Among the recommendations adopted by the late International Prison Congress, at Stockholm, and emphasized by a unanimous vote, was this:

"Resolved, that we favor the professional education, in some form, of prison officers and employés, and the payment of such salaries as will attract and retain competent persons in prison service."

Such prison education, in the main, should be in the prison itself, in the prison service. Those entering should do so at merely nominal wages, and their promotion to higher position and better pay, should be in accordance with capacity and fidelity.

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.

After all that has been done, or can be done, in penitentiaries, to decrease crime by reforming criminals, the result will be but little, compared with well directed efforts to prevent the creation of criminals. In short, we must look after the vagrant, homeless and vicious children. To purify a stream we must first cleanse the fountains that feed it. It is amazing that this self-evident proposition is not recognized and acted upon in the legislation of every State. Of the convicts in our penitentiaries twenty and possibly thirty per cent. can be reformed by proper treatment, but if we had taken charge of these convicts when they were children, and placed them in industrial homes, and given them proper training, we could have transformed eighty or ninety per cent. of them into good citizens. I am very sure that I voice the unanimous conviction of this Conference when I say that the first, the foremost, the most important thing to do in the prevention of crime is to care for the children. It is a sin, almost unpardonable, to allow children to drift through our communities as homeless waifs, or to thrust them into poorhouses to be tainted by their vile surroundings.

If there is any one precept made specially emphatic beyond all others by the founder of our religion, it is the care of children. "Feed my lambs," was the injunction of the Great Teacher, and was solemnly repeated as He stood in the morning sunlight by the waters of Gennessaret, and the wisdom of His requirement was never more apparent than it is today.

Care for the children, and the men and women that grow out of them will care for themselves.

THE DEPENDENT AND DEFECTIVE CLASSES.

In regard to the dependent and defective classes, there is not so much of a demand for a change of system as there is for separation, classification and expansion. A few requirements, however, are imperative.

First. The insane, the epileptic and the idiotic, should be wholly under State care, and not one of them should be left in a county or city poorhouse.

Second. The insane should be so classified and subdivided that the ordinary insane, the epileptic insane and the convict insane, should be entirely separated, and in the larger States, each class should be provided for in an institution of its own.

Third. The idiotic and imbecile should be provided for, not only in educational, but also in custodial institutions, under one administration. If we are to control the increase of idiocy, custodial care is indispensable.

Fourth. Almshouses should be strictly limited to the care of such as are entirely unable to earn a living for themselves. Ablebodied paupers should be sent to the workhouse. The almshouse should be a refuge for the old, the sick, the lame, the halt, the blind, who have no other shelter, and to the worthy it should be made cheerful, comfortable and hospitable.

Fifth. Of all the questions submitted to our consideration, as I have already indicated, the care of neglected and dependent children is, by all odds, the most important. This assertion will not be disputed in an audience like this, nor in any other which will give proper consideration to its far-reaching requirements, and yet, of all the subjects I have mentioned, this, probably, receives the least attention from legislative bodies. Instead of the ending, this ought to be the beginning of all legislative thought and action. Here is the fountain head which fills all the streams and currents of social and civic life. Here is the heart which pulsates blood, pure or impure, into all the veins and arteries of the body politic. Neglect here is neglect everywhere, and yet, just here, at the governing point of control over the ever-flowing tides of human life and destiny, legislation has been most neglectful. "Tis strange, 'tis passing strange, 'tis pityful."

When the tyrant Herod slaughtered a score or two of children at Bethlehem, a wail went forth from the heart of humanity which

has continued to reverberate through all succeeding ages, and yet, in this generation in which we are now living, and in this Christian civilization of America, we slaughter, by neglect, countless thousands of children-not physically, but morally-and society, for the most part, remains unmoved and dumb.

Men and brethren, if we are to redeem the world from crime and misery, or make any large progress in that direction, we must first redeem the children. If society should do its duty, it would not sleep until every one of its homeless and neglected children is taken out of the pollution of poorhouses, and out of the slums of cities, and is placed under the fostering care, and in the genial sunshine of a kindly Christian home.

THE APATHY OF THE CHURCHES.

In these suggestions of requirements for progress in the line of our work, the last, perhaps, ought to have been the first, and that is, the need of a more active sympathy on the part of our Christian churches. In saying this, I do not intimate that they are less active than non-Christian organizations, but rather that they fall short of what we have reason to expect. The neglect of a friend we feel more keenly than the hatred of an enemy. Persons in distress, naturally look to their family or kindred for help, and a failure to respond is reprobated by the common instincts of humanity, and so as we remember that the public care of the dependent and defective classes, and all the great reforms in prison management, are an outgrowth of the teachings and the philosophy of Him who founded the Christian faith, we may, at least, be permitted to wonder at the apathy of those who profess that faith. In fact, at the very beginning, the distinguishing characteristic of that faith was the care of the afflicted, and "the remembrance of those in bonds as bound with them." Our benevolent and reformatory institutions are its legitimate children, and, like the sons of Cornelia, they should be its choicest jewels.

The first public announcement by the Great Teacher was the declaration upon that memorable Sabbath day in Nazareth, that "the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the securing of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised." Again, at the close of those matchless parables, indicating the final test of obedience to His teachings, He declared,

"I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." (Matt. 25, 35, 36.)

In the light of all these teachings, can the church afford to leave its children in the care of strangers or hirelings? Nay, verily; if the churches are to receive in full measure the spirit of the Master, they must imitate the Master. However this may be, I think this Conference will agree with me in the opinion that one of the obstacles of progress in our penal, reformatory and benevolent institutions, is the apathy of Christian churches, Christian ministers and Christian people. They should remember that, practically, the poor, the afflicted and the erring, for the most part, have gone into the care and custody of our public institutions, and if we, as Christians, are to have a part in helping them, we must work with, and upon, and through these institutions. Do this, and the usefulness of these institutions will be enhanced an hundred fold, and the church itself will again receive a pentecostal baptism.

SIGNS OF PROGRESS.

In conclusion, allow me to congratulate the members of this Conference upon the signs of progress all along the line of our public institutions. To break down old habits and old prejudices is not a rapid work, and yet, as we look backward through the years of the past, we can see that our institutions are slowly, but surely emerging out of the darkness, and degradation and desolation of past ages into the golden sunlight of a humane and merciful and Christianized future. As an evidence of this fact, we have, year by year, a larger Conference, an increasing wealth of information, and a wider sympathy from the public at large. In short, we have every reason to thank God and take courage, and to go forward with an enlarged faith in the promise of the future for good.

As the great globe swings in its mighty orbit around the sun, and lifts its polar ice crowns into the dissolving summer, so let us have the faith to believe that in the grander cycles of human destiny, the long and icy winter of humanity is evolving into the golden summer of the Son of Man.

NOTE.-Gov. Marks, of Tennessee, in a published letter has questioned some of the above conclusions in regard to his State. Gen. Brinkerhoff having asked him to substantiate his criticisms with official documents, and none having come to hand, anything which shall change these conclusions must be inserted elsewhere.

PENAL AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.

I. REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE.

READ BY HENRY W. LORD, OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE. Wednesday Evening, June 30.

The treatment of criminals on the present scale of management is a comparatively new science. Not so new as steam navigation, railways and telegraphs, but comparatively new; so new indeed, so undeveloped, when we contemplate the slow processes by which society is built up, as scarcely to be even entitled to the name of system or science.

Until recently, the world for the most part had but two or three prompt and summary processes or methods of dealing with prisoners, they being held as such only while their final disposition awaited the determination of the law. Slavery or transportation when such resources were available, otherwise death, settled all questions of escape or expense of confinement, maintenance and discipline.

Offences of almost any degree of moral turpitude could, in many of the most enlightened countries, be expiated by fine,- that being in some ways desirable by the governments, and for some minor faults, and noticeably for differences of opinion in regard to established forms for the time being, lashings, mutilations and the stocks were more or less in use; while for heresy, that pertaining more nearly to the divine authority, torture by fire was regarded as appropriate and in keeping with the ultimate condition of wicked men, according to the teachings of those times.

Prisons were rarely more than dungeons in the vaults of castles and strongholds, in which men were not expected to be public burdens for any great length of time, for it was designed to inflict a greater rather than a less punishment than death. Men were seldom so held in mitigation of penalty, but rather for purposes involving worse than immediate death.

If distributed in places of detention in the form of jails, and held for trial, they were soon either enlarged by acquittal or punished by fine, whipping, torture, execution or banishment, thus concluding expenses, and providing room for the next delinquents.