We have often fallen far short of our ideals, but still we have on the whole been an agitating, propagandist sort of society a society that talked a great deal and held meetings early and late. Committee meetings in which we have gathered together all sorts of people that would not occur to you as belonging together have been our specialty. It has been no uncommon thing to find on the same charity organization committee a Catholic priest, a Presbyterian or Baptist minister, a Unitarian secretary, and a Hebrew vice-president, and they do work wonderfully well together after they have once learned how. If, for a while, they only learn to treat each other decently, a good deal has been accomplished.

Is it not just here that we come to the weak spot in the church district plan? The best thing about the district plan that I am advocating is that it brings people of a great many different sorts together. The church district plan, on the other hand, has a tendency to keep people of the same sort together.

You have had a delightful time in New York in this last month. I haven't heard it referred to at all on this platform, but I am an outsider, you know, and a free lance, so I can say what I please. Workers all over the country, have gained new courage from the New York news of the last month, and I wonder whether some of the things that have happened here haven't happened because for the last twenty years your charity workers have been in the habit of trying to get people of different sorts together. And after people of different sorts get together over small tasks, learning to treat each other decently, learning too to respect each other's prejudices, convictions, and good intentions, then gradually they learn to attack the larger tasks together, and that is the greatest lesson of charitable education. It goes farther down than the mere administration of relief, farther even than the amelioration of the condition of the poor; it touches what Dr. Huntington has called the improvement of the condition of the whole people.

A charity organization society should not grasp at power, therefore. It should seek rather to diffuse knowledge, trusting always that the best will win when once we have let our fences down and given the truth a chance. As Mr. Bosanquet has put it, our task should be to organize the mind of each district, in so far as it affects social work.

Mr. de Forest in the chair.

Mr. DE FOREST.- The Conference is now open, according to the program, for miscellaneous business. As there is no one to call me to order, I feel inclined to be out of order myself for one moment and add to what may be called the Presbyterian part of this discussion. It has been gratifying to me as a Presbyterian to know that the Presbyterians did raise a fund, as Dr. Devins has told, to take care of their own church people, and, as charity begins at home, it was a very proper thing for them to do. It was increasingly gratifying to me to know that the only two alleged Presbyterians who did present themselves to take advantage of that fund turned out to be fakes. And it is also a matter of gratification to me to know that after no real Presbyterians applied for this particular fund, then it was distributed in undenominational gifts among the missions of the lower part of the city. I may add that this is not the only Presbyterian money that goes in that undenominational way.

If those of you who are not New Yorkers will pass up Madison avenue, you will see, on the corner of Seventieth street, a very large hospital; it is called the Presbyterian Hospital, and if you will look on the corner, you will see this inscription on the side of the building:

'Presbyterian in its burdens, because founded by Presbyterians. Undenominational in its benefits, because for the reception of patients irrespective of creed, nationality and color."

A comparatively small part of those who enjoy what I may call the privileges of that institution are Presbyterians in faith. By far the larger number belong to the Church which is so worthily represented in this Conference by Dr. McMahon, Father Doyle, Father Kinkead and others. As some doubt seems to have been thrown on what may be called the broad charity principles of Presbyterians, I had wished to make it plain, as a loyal Presbyterian, that in its charity Presbyterianism draws no line of creed, nationality or color.

Mr. de Forest announced that he had appointed the following committees:

Committee on Organization - Rev. Thomas L. Kinkead of Peekskill; Mrs. James M. Belden of Syracuse; Mr. Homer Folks of New York; Dr. Charles W. Pilgrim of Poughkeepsie; Prof. Franklin H. Briggs of Rochester; Dr. Lee K. Frankel of New York and Mr. Robert W. Hebberd of Albany.

Committee on Time and Place Mr. Edward T. Devine of New York; Mr. Frederic Almy of Buffalo; Dr. Robert W. Hill of Canandaigua; Mr. Daniel B. Murphy of Rochester and Mr. T. E. McGarr of Albany.

At 5.35 the session adjourned.

RECEPTION TO DELEGATES.

On Wednesday evening a reception, given by the Local Committee to the delegates, was held in the Assembly Hall of the United Charities Building and the rooms of The Charity Organization Society.

FOURTH SESSION.

Thursday Morning, Nov. 21, 1901, Assembly Hall.

The first subject was the report of the Committee on Politics in Penal and Charitable Institutions, which was read by the Chairman of the Committee, Mrs. Charles R. Lowell of New York, who presided throughout the session.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON POLITICS IN PENAL AND CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

In every undertaking the human element is of supreme importance. It is safe to say that there is not a person in this Conference who would not prefer to have an institution of whatever kind carried on in canvas tents under the charge of experts of high moral and intellectual character, rather than to have brutal and ignorant officials in the most beautifully finished buildings with every modern appliance for the benefit of the inmates.

If men and women of intelligence and character could be placed in every position from top to bottom in every institution, including jails and almshouses, in the State of New York, we should have not only wonderful results in the personal care and reformation of individuals but also very radical reforms in the management of institutions and in our penal and charitable systems.

The one problem then into which all other problems in relation to charity and penology resolve themselves is the problem of getting the right men and women to take up the onerous duty of caring for the unhappy inmates of our institutions.

That we have not succeeded in securing generally the class of men and women referred to we all know, and we know also that it is "politics" which has prevented it.

A brief glance at the history of each class of institutions will show the truth of this, if any demonstration is needed.

Our county jails, in which many innocent men and women and many young persons just entering on a career of crime are shut up, have been left under the charge of the sheriffs, elected only for political reasons and with no thought of this important duty, with the most disastrous results. It is an interesting but extremely painful fact that the greater number of the county jails of this State are still managed under a system similar to that which was exposed in England by John Howard in 1776 and which was first

discarded there in 1783 in Gloucestershire upon the building of a new jail — that is the congregation, for weeks and months at a time in absolute idleness, of all kinds and degrees of innocent and guilty human beings, sex being the only ground of separation, and that only imperfectly carried out.

It was not that this system was not recognized as wrong. From 1844, year in and year out, the New York Prison Association and its local committees tried to induce the State to adopt a more humane, corrective and sensible method of treating the men, women and children arrested for petty offenses, or for no offense, in the various counties.

Nor was it for want of laws. There was a law requiring "the classification and separation of prisoners," and also a law requiring that every prisoner under sentence be kept at hard labor. But the laws were not enforced because it was not for the interest of the sheriffs to enforce them. The sheriffs have usually no salary, and their principal gain comes from the board of the prisoners, which in some counties, has been at times as high as $5 per capita a week. As a sheriff's wife once remarked: "When we have many boarders, we make money when we have few, we don't." The prisoners being the boarders of the sheriff, and the majority of the prisoners preferring congregate idleness to separate labor, the sheriff naturally does not impose unpleasant conditions upon them. The Legislature could not be induced to pass a law radically changing the whole system, because the sheriffs were a political power, and thus it is "politics " which has created and kept up a school for crime in almost every county of the State, and it was only after the Prison Commission was appointed, in 1896, that gradually in one county after another, improvement began through its suggestion and help, the sheriffs in several counties being made salaried officers.

The poorhouses of the State were also entirely under the control of politicians up to 1867, since which time the State Board