dumb asylum $400; the trustees of the blind asylum $300. For the government of the asylum of feeble-minded children, and for the soldiers' orphans' home a separate board of trustees is appointed by the Governor. This board consists of three members, and they are paid a salary of $200 a year, which is in full for all services, travelling and other expenses.

IOWA.

First. Iowa maintains three hospitals for insane, college for the blind, institution for the deaf and dumb, soldiers' orphans' home, and home for indigent children, and an asylum for feeble-minded children.

Second. These institutions are open to all classes, but the incurably insane, if harmless, are provided for in county asylums or poorhouses. Persons having insane relatives in the insane asylums are obliged to pay for their care, if able; if not able, the cost of caring for them is collected from the counties. Persons having relatives in the blind or deaf and dumb asylums pay for their clothing, if able; if not, then it is collected from the county to which they properly belong.

Soldiers' orphans are maintained in the Orphans' Home at the expense of the State, and indigent orphans or children at the expense of the county to which they belong.

Third. No changes in legislation.

Fourth. The poor of the counties are provided for in county poorhouses, excepting in cases where the county has no poorhouse, when they are maintained with private parties at county expense. Temporary relief is extended upon application to township trustees.

Fifth. The State maintains two penitentiaries and a reform school, the boys' department of which is located at Eldora, and the girls' department at Mt. Pleasant. Each county, with some few exceptions, has a county jail; and a few cities have city prisons.

KANSAS.

No report rendered. Governor St. John responded promptly that he had referred interrogatories to the Board of State Charities for answer, but no answer has come.

KENTUCKY.

No report rendered, but from newspaper accounts, corroborated by Governor Blackburn's message, I judge that, for the good name of the State, silence is the best report possible.

No report rendered.

LOUISIANA.

MAINE.

No report rendered, notwithstanding I addressed a letter of inquiry consecutively to the retiring Governor, the Governor de facto, and to the Governor de jure.

No report.

MARYLAND.

MASSACHUSETTS.

In the midst of these deaf, dumb and blind States, from which I found it impossible to obtain any epistolary evidence of their existence, it is a relief to interrogate the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The answer was prompt, courteous, comprehensive, and instructive, and I only regret the want of time to give it entire.

The State charities of Massachusetts, strictly speaking, are four lunatic hospitals; a State Almshouse, State Workhouse, State Primary School, State Reform School, State Industrial School; Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth; Massachusetts Infant Asylum; and the Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary. The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind, and the Clarke Institution for the Deaf, are educational rather than charitable; and the Temporary Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners belongs to our prison system.

In addition to these State charities, our township system gives us a large number of public charities managed by the authorities of the three hundred and forty cities and towns, the precise number of which cannot be given. They are most numerous in the twenty cities of Massachusetts, and of course most numerous of all in the city of Boston. We have no county system for managing the poor, our only county establishments being prisons. Our law favors, however, the establishment of county reformatories, and one such is now building in Hampden county. Our larger cities, Boston, Cambridge, Lowell, Worcester, etc., correspond in their poor law administration to the Ohio counties; that is, they maintain almshouses, hospitals, pauper schools, reformatories, and, in case of Boston, prisons. The city of Boston maintains four separate almshouses, a pauper school, a reform school for both sexes,

a hospital for the sick, a temporary home for infants, vagrants, etc.; and her poor law authorities control large funds (gifts or bequests) for the relief of the poor. The whole expenditure of the city of Boston for its city charities and prisons is nearly or quite as great as that of the State for its charities and prisons. The other large cities are following in the track of Boston, adding one charity after another, which to that extent relieves the State from enlarging its charities. In fact, the State is now reducing its charities, both in number and in cost, the only exceptions being the insane asylums and the infant asylums.

Second. Our hospitals for the sick are practically open to everybody; our hospitals for the insane are not; but the board of all insane patients must be paid either by the State, the cities and towns, the patients themselves, or by charitable funds held by the hospitals.

Third. The only general legislation reported is the law against tramps, enacted April 20th, 1880, which provides that " any person convicted of being a tramp shall be imprisoned in the House of Correction, or in the State Workhouse at Bridgewater, for not less. than six months nor more than two years." "All persons who rove about from place to place, begging, or living without labor or visible means of support, shall be held to be tramps within the meaning of this act."

Fourth. We have had a broad division of our poor into two main classes, the State poor and the town or city poor; and certain institutions receive only or chiefly the State poor, whilst others receive only or chiefly the town and city poor. The number of the two classes in any given year is something like this: of the city and town poor, 9,000 fully supported, and 40,000 persons partially supported; of the State poor, 4,500 fully supported, and 20,000 partially supported; that is to say, about one-third of all our poor are State charges, and about two-thirds are town or city charges.

Fifth. In response to interrogatory upon prisons, the report of the Commissioners upon Prisons, together with other documents, was sent. From these it is apparent that the treatment of the criminal classes has received in Massachusetts more study and thought, and more intelligent legislation, than in any other State in the Union. It is impossible here to give even an abstract of what has been done, but it is safe to say that in prison management no other State is in advance of Massachusetts.

In structure and management the prison at Concord, the Reformatory for Women at Sherborn, and the city jail at Boston, are in the very van of progress, and clearly mark the course in which all the States should travel. With the single exception of the Reformatory at Elmira, N. Y., there are no other prisons on this continent more worthy of imitation.

First. Michigan, in its benevolent institutions, is in the front rank. A detailed list has not been furnished me, but ample provision has been made for her dependent and defective classes.

Second. These institutions are free to all who have a residence, a settlement in the State. This restriction, however, is liberally construed, except to obvious travelling impostors, and even too liberally to these.

Third. No changes at last Legislature except to provide for a female reformatory, and to separate the blind from the deaf mutes, and to provide the former with a school of their own.

Fourth. The poor are provided for, in the main, under what is called the county system; that is, under the supervision of county superintendents of the poor. These decide upon the measure of relief, and afford it, indoor or out, according to their discretion, and the expense, including the county almshouse, is levied upon the county. In a few counties the township system prevails, but practically there is little difference, except that the relative expense is borne by each town.

Fifth. Two State prisons-the penitentiary at Jackson, and the reformatory at Ionia, the latter limited to convicts between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, and who have not committed capital crimes.

The House of Correction, at Detroit, is a municipal prison, but both the State and the United States have contracts with it for the custody and keeping of certain classes of offenders. The above are all the prisons, except the county jails, over which the State has supervision under general laws.

MINNESOTA.

First. The organized charities are an institution for the education of the deaf and dumb and blind, with a department for the care of imbecile children, and two hospitals for the insane.

Second. These institutions are free alike to all classes. Third. By act approved March 8, 1879, the Governor is directed to appoint a commission of "three doctors," one of whom shall be a member of the State Board of Health, who shall constitute a commission, whose duty it shall be to visit the several hospitals for the insane, at least once every six months, and inspect said hospitals as to the sanitary condition and general management of the same, and also to examine into the mental and physical condition of the patients therein, frequency, manner and course of punishment, etc., etc., and report to the Governor within ten days. Any patients whose insanity is doubted are to be remanded to the court by which they were committed for examination.

This commission receives no pay except expenses.

Fourth. The poor are provided for by the several counties in almshouses.

Fifth. The penal and reformatory institutions embrace a State prison, a reform school for the correction of minors, and county jails. An inebriate asylum has been abandoned, and the building converted into an insane hospital.

MISSISSIPPI.

First. The organized charities of this State are a lunatic asylum, the institution for the education of the deaf and dumb, and the institution for the blind.

Second. Persons able to pay are required to do so, but the institutions are free to the indigent citizens of all classes.

Third. There has been no legislation relative to the management of these institutions during the past year.

Fourth. The poor of the counties are provided for by a system of poorhouses supported by taxation.

Fifth. The prison system includes a penitentiary, the county jails, and such calabooses, workhouses, or such other prisons, as the authorities of cities and towns have or may establish.

No report rendered.

MISSOURI.

NEBRASKA.

No report rendered.