropriation for an enlargement of the building.

Our Industrial School for Boys is and has been a great success; having now about 425 between the ages of 10 and 21 years. It is a turning point between the street and crime, and a home. It arrests the criminally inclined on the downward grade towards the prison, and starts them on the upward grade to respectable and virtuous manhood. The smallness of our prison population, we think, is largely due to what this school has done for our boys. Our State Prison we regard as one of the best reformatory institutions in the Northwest, if not in the United States; and while I used to sympathize fully in the opinion so eloquently expressed last night, I will say that the State of Wisconsin lets its prisoners labor by contract. While we were greatly opposed to the system, a bill was drawn, so well guarded in its provisions, that we did not oppose its passage through the Legislature. We were willing to see the experiment tried. Formerly the State manufactured furniture with machinery, and it was found an expensive job. A contract was made with M. D. Wells & Co., of Chicago, by which the labor of the convicts was leased, at 40 cents per day, to be used in making boots and shoes. The agents of the contractors have nothing to do with the prisoners but to direct the work; the State agents have entire control. The prison keepers have an eye upon the convicts at all times. The warden, guards, and keepers are all employed by the State, and the contractors' agents and employés can be discharged by the prison authorities, at any time, for any interference with the convicts, or violation of rules. We have watched the experiment with interest, and are well satisfied with its operation.

The Milwaukee House of Correction underwent an investigation last fall, and a most disgraceful condition of things was found to have existed for a long time, that the treatment of convicts had been barbarous, and severity the rule in the management of the prison. The result of the investigation was a change of the officials in charge, and it is now fairly reformatory in its work.

My time has expired, yet I have not been able to condense into ten minutes all I desired to say about our public charities, and have not alluded to our many private institutions that are doing so much for the dependent classes.

The PRESIDENT: We have a State represented this year that we have often wished to hear from in our Conference, the State of Kentucky. We have this year several delegates from Kentucky. I have not been informed on whom I should call, but I will ask Dr. Stanton to report for his State.

Judge R. H. STANTON: I have had the honor of being called almost everything but "doctor" [laughter]; I am not a doctor. About the first incident that I can now remember, in the story of my long life, was my employment upon the big Penitentiary at Greenleaf's Point, Washington City. I helped to build that structure when I had not yet arrived at majority. I was then an expert mechanic, - my father having been one before me, and thinking it wise to teach me the trade which he had chosen. I went to Kentucky very shortly afterward; and that was all I have had to do with prisons, except during the year that I served the country in all, or nearly all the jails North as political prisoner; because at the opening of the war they thought I was a dangerous man, and they ordered me to the rear. But I now have the honor, myself and two other gentlemen from Kentucky, to have been designated by the Governor, under an Act of the last Legislature, to consider the question of establishing a new penitentiary in that State; and to recommend plans and furnish specifications for the building of a penitentiary. We have also been constituted a committee to consider and recommend a system of prison discipline; and for that purpose we were sent to this Conference by the Governor of Kentucky. We have come simply as learners, to get facts and gain information about the best plans for prisons and the best rules for prison discipline. It is a part of our duty to visit the Eastern prisons whenever we can ; and gain all possible information that will aid us in determining the best plans and regulations for our new penitentiary.

We have in our State a prison that was established at the early organization of the government (1798), and it is unfortunately so situated as to be right in the heart of the municipality of Frankfort. There is no room; it is a confined, narrow place; and, in the last eight or nine years, there has been a great deal of sickness among the prisoners, and there is great mortality among them. I suppose that an average of ten per cent. of the prisoners died in a