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SECOND SESSION.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 17, 1909.

The Conference convened in the Senate chamber at 10.30 A. M., President Mornay Williams presiding.

THE PRESIDENT: Will the Conference come to order?

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To the Committee on Time and Place should be referred the letter of the Hon. H. H. Edgerton, Mayor of the city of Rochester, inviting the Conference to meet next year in that city, and the accompanying communication from the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, signed by its president and secretary, also urging us to come next year to Rochester. There may be also other communications regarding this matter.

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I take pleasure in introducing as the Chairman of the Committee on Public Institutions," Dr. Eugene H. Howard, superintendent of the Rochester State Hospital.

CHAIRMAN HOWARD: On the program, the first appears to be the report of the Committee, by the Chairman.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC
INSTITUTIONS.

EUGENE H. HOWARD, M. D.

Your Committee on Public Institutions this year reports that from all quarters there is a general note of encouragement, though the need of continued effort and hearty public support is everywhere evident. We have been careful not to duplicate in any important particular the probable programs of other committees. Several very important public institutions are not included in the report.

In the city of New York, owing very largely to the generous spirit shown by the fiscal authorities, it is generally conceded that the needy poor, who are obliged to seek institutional care, are better provided for than ever before. There has been a determined and successful effort to provide better care and better pay for the minor employees, which has also resulted in an improvement in the service. Many new buildings are going up on the properties of the Department of Public Charities, and, on the whole, much progress is being made.

Probably never before has the Department been freer from political interference than at present, and, at the same time, it has had the help and sympathy of the members of all parties in official position in the work of improving the service.

At Sonyea the number of applicants for admission continues to be quite large. There are probably twelve hundred epileptics in New York state awaiting admission to the Colony. Relief can be offered by erecting additional buildings at the Colony and by pushing the work on the new institution in Rockland county Letchworth Village.

Letchworth Village the new state colony -was established by an act of the Legislature of 1907, providing for the appointment of a commission to ascertain the number of defectives needing custodial care, and to select a site. The commission reported to the Legislature of 1908, confirming the great need for such

an institution in the southeastern part of the state, from which section more than half the defectives come. The commission recommended the purchase of a tract of land some two thousand acres in extent at Thiells, in Rockland county, which has since been acquired. In its second report made to the Legislature of 1909, the commission presented a carefully prepared plan for the development of the new institution. A bill passed at the last session of the Legislature made the name of the new institution "Letchworth Village," in honor of William Pryor Letchworth, and in recognition of his many and distinguished services to the state and of his efforts in behalf of its defective wards. The act also provided for the appointment of a board of managers and for the organization of the village. On September 11, 1909, the commission and board of managers, which had in the meantime been appointed by the Governor, met at the site. Frank A. Vanderlip, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and now president of the National City Bank of New York City, was chosen president of the board of managers, which is required to proceed with the construction of the village as rapidly as possible. A spur track will shortly be built to connect the village with the Erie Railroad, and alterations will be made to some of the buildings on the site, looking toward the admission of a small number of inmates some time next year. In the center of the property will be the village street, on which the Administration building will stand and where much of the life and work of the place will be centered. To the east and across Minnescongo creek will be the men's groups, while the women's groups will be on the slopes of the hills to the west. Groups will be of moderate size. They will be far enough apart to give each a distinctive character. Each building is to be separated from the others in the same group by sufficient space to make it an independent unit, so as to permit of careful classification and segregation of the various types of patients. The inspiration of Mr. Letchworth's name will be in itself a powerful incentive to make the new institution one of the very best in the country, and, with the support of the Governor. the Legislature and large numbers of friends throughout the state, who are interested in its speedy development, its managers and officers take up their responsibilities under the most favorable conditions.

The state charitable institutions are being developed upon a general plan which will ultimately provide suitable institutions in sufficient number to classify all the dependents who should receive state care. The reformatory system for juvenile delinquents has

been added to by the establishment of The New York State Training School for Boys, which will take the place of the House of Refuge on Randall's Island. This institution is intended for juvenile offenders under the age of fifteen, and is planned, not as penal, but educational and reformatory in the highest sense. The influences which will surround the inmates will all make for uplift. It is located on a beautiful site at Yorktown Heights, and looks out upon Lake Mohansic and far over the hills and vales to the Highlands on the western side of the Hudson river. The boys will be placed in a natural environment where opportunities for recreation, as well as work and instruction, will be afforded, as is now the case at Industry.

The policy of the state in regard to the institutions for the feeble-minded is undergoing modification. Originally, the first institution established received both males and females. It was largely custodial in character, although the training of the feebleminded was one of the principal plans which the superintendent had in mind when he appealed to the Legislature. When the numbers admitted to this institution became so great and the possibilities of giving satisfactory instruction to the feeble-minded were realized, the managers established the second institution of the group, the Newark State Custodial Asylum, as a colony for the care of such of the girls as could not be benefited by instruction and who were in need of custodial care during the childbearing age. It also established a colony for some of the feebleminded men on a farm at Fairmount. But, when the Legislature established the Rome State Custodial Asylum, it returned to the original policy and arranged for the maintenance of both sexes in the new institution. The rapid extension of these institutions has shown clearly that it will be to the public advantage to return to the policy of maintaining the feeble-minded women in an institution separated from one devoted to feeble-minded men. The managers of all the institutions are agreed, therefore, that the Newark State Custodial Asylum should be enlarged to a capacity sufficient to receive all the feeble-minded women now maintained in the Rome State Custodial Asylum, and that henceforth the Rome institution should be exclusively devoted to the care of feeble-minded men and boys. They also are agreed that a similar policy should make a division of sexes in the state's educational work for feeble-minded children and that, in connection with the Rome State Custodial Asylum, there should be established a school for the feeble-minded boys who are now sent to the Syracuse State

Institution for Feeble-Minded Children. This, if carried out, will leave the Syracuse institution to be exclusively devoted to the instruction of feeble-minded girls and will result in a perfect sex classification of the other institutions. This is regarded by those familiar with the great work which can be done for the feebleminded in the state of New York as absolutely essential to satisfactory work. The Committee recommends that appropriations be granted for sufficient buildings at the Newark State Institution to provide for the immediate reception of the women now at Rome. This plan will open the doors of the asylum at Rome to hundreds of feeble-minded men and boys now in various institutions in the state, supported by friends or as county charges.

A closer coördination in the general charitable work of the state, as the system of classification is made more perfect, may now be expected. The law now requires that the State Board of Charities shall determine whether all parts of the state receive equal benefit from state charitable institutions. Heretofore the public necessities have frequently given preference to one section or judicial district.

The Governor has appointed as Fiscal Supervisor Hon. Dennis McCarthy, who for nearly eleven years had been an active, earnest and influential member of the State Board of Charities, fully committed to its policies and program for the betterment of the state institutions and the humane care of the public dependents. Entering into the responsible duties of the office of Fiscal Supervisor, he will take that intelligent and sympathetic interest in the inmates of the institution which cannot but be helpful in all ways. The year 1910 thus will open auspiciously, as far as the state charitable institutions are concerned, with controlling influences working unselfishly to carry out the humane policies which the people have decreed shall obtain. The outlook, then, is far more hopeful than heretofore, as there is a promise that political pressure of all kinds will be withdrawn and the work be carried on upon a higher plane.

The net 1,014, as

The total number of insane patients in the thirteen civil hospitals at the close of the last fiscal year was 29.362. increase in the number of insane during the year was against 1,346 during the year immediately preceding. Although it cannot be definitely stated, without a further study of the question, that the decrease in immigration, succeeding the depression of 1907, has been a factor in this decrease in the number of the

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