temporary sickness or disability have been compelled to seek relief, have been herded together, and the tendency is to bring down all to the level of the lowest, which destroys their selfrespect, and prepares them to become life-long dependents of public and private charity."

7. We recommend the employment of more medical care and attention in county almshouses. Under the insufficient remuneration almost universally paid to physicians, recent attacks of disease only receive the benefit of any considerable treatment. Neglected insanity, wounds and slight ailments, have tended greatly to increase the list of paupers. With many, chronic disease and pauperism are inseparable.

8. We recommend the organization of a uniform system of labor, a system which should provide employment for every inmate in these institutions, outside the hospital or infirmary departments, with some kind of useful and, if possible, remunerative labor. Many idle and shiftless vagabonds drift into the poorhouses, especially during the winter months, attracted by the life of listless idleness which so generally prevails. Employment in the house, the gardens, the farm, the shops and the roads may always be provided. The absence of regular employment in poorhouses tends to make those who are temporarily dependent, chronic and incurable paupers.

9. For that class of vagrants who make a wandering and predatory life a regular pursuit,-a class who spend their whole. lives in gaining a livelihood from organized institutions or private individuals,—no effectual remedy has yet been devised by which harrassed communities can be relieved of this species of criminal pauperism, no way by which these travelling vagabonds may be compelled to earn subsistence by the labor of their own hands. An act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, passed in 1879, authorizing more summary arrests and longer terms of imprisonment, wherever it is enforced has been more effectual in expelling them from within the borders of the State than had been accomplished by any measure previously provided.

The remedy of universal application consists in the establishment of district workhouses, in which a system of compulsory labor may be conducted, to be under State control; with the necessary legislative enactments to authorize commitments for short terms for a first offence, and from six to twelve months for a

second. Under a well-executed system of useful labor these establishments might, in a short time, be made self-supporting, and relieve the public, not only of a grievous burden, but a rapidly growing evil.

For the Committee.

DILLER LUTHER, Chairman.

II. THE TREATMENT OF ERRING AND CRIMINAL WOMEN.

BY MRS. W. P. LYNDE, OF WISCONSIN.

In reconsidering the papers and discussions of the last Conference of Charities in the line of subjects properly belonging to the committee on "The Causes and Prevention of Pauperism,” to which I have been assigned, the suggestion of measures and methods of treatment of erring women, contained in Mrs. Lowell's valuable paper, seems to me worthy farther consideration both by the abovenamed committee, and also that on "Criminal Law and its Administration," with a view of effecting some radical changes and reforms in the methods of treating this entire class.

Mrs. Lowell, quoting from the report of the Board of Charities of her own State, in its "examination into the causes of the increase of crime, pauperism and insanity," made in compliance with a resolution of its Legislature, says, "even a casual perusal of that report will convince the reader that one of the most important and most dangerous causes of the increase of crime and pauperism and insanity is, the unrestrained liberty allowed to vagrant and degraded women."

In connection with this, the statement of Mr. Skinner, agent of the Children's Aid Society of New York city, in reference to the work of that society, is full of significance. He reports that in 1878 that society had placed out in homes in the West four thousand (4,000) children, and in the whole period of its operation, forty-eight thousand (48,000) children had been sent out from New York city to the West; and the gentleman added, "this was checking pauperism and crime." May I put the question, is not this scattering throughout the fertile West the baleful seeds that may speedily ripen into bitter fruit; seeds that may bring forth some fifty and some an hundred fold? Will New York and Boston and Philadelphia continue to be the nurseries of such fruit, and the West permit them to add their product to the home grown results of our own mistaken policies? Will it not be a wiser and

more humane and Christian policy for us all to unite in the endeavor to devise some plans and measures that shall tend toward checking or preventing the production of these "wild grapes," that shall "set on edge" the teeth of hosts of children, "even to the third and fourth generation?"

Mrs. Lowell says, "We do not hesitate to cut off the entail, where it is possible, of insanity by incarcerating for life the incurably insane, why should we not also prevent the transmission of moral insanity? as fatal" (I would say more hopeless)" than that of mind."

Where lies the cause, and whence shall come the cure for these evils, so big with portent of danger to society in this new world of ours, and that have already worked with such destructive force in older civilizations?

Criminal laws in their spirit and administration seem formed almost entirely for purposes of punishment, and to have no influence or intention toward prevention or reformation. Take, for example, the course of law" in its dealing with disorderly houses. They are usually, although well known to the authorities, utterly ignored by the guardians of the peace until somebody makes complaint of. one, then "the force is sent out to raid it." It would be fair to suppose that all the inmates would receive equal justice at the hands of its administrators, and that both men and women would share the due penalty of outraged law, but, except in very rare instances, the male inmates are suffered to escape, or, under an alias, fined and discharged; but the women and young girls, without regard to degree of guilt, are all, in open day, dragged through the streets, and into open courts for trial! The young victim of her own ignorance, or weakness,-or more frequently of some human fiend,—who has, mayhap, taken but the first step in vice, and has, as yet, made no friend to pay her fine, is sentenced (frightened and, perhaps, penitent) to the common jail, sharing the same punishment with the old and hardened sinner, and too often the same cell where she sees and hears only deeper depths of vice; attended, perhaps searched, by men, with no sight of womanly presence, or sound of feminine kindness to admonish or whisper words of hope or lead to better ways. No wonder, if after even a "short term," she emerges hopelessly doomed to a life of infamy and an early death in ignominy. The law, in its execution, has prevented reformation by the disgrace and degradation of its

method of punishment, and sent the contagious pestilent forth to exercise her baleful influence wherever-poor, hunted, wounded animal, she may hide or flee. By rigid legal enactments we isolate such contagious maladies as small-pox, scarlet fever and diphtheria, etc., and stamp them out by disinfectants and sanitary measures; but for this moral vice of society, which "stingeth like an adder," and "whose steps take hold on death," we have no preventive measures nor any legal enactments, except those which disseminate and perpetuate, and render reformation or restoration to society of the wronged or erring woman improbable if not impossible. The words of Dr. Elisha Harris, "that until the State shall have provided a prison, or a reformatory refuge for criminal females, and until every country and city has more suitable places of detention for women than the present common jail, most of those who suffer arrest and conviction for crimes, will become destroyers and injurers for their life-time," seem, in view of this condition of facts and forces, almost prophetic.

New York city, in 1878, sheltered, in such "ways and manners as we have just been considering, fourteen thousand two hundred and thirty-four (14,234) vagrant homeless women and children. Suppose New York city, for a few years previous, had exercised the provision possible, with suitable restraint and supervision of the four or five thousand mothers of these children, to say nothing of the often more guilty fathers, she would have reduced the cost of this charity and correction in a more than corresponding ratio, and greater, better, holier still would have been the work of that grand metropolitan city, in the work of preventing pauperism and crime. Indiana and Massachusetts have established separate prisons for women, which are managed by women exclusively, and are accomplishing a grand work for those who reach that advanced stage of crime, and we earnestly hope more of our States will soon have similar institutions. But places of detention for those in earlier stages of criminal life, which shall also be under the control of women, removed from all control or association with men, or their once previous habit of life, with such reformatory and restorative influences as healthful and cleanly surroundings, compulsory work and longer sentences, seem to offer better hope for the restoration of erring and fallen women than any of the systems we have yet adopted.

III.

THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM.

READ BY R. D. MCGONNIGLE, OF PITTSBURG, PA.

The causes of pauperism and the best means for its prevention form a subject preeminently worthy of consideration, for the simple reason that anything that tends to lessen pauperism is of incalculable benefit to the State, the country and the world at large. Some of us endeavor to get at the root of this gigantic evil from an economical standpoint, and some of us from purely philanthropic motives. In either case the investigation results in good. When we speak of the causes of pauperism we open a subject as old as the hills, and as difficult to thoroughly explore.

The causes are multitudinous, and many of them have been recapitulated over and over again. The difficulty is not to find a cause of pauperism, but rather to find the best methods of preventing its alarming increase in the future.

There are, however, three causes which I shall allude to in this paper, not because they are newly discovered - for they are not but because, as it appears to me, they are capable of practical treatment at the hands of practical men.

First. The neglect of destitute and pauper children. We either permit them to grow up neglected in our cities, or, when brought to our notice, we hurry them off to an almshouse, where they are surrounded by the worst influences and associations.

Second. The improper administration of our almshouses. In many places the pauper is fed, clothed and lodged, without exacting anything in the shape of labor in return. The institution is simply a place of refuge for persons who, in many instances, could provide for themselves. In this way the almshouse itself is a fruitful cause of pauperism.

Third. The indiscriminate distribution of outdoor relief by poor law officers. The dealing out of small sums weekly to applicants for an indefinite time, and the neglect of making a full and searching investigation, not merely when the application is first made, but through all the successive stages of the relief is a part of this soil.

These are all prolific causes of pauperism, but happily they are not beyond our control, and, in considering the best means of prevention, I am of the opinion that all destitute, neglected and