permanently into other hands, may avail themselves of the temporary aid which these homes afford.

Thus the chasm over which self-reliance, filial relations, sometimes family honor, or personal integrity, and often the last hope of the family is wrecked, is bridged across-self-dependence encouraged, virtue protected and filial affections fostered, to the mutual advantage of those who give and those who receive.

2. Neglected children; such children as have homes, but have known them only as the abodes of want and wretchedness; such as have been exposed to scenes of licentiousness and crime; such as have experienced cruelty as the only persuasion to obedience, and have never known the holier incentive inspired by parental fondness.

Hitherto, in our State, or at least until within recent years, many of this class of children have constituted no small share of our prison population.

During the year 1878, 326 children, under 16 years of age, were committed to county jails. For the most part, these would have gone to our reform schools had there then been room, and few, possibly, would have been proper subjects for such care as is designed in these homes. But it is well known that a fair proportion of the boys, and not a few of the girls, sent by our probate judges, and other magistrates, to our State reform schools, are children of tender years, not guilty, many of them scarcely capable, of any crime, but subjected to a criminal record, and consigned to years of reformatory discipline, simply because this was the only alternative between the neglect and cruelty of vicious homes, and the vagrancy and crime of the street.

Of the 3,117 boys committed by our courts to the State Reform School at Lancaster, from the beginning until the year 1879, it is estimated that 1,173 were simply "homeless and neglected."

A recent examination of the records of this institution developed the following facts:

On the 29th of April, 1880, there were present in the reform school, 560 boys. Of this number, 321 were committed for " causes other than crime." Of these 321, 180 were under 12 years of age, and 108 are reported as having both parents living.

At no point in the practical operation of our Ohio system, either as to facts accomplished or hopes justified, is it to be more highly commended than just here, where it substitutes the home for the poorhouse and interposes between the child and the prison.

One development of the system has been the disparity of numbers of children found in our county infirmaries as compared with those actually in need and ready to receive the better care provided in the county home. Apart from children receiving temporary care, to whom we have already alluded, the difference in numbers is to be found in children rescued from the streets. Children whose vices were overlooked rather than commit them to prison, or whose sufferings were tolerated because "anything was better than the poorhouse."

In citing the foregoing figures, a social question is suggested upon which the Ohio system of homes for dependent children is destined, we trust, to exert a most healthful influence. Ordinarily the outward manifestations or ultimate consequences of the neglect of which we are speaking, as it develops into vice and crime, is seen chiefly among boys. Strangely enough, society seems not to consider that in the ratio of population this neglect must reach girls proportionately. It is true that statistics of crime and of juvenile delinquency show a large preponderance of men and boys as compared with women and girls. At this writing, there are 1,325 men in our State prison and only 22 women. In our Reform School for Boys during the past year we had an aggregate of 749, while in the Industrial Home for Girls the aggregate was but 282. Possibly these "annals of crime" are only read in what they disclose; seldom, if ever, considered in what they suggest. We conceive it fair to assume that there are as many girls neglected and exposed to temptation and sin as there are boys. And in face of all the statistics we do not hesitate to declare the conviction that as many fall; and further, that the entail of personal suffering, and the nature and extent of public wrong experienced from one girl, neglected, misled and fallen, is to be deplored beyond the crimes of many boys. From the threshold of neglect, as the boys and girls enter upon mature years, their paths diverge, the boy to the highways of vagrancy and crime, which bring him speedily and prominently into view; the girl into the obscure and hidden ways of licentiousness, of which we take "no note" till all is lost, save the noisome presence which becomes like the open gutter, gathering the sweepings of the street at once a poison and a pestilence. In these homes-not in poorhouses, prisons or reformatories,—are our dependent children ultimately to find shelter.

Finally, homeless children are here especially provided for; the

public authority and beneficence seeking as far as practical to supply the natural and moral restraints and helps essential to health and hope and happiness in life of childhood.

The doors will open alike to boys and girls. Here brother and sister may enter, and though they go out by different paths, they will go under the guidance of the same hand, under the protection of the same law, and with the same benediction of love.

I have thus, with a haste scarcely compatible with the gravity of the subject, but at a length which I am conscious must tax your patience, thrown together an outline of law with its defects, a mention of practical operations with their difficulties, and some detail of classes provided for and of results obtained; all of which I have conceived as essential to an understanding of the Ohio system of care for dependent children.

political, involved in the these will suggest them

Of the economic interests, social or system, I have no time for discussion selves to persons interested in such subjects.

Upon the whole, as we review the facts thus presented, we conclude that this system, as a system of public care, is humane and wise, and our experience thus far justifies further effort upon the part of the people of the State, until every community shall have a place for every child and every child in its place.

If, in the presentation of our system of public care, this Conference may have been led to the conclusion that the people of Ohio have abandoned private charities looking to the same end, and that dependent children of our State are being left wholly to the public care, it is proper, before concluding this paper, to correct such an impression.

It is doubtful if any State or country can produce better private charities for the care of children than are to be found in the cities and some of the larger towns of our State. Confirmation of this statement will be afforded in this immediate community. I wish to refer you to the German Methodist Orphan Asylum at Berea, within a few miles of this city, to the Jewish Orphan Asylum on Woodland avenue, and St. Vincent on Monroe, and St. Mary's on Harmon street, the St. Joseph's on Woodland avenue, and to the Industrial Schools and Protestant Orphan Asylum of Cleveland. The two latter are just now, under the patronage of a few wealthy citizens, being provided with new and elegant buildings. These buildings, in construction and finish, are possibly unsurpassed

anywhere, and will, we trust, at your convenience, during the session of this Conference, be visited. These local private charities will bear testimony that the public care of the State, made possible by law, has not hindered the private benevolence of the citizen prompted by philanthropy.

Thus, combining private benevolence with public charity, our aim is to reach in town and country, by one form or the other, our homeless children, satisfied that if we fail to reach all we shall not fail ultimately in reducing to its minimum the class of unfortunate children "whom no charity can help, no philanthropy reclaim."

II. THE MASSACHUSETTS SYSTEM OF PLACING AND VISITING CHILDREN.

BY MRS. ANNE B. RICHARDSON, OF LOWELL.

More than half a century ago the subject of juvenile pauperism and juvenile crime began to attract the attention of philanthropists and social scientists. Discriminating private charity recognized the fact that to strike at the root of crime, children must be prevented from becoming criminals that poverty and neglect were too often the inevitable preliminaries to crime, and that to rescue from the one would tend to prevent the other.

To this end asylums for the orphaned and destitute were endowed from private means, while municipal authorities followed by providing houses of refuge for the abandoned and neglected of their own cities. It was not, however, until 1846 that any movement was made in Massachusetts to arrest the career of those already started on the highway of crime. The State, incited by private munificence, then established the first State reformatory in this country for boys, at Westborough, and, eight years after, the Industrial School for Girls, at Lancaster, was opened. In 1866 the Monson almshouse was diverted from the original purpose of its erection, and the State Primary School-last but not least in importance of these institutions was regularly inaugurated, the stigma of pauperism removed by legislative authority from its inmates, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was fairly committed to "child-saving" and crime-preventing work.

Before this time the attention of those interested in this work

had been attracted by that of a similar kind accomplished in the old world which, though in the management of individuals, and not of Governments, was yet most worthy of imitation. Late in the last century, and early in this, Pestalozzi had thrown his great light on the education of the poor in his native land; had made his mistakes, and achieved his successes for the cause of general education.

Many years after this great man, Wichern had established his little colony round the original Rauhe Haus (Rough House) at Horn, in Germany, while DeMetz, in France, seven years before the organization of the Westborough school, had started somewhat on this German model, the famous Mettray establishment. Almost simultaneously with the awakening in this State, Mary Carpenter was striving for the same class in England; and there were soon springing up institutions of a similar character in other parts of our own country.

Massachusetts was to be congratulated that it had taken the initiatory steps towards stemming the tide of ignorance and sin, and that by it and with its support the work of prevention and reform had been begun. But it was only begun. Necessity had stimulated this beginning, but the system best calculated to insure the success of the undertaking must develop itself gradually, and while there was in the community a feeling of complacency in the fact of these powerful agencies for good, there were growing up in the institutions themselves mistakes to be guarded against, evils to be combated, and a multitude of details to be considered, which could not be foreseen in the beginning, and which required more than the voluntary service of local boards of trustees, who were not always best fitted intelligently and conscientiously to grasp the work. Without progress, almost of necessity, comes stagnation, sometimes retrogression.

Neither the State in itself, which had sanctioned and supported, nor the private beneficence which had stimulated and encouraged, could correct abuses, guard against lapses from ideals, or progress toward a more satisfactory condition. When results, in both charitable and reformatory institutions, seemed not up to public expectation, it was suggested that there should be an outside power, having oversight of the institutions, which should discover defects, point out remedies, and have authority to carry into execution plans to these ends. These suggestions of earnest and far