there shown its baleful effects, and it is really inspiring to think what may be accomplished by the incoming administration in the direction of taking our public institutions once for all out of politics and placing them upon an enduring basis of sound principles, so that the administration of public charity here shall be as creditable to this community as the administration of the State institutions is creditable to the State at large.

I have left myself but little time to speak of the remedies, and what I shall now say about them will be simply by way of suggestion, as I do not feel sure enough of my facts to speak with unqualified confidence.

As the conditions in the State institutions are on the whole satisfactory, I would make no radical changes in them. It has sometimes been thought that large boards with unpaid members are inefficient as administrative bodies. But the Boards of Managers of State institutions appoint superintendents to do the administrative work and their function is principally to exercise a general supervision and control. In recent times there seems to be a tendency to diminish the powers of these boards, and especially in the matter of the control of expenses, but it is doubtful whether this policy is a wise one. I should be disposed to favor a system of administration by boards consisting of not less than seven members, with terms ending at successive periods, so that the term of not more than one member would expire in any one year; and I would give them such powers as are needed to exercise an effective control. The considerations which occur to me in favor of this are:

1. Such boards can accumulate a special fund of experience and wisdom, which is greater than that of any average man. It becomes the experience and wisdom of the board, and the board is a self-educating body, each member as he enters it acquiring readily its knowledge and experience.

2. With a slowly changing body, no one State administration can appoint a majority of its members, and, this being so, there

board and less diffi

is less political pressure for places on the culty in resisting such pressure as there is. Indeed, it ought not to be difficult to maintain the practice, which has often been followed, of reappointing the more capable and experienced members for many terms.

3. The boards now already constituted are on the whole good boards, and the practice in making appointments, as established by long usage and the traditions of the service, are such that these boards are likely to be kept substantially non-partisan.

4. The experience in many parts of this country, notably in the management of hospitals, has been that the system of unpaid boards is a good one, and by the revised charter of this city, which is to go into effect on January first next, this system has been adopted for Bellevue Hospital in response to the earnest demands of some of those who are familiar with the needs of that institution.

5. There is an advantage to the State in having so large a number of men studying the problems of charitable administration and interesting themselves in charitable work. It cannot be too much emphasized that the care of these wards of the State the insane, the epileptics, the feeble-minded, and the inmates of the houses of refuge and industrial schools requires expert knowledge of a high order, and that there is still much to be learned in these fields. On the whole, I should think better results are to be expected from the present system of many boards and from the diversity of methods and experiments, than from too much simplification and centralization. A wise economy is always desirable, but wise economy involves other considerations than that. of the immediate outlay in dollars and cents; charitable administration being in its nature rather complicated and involving religious feelings and influences and perhaps other factors which do not enter into the other business of the State.

As for the county institutions, I would extend to them the civil service rules, so far as they have been found practicable and ad

vantageous in governing appointments in the State institutions. The rules are now applicable to a very large number of the positions in the State institutions and have doubtless been instrumental in eliminating politics from them. Similar rules have also recently been made applicable to the institutions in this city, but they have not yet been extended to any counties outside of New York city and Erie.

We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that, in spite of the civil service rules, if they are not well-administered, or even if they are well administered, we cannot obtain the best results unless these rules and the whole administration of charity are supported by an enlightened and effective public opinion. As Mrs. Lowell in her report says: "The one sovereign remedy is an

awakened public conscience." The difference between our own times and the age of Oliver Twist, with its ingenious poorhouse system of starvation on a diet of gruel and water, as a simple means of lightening the burden of the taxpayer, is not a difference of politics, but a difference of civilization and of public sentiment. This age of the X-ray and wireless telegraphy, by which solid and opaque bodies can be penetrated, has also discovered the art of transmitting the electric waves of public conscience into the dark places of the body politic, and to this circumstance more than to any other single influence do we owe it that the scandals and abuses of a generation ago have largely disappeared from the administration of public charity. What we need then above everything else is this influence of a steady and enlightened public opinion, and whatever agencies and instrumentalities there are for making such opinion effective are the best means of improving the administration of charity. At the present time and in this State we are fortunate in having many such agencies and instrumentalities.

First, there is the State Board of Charities, a non-partisan Board consisting of men of high character, experience and knowl

edge. They have done a vast amount of good in the way of creating a sound public opinion and bringing it to bear upon the practical administration of charity. The appointments to this Board have, almost without exception, been non-partisan, its members have been chosen for fitness and in its last report the Board committed itself unreservedly to continue the non-partisan policy. In view of the good work which it has already done and is capable of doing, no greater evil could befall the charitable institutions of the State than the introduction of politics into this powerful central Board.

Second, we have the State Charities Aid Association, with its county visiting committees in most of the counties of this State. These county visiting committees, visiting the almshouses, reporting upon the abuses which they discover and commending the improvements that are made and stimulating in their communities a wider interest in charitable work, I believe are to be credited with a considerable part of the improvements which have been made during the past quarter of a century in the administration of county charities. All honor to these devoted men and women, who, in quiet and obscure places with tact, judgment and unwearying patience, have carried on this beneficent work.

Finally, we have the influence which comes from the large body of workers in the private charitable institutions of the State, especially the charity organization societies, from publications devoted to the interests of charity, such as the Charities Review, from the National Conferences of Charity, and from these State Conferences. These meetings, with their discussions and the public interest which they excite, have been helpful not only in inculcating the principles of sound philanthropy, but also what is quite as important, in supplying the enthusiasm and zeal which are needed to carry these principles into the practical work of administration. For supplying this enthusiasm and zeal nothing

is better adapted than occasions such as these, with their opportunities for gaining a better knowledge of the lives of these men and women, devoted in whole or in part to the service of their fellow-men, these lives filled with human sympathy and that moral strenuousness, which, with its patience, its courage and its persistent energy, transcends that other strenuousness, which on broader and more conspicuous fields may win more of the world's applause.

DISCUSSION ON "POLITICS IN STATE, COUNTY AND CITY INSTITUTIONS OF CHARITY."

The discussion was opened by Dr. Robert W. Hill, Inspector of the State Board of Charities.

In the discussion of Professor Canfield's paper, it must be borne in mind that from time immemorial men have been accustomed to the practical enforcement of the doctrine that "to the victor belongs the spoils." It is in accordance with natural law that men expect to reap the fruits of earnest strife, and it requires a large measure of self-restraint to refrain from exacting a full surrender from the vanquished. In war, in commerce, in politics, there must be compensation, or men will refuse to strive. In politics principle is at stake, and victory may be rendered useless if full political control does not pass to the successful party. It has frequently happened in the past that the popular desire has been frustrated by an adverse administration, which, intrenched in office for a specific term, refused to recognize the new conditions imposed by the public demand. It may be said in a general way that when vital principles of public policy are at stake, the exponents of the policy indorsed at the polls should be charged with the responsibilities of administration. Because a particular party puts forward a candidate for office, follow that principle is involved in the election. Modern politics often degenerates into a scramble for office, with no more of

however, it does not