NON-POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION.

Another essential requirement is to lift our public institutions out of the domain of partisan politics. If this cannot be done, at least so far as our benevolent institutions are concerned, the sooner we abandon them as a State charge the better, and rely wholly upon private charity and professional competition. If insane asylums, and orphan asylums, and idiotic asylums, and deaf and dumb and blind asylums are to become mere nesting places for political parasites, let us away with them at once and forever. So long as the State occupies the ground, no one else can do so to advantage. It is clearly right that the State should

do this work, for it is the natural guardian of its afflicted children; but nevertheless, when a guardian becomes derelict in the discharge of the duties of this high trust, it is a crime against God and humanity, and the guardianship should be removed. That crime is committed whenever and wherever the administration of any public institution is interfered with for any other reason than for inefficiency or misconduct.

Here in Ohio, our benevolent institutions have been our pride and glory. Nowhere else upon the rounded globe, in all the ages, has there been a people who have responded so munificently in taxation in order that the afflicted and dependent classes should have the amplest opportunities for cure and care, absolutely free of charge to the recipients; and yet it is becoming a serious question in the minds of our best thinkers whether this whole expenditure is not an enormous mistake. It surely is such if it is to become merely spoil, or booty, with which political parties are to reward their henchmen.

There can be no proper efficiency in the management of any benevolent, penal, or reformatory institution without cultivated supervision, trained attendants, and a continued experience, which is utterly unattainable where the tenure of employment is based upon party supremacy.

Any man, or body of men, who would attempt to operate a railroad or run a line of steamers upon the basis of political success, would be considered insane or imbecile; but surely it is equally

rather than the details of administration. Experience seems to demonstrate that, for a Board of State Charities, moral power is more potential for good than actual power.

difficult, and far more wicked, to operate our great asylums or penitentiaries upon such a principle. In this judgment I am very sure there will be no difference of opinion among those who have had the largest experience in these matters; and if the voice of this Conference is called for, I have no doubt it will be given with absolute unanimity in favor of a non-partisan administration of our charitable and correctional institutions.

BUILDING EXPENDITURES.

Another self-evident proposition is the need of greater economy, and more wisdom, in the construction of buildings for the care of our defective and dependent classes. There is not a State in the Union where inexcusable extravagances of this kind have not been perpetrated. In every State there are large numbers of the insane, the epileptic and the idiotic, who are either wholly deprived of public care, or else are driven into dens or corners in poorhouses, or into cells in jails, where proper treatment is impossible, simply because our asylums have been built to make a show outside, rather than to provide accommodations inside. There are some asylum buildings which have cost as high as $5,000 for every inmate they contain. Here in Ohio, we have not a single asylum which has cost us less than $1,500 per capita of inmates, and we have been economical in comparison with some other States. There is no reason, justice, or common sense in this kind of expenditure; $400 per capita is ample for any insane asylum, and an amount still smaller will suffice for the idiotic, the imbecile and the pauper classes. Our Central Asylum, at Columbus, cost us $1,800,000, and accommodates 900 patients. The same amount of money properly expended, would afford accommodations for 4,500. As the matter now stands, we have six asylums with accommodations for 3,400 insane, and this leaves from 600 to 800 crowded into poorhouses or jails, or left out altogether. This, however, is not the worst of it. Our legislators, after so much extravagance in brick and mortar, have felt a necessity for retrenchment somewhere, and have made it by cutting down the cost of supervision, which is exactly what they ought not to have done. A log house with competent supervision is better than a palace without it. The golden rule of economy in all our public institutions should be retrenchment in construction and liberality in supervision. One of the duties which should be

devolved upon every Board of State Charities for its careful consideration, should be the construction of public buildings, and no plans should be adopted by local officials without its criticism and suggestions. Fully one-half the money expended for public buildings in the United States is worse than wasted, through the ignorance, foolishness, or malfeasance of architects, builders, or officials, and it ought to be stopped.

In all that I have said thus far, I am very sure that, in the main, I speak the sentiments of this entire Conference; but in a statement of principles for the separate management of our dependent, defective and criminal classes, perhaps we would not be so unanimous, but there are a few things even there that can be outlined as axioms without serious dissent.

OUR PENAL SYSTEM.

Our penal system, as a whole, is a relict of barbarism, and needs reconstruction, and almost revolution, from top to bottom. With less than half a dozen exceptions in the entire United States, our penitentiaries are merely punishing places, as their name indicates, and, as a rule, they make men worse instead of better. Our jails and station houses are even worse than our penitentiaries, and perpetrate more wrongs than they prevent. In fact, they are nurseries of crime rather than its correctors.

The truth of these assertions I need not stop to prove to an audience like this. The practical question is, what are we to do about it? In reply, let us start at the bottom, with our jails.

JAILS.

Upon this point I think we are all agreed.

First. That jails should be solely places of detention and never places of punishment.

Second. Separate confinement in separate cells should be the rule. Certainly convicted prisoners should not be confined with the unconvicted, and old offenders should have no association with the young. In the construction of new jails, entire and absolute separation of all prisoners should be provided for. The Boston jail, so far as I know, is the only one in the United States where these principles are fully carried out, and its superiority to the old system is palpable and infinite.

WORKHOUSES.

Persons convicted of less than penitentiary offences should be sent to workhouses and compelled to earn their keeping by hard labor. All tramps, vagrants and able-bodied paupers should be ranked as minor offenders, and promptly sent to the workhouse, instead of being furnished with genteel boarding, free of charge, as at present.

Where a county is not sufficiently populous to warrant the erection of a workhouse of its own, a number of counties should be included in a district, under State supervision.

A workhouse with less than 200 inmates cannot be operated to advantage economically, and with over 500 it cannot be operated to advantage morally.

PENITENTIARIES.

Our penitentiaries, with the few exceptions I have indicated, seem to be based upon the theory that every man convicted of crime is wholly bad, and that the thing to be done is to shut him up and make his life as uncomfortable and unhappy as possible, and then, when his term of imprisonment is expired, to thrust him out into the world with the brand of Cain upon him for the remainder of his life. This theory, whether true or not at the beginning, is very likely to be true at the ending. Any man, who, for a series of years, is considered a devil and treated like a devil, must be of extraordinary virtue and stamina if he does not, in truth, and in fact, become a devil. Our penitentiaries, as a rule, discharge their prisoners worse in character and more dangerous to society than when they receive them. This ought not to be, and need not be, and, as proof of this, all that is necessary to do is to go to the New York Reformatory, at Elmira, and see what is now being done under a reasonable and humane system. Elmira, possibly, may be but a beginning, but it is clearly a beginning in the right direction. All prison reform requires:

First. Such a classification of prisoners as will separate old offenders from new offenders; the incorrigible from the reclaimable ; the young from the old.

Second. Indeterminate sentences, so that a convict shall be retained in prison, as a patient is retained in a hospital, until he is cured. When convalescent, test him by a leave of absence, and discharge him only when a cure is fully established.

Third. We should remember that men inside of prison walls, like men outside, are intensely human. None are wholly bad, and none are wholly good. The Psalmist has declared that "No man doeth good, no, not one," and Solomon, who was wiser even than his father, says, "We are prone to evil as the sparks fly upward."

John Newton never said a wiser thing than when, observing a criminal on his way to the gallows, he declared, "There, except by the grace of God, goes John Newton." In short, we should remember that condemned criminals are men of like passions with ourselves, and that fair, just and equitable treatment is appreciated inside of prison walls just as fully as it is outside, and with the same result in making men better or worse. In other words, let every prisoner go up or go down in accordance with what he is, rather than in accordance with what he has been, or with what he is supposed to have been.

Some may contend that mercy is a bad quality to exercise in the management of a prison, but it should be remembered that I am not insisting upon mercy, but simply justice, for it is justice and not mercy that insists that a convict is fairly entitled to treatment according to conduct. Less than justice is devilish, but justice tempered with mercy is better than either.

Fifth. All prisoners able to work should receive steady employment, in occupations furnished by the State rather than by contractors, and if unable to read and write they should be taught at least that much in a prison school.

Sixth. Prisoners, when discharged, should receive a certificate of good conduct if entitled to it, together with a percentage of their earnings to give them a start. If their conduct has been bad, they should be carefully registered and placed under supervision of the police, and be required to report at stated periods their location and occupation. To place the brand of Cain upon all alike-the good as well as the bad — is not only the height of cruelty, but it is also the height of folly.

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Seventh. Our penitentiaries, to be what they ought to be, must have intelligent supervision, and all their officials should be specially trained for their work. In fact, in all our public institutions, if we are to make progress, we must have a more cultured management. We cannot extemporize men for these positions any more than we can extemporize navigators for our navy, or generals for our army.