employed capable, experienced superintendents and officers; rehabilitated institutions physically; adopted standard food products; modernized parole system; expects to place Kentucky on par with best in country. West Virginia. The State Board of Children's Guardians receives and places normal dependent children, after careful mental and physical examinations have been made. Is especially interested in aid cases. Gives particular attention to the problem of the unmarried mother. Investigates cases of tubercular and venereally infected children and in conjunction with State Board of Control and State Board of Health provides for care of same in state and private hospitals receiving state aid. Investigates cases of deaf, blind and crippled children in behalf of State Boards of Control and Education. Places same in proper institution or hospital. Board officers and agents supervise paroled youth of boys' and girls' industrial schools. Assists in enforcement of child labor law. Aids in cases coming under Mothers' Pension Act. Studies problems concerning dependent, delinquent, defective and deficient children, and reports to the governor and legislature measures designed to improve conditions surrounding said classes. After July 1st, 1921, will inspect and license private institutions, hospitals, lying-in or maternity homes, associations or societies receiving, caring for or placing children. As a result of activities of State Board of Children's Guardians and Control, a State Mental Hygiene Commission was appointed during 1920. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene was induced to make a complete mental deficiency survey of the state resulting in passage of law authorizing Training School for Mental Deficients. Board worked for law creating Child Welfare Commission. Passage of law raising age of consent. Establishment of industrial schools for colored youth. Improvement juvenile court law. Board is interested and assists as far as possible every legitimate effort to improve conditions surrounding unfortunates. Future. Today the clarion call of privilege and opportunity is being sounded to the socially minded of the South. More and more, as vision and breadth of mind increase, do the people of the South appreciate their serious social responsibilities. I believe that the leaders of southern welfare movements, assisted and guided by sympathetic counsellors of other sections, will produce some practical and gratifyingly pleasant surprises as they solve many of their problems. Dr. H. H. Hart, director of the Child Helping Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, gave the following bit of advice to a worker who has labored in the southern field during the past twenty years. He said: "Remember, five years is an exceedingly short length of time; if in twenty years you have had a small part in the proper development of southern social problems, you will have done a tremendously big piece of work." I believe that the inherently strong principle underlying this statement is generally accepted by southern social workers and that enduring structures are being built, based upon sympathy, knowledge, and practical results obtained; upon thorough work done by the best of workers obtainable as far as means will permit, and upon a sincere desire to "do a good job, not to hold a good job." THE RELATION OF STATE INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCIES TO PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS A. A REDEFINITION OF THE PROPER RELATION OF STATE BOARDS OF CONTROL TO BOARDS OF EDUCATION, HEALTH, CHILD WELFARE, AND THE LIKE. Burdette G. Lewis, State Commissioner of Institutions and Agencies, Trenton, N.J. md For some time we have heard that state governments are inefficient and cumbersome. Apparently they have suffered as has the federal government from the tyranny of well organized and vociferous minorities and from the paralysis of 11 inarticulate majorities. In the Congress of the United States we ha that a handful of wilful men may stop legislation and menace the c of governmental departments whenever they wish to force their will upon the majority. Something of the same sort has happened upon different occasions in most of our states. Perhaps we do not recognize so clearly these organized minorities in our states because in many cases their organizers are our own friends and neighbors, or they are so highly placed in the confidence of the people that discretion is the better part of valor and we leave them alone, while the taxpayers foot the bills. The present status of state government service. One of the difficulties with our educational system has been that the determination of the subjects to be taught, as well as the manner in which each subject was to be taught, was left almost exclusively to expert educators, whose lives have been confined to teaching work and who have not had the opportunity of becoming familiar with the way business, commerce, and industry are conducted and with the viewpoints of those having had business experience, professional experience, or social service experience. They were therefore improperly prepared to act as dictators in the educational field, charged with determining what subjects should be taught in the public schools. It is, of course, true that they were especially qualified to determine the manner in which the subject was to be taught, but they had no more right than the doctor, the lawyer, the business man, or the trained social worker to exclusive judgment as to what subjects, whether history, science, civics, arithmetic, and the like, should be taught. The health departments have been slow to recognize that the social workers of the country have a great deal to teach them about how to handle public health education in particular, and about how to improve industrial nursing, social service nursing, and nurses' training school work. The child, the greatest possibility in the universe, has naturally and justly attracted a great deal of attention. People have been quite properly insistent that everything possible be done to insure him the greatest future, for in doing that the nation is made doubly secure and is wonderfully enriched. It has been understandable, therefore, that special departments should spring up to emphasize the importance of certain fundamental, medical, environmental, social, and training opportunities for children, and that great impatience should be expressed regarding the apparent or alleged failure of the well organized ordinary departments of government, such as the health, educational, institutional, and labor departments, to function specifically and particularly for the child. There have been notable movements for the development of child welfare boards, which have done much good. Public institutions have been surrounded either by high walls of brick and mortar or by imaginary walls erected by those especially interested in them. While again there are notable exceptions of institutions which have become highly developed in isolation, the evil results of this generalneliot of isolated development have been most serious. Correctional institutions pe st during the first ninety years me of the more unstable of the past century, for, as the ins EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT 1. Supervision of kindergartens, elementary, high and normal, continuation, trade, vocational, industrial, and special schools for crippled, truant, backward, and defective children. 2. Physical training for children of school age, community centers, conduct of indoor facilities for community bathing in school buildings. 3. Provides space for and conducts medical, dental, surgical, and psychiatric clinics for children. 4. Formulates and by inspection promotes adoption of educational standards for institutions and industrial welfare departments. 5. Supervises vocational guidance work, furnishes basic reports to industrial welfare department in re-working certificates. 6. Conducts demonstration work and classes in the field of special education for children, youth, and adults. The co-operation of the special state institutions for the care and training of the insane, the feebleminded, and the epileptic within the same department and with private institutions, with well organized psychopathic, clearing house, classification, and treatment institutions, and with clinics has a tremendous influence upon the development of research and medical work in these institutions. The reasons for this are simple. The state institutions have been receiving the end product, where so INSTITUTIONAL DEPARTMENT 1. Administrative control and jurisdiction over all state institutions and 2. Conduct of own health work with co-operation of visiting physicians, 3. Conducts own educational work but educational department 4. Demonstration field for community activities. 5. Conducts own special clinics and laboratories in institutions and for 6. Child placement, dependent children, widows' pensions, repatriation 8. Supervises and inspects all public and private institutions. 9. Conducts institutional farms as demonstrations with co-operation 10. Makes demonstrations for educational and industrial depart- many of the cases are of such a low standard or where the disease has been allowed to develop so far that the chance for rapid recovery or for complete recovery in state institutional cases is much less than in those special private and public institutions where the cases are handled at a much earlier stage in the development of disease. The interchange of ideas within the Department of Institutions and with the medical and other divisions, through clinics and clearing house psychopathic instituPUBLIC AGENCIES AND INSTITUTIONS administrators made up of at least a representative of departments of health, education, industry (labor), industry (capital), agriculture, research, commerce, and social welfare. The proper sphere of the board and of the directing administrative head of the Educational, Health, Institutional, and Industrial departments. The state board and the commissioner or directing head of each of these departments should in so far as possible be relieved of "business details" by a capable staff in the department, not by division of authority. The state board should be composed of practical and enthusiastic representatives of health, education, industry, social welfare, scientific investigation, agriculture, business, and the like and they should be chosen regardless of their political or religious affiliations or belief. In like manner, the commissioner should be chosen by the superior authority without the necessity of confirmation by the legislature and should be left free to conduct work of this vast importance in accordance with policies and principles formulated by the authority superior to him, but by an authority which is willing to listen to him before it takes final action, and when a decision is once made, no board should attempt to become administrative, but should leave these details to the chief executive of the department. Great dangers in autocracy and in decentralization. - There is a way to minimize the danger of too much centralization and of the much greater danger of decentralization. The proper corrective is a well informed electorate which can be obtained only through the adoption of well planned, truth-telling, educational campaigns. The public press should be utilized to bring the people into more intimate contact with government, and the essential facts as to discoveries, achievements, failures, and hopes should be told to the people through the medium of the press and motion pictures. Even the most thick-skinned politicians will understand, will fall in line, and will actually support the administration which is successful in the eyes of the public. B. THE OHIO PLAN Mary Irene Atkinson, Chief, Institution Inspection Division, Ohio Board of State The functions of the Ohio Board of State Charities may be divided into two classes: first, administrative; second, non-administrative. Under the head of administrative functions are the Support Department and the Child Caring Division of the Children's Welfare Department. The non-administrative duties include the inspection of workhouses, jails, and infirmaries, when such inspections are deemed necessary, the annual inspection and annual licensing of every child-caring agency in the state, whether public or private, the annual inspection and licensing of every private home which boards children, and investigation of the reliability and purpose of persons applying for articles of incorporation to establish some social activity. If the secretary of the Ohio Board of State Charities, Mr. Shirer, for whom I am substituting, were presenting the subject he would be able to explain in great the Support Department, which is responsible for collecting money for the p board of persons confined in our insane hospitals, institutions for the feel and the hospital for epileptics. He would also doubtless stress the subje maries and workhouses. What I shall say will be confined to the childr |