many years in Great Britain and on the Continent, the custom having had great antiquity in France. In this country the plan has been tried by other than State institutions. The Hampden County Children's Aid Society has accomplished much in this way, and through the efforts of one of its officers a law has been passed requiring cities and towns to board, in some "respectable family" in the State, "or in some asylum therein," all pauper children over four years of age, requiring the overseers to visit such children as "often as once in three months, and make all needful inquiries as to their treatment and welfare." It is to be regretted that the absence of any penalty attached to the violation of this law, together with the apathy, or it may be ignorance of the community, in regard to such subjects, has prevented its observance in many of our cities and towns where its violation would not have been looked for. It will at once be seen that children for whose board payment is made must be more carefully visited than those are who are retained for their services. The sum, though small, is enough to tempt the cupidity of the unworthy, and the character and age of the children so placed will render them more liable to wrong than more fortunate or older ones. This thorough supervision will be provided, and the younger boys will also be included in the female visitor's care. To insure the well being of these children, the rules appended to this paper have been proposed by a member of the Board of Trustees of the schools, and will probably be adopted without material alteration, while they will be subject to the same general regulations as other wards of the State. Such, in a general and cursory description, is the Massachusetts system of placing out and visiting dependent children. The State appropriates generously for these charities, and the appropriations are supplemented by the voluntary and unpaid service of those having the administration in charge. Those who devote most of their time even to charity must be compensated as laborers "worthy of their hire;" but there are many in Massachusetts who rejoice in bestowing the offering of some labor in the cause of humanity. Among these are the auxiliary visitors, who neither ask nor receive compensation beyond the payment of actual and necessary expenses. In addition to the time given to the work of visiting, arrangements have been made for three meetings each year, one at Monson, 66 one at Lancaster, and one, during the winter, at Boston. Two such gatherings have already taken place. Much good will spring from these meetings of the visitors at the different parts of the State, from their interchange of experiences and from concerted plans. The expense thus far has been so small as hardly to be worthy of mention. Whatever it may be in the future it will not, in any probability, compare with the vast expenditure required as the cost of crime. The public has been told over and over again the story of Margaret, the mother of criminals," and her expense to the State of her birth, by the burden she imposed upon it in her progeny. If the "Margarets" of Massachusetts shall be saved from such a career, and the State shall be enriched by a line of honest, pure and intelligent descendants, in any degree through the help of this organization of women, may it not be, as Mr. Sanborn once said of the possibility of the old visiting agency, that, "It shall be recognized hereafter as the culmination and flower of the Massachusetts system of charities?" Mrs. Leonard, who read the Paper of Mrs. Richardson, submitted the following RULES FOR BOARDING OUT Children NOW AT THE STATE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 1. The price per week for board, and the yearly amount allowed for clothing, shall be arranged by the Superintendent and the Committee, and payments may be made quarterly. 2. Children, before leaving the institution, shall be examined by the physician, and a certificate given stating their physical condition. Any physical defect, such as the loss of an eye, partial deafness, or any deformity, should be noticed by the physician. 3. Histories of children shall not be given, except as to whether or not they are orphans. Illegitimacy should not be mentioned. 4. A distinct understanding shall exist that persons taking children are to treat them, so far as possible, like their own children; the aim being to place the children in a condition of equality with the family. 5. Applicants, approved by the proper authorities, shall come to the Primary School for children on appointed days in each month, fixed by the Superintendent and Committee, and their travelling expenses shall be paid. 6. When there is probability of future adoption, applicants may be allowed preference in selecting a child, but otherwise the selection shall be by those having the children in charge. 7. Not more than two children, unless brothers and sisters, shall be boarded in one family. 8. Brothers and sisters shall be placed in the same neighborhood whenever practicable. 9. Arrangements for proper medical attendance shall be economically made with reputable physicians, in the localities of the children who are boarded out. 10. Cases of illness shall be immediately reported to the Superintendent. 11. Those children affected with diseases assuming a chronic character shall be returned to the institution. 12. Children from six to ten years of age shall attend school the entire school year established in the towns where they reside; shall regularly attend church and sabbath school; shall be taught the care of their clothing and other personal effects, and girls shall be taught to sew and to knit. III. THE MASSACHUSETTS STATUTES RELATING TO JUVE- BY GARDNER TUFTS, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE STATE PRIMARY SCHOOL, MONSON, MASS. Bringing a child before a court as an offender, committing a child to an institution as an offender, are grave acts. They may benefit, they may harm; they affect personal destiny and the public weal; they make early impressions which may outlast generations. The first act is an invitation to public distrust; the second, to public condemnation. It is wise, as well as kind, to be slow to distrust a child, and yet slower to condemn. Law, born of necessity, and grown in wisdom, is exact and just. It is technical; it designates persons by their acts; it names him who steals, a thief. Over against its designations are written its penalties. Justice sits blind, inflexible and cold, rigidly holding the scales in which she weighs legal causes. Such invitations, designations, attitudes and attributes may be rightly and wisely made, applied, or assumed in cases of adults, and yet not in cases of juveniles suspected of, or charged with offences. A child who steals is not certainly a thief, and, if So, it is not always well to designate and condemn him as such. He who hears and determines the causes of children should be open-eyed, flexible and warm; holding the scales so freely that he may feel, and they be moved by the weight of circumstances or mercy's plea. Under a certain age, persons are legally non-accountable for their acts; they may be morally non-accountable at a greater age than the legal limit, even when mentally effective. Law sometimes makes offenders. Paul said, "Where no law is, there is no trans gression;" yet, for the same act, where law is,, there is transgression. Once, boys gathered nuts and berries from fields and woods, without transgression. Now, for such gathering they are thieves, liable to incarceration for the period of minority. The avarice of men procured a law, which makes the boy of today, in such an act, an offender, yet he is not worse than the boy of years ago, nor his act different from his, who was not then an offender. Law must abide; offences must come; how to apply law to the offender, how to deal with him without law or the imposition of penalties, are questions which demand earnest consideration. A person once designated, or condemned as an offender, rarely changes therefrom, but continues as such, growing worse and transmitting his evil down the generations. What an accumulation of evil is there in and by him, or her, who starts, or is started in life an offender. The divergence from rectitude is very slight at first; a gentle hand will prevent it; a slight pressure to the right will turn from the wrong, and goodness thereby may descend through thousands of generations. Massachusetts law reaches down to the child of seven years; and recognizes and has penalties for acts as slight and frequent as disobedience and stubbornness, and conditions as common as exposure and want. Upon proof or conviction of such condition or acts, as well as of worse or greater ones, it permits commitment to the reform or industrial schools, and for more strictly termed criminal acts to jail or State prison. Commitments to the schools must be for the period of minority; the length of time to jail or prison, is within the discretion of the magistrate. In briefer and harsher phrase, a child for stubbornness may be incarcerated for fourteen years, and it may be thus upon the complaint and testimony of his parent. But the law has always had a provision of mercy which permits the trustees of the schools to discharge or place in a family, under indenture, any child committed thereto, at any time they may deem it wise and prudent to do so. The average time of remaining in the schools is less than two years. Of course, the long commitment is not contemplated by the law, nor viewed by the magistrates as punishment, but as an opportunity and method of reform, which may come quickly, or after the effort of years. But the commitment is rarely accepted as a beneficent measure by the child or his friends. It is generally viewed by them as a punishment, differing in degree, but not in kind, from commitment to the State prison. From this view and feeling of the child, there is danger that he, or she will grow sour, surly or morose, as under the discipline of a penal institution, a person is quite sure to do. The kindly methods and better facilities of the reformatory do often operate to prevent such danger from becoming a fact. The placing out of children from the reform and industrial schools, under indentures, or agreements, in families, is a salutary proceeding. The per cent. of well-doing is almost wholly secured from such ones; because they are thus kept away from the evil associations which carried them to the reformatories, and are among associations which tend to keep them in the right way. They do not pass from the care of the State when thus placed out, and may be returned to the school if they fail to do well. Of the means and method of care for such ones, which Massachusetts has and employs, you hear have from another representative of the State. I now pass to a statement and consideration of a broader, wiser, and more kindly law of the State, relating to juvenile offenders, which was first enacted in 1869, and much improved in 1870. This law provides First: For the appointment of a State agent, to act in cases of juvenile offenders. Second: "That when a complaint before a judge, or court, against any boy or girl, under seventeen years of age, for any offence, is made or pending, a notice in writing thereof shall be given to said agent, who by himself, or assistant, shall have an opportunity to investigate the case, attend the trial, and protect the interests of, or otherwise provide for such child." Third: That such children "shall have the complaints against them heard and determined by themselves, separate from the general and ordinary criminal business of the courts." Fourth: That the judge may, "upon request of the agent, authorize the State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity, to take and indenture, or place in charge of any person, or in the State Primary School, such child, until he, or she, attains the age of twenty-one years, or for a less time;" and the Board can, "if the child proves unmanageable with the person with whom he or she has been placed in charge, transfer him, or her, to the State Reform or Industrial School." Before referring to the operation of this law, permit me to introduce the children to whom its provisions are applied, and |