or smaller number of wards to be placed in different townships. For instance:

BARNSTABLE COUNTY.

Number of wards 25

Number of townships where wards are placed 8

Number of Auxiliary Visitors, one of whom visits seven of these

towns 2

HAMPDEN COUNTY.

Number of wards * 65

Number of townships where wards are placed 15

Number of Auxiliary Visitors (another is needed) 8

MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

Number of wards , 36

Number of townships where wards are placed 18

Number of Auxiliary Visitors 11

The greatest pains are taken to place the State Wards in the country farming districts.

The State Primary School being placed in the centre of such a district, has furnished the neighboring State of Connecticut as well as the neighboring counties of* Massachusetts with "little maids of all w"ork" for the past dozen years. Children more readily fit into country homes when placed in early years, provided they are in proper condition in body and mind.

Feeble, sickly children, as a rule, are not fit for family life; they jieed more regular diet and better adjusted to their special needs, than can be secured for tnem in a farmer's busy household. For such, shelter and gradual toughening must be given where the welfare of the child is made the one object, as in the State Primary School.

Healthy children cannot be placed too early, provided the home is carefully chosen, the child carefully visited, and removed in due season if real " incompatibility of temper" or other chronic difficulties arise.

Children directly from the courts are often simply in need of "cleaning up" before they can be placed out; on the other hand such children gain rapidly in health and good habits by a short stay in the Primary School and can gain admission into a better class of families than would receive them directly from the " North End" of Boston for instance, with its squalid, coarse associations. This is eminently the case with older girls taken from the courts for serious offenses, as is well recognized

by all who have attempted to deal with such. (See Report of Trustees for 1882.)

The greater number of places offer in or near the cities, but these must be set aside in favor of country homes, except in certain peculiar cases.

1st. Where the claim of parents is recognized by.the State Board, and the child placed in its home on probation, which home is usually in some centre of business.

2d. Where a girl (I will not speak of older boys) is in the condition of mind when nothing except the variety and interest of city life can keep her reconciled to her necessity for work.

3d. Where a girl has become gradually accustomed to self-reliance by faithful work in a country family and by her own exertions has fitted herself for a trade or whatever she may choose. When once a girl arrives at this point, there is little to fear for her, even in a large city."

One of the greatest benefits arising from commitment to the State Schools during minority, is the authority thus conferred upon the trustees to insist on a season of probation in our country towns, where a demand for trained labor makes an intelligent, lively girl welcome as a member of the family. The law of demand and supply in the long run serves better than a half sentimental desire to "benefit the race." The latter may wear itself out, while the demand for good bread-makers and good carpet sweepers at moderate wages brings with it a wholesome consideration on the part of the employer for the girl who by friendly treatment and on no other terms can often be made happy and incited to do her best.

It is in choosing homes for girls over twelve years of age and in helping the girls to "choose the right and pursue it" that our auxiliary visitors have accomplished me^t good work. Young children may be as well visited by an agent who divides her time and thought among some hundreds, but a girl of fourteen years and upward craves personal individual interest.

CONCERNING THE REPORT FROM NEW SOUTH WALES.

Having arrived at the above conclusions after several years experience, it was exceedingly interesting to read the report from New South Wales for the year ending April 5,1883, to find the similarity of experience there after ten years' work.

In South Australia, 474 children are boarded out; in Tasmania, 200; in Victoria, 2,000.*

The share of the work which the public undertake by virtue o,f the arrangements of the boarding out system is that of managing individual children. The share of the state is to select foster-parents for boarded out children and employers for apprentices with jealous scrutiny; to join-with locally chosen persons of good repute, in ceaseless oversight of the children placed out, and to pay the stipulated weekly fee for boarding them. Consequent upon the placing of a child in any locality there are appointed resident ladies as visitors, whose function it is in the intervals between the officers' visits, to see that the children are properly treated and are behaving properly. If the local lady visitors fail to discharge their duty or discharge it perfunctorily, without tact, without zeal, without a sense of its supassing importance, the cause of boarding out becomes a lost cause.

I now desire to call attention to a different and more painful class of cases. If, as I have already pointed out, people naturally hesitate at receiving into their homes children who are afflicted with physical impurities, they may be expected more naturally to reject with horror morally deformed children. The morally diseased must be made whole in reformatories wherein, as the cure proceeds, it may be possible to obtain fit subjects for boarding out. Until some degree of soundness is imparted, it would be wrong to place some children in decent homes at all. The whole report deserves careful study.

PREVENTIVE WORK AMONG CHILDREN.

BY MRS. M. E. COBB.

I am glad that this additional time has been given to the field of Preventive Work Among Children, which I understand to cover all healthful influences provided for boys and girls taken from dangerous associations under sixteen years of age. Many of the practical, every-day workers, came to this conference hoping for much help in the Thursday programme.

It was not so much that we "wanted to talk," as that we wanted to hear and ask questions. All the work of the conference is of deep interest, is attractive and in

* These figures apparently include children who are self-supporting as well as those for whom board is paid.

close association with our home work, but these practical issues as to classification, placing out, and internal methods and economies touch vital points. After all has been done to prevent it, a large number of children will still exist who must have their industrial and moral training in the schools provided for wayward and dissolute youth. We would not have the number larger, but we do want and seek wisdom and strength for their care, and we expect to receive both in this conference, in the counsels and directions and sympathies of those who best know our needs. And in our opinion this department is most important in its relation to society, as it deals with those who have longest to live in the world, and are yet in the impressible age.

When perplexed by the intricacies of the question of classification among the inmates of child-saving institutions I have been comforted to find that more and more, I am able to believe that the children of good and worthy parents,— who alone can be "innocent little ones," — do not so often fall under public care, as I once supposed. Even in pases of sudden accident, or other disaster in the family, there is often, even in large cities, some respectable relative or friend, who will see that the children are returned to early friends, or provided with homes without becoming public dependents.

There is yet a healthy pride of character and name, which the worthy poor work hard to sustain for each other as well as personally. When there is proof that children of respectable parentage and pure tendencies have fallen into institutions they should at once be placed upon the lists for supplying "good families" who desire good and interesting children for adoption or employment.

But systems of classification are sadly crippled by the facts of heredity.

In the numerous cases of families abandoned by husbands and fathers, and the fewer abandoned by mothers, there is frequently the taint of hereditary lack of principle and love of selfish gratification.

Classification in industrial schools should not degrade its subjects, either in or out of the institution, but should be used only as a means of securing needed instruction.

What a child has done before coming to an institution is no criterion of its' moral condition. The one stigmatized as " criminal" may be more innocent and pure in heart and purpose than the one classed as only destitute. Cases of dozens of young children can be cited who were early placed in institutions where they never heard an impure word, or saw a criminal act, yet who, as soon as placed out in families and exposed to the ordinary mixed influences of life, have sucked the poison v only from every pleasure offered — who have grasped as with longing and eagerness at every opportunity to learn expressions of impurity and wickedness. It is when dealing with this class of subjects — personally pure, perhaps, but full of the propensities inherited from pauperized and vicious ancestry, that institutions are charged with being "schools of vice," when their inmates in after years are found in jails and prisons.

Heie lies the saddest nhase of all this work. I have now under my care at least a dozen girls who were adopted in their infancy by excellent families who, as they grew older, were obliged to resign them to special training as "incorrigibles." I will mention one, who was taken from a foundling asylum at eighteen months old — "a lovely baby," as the sweet foster mother say s — and was tenderly nurtured and carefully taught by one of the best of women, in every way being treated as her , own beloved child. From the age of eight she became an habitual truant, often going many miles from home, giving a false ilame, and claiming to live in some distant m place. Her statements were found to be habitually" false, her promise utterly worthless, and soon she became, a thief, taking small articles or money wherever the slightest opportunity was given. When at last, after every effort to control these faults, it was decided to send her to the Industrial School, she stole the ornaments from the parlor table when the sheriff left her for a half hour at the house of a friend, while he attended to some business in a city through which he passed on his way. And we have now in our school a pretty blue-eyed baby, three years old, whose clinging little hands are lovingly stretched out towards every one, always claiming and receiving a kiss from officer, visitor or friend, who is, in her helpless, inoffensive babyhood, very dear to my heart, but whom I would not (tare to adopt, nor advise a friend to do so. For her father is for the third time under sentence for burglary and housebreaking, and a more plausible, unprincipled scamp probably does not exist, while the mother is but a fair, inefficient, good-natured tramp, who follows his fortunes from prison to prison, with no more appearance of conscience, or appreciation of his offenses against or relations to society than a kitten might have.

I do not speak of these things to discourage the adoption of children, nor efforts at classification. I encour