as one of the best methods ever discovered of elevating the children of the poorer classes.

SUMMER HOMES.

(6) To these various reformatory branches of children's charities should be added, in large cities, sanitary movements and efforts for affording fresh air to the children of the crowded tenement houses. Excursions may be made to give the children a picnic or a day in the country; others may be placed out for a few weeks with farmers who are found willing to receive them for charity's sake. For others," summer homes" should be opened near the seaside, or on the mountains, where the children of the poor could have a week of fresh air, with sea-bathing or good country fare. For the sick, a sanitaria" should be opened during the summer months at the seaside, and mothers with infants afflicted by summer diseases should be conveyed there for a week's stay. The same sanitarium, warmed by open fires, could be used as a "children's hospital" in the winter. It is found that in these large summer homes, or sanitaria, the average expense for each child, including railroad fares, rent, salaries, food, etc., need not be more than $2.00 or $2.25 per head for a week.

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This, then, is a sketch of what children's charities in towns and villages should be. So far as cities are concerned, the Children's Aid Society of New York has been built up on this plan during the past twenty-six years.

THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY.

The society opened in 1853, with the secretary and an office boy for agents; in 1880, it employed 112 teachers, superintendents and matrons, Western, and other agents and visitors; during the first year, it expended $4,194.55; last year, its expenditures were $205,583.25; it provided with homes during that year, 197 children; in 1880 it placed out 3,773 persons, of whom 3,360 were children. Two industrial schools were founded during the first year, the Fourth Ward and the German, with 230 children in attendance. The society has now twenty-one industrial schools and twelve night schools, with an aggregate attendance of 9,098 children. No lodging houses were founded during the first year (the newsboys' originating in 1854); in 1878, the society carried on six lodging houses (the buildings of five being its own property, valued at $300,000), sheltering and instructing some 13,652 differ

ent boys and girls, of whom 7,554 were orphans, with an average attendance of some 600 every night. In addition, it sustains a "summer home" where some 2,000 children enjoy each season the pleasures of the seaside and country air.

Since the first year, it has placed out, largely in Western homes, 55,717 homeless persons, of whom some 51,000 were children. During these twenty-five years, over $3,000,000 have been contributed by the public to this charity, and it stands now without any debt.

This remarkable growth and extent of charitable labor during a quarter of a century have been due to the fact that this society met a deeply-felt want of the city, that its plans were wisely laid and efficiently carried out, and its trustees and agents men of integrity and character. So far as is known, not a dollar of these three millions was ever wasted or stolen, but it was all intelligently and economically applied to the purposes of this charity, and has all been repaid many times to the public, in the scores of thousands of vagrant, or outcast, or destitute children, who have been turned. by means of it into honest and industrious and self-supporting men and women.

Some $300,000 of this sum are invested in buildings, which will be a permanent benefaction to the poor children of New York for generations to come.

EFFECTS ON CRIME.

In the lodging houses, during twenty-six years, some 200,000 different boys and girls have been sheltered and partly fed and instructed. In the industrial schools, probably over 50,000 poor little girls have been taught; and of these girls, it is not known that even a score have entered on criminal courses of life, or have become drunkards or beggars, though four-fifths were children of drunkards.

But a better test are the police statistics of crime. During a portion of the period through which these figures run, the population of the city increased from 814,224 in 1860, to 1,083,371 in 1878, while, as usual, great numbers of poor people remained here, left by the foreign immigration.

In regard to commitments of young girls, it should be remembered that our police statistics include now all those committed to charitable and reformatory institutions, whereas, formerly, only those imprisoned were reported in these tables.

It will be seen, from these figures, that vagrancy and crime among young girls have been greatly diminished during the past fifteen or twenty years, while, among boys, criminal offences have not grown with the population, but have been held decidedly in check.

SANITARY RESULTS.

In the sanitary field, the results are equally remarkable. Among 162,148 boys who have been, during the twenty-five years, in the Newsboys' Lodging House, there has been no case of any conta

gious, or "foul air" disease, not even ophthalmia; only one death (from pneumonia, in 1858,) has occurred, though there have been several cases of accidents. The other boys' lodging houses have been almost equally fortunate; a distinct sanitary result of scrupulous cleanliness, ventilation and proper food. The only exception has been in malarial diseases, during the past year, at the Rivington Street Lodging House, owing especially to the erection of a new, over-crowded tenement house on the adjoining lots, and the bad drainage of these lots.

In

Since our summer enterprises have begun, in the Sick Children's Mission and the Summer Home, there has been a steady fall of the death-rate of children from diarrhoeal diseases in the summer. producing this result, the Board of Health and other associations have had a share, though the 2,500 children refreshed each summer in the Summer Home, and the hundreds relieved by the Sick Mission, must have materially affected the death-rate of the city.

It will be observed that, in six years, over 1,000 lives annually have been saved under this disease alone.

The general death-rate has been reduced from 33.76, in 1872, to 24.93 per 1,000 in 1879.

PLACING OUT.

With reference to the "placing-out" system, the failures have been a very small proportion to the successes, and thousands of these poor boys and girls have grown up to be useful and respectable men and women.

A striking instance was given recently of the effect of this plan in the disposition of some trust funds, put in the hands of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of New York. They were applied, to the amount of several thousand dollars, to placing out homeless children in New York, on farms, and in families, mainly in Kansas, by the longexperienced agents of the Children's Aid Society. Several hundreds were thus placed, and the greatest possible publicity given to the

disposition of them, and the behavior of the children. A Kansas paper stated recently, that out of 700 New York children thus placed in Kansas (part having been previously sent there by the society), only four children had turned out badly.

CONCLUSION.

This, then, is the work of one extensive children's charity in the city of New York. There seems no reason why similar charities, even if not so extensive, should not be founded in all the large cities of the country. There are poor, homeless and vagrant children everywhere, and every motive of self-interest, of political security and Christian duty prompts to efforts to aid and reform them. We trust to hear throughout the land, wherever there is childish crime and misery, of the formation of boys' Sunday meetings, children's reading rooms, day industrial schools for the poor, kindergartens, kitchen garden, and crêches for destitute little ones, children's lodging houses for the homeless, summer homes and sanitaria for the sick and unfortunate, and a judicious "placing out" for the houseless and neglected.

It will be simply the application of Christianity, through judicious means, to the greatest and most threatening of our social evils.

DEBATE ON THE PAPERS.

Before the reading of Mr. Brace's Paper, Mr. COFFIN, of Indiana, said: I would like to suggest to the Conference, that this (the Family System) is an exceedingly interesting and important subject, and if there are any other papers read now we may not have time to discuss it.

Mr. McCULLOCH, of Indiana: It is customary to refer some papers to the Committee on Publication, without reading. It is possible that some will want to hear a discussion of these papers that have been read thus far, and I, for one, would like to see other papers referred to the Committee on Publication without being read.

Mr. COFFIN: I would like just here to make a few remarks in regard to the question of delinquent children. I think in Massachusetts they have hit upon the right plan, and have obviated some of the difficulties which exist elsewhere. Four years ago, in