'tion for absolute truth, so that whatever it may say will be accepted without question. No man must have any ground for believing that a State Board speaks without information or without thought; or that it will conceal its knowledge and opinions through fear or dislike of controversy; or that its declarations are warped by secret hostilities, or by personal or political interests.

Let any State Board follow closely the path which I have endeavored to indicate in the remarks which I have made this evening, and I believe that its utility will cease to be a question, at least in the State in which it lives and acts.

DISCUSSION AND REPORTS.

The PRESIDENT: This very able and sensible paper is now open for discussion.

Mr. LETCHWORTH, of New York: I would like to ask Judge Robinson's views as to the personnel of such a Board.

Judge ROBINSON: That would depend on the number of the board. I think there should be a lawyer, to see that the law is not departed from; a physician, also, and an architect, to look after the varied interests represented. Perhaps, so far as outlay and expenses are concerned, an intelligent, educated farmer would be an addition.

Prof. WRIGHT, of Wisconsin: Among other topics suggested by this subject, there is one on which I wish to say something for Wisconsin. In our county.poorhouses the worst feature has almost invariably been the presence of the chronic insane, the overflow of our insane institutions. The features of the maltreatment, the utter neglect of the chronic insane, as portrayed by Judge Robinson, could have been found, years ago, in many poorhouses in the different States of this Union in which Boards of State Charities have been established. But in very few poorhouses in those States can those evils be found to any extent today. Certainly those horrors cannot be found, in anything like that form, in Wisconsin. On my way here I fell into conversation with a gentleman who told me what happened twelve or fifteen years ago in a county poorhouse in Wisconsin, when he was Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors. On visiting the poorhouse, he found in the second story, over the pig-pens, two cases of violent insanity, a man and a woman, both stark naked, strapped upon their beds, and covered with their own excrement. A few weeks ago, at the invitation of the Board of Supervisors of that same county, and in their company, I visited that same poor

house, without notification to the superintendent or overseers. We found the superintendent on his way to town, and we found the insane in but one case confined; and that was a man simply confined for the lack of confidence of the superintendent in any one whom in his absence he could trust. All of the insane were well cared for, and many of them at work on the farm and in the kitchen. The principal object of our visit was to take a further step for receiving the chronic insane there, by the location of several buildings there for the insane of that county, for we have just entered upon an experiment which I think very wise, and which will partially solve the problem of the care of the chronic insane. The State Board of Wisconsin have lately been vested with the power of practically disbursing the money of the State in payment to those counties which provide proper accommodations for the care of their chronic insane, according to rules prescribed by the Board; and no county can get $1.50 a week (the sum fixed by law) from the State treasury, unless it does provide such accommodations as the Board requires.

Now as to what has been done even without this special provision; Mr. Elmore and I, a few weeks ago, visited together one of our Wisconsin poorhouses, and I doubt if there is another poorhouse in the United States which cares so well for its inmates. We found about thirty insane paupers there, and twenty other paupers; and not one person in confinement of any sort whatever. We found every person but two (and those two were crippled) at work; women washing, ironing, quilting, insane women, mind you, and attending to all the ordinary details of the household. We found men engaged in all the farm work, -two of whom, six months ago, were discharged as incurably insane from one of our State hospitals. We found those two men half a mile from the house, hoeing corn, with nobody to watch them, and doing a good day's work, and on the way to recovery, although, in the presence of Dr. Earle, we do not dare to say that they will recover. I secured a report of the amount and character of the work done by these inmates, and if any one is curious to see it, I can exhibit it. It shows, as I believe truthfully (knowing the character of the superintendent and that of his wife), that with one or two exceptions of crippled persons, every insane person there has a regular round of duties to perform daily. About one-half of them do a full day's work, about as much as you would get from ordinary hired people, and very rarely is it necessary to use any form of restraint for these insane. There is one small cell, in which a person may be locked occasionally. Now, remember that these insane are persons who have been through the State hospitals, and been returned to their county as chronic insane. The superintendents of the hospitals can choose which ones they will keep, and which mes they will send back; and they naturally send the worse cases; that is what the superintendents of the poorhouses are doing

with them in Wisconsin today. And we hope soon to see the two simple principles of non-restraint and occupation, in all the institutions of Wisconsin, among the chronic insane.

Mr. ROSENGARTEN, of Philadelphia: Certain of the rules that have been laid down by Judge Robinson apply to the West, but would not serve in my neighborhood. I could wish, instead of telling us so well what a Board should be, he had told us what a legislature should be. It is a good thing to have a Board of Charities, and in Pennsylvania we have a good one. Yet the legislature, which called it into being, has, about as effectually as possible, stopped all practical measures that the Board recommends. At the very last session, there was presented a bill on a subject which commends itself to every mind, to prevent the gathering of children together into almshouses,- one of the worst forms of evil that can be dealt with. There is abundant provision elsewhere for the care of these almshouse children in Pennsylvania, and it could be easily made if there were not. Yet against the individual judgment of the Board, and against its collective action, the legislature set itself up in such violent opposition, that it almost destroyed the Board. Our Board makes its yearly inspection and report, and, year after year, we have the spectacle of a wrangle over the petty sum of money to be given for its work, while, at the same time, an extravagant sum of money is spent in opposite directions. How, then, are you going to get at the legislators, and impress on them the necessity of respecting a trained body of men, such as the State Board of Pennsylvania contains, men whose earnestness, knowledge and fitness are undoubted? When their recommendations come before the legislature, they are almost totally disregarded, and our people seem as far as possible from coming to their support.

Mr. LETCHWORTH, of New York: I will ask Mr. Rosengarten (and I do so not in a critical spirit), whether in Pennsylvania the mistake may not have been made of asking for legislation before the public mind was prepared for it? I regard it as one of the legitimate functions of a State Board of Charities not only to enlighten the public on all matters coming within its purview; but also to create a right public opinion, and so prepare the way for sound legislation. Not only is legislation thus more easily obtained; but it can then be enforced when upon the statute book, which is equally as important as the making of a law.

The law of New York State forbidding the commitment of pauper children to the debasing association of the almshouses and requiring that they should be placed in families, orphan asylums, and other appropriate institutions, was not passed without much preparatory work. This included a visitation to every poorhouse in the State, and a report upon the condition of the children was presented to the legislature. This report embraced not only their

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mental, moral and physical condition, but also the personal history of each child, and its antecedents for several generations, thus showing its pauper genealogy, and how pauperism was perpetuated by the rearing of children in the almshouses.

While this was

being, done, an earnest appeal was made to the local authorities to remedy the evil, within their respective jurisdictions, and the result was that before I made my official report to our State Board of Charities, recommending the passage of a mandatory law, thirty-one out of sixty-one counties in the State had, by voluntary action, broken up the system, and had made proper provision for their pauper children without permitting them to enter the door of The work was undertaken and carried through an almshouse. systematically. It was no spasmodic effect; but steady, persistent labor, requiring about three years to reach final results. During that period public opinion had been changed, the policy of the State had been changed in the care of this class, and three thousand children had been removed from the thraldom of almshouse life.

We are not alone, I find, in the adoption of this preparatory method to law-making. A much needed reform and one deserving our sympathy is now being attempted in England, by Sir William Vernon Harcourt. The sending of large numbers of children of tender age to the jails, on even the shortest penal sentences, the Home Secretary regards as a great abuse; but in the attempt to effect reform, public attention was first directed to the subject, and the matter was freely discussed by philanthropists, statesmen and the press, before the corrective proposition, prepared by Lord It is to be hoped that the Norton, was presented to Parliament. Home Secretary will eventually succeed in his humane efforts; and in first presenting the subject to the public for discussion before attempting legislation, he has undoubtedly acted wisely.

It

Mr. MILLIGAN, of Pennsylvania: The Board of State Charities It was made up of good men when in Pennsylvania is too modest. it was first created. It had one of the most active secretaries, who made himself thoroughly acquainted with the wants of the State in every particular, travelling often at his own expense. started well, and held a prominent place in the State. Now I think that, if our Board instead of simply confining itself to an annual report,-which is a large document, as you experienced gentlemen know, coming from the large State of Pennsylvania, and which is not accessible to the people, but distributed to the State legislature and the State institutions, having, therefore, a very narrow circulation among the very people where it is desirable to make the public sentiment necessary for progressive action,—if instead of confining themselves to this, the Board would issue little leaflets (the American Tract Society understand that business), or little tracts pertaining to different departments of the work under

their care, and would distribute them to the press (for the press is always ready to stand in the front in the great movements), they would have the "inside track." And they could have willing and ready pens to serve them in this, with their terse, well-considered sentences, which could be printed and published, say in a square or four or five lines, in our daily papers, and thus have an opportunity all over the State to show the people that there is a Board of Charities and the great objects for which it stands. Then, if our State Board were not so modest, they would go to the legislature and say, "Gentlemen, we know just as much as you do, on these subjects, and we think a little more, and we have got now back of us the moral sentiment of the great State of Pennsylvania, and we mean to assert the claims of this people against all jobbery." If they would stand up as men, and were short and decisive in their action before the State of Pennsylvania, I am sure our Board would stand in a line with those of Illinois, Massachusetts and New York, and all the great States of this country.

I want to say here, that it has been from the State Board of Illinois that the most pronounced and most earnest words in regard to one of the greatest evils that now presses upon these United States, have come,-first from its Secretary, and tonight from its President,-in regard to the county jail system of the United States, whose abuses can never be blotted out until the Boards of State Charities come to the front and speak out as independent men what they know, and say what shall be done, and stand by it in a way that shall enforce action by all the State Legislatures. I say that one of the greatest interests the State Boards can serve is just the weeding out of that jail evil, so that there can be a uniform jail system under the direct supervision of the State Boards, and any wrong there can be corrected at once, and corrected so decidedly that the reformers shall have the sentiment of the public with them. I hope that any Board able to do this will reiterate over and over again the evils of our jails until there is a public sentiment in the whole country, saying we shall go forward in this matter of county jails, and not stand still or go backward.

Mr. CASWELL, of Washington, D. C.: I must take exception to one of the proposed duties which Judge Robinson suggested may be performed by the Central Board. It is my impression that no State Board can know the wants of an institution so well as the head of that institution. If you have your ten to a hundred institutions in the State, and your Board prepares the estimates for each one, I think you make a mistake. The man who is on the ground, and who has charge of the institution, and sees everything connected with it, knows better than the best State officer in the world can know what it requires. The next provision of Judge Robinson would be all sufficient to carry out his object, that members of the Board shall be empowered to attend the meeting of the legislative committees. If the heads of institutions shall make