All employés are paid every week. Two-thirds of those employed in the manufacturing department work by the piece, averaging nine hours per day. Those employed by the week work fifty weeks, but are paid for fifty-two weeks. They work ten hours per day.

Wages: In the ready-made department the men will average $14 per week.

The women: One class will average $9 per week.

The firm give an annual picnic to their employés, paying all the expenses. Last year over 800 were of the party.

Length of service: In the custom shop there are at present 100 hands employed. Fifty-five have worked between 10 and 18 years; forty-five have worked between 1 and 10 years. Average wages per week, $10. There are at present in the ready-made shop one hundred and sixteen hands that have worked between 4 and 10 years; forty between 10 and 20 years; four between 20 and 24 years.

Information obtained from an official connected with one of the prominent boot and shoe manufactories, which has its headquarters in Boston.

Number of employés at the factory: men, about 1050; females, about 150; children, about 60; total, 1260. Have at times had nearly 1400.

Is your regular help in all departments kept through the entire year? Yes.

Do you hire extra help for the busy seasons? Does your help mostly work by the piece? time; about two-thirds, piece.

Yes.

About one-third,

Wages? We have this item by average: skilled labor, $2 per day; unskilled labor, $1.25 per day.

Vacations? None.

In sickness, does pay continue? No.

Hours per day? By the piece, nine hours; by the day, ten hours.

Have you a library connected with the factory? None in the factory; but a large one in the town, to which the firm contribute. How long has your factory been established? Nearly sixty years.

How long have any of your employés been in your employ? Several upwards of 40 years; more, 20 to 30 years; and many, 10 to 20 years.

Please state any facts bearing upon the last question.

With the introduction of improved machinery, manufacturers able to acquire a style of workmanship and finish on the

coarser grades of goods that is truly astonishing. The oldfashioned shoemaker is nearly, if not quite, obsolete. The modern workman knows only his branch of the work, and in that he becomes skilled, each department being officered by an efficient and skilled workman, who is responsible for the proper execution of the work in his department.

As to fires? The entire able-bodied male force is enrolled for fire service, if required. Modern appliances for putting out fires are very effective.

Production? The annual production is nearly 2,000,000 pairs, at a market value of about two and one-quarter millions of dollars.

STATE REPORTS RESUMED.

Prof. WRIGHT, of Wisconsin: When the gentlemen talk about county almshouses, they must mean the county almshouses without supervision by a State Board of Charities; almshouses run down, and allowed to be utterly neglected, even by the citizens of the neighborhood. Under proper supervision, the county almshouse is a better place for the class of insane that Dr. Luther speaks of than State institutions, for the reason that there is not a large number gathered together, and they are not under such strict military discipline. They have more freedom, and there is more opportunity for individual occupation.

We

Mr. GILES, of Wisconsin: I desire to say a few words here, in connection with the statement made by Dr. Luther. I premise by saying that our experience and observation are almost directly the reverse of what is stated by him in regard to Pennsylvania. imbibed the idea, which was advocated by the superintendents of the insane hospitals, and especially by the members of the American Association of Medical Superintendents of the Insane, and published in their reports, that there was no place so good and suitable for the care of the insane as a State hospital. While we were pressed for room, and our hospitals in Wisconsin were overcrowded, we appealed to the legislature for the erection of new, or the enlargement of the old hospitals; but we found that the legislature could not keep pace with the growth of the insane. And now we have considered very carefully, and attended very carefully to the condition of the chronic insane, in our county almshouses, and I am prepared to say that, as a rule, the chronic insane in our State are as well cared for there, are as quiet, as orderly as they are in the State hospitals. In a great institution, with four or five or six hundred patients, nearly four-fifths of whom are of the chronic class, it is impossible for the officers to give them that attention, and that degree of freedom which they can enjoy in a

smaller community. This very absence of restraint in the county institutions tends to quiet the class mentioned. Now, sir, our records show numerous cases in which violently insane patients have been returned to the county almshouses, from the State hospitals, where they had been in restraint most of the time, and in the county asylum they have become harmless and quiet; and, in many instances, they have labored regularly every day on the farm when it was fair weather, or about the house in foul weather, and in the winter. Why this change? Because they had formerly been under surveillance all the time. who have had to do with the insane, or been much with them, that It is the experience of all the less appearance of restraint or of compulsion there is with that class, the more quiet and orderly they are. that he is constantly watched, and such a patient is continually Let a patient believe troublesome. That has been our experience, and hence we promoted the passage of a law to scatter the chronic insane in all the counties of the State, by remunerating the counties for the care of their insane at home. We believe we have inaugurated a measure that will solve the question of the chronic insane, and instead of accumulating them by hundreds and thousands, as is done in nearly every State, we propose to scatter them in small institutions, give them employment, occupation, and non-restraint. My opinion, and that of many others, is that the great remedy for this class would be this.

So in Wisconsin we have gone to work to keep them in the county almshouses, almost all of which have a separate department for the insane. In many counties they are somewhat crowded; twenty or thirty (but that is the maximum) in quarters that would not accommodate conveniently more than twelve. But even then it is our experience that the insane are better off in those institutions than in the State hospitals. When we visit the hospitals, that class of patients beseech us to send them back to the counties. They want more freedom-less restraint. I have in mind now several cases, one in particular, where a man, taken from a State hospital, was put in the lockup of the county almshouse and kept in confinement for several months. There was a change of officers, and a new overseer came in. He found this man shut up, and he pondered whether there could not be something done for him. He got him out one day and took him into the field. in a demented condition. The overseer took a cord, fastened it to The man seemed the man's wrist and tied him to the plough. At first he resisted, but soon gave up and followed the plough. Then he released him. The man's excitement subsided. afternoon he followed the plough by himself. In two days he was He had worked it off. In the steadily at work in the field, and he has worked from that time to this, nearly every fair day, doing a man's work. the hospital three or four years, and a whole year in a cell as a He had been in maniac.

The trouble is that the administrative department of our hospitals does not get near enough to the patients. If a man is a little sick they have a routine of medicine. If he is violent they give him something to quiet his nervous system. The same medicine is given to all. The peculiar wants of the individual are not studied. We believe therefore in putting them in smaller communities. This is the greatest question we in Winconsin have to deal with. The increase of insanity is alarming, not only to the philanthropist but to the statesman. With the rate of increase of the last fifty years, if that were kept up, it is only a question of time when a majority of the people will be in insane hospitals and the minority outside. How shall we deal with this question? Shall we go on building these magnificent hospitals? We have come to the conclusion out West that there is a better way. We have called a halt, and propose to stop crowding the insane into hospitals, and to put them among the people and give them employment.

I. ORGANIZATION OF CHARITIES IN CITIES.

REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE; BY THE CHAIRMAN, Dr. Cadwalader. (Read July 26, 1881.)

The consideration of the subject will be presented under three divisions:

I. The General Report.

II. A Paper to be read by SETH Low, Esq., of Brooklyn, N. Y., on "Out-Door Relief in the United States," which will follow the discussion on the present statement, and other parts of the Report of the Committee.

III. A Paper to be read by Mrs. C. R. LowELL, of New York, at the evening session, entitled "Considerations Upon a Better System of Public Charities and Corrections for Cities."

These three subjects are the complements of each other; and, in this view, the Chairman has confined the present statement to giving the status of the Societies in the recent movement in organized charity in cities, so rapidly extending at home and abroad. In England and the United Kingdom, where the movement originated, the societies are usually called Charity Organization Societies. With us, in the United States, they are either similarly called, or, more often, the Associated Charities. Either name is descriptive of their aim, viz: To organize a combination or association of the benevolent agencies in a town, for the best economy and effectiveness. The first of these societies, "The London Charity Organization Society," was established in April, 1869. It appears that the necessity for some such comprehensive organization had moved a number of the most prominent philanthropists of London, and that between the years 1860 and 1869, several projects of the kind, however, had proved abortive, as "The Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and Crime," and others, until the present form of organization was devised. The movement immediately spread, and there are now in England and in the United Kingdom, fiftyone charity organization societies. Of these, twenty-two are federated, or affiliated with the parent society in London. The first charity organization society, established in a large town in this country, was that of Buffalo, N. Y., in December, 1877. In 1875, however, the Germantown Society, now a District Association of the Philadelphia Society, was modelled after the methods