and late at night, and not being able to get away simply because one is caught with his sympathies, with his imagination, with his desires, with his interests, he does get a point of view which, I think, comes only to us on any subject when we give it continuous attention. And, after the settlements have given this attention, they would indeed be very stupid to minimize the people who are engaged in charitable and correctional work. We need them at every possible point. In Chicago, for instance, we have a day nursery at Hull House. We would a great deal rather have some one else establish the nursery, and use our money for something else; but we have it because there are not enough nurseries in that part of the city. We have a free kindergarten, because we cannot get enough of them in the public schools of our ward. We have a coffee-house, from which we sell cheap foods in winter at cost, not because that sort of thing is what the settlement started out to do, but because we feel the pressure for it. One of the residents goes every day to the court, and has the children handed over to her probational care when they are first arrested,— not because we want to do that, but because we have no children's court and no probation officer. We have no feeling with regard to the charities but one of hearty good fellowship. But we do ask your help; and we ask, when we come to you with a point of view gained from long.and continuous observation, that together we may study how to remedy some of the conditions which are so tenacious, and operate so constantly against the very poorest people. Let the settlement represent the sentiments of working people who have received no charity. It is so easy to stand just on the line, and then to get across the line, and to have the public opinion of your neighbors and of the charitable societies think of you as a pauper.

I have not that great fear of pauperizing people which many of you seem to have. It is the feeling with which you give a piece of bread or the feeling with which you take it which determines whether the transaction shall be a pauperizing one. We have all accepted our bread from somebody, at least until we were fourteen; and we have help all the time from all sorts of people. If we can only make the medium of giving friendly enough, if we can only make a real fellowship, it does not make any difference whether you give an old Latin grammar or a pair of shoes. I should feel very much ashamed if my neighbor next door did not come to me when she

wants money for her taxes, and borrow it from me as she would from any other friend. I should feel that I had been a failure as a friendly neighbor. Money is not so different from the rest of life, and shoes and soup need not be so different from books and pictures. You can transfigure and transform them in the feeling of friendliness and kindliness. But you cannot do it wholesale. You cannot do it unless you really know people, and unless your feeling is genuine.

This may be the only right view the settlement has at such a conference, that its feeling for the poor is genuine, and that it gets a glimpse of charity from their point of view.

1

XIV.

Moral Reform in Ontario.

AN ENCOURAGING OUTLOOK.

BY J. J. MACLAREN, Q.C., LL.D.

In this Province we have about 2,500,000 people. 400,000 of these are in twenty-four cities and towns of 5,000 and upward. Of these, Toronto is the largest, with 200,000; next Hamilton, with 55,000. Four have more than 20,000; the others, between 5,000 and 20,000.

As to the origin of the people, the great bulk, probably over 2,000,000, are of English-speaking races. The other considerable elements are about 100,000 French Canadians, chiefly in the valley of the Ottawa, with about 20,000 west of us in the neighborhood of Detroit. There are probably about an equal number of Germanspeaking people in the Province. These, however, are not recent arrivals, but are chiefly descendants of the German-speaking people of the United States. Both of these classes are very thrifty, industrious, law-abiding, and do not present any special social problem.

Another point to be borne in mind in connection with our community is this, that, speaking broadly, we have no slums, no tenements, as the words are understood in your large cities, no immigrant population, so that many of the problems which are perplexing you, and toward which your efforts are directed, are to us unknown.

Another subject that I think is worthy of mention is that the observance of Sunday as a day of rest is more marked in Ontario than in any other community. I speak of it not only as a day of rest, but as to church attendance. One of our enterprising newspapers recently took a church census of this city, and the result was a surprise even to those who looked upon this as a church-going people. It was found that the aggregate church attendance on that

particular day was 65 per cent. of the total population, reckoning the two services held in the majority of them; that is, the aggregate church attendance was larger than the total adult population of the city, so that, even making allowance for duplicate attendance and the number of children under fourteen,—and, as a rule, our children under fourteen, like yours, go to Sunday-school, and not to church, the number attending service was something remarkable.

We have no Sunday papers, no Sunday excursions. Excursions by steamboat or railroad are prohibited by statute. There is comparatively little Sunday labor, and no open shops, as a rule. The only exception is one that you may have noticed,— and that, if you had been here two months earlier, you would not have seen,— Sunday electric cars. They are found only in Toronto and two or three other places in the Province. An act was passed at the last session prohibiting the running of these where there were not vested rights. The question whether they shall run in Toronto is a question before the courts.

With regard to charities and correction I may speak first of correction, and chiefly as to a few points in which I think our practice differs from the majority of your States.

In the first place, our criminal law is in the jurisdiction of our Federal Parliament instead of being with the separate states. Our judges, both of provincial and federal courts, are all appointed by the federal government and for life. Our police magistrates and lower judiciary officers are appointed by our provincial authorities.

Our magistrates are able to try many offences which are subject of indictment with you. Except for grievous offences the person committed for trial is asked whether he will be tried by speedy trial before a judge or whether he will elect to be tried by a jury; and the great majority elect speedy trial, so that our courts of criminal jurisdiction, where juries are summoned, have little to do. At the majority of the higher criminal courts there is scarcely a criminal to try.

With regard to other points we have not in this country the system of indeterminate sentences; but the magistrates and judges, when they consider it a suitable case, have the authority to allow the convicted party to go on suspended sentence. That is very generally used, and, I think, with good results.

Sentence for a definite term may be shortened by good conduct.

With regard to the subject under discussion this afternoon, for offences against women and children, legislation against vagrancy, obscene literature, indecent pictures and papers, prize fighting,- in these and similar matters I think we are fairly abreast of the most advanced communities on this continent.

To come to houses of correction, there is a distinction between the federal and local authority. The only houses of correction under federal authority are our penitentiaries. To those are sent only criminals sentenced for two years or over. All others go either to the provincial prisons, to the reformatories, to the industrial schools, or to the county jails. The management and inspection of these institutions have been approved by many of those from the United States and from Great Britain who have made special investigation of the subject.

In connection with the administration of justice there is one thing worthy of mention. We have a special section of our police force selected for the looking after such matters as properly come under the head of charity and kindred subjects. This is nicknamed, not inappropriately, the "morality department." One of the higher officers of our police force interested in philanthropic work was, in the time of the late Mayor Howland, ten years ago, set apart to look after those matters specially connected with morality, not so much on the lines of cold justice as to confer with various benevolent associations and endeavor to facilitate their work. Thus a large part of the work that in most cities devolves upon benevolent and voluntary associations is here done at the expense of the city.

Offences against women and children are dealt with by this body. It looks after the enforcement of the laws against gambling, disorderly houses, and against the liquor traffic.

Our charities are promoted by voluntary associations aided by municipal and provincial grants. I know of no place where there are so many charitable organizations in proportion to its population as in Toronto, and an unusual number of the boards are composed of women. The difference between such boards and those managed by men is, as I have noticed it, that they make the money intrusted to them go farther than the men can do.

We have endeavored to do something in the way of the organization of charity; but there is a great deal of overlapping, and a great many pretenders and undeserving people avail themselves of the charities of the city.