continuous labor which the proper enforcement of sen• tences to frequent offenders would permit. An act of legislature to enable a magistrate to visit the institutions, and there carry out the sentence, which should be only preliminary in court, seems to be the only recourse. Women can be transferred on long sentences to the excellent reformatory prison at Sherburn.

Truants. Industrial educati^i would probably attract many children to the schools, who are restive under the present system. Meanwhile the offenders should be separated from criminals, and it would be interesting to try the experiment whether these rebels to our common schools might not prove responsive to training of the eye and hand.

Neglected Children. While placed together as at the Marcella Street Home, family influence is impossible. Efforts are being made and should be increased through the employment of sufficient agents, to place these children in homes as fast as possible. , The law which obliges parents to support minor children also should be very punctually enforced. To many parents the ease with which they can disembarrass themselves of their offspring is a serious temptation.

Lunatics. The distressing increase of this unfortunate class makes necessary at present the boarding of many city cases, far away from their friends and kindred, in state institutions, which is an undoubted hardship.

Sick Paupers. Excessive medical charity is as possible as any other form of pauperizing. To classify and charge to their proper percentage all who are justly chargeable to the state or other cities, is only a reasonable precaution, and the oversight of the Overseers of the Poor might check the reception of the purely vicious or thriftless to give room for all who need aid, at a moment of weakness or incapacity.

Deserving Poor. The Trust Funds are wisely and honestly dispensed, but would not our Associated Charities Organization be a safer and surer channel for these benefactions, designed often for those who have seen better days, for the shrinking class who need the most, but who have to be sought out, discriminated and befriended, which official agencies can scarcely undertake to db?

Criminals —Variety of occupation would seem, if less productive than contracts for stone cutting and tailoring, to be a better means- of driving out the possession of evil by cultivating the natural taste which almost all have for some kind of manual labor. And the oversight of the after full discharge or on probation, is certainly one most effective ways in which voluntary effort may co-operate with official action.

Erving Winslow, Chairman, For Committee of Directors of Associated Charities.

CHARITIES OF THE CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.

A list of the charitable and correctional institutions of the city of Indianapolis is herewith appended; also a list of the societies and agencies for the relief of suffering and repression of crime.* Our city has a population of one hundred thousand, and is a railroad center. Its youth and rapid growth have not favored tha formation of those agencies for the care of the neglected and dependent which are to be found in larger cities. The public care of the criminal and poor is still political, and what little acquaintance an officer gains both with his work and with the classes with which he has to do, is rendered of little value, as he is liable to displacement at the next election.

The correctional institutions located within the city are the jail and station houses. The inmates of the jail average about two hundred per month. The present sheriff does all he can to make the place comfortable, and to classify the inmates. But the fact that there is no work, and no room for the separation of young and old, the aged in crime and those caught out in crime's first confusion, forbids that care which is demanded. At present, under the repeated presentations of the subject, by the Charity Organization Society, the County Commissioners are moving in the direction of a County Work-house. Under the present law almost all criminals are prosecuted by the County Prosecutor, and become county prisoners, so the Station-houses are only houses of temporary detention.

The city gives no relief, that being the function of the Township Trustee, and from the County Treasurer. At present, the amount of relief is comparatively small being about $8000 for the year. The Trustee is elected, and liable to change every two years. It is impossible but that much relief should be given unwisely. But the whole system is wrong. Each individual receiving public aid should be under the care of some society which substitutes personal care for officialism. The small amount that, the poor of the city now receive, shows that they could be cared for by the voluntary societies, at a small additional charge upon them.

*Omitted from the printed proceedings.

It is to be hoped that before long the whole system-of public relief, in large cities, will be broken up.

The voluntary societies for the care of the poor are growing along the line of revealed need, and are gradually assuming the care of those who have fallen out by the way.

Neglected children may be committed by one of the Judges, to the Orphan Asylum, the Woman's Reformatory, or the House of Refuge. There is needed an intermediate place — a State Home or Industrial School, for those who are not criminal, but are only neglected. Mention must be made of the County Homes established under a law passed in 1881, by which all children in County Asylums may be taken out, and placed in a County Home. Whenever the number reaches twentyfive, another home is founded. The children go to the public schools, and in all ways resume their place in society. The care is personal. The results have been gratifying in the progress of the children. Under this law, some five or six homes have been established. While there are laws against street-begging, they are not enforced. But street-begging is materially lessened by the Charity Organization Society.

THE MUNICIPAL CHARITIES OF NEW YORK CITY

are exhibited in the following tables:*

Farther analysis and information regarding these, as well as many of the voluntary charities of the city which receive state or city aid, may be gathered from the compendium of the United States census for 1883, to which reference is made.

The weak points of the Municipal Charitable and Correctional system of New York City, are those which unavoidably inhere in all departments of public administration which are controlled by partisan influences, intensified in proportion to the magnitude of the expenditures, and the number of officers and office-seekers of this vast and rapidly growing city. In this presence these points need no repetition.

Furthermore, the Department of Public Charities and Corrections has three co-equal and co-ordinate chiefs, amenable to no superior executive head, with the inevitable weakness and confusion of divided authority and responsibility. Also, the time and attention of the three commissioners, being absorbed in the details of the management of more than a score of institutions, and their 10,000 inmates and 500 officials, which management should be committed to a competent head of each institution, none remain to be given to efforts to study thje causes, to diminish the volume and to check the increase of pauperism, crime and insanity. And being controlled largely by party legislation at Albany, and robbed of the right of local self-government, all laudable efforts in the direction of research and improvement would be thwarted if they infringed at all upon party claims and prerogatives. The other noticeable defects are:

1. The absence of any fixed principles or system to raise the morals of the inmates, especially those of the work-house, and to turn them back into the world better than when they entered, or better fitted to lead honest, self-supporting lives. On the contrary, the influence of the correctional establishments is degrading and corrupting; the practice of overcrowding or doubling up is tolerated, and vicious comrades have large opportunities for contaminating their fellows.

2. The absence of any inducement of promotion or tenure of office to the subordinate officials, to be faithful, diligent and progressive. This is shown by the very large proportion of changes which occur every year among the officials.

3. The consequent powerlessness of the superintendents of any of the several institutions to carry out definite plans for bringing their own work up to a higher standard of efficiency and discipline.

The strong points of the administration consist in the heathful location of the city institutions, in their general cleanliness, in the good quality of food provided, in growing improvements in the material structure of the buildings, and in the physical condition of many of their inmates, as well as in the many faithful and interested officials to be found in the department, in spite of the faults of the general system and the discouragements to ambition and fidelity.

The remedy for the evils above suggested was well set forth before your eighth annual conference at Boston, * in 1881, by Mrs. Charles K. Lowell (see proceedings p. 168); and a careful study of her paper is recommended to those interested to pursue the subject farther.

In conclusion it may be remarked that the large majority of thoughtful and well-informed persons in New York City, who have studied the subject, are convinced that aid extended from the public funds to so-called private charitable societies, is a grevious error, fraught with numerous abuses, and with a tendency to increase the evils they are set to lessen; and that if any public aid to such societies is ever justifiable, it should only be given to stimulate and supplement private charity. Moreover the State or City should be actively represented on the Board of Management of every Society assisted by either; and all grants should be so conditioned as to secure at least an equal amount of private support, to insure economy, and to compel the exclusive application of the moneys to the alleged objects. Furthermore, the annual reports of all such societies should be published and circulated for the information of the public. We have not included in our report any reference to societies and institutions outside of New York City (except " branches" of those located within the city), fearing to trespass upon the reports of other Charity Organization Societies.

Henry A. Pellew (by C. D. K.),
Chas. A. Bacon, M. D.,
Chas. D. Kellogg,

Special Committee.

The following reports were then read by the persons named below.

THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES OF CINCINNATI.

BY A. C. SHATTUCK, SECRETARY AND DELEGATE.

This society was organized in 1870, and a summary of its work since that time has been given to the public in its three printed annual reports. This work has not only covered the legitimate ground of such an Association, viz.: the careful investigation of all cases of actual or ostensible need, through sympathetic but clear and cool-headed visitors, and the giving advice to charitable persons an1 societies as to the proper direction of their bounty; but has also involved the collection and distribution of relief funds for those purposes for which,, in mo^t of the older eastern cities, ample provision is made "by well endowed benevolent associations and by the municipal poor taxes, neither of which in Cincinnati are equal to the demand.

This double labor is unfortunate, both in its tending, with the popular mind, to confound the Associated Charities organization with ordinary relief-giving societies; and its devolving upon the directors of the several ward-districts burdens which they are reluctant to assume in addition to their advisory functions.