of Charities, with the help of the State Charities Aid Association, has been slowly driving politics out of their management.

The superintendents of the poor used to be elected solely for political reasons with no reference to knowledge of or qualification for the duties of their office, and they were changed every year or two, and the condition of things was absolutely horrible. Naked crazy men chained in outhouses, wallowing in filthy straw to keep themselves from freezing through the winter, three generations of idiots, born and bred in the poorhouse, idle men lounging and smoking in the house, while the poor farm was worked by hired labor, wicked girls coming, every year or two, to bring forth and leave behind them their illegitimate children these were some of the results of "politics" in the "charitable" institutions of the State.

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In the city institutions of charity in years gone by politics had free play. In New York city under that culmination of folly, a bi-partisan Board, the Department of Public Charities and Correction was largely a "hodge-podge" of misery and wickedness. On Blackwell's Island, to enumerate them in the order in which the institutions stood, were the sick, epileptics, felons, paupers, misdemeanants and insane. On Randall's Island, the sick, felons, paupers, misdemeanants, babies, sick children, idiot children, idiot men and women, epileptics and all these under a system of management which was incredibly bad. No superintendent had control over his subordinates, he neither appointed nor could he discharge them, however incompetent or immoral they proved.

The State institutions of charity with one or two notable exceptions have been comparatively free from political control. The Boards of Managers have as a rule been chosen from local men of capacity, who have given time and thought to the development of the institutions under their care, the Superintendents have been men of high character and knowledge, and even before the

passage of the Civil Service Law the subordinates were usually appointed for "fitness" and promoted for "merit."

The State of New York has been fortunate in having had since 1867 a State Board of Charities which has been absolutely non-partisan, and the members of which, being carefully selected from each judicial district by successive Governors whenever there was a vacancy, have given an immense amount of time and thought to the interests of the public and the welfare of the helpless wards of the State. Several of these members became experts and were reappointed two or three times, holding office for from sixteen (16) to twenty-five (25) years. No suspicion has ever been breathed against members of the Board even suggested that personal or partisan politics has fluenced any one of them, far less the Board as a whole have succeeded in making it possible to say with truth that New York institutions of charity are now, to a great extent, free from the blight of political influence.

no one has

ever in

and they

That it is not possible to say the same thing of the prisons of the State is mainly due to the fact that until 1896 there was no non-partisan State Board to watch over them. They were left, county penitentiaries and State prisons as well as county jails, a prey to the politicians, and the only improvements that were made were those few and small ones which the New York Prison Association could induce the Legislature to adopt. During the six years since the Prison Commission was created, great improvements have been begun, and the criminal population of the State has diminished actually two hundred and twenty-six (226) since 1895.

In connection with this decrease in the criminal population of the State one concrete and still existing illustration of the effect of "politics" in connection with our penal institutions may very well be submitted here.

In order to relieve the overcrowding at the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, the State Board of Charities in its reports

to the Legislature recommended the establishment of another reformatory similar in scope and purpose to that at Elmira, to be located near the cities of New York and Brooklyn.

By chapter 336 of the Laws of 1892, the Governor was required to appoint Commissioners to select a site for the Eastern New York Reformatory, to be located in Ulster county, "to be governed by a board of managers hereafter to be appointed for the care, confinement, discipline and reformation of such convicted criminals as may be sentenced thereto by courts of justice within the limits of such counties or district as may hereafter be designated by law."

Various laws passed in 1895, 1896 and 1899 appropriated $506,533.50 for buildings and other work performed at the Reformatory.

In April, 1900, chapter 348 of the Laws of 1900 was passed. This law changed the character of the proposed reformatory, did away with the plan of having a board of managers and converted it into a State prison under the control of the Superintendent of Prisons.

The most important result of this legislation is that the people of the State are deprived of a reformatory modeled on the wellknown Elmira lines, and intended for the reception of first offenders only from the city of New York and its adjacent territory. Such a reformatory has been greatly needed for several years, and is as much needed now as ever, the State Reformatory at Elmira having a population of about 1,300, a greater number than should be committed to any one reformatory, if the reformation of the individual is the object sought.

The following table furnishes a comparison between the present management at Napanoch under the Superintendent of Prisons. and that at Elmira under a Board of Managers and gives some explanation of the motive of the persons who were instrumental in changing the building at Napanoch from a reformatory into a

State prison, notwithstanding the fact that a reformatory was and is needed and a State prison was not.

900

It would be singularly unjust in a report upon "Politics in Penal and Charitable Institutions" to ignore the great influence exercised during the past generation in opposition to the "spoils system in these institutions as well as throughout the whole system of government in this State, by the handful of civil service. reformers who in season and out of season have contended for honesty and efficiency in the public service of the State and its various divisions.

The law of 1883, signed by Governor Cleveland, acted for many years as a defense against the politicians and as a means of edu

cation to the people. In 1894 the Constitutional Convention adopted a provision which it was hoped would bring about at once a genuine reform of the whole civil service of the State and all its divisions, for it was as direct and simple and comprehensive as it was possible to make it. It read as follows:

"Appointments and promotions in the Civil Service of the State, and of all the civil divisions thereof, including cities and villages, shall be made according to merit and fitness, to be ascertained, so far as practicable, by examination, which, so far as practicable, shall be competitive."

The experience of the past six years, however, has proved that no reform can go very far in advance of public opinion, for even the existing law, chapter 370, Laws of 1899, drawn with the approval of so good a civil service reformer as Governor Roosevelt, by no means carries out even the letter of the constitutional provision, exempting from competitive examination as it does many offices where such examination is without question practical, having been proved so by experience, both in this State and in the Federal Service, and leaving also all legislative officers and employes and all the laborers employed by the State at the mercy of the politicians.

The constitutional provision, moreover, has been made to apply, even in this mutilated form, only to the service of the State itself and to the cities of the State, the offices in villages and especially the county offices, with some very important exceptions, being still left at the disposal of the spoilsmen.

It seems almost a waste of time to present to this Conference the principles upon which appointments in penal and charitable institutions should be made, but the Committee hopes that this report may reach people outside the Conference, to whom its truisms may not sound so self-evident as they do to this particular audience, which is the excuse for what follows.

The members of the governing board of every public institution, whether appointed by the Governor and Senate, elected by