large-hearted, intelligent people, and, therefore, there was no design in coming here, that we should be considered as setting ourselves up as examples, and I ask you not to do as we do, but to do as we say.

I feel comfortable in the city of Louisville. I can walk about your beautiful streets and see the wonderful improvements going on every day, and! find that you have great charities in your midst, sustained by yourselves, of which you make no parade.

Mr. John H. Mills, of North Carolina, also spoke, as follows:

In coming to this Conference, I passed through two ranges of mountains and through a great many tunnels; and I thought of the little child with no teeth to bite and no clothes to keep him warm, no instrument to defend himself, no power to walk, and not even to crawl for a long time after he was born; and after a while that little child goes to the mountain and digs a hole through it and runs a house through it. But we have come to look at the other side of the question. We come to devise the best means of helping those who cannot help themselves. That song that you last sung was beautiful—" Who Was His Neighbor?" The Levite, when he saw that poor man, way down on that lonely road, where the robbers attacked him, far from the world, lost sight of his charity. The priest, likewise, was willing at any time to make a display of his piety, but here he also passed by on the other side, when it became necessary to aid this his fellow-man, and he left it for the Samaritan to help him. I believe, from what the Bible says, he was a commercial traveler; for he had wine and oil with him, his credit was good, and he stopped at the best hotels. That man took a quiet place and way to do good in.

There was a great general once who heard of a person who was healing the sick, and he went to him to be cured, and when he got to the school-house where he was teaching, he expected that he would come out and make a display and pass his hands over him and go through some strange expressions, and the old schoolteacher told him to go dip himself seven times in an old filthy river. The general wanted to do something big and the old teacher told him to do something small.

That is the characteristic of these conventions. They go to different places each successive year, in order that they may do good to those who are disposed to benefit by them.

Now> for instance there is a ]arge class of children of feeble intellect. They cannot be taught in an ordinary class at school, because it requires a peculiar way to impart knowledge to them. But a large number of that class, with the proper treatment and teaching can be taught to earn their living. The object of this convention is to devise the best means for their education.

There is a man confined in jail. There is nothing for him to do but read. There is no one to talk to him, nobody to preach to him, nobody to sympathize with him in his trouble. He may be innocent of the offense charged. The object of this convention is to see how the condition of that man can be improved.

It is natural for youth to be rash g,nd inconsiderate. Sometimes you see a party of young men go out at night together on a lark. They may be of fine character. After a while, when they are on some little mischief, the police catch them and put them in among the thieves, who have been there for many years. One of the objects of our conference is to induce the people of our land to be thoughtful and considerate with these young men and to provide reformatories for them, so that they may be reformed and restored to society. I do hope that all who are here will take a deep interest in these matters; and I especially desire your best endeavors for the young boys and young girls.

I did not get up to make a speech, Mr. President, but I must say that I am glad to see the people of this city take such an interest in the object of the convention. I am glad to see such a large delegation coming from the north and south. I am satisfied, from what I saw of the convention last year, that this Conference is a body not seeking to distinguish themselves, but to do good to the human race and to help those who have no other help, and I hope that that spirit will permeate us all, so that we may be able to feel that we belong to on,e common race and one common brotherhood.

Judge Knapp, of Florida, said:

I came in here as a listener. I did not come to make a speech. I did not know that your convention was in session, until this afternoon, when I was informed by my brethren the commissioners for Florida at the exposition, that we were requested by our governor to be here; and then, again, I did not expect that I was to be singled out by them or anybody.

Besides we are so far removed, that we do not know what you are here for. What your object is I gather from what I saw thirteen years ago when the legislature of Wisconsin passed the act creating a board of charities. Since I have been in Florida I have forgotten these things. Probably we are so far off and have so many alligators that we have forgotten everything. But one thing I want to say, that we have not as many mosquitoes as Louisville, and our alligators are more afraid of us than we are of them, and if we get very hungry, we can make a meal off an alligator, and it is not so bad, either, for I have tried it.

Our state prisons are not full, because* we have none, so our prisoners are employed on the railroads. Whether the death-rate is as great as I read of in Alabama, Tennessee or Georgia, I do not know. In my opinion one thing is certain, and that is, that it is a very bad plan, and I hope some day that Florida will reform, and that, as our governor has told us to attend this meeting, that we may learn something to report to him.

The President: We have with us this evening Senator Williams, of Kentucky, and we would be glad to have a few words from him.

Hon. John S. Williams, U. S. Senator, from Kentucky, spoke as follows:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I had no expectation of saying anything to you; and I know I can say nothing that will instruct. I understood there was to be a.meeting here for some charitable purpose, and I came around to see what it was. I came to know what is the purpose of this Conference; and I do not feel that I comprehend the scope of your organization sufficiently to say anything that can be of any use to you whatever. I can only say that I have discovered in the last ten minutes that yours is a charitable association as broad as the world itself; that it covers every kind of suffering; that it extends a helping hand to the helpless, to the infant, to the refugee, to the criminal, to the blind, to all who are without friends, and without homes and without money. In such a purpose as this my heart responds fully, and I am with you heart and soul, and whatever can be done by my personal influence or public character is at the service of this association.

I hope to attend your other meetings and learn more fully the meaning and intention of your Conference. I hope you will excuse me from making a speech.

The president then delivered the annual address.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

By Fred. H. Wines, Springfield, Illinois.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Conference of Charities and Corrections: I know of no more difficult task than that of building a country; and this is the task in which all Americans who live to any purpose are engaged.

The great mass of us are employed in developing the material resources of the country; a few are looking after its intellectual and moral development, in science, art and religion; and all of us pay more or less attention to its social and political organization, if only to grumble that both are not better than they are.

But we are so accustomed to the burden of responsibility and of effort which we have to bear, that unless we stop to think of it, we scarcely realize its magnitude. Our task is rendered harder, first, by the great extent of our territory, the immense distances which separate us from each other; next, by the heterogeneous character of our population; then by our peculiar political organization, — the subdivision of the nation into states, independent of each other, and possessed of many of the attributes of sovereignty — which renders uniform and even united action at times difficult, if not impossible, and which also makes it difficult to know in any one state what all the other states are doing; and to these difficulties I may add a fourth, namely: the too great prevalence of a notion that political office is an end, rather than a means to an end, which results in the appointment or election of many men who are "but poorly qualified for the special work which they have to do.

Now, I know of no branch of this great task of country-building in which the difficulties to be surmounted present themselves more clearly to the mind than that with which our Conference is specially concerned — the organization of public and private charity.

There are political and social doctrinaires who deny the necessity for organized relief, or for any interference with social evils on the part of the state, and who profess to be anxious that all help extended to those who need it should be "relegated to the domain of private relations/' and be given only by individuals to individuals. On this subject a great deal of romantic nonsense is current on the lips of men who only partly comprehend what they are talking about.

That there is a demand for relief of some sort is undeniable, so long as human ignorance and passion and error continue to produce want and misery and crime upon earth. Help must be given, sometimes even to those who do not deserve it. It is not always a question, of what we owe to others, but of what we owe to burselves. We can not stand by and see the tide of insanity, idiocy, pauperism and crime rising, without trying to rescue from drowning those whose retreat we see to be cut off. To restrain the operation of this natural instinct would be to do violence to our common humanity, and the reaction could not be other than injurious. The proper objects of relief, the extent of relief, the form