Our County Jails, so long a disgrace in their construction and management, are slowly but surely giving way, before a more enlightened public sentiment, to jails which, in their construction, will admit of the separate confinement, without hurt to the health, of all persons therein, and to the demands of justice and economy as well as of humanity, which insists that men awaiting trial for alleged crime shall not be subjected to worse conditions of degradation and punishment than men already convicted of crime.

Our State Penitentiary, with a cell capacity for ten hundred and fifty prisoners, has had a daily average for the past year of over seventeen hundred. Meanwhile most of our jails have been equally overcrowded. In view of these facts, the Board of State Charities are urging the erection of an intermediate or reformatory State prison, and of district workhouses under State control, so located as to be accessible to all the incorporated towns and villages of Ohio. To these workhouses, so controlled and placed under judicious management, we look for relief from the heaviest burden of tax which our people are called to bear, that of supporting in our county jails great numbers of worthless vagrants and petty thieves, who enjoy nothing so much as the infliction of something to eat and nothing to do.

It has been the thought of the Board of State Charities, also, that a well-ordered workhouse system, so arranged as to reach every section of the State, would afford a practical solution of the "tramp question."

It has been our observation, that cities and larger towns, with efficient police regulation and facilities for enforcing penalties. against vagrancy, were able to protect their respective communities, but usually it has been at the expense or by the exposure of smaller towns and the rural districts where no such protection could be organized. All tramps are not vagrants; but if the tramp be an honest, sober, industrious citizen, going from place to place really in search of employment, there can be little difficulty in his way. Such a man ordinarily carries with him, or can readily procure, satisfactory credentials as to character and habits. Other men, flying from the face of work and determined to live without it, ought to be compelled-peaceably if possible, but forcibly if necessary to earn their bread. to earn their bread. Few things in our day stand so directly in the way of the employment of honest industry, remunerative wages, and the maintenance of proper relations between capital and labor, as do the vast hordes of the indolent and vicious for

whom moral restraints and social interests are alike without force or charm, and whose presence in the community tends continually to impair the claims of labor by destroying the confidence of capital. Strangely enough, capital and labor strike hands in opposition to the proposed method of reform. Capital opposes the workhouse system because of the cost of providing for it. Honest industry, equally true to that which it conceives to be its interest, objects to competition with enforced labor.

THE CHARITABLE, CURATIVE, AND REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS OF IOWA. BY C. S. WATKINS.

The State census of 1875 gave Iowa a population of 1,350,000; and, as the increase since has been quite rapid and constant, it is safe to assume that there were 1,500,000 people within the State 1878.

Jan. 1,

The official reports from the various charitable, curative, and correctional institutions of the State, delivered to the governor in November, 1877, gave a total of 2,090 inmates; to which add the number, estimated from the returns of the county authorities in 1875 as being under the care of local authorities, at 1,200, and it appears that Iowa has about 3,300 persons, one to every 450 of the entire population, maintained by special or general taxation on the property of the self-sustaining classes.

The subdivision of this total number of dependents shows as follows:

1,200

3,290

Inmates in Home for Feeble-minded Children,

Paupers, imbeciles, &c., under local care of county authorities (esti

As Iowa has never been directly heard from at any previous meeting of this Conference, I have thought that perhaps a brief enumeration of some of our State institutions, with some explanation of their systems of management and supervision, and also of our legislation on these subjects, might be a more acceptable offering at this time than would a detailed and statistical exhibit of our past, present, and prospective condition in these matters.

It may truly be said, that although it is scarcely thirty years (Dec. 28, 1846) since Iowa, with less than one-tenth of its present amount of population, assumed the responsibilities of State sovereignty, and though, as in all rapidly-growing communities, our law-makers and State officers have generally had but little knowledge of each other previous to their official meetings, yet, from the first, the policy towards the disabled and dependent classes has been uniformly liberal and progressive.

Our laws provide for the kindly care and humane treatment of all persons held in restraint or custody, and for the especial care, education, and moral training of the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the feeble-minded. Iowa also provides a generous home for soldiers' orphans, and for all indigent or delinquent children.

Our statutes provide that neither soldiers nor the individual members of soldiers' families can be sent to the poorhouse when destitute, but must be properly cared for elsewhere at the public

expense.

In several of the more populous counties, minor asylums have been established for the care of such insane as may have been returned from the State hospitals as incurable and harmless. Mercy Hospital, near Davenport, in Scott County, has a large building expressly planned and constructed for the proper accommodation of such cases, and generally has forty or fifty of these unfortunates under its care. The "Sisters of Mercy" have this department of the hospital under their especial charge, and since its opening in 1869 no word of adverse criticism of their management has been heard. The rates paid by the county to this hospital are the same as charged at the State hospitals, · rather less than four dollars per week.

The legislation pertaining to the care and relief of the local poor and transient applications, by the county authorities, has always been liberal. Of the one hundred counties in Iowa, nearly sixty have provided county poorhouses, with farms attached, in the cultivation of which such of the paupers as are able are required to

contribute so much labor as may be suitable to their physical condition. In counties where no poorhouses have been provided, the paupers are placed with friends or others willing to receive them, and a proper weekly rate is granted by the county for their support. Where relief is furnished to an applicant at his own home, the "overseers of the poor" are permitted to give supplies to the extent of two dollars per week to each needy person in the family.

The State institutions are respectively under the direct government of a superintendent, appointed by the Board of Trustees, who, in turn, are selected by the State legislature. These institutions are also under the general supervision of the governor of the State, and of the special committees of visitation and inspection appointed from among its own members by the legislature at each

session.

Admission as an inmate to any of these institutions can only be had through the especial action of the county officials designated by law, and all inmates enter and are treated on an equal footing, and each is classified as his physical or mental condition indicates.

Committal to the hospitals for insane is very strictly and judiciously guarded, and unjustifiable detention there is almost, if not entirely, impossible.

Iowa several years ago adopted what is popularly known as the “Packard law," by which it is provided that "there shall be a visiting committee of three, one of whom at least shall be a woman, appointed by the governor, to visit the insane-asylums of the State at their discretion, and without giving notice of their intended visit; who may, upon such visit, go through the wards unaccompanied by any officer of the institution; with power to send for persons and papers, and to examine witnesses on oath, to ascertain whether any of the inmates are improperly detained in the hospital or unjustly placed there, and whether the inmates are humanely and kindly treated; with full power to correct any abuses found to exist," &c.

As Iowa was the first State in which this committee was established, the friends, and also the opponents of the measure and of the principles therein implied have always given especial attention to the results of its operation here. The conclusions thus far arrived at seem to justify the opinion that its friends are constantly increasing in numbers, and that the people of Iowa regard this committee as an intelligent, reliable, and vigilant guard over the proper care of the many loved ones always among the patients in