I ask you to reflect that this "desirable effect" of discouraging applications for transference of poor children to the State care would be with us of New York the sorest of evils socially, morally and politically. We have a million and a quarter residents in the dreadful tenements of the downtown East Side districts of this city. Nearly all of them are foreign-born Irish, Russians, Bohemians, Slavs, Magyars, Italians and Hebrews. Too often they are unfitted for the struggle for existence here - being too old to adapt themselves to new conditions, and being, besides, handicapped by past miseries. If we refuse to aid their children with a wide generosity unnecessary elsewhere, there will be largely bred in our midst citizens of a type unknown in America, but only too much in evidence elsewhere. Stunted, wizened, under-vitalized, criminal, drunken, pauperized, without bodily, mental or moral stamina they would make our later stage far worse than our earlier. It will prove in the end a much costlier task to maintain hospitals, jails, workhouses and asylums for them later on, than it does now to prevent all these evils by taking them in hand while they are young enough to be molded into better shape.

Yet, while foreseeing grave dangers in any attempt at a widespread system of boarding or placing-out, I favor, as I have said, a strictly limited adoption of the boarding-out system under proper conditions. There is a certain number of homes much fewer than is generally supposed - where our wards might do well, and there is a certain limited number of our wards the peculiarly sensitive and nervous among them who might do better in homes than with us. For these reasons, I should like to see the experiment tried, tentatively, under the due and absolutely indispensable triple system of regular, persistent and vigilant inspection by (1) local visitors, (2) visitors specially representing the institution, and (3) State officials.

There is one last statement to which I claim your attention. The children of the State may be divided into seven distinct

These are

classes, and each class demands different treatment. the divisions:

1. Orphans without friends or relations.

2. Orphans, but with relations or reliable friends.

3. Half-orphans.

4. Destitute children.

5. Children found in improper environment.

6. Uncontrollable children.

7. Delinquent children.

Of these, the first class is that from which the boarded-out or placed-out children should mainly be drawn.

The second class of orphans, the half-orphans and the destitute children should never be so placed that the natural family tie is finally and rudely snapped for them. In this connection let me hope that the following pathetic picture in one of Mr. Jacob A. Riis' admirable books will linger in your memory:

"How strong is the attachment to home and kindred that makes the Jew cling to his humblest hearth and gather his children and his children's children about it, though grinding poverty leave them only a bare crust to share, I saw in the case of little Jette Brodsky, who strayed away from her own door, looking for her papa. They were strangers, and ignorant and poor, so that weeks went by before they could make their loss known and get a hearing, and meanwhile Jette, who had been picked up and taken to police headquarters, had been hidden away in an asylum, given another name, when nobody came to claim her, and had been quite forgotten. But in the two years that passed before she was found at last, her empty chair stood ever by her father's, at the family board, and no Sabbath eve but heard his prayer for the restoration of their lost one. It happened once that I came in on a Friday evening at the breaking of bread, just as the four candles upon the table had been lit with the Sabbath blessing upon the home and all it sheltered. Their light fell on little else than empty plates and anxious faces; but in the patriarchal host, who arose

and bade the guest welcome with a dignity a king might have envied, I recognized with difficulty the humble peddler I had known only from the street and from the police office, where he had hardly ventured beyond the door."

The children taken from improper environment should, I think, rarely be removed from suitable and special institutions until they are able to face the world for themselves. There is the ever-present danger of the hereditary taint manifesting itself in their natures, and they require throughout their period of dependence special religious, moral, physical and technical training, which can be supplied only in well-organized institutions, managed by sympathetic and skilled specialists.

Incorrigible and delinquent children demand even more of the same kind of special attention, if that be possible, than the last class. Training-ships, industrial farms and technical homes for the boys, and well-subdivided institutions for moral, physical and industrial training of the girls, are mainly the remedies with this class.

Let me conclude by stating my conviction that in dealing with our Neglected Children" our best hope lies in the perfection and extension of our modified institutional system, rather than in any general extension either of the "boarding-out" or the " placing-out" systems.

DISCUSSION ON "PLACING OUT CHILDREN."

Rev. T. L. KINKEAD, of Peekskill, N. Y.- In opening the discussion on Mr. Levy's exhaustive paper, so full of facts, I will confine myself to two points to which the paper refers, namely, the number of children placed in family homes within a year and the supervision of children thus placed.

Mr. Levy tells us the whole number of children placed out in family homes within the boundaries of the State, as well as out

side of its limits, for a given year, was 669. But this was only the number placed by exclusively placing-out agencies. Referring to the same report of the State Board of Charities, from which Mr. Levy's figures are taken, we find that the whole number placed in family homes for the given year by public officials, institutions caring for children, and placing-out agencies, was 2,260, and of that number 1,394 were placed by the institutions themselves. And because it is sometimes thought and even said by persons who have not examined the facts, or who wish to misrepresent them, that the institutions seek only to retain the children, I call your attention to the fact that the institutions themselves have placed in family homes more children than all the other agencies combined. I may instance the work done in this line by three typical Catholic institutions, and similar work is being done by non-Catholic institutions. The New York Foundling Asylum has placed out in one year 288 children in permanent homes, the largest number placed by any society or institution in the State; and this is the more remarkable when we remember that these children are placed between the ages of three and five. The Catholic Protectory placed 191 and St. Joseph's Home, Peekskill, 67.

There are 207 institutions in this State caring for children, and 73 of them are Roman Catholic. There are 1,116 children given as placed out through the institutions, by adoption and indenture, and of this number the 73 Catholic institutions have placed 672, and the 134 other institutions have placed the remaining 444. This does not include some placing-out done from temporary homes and shelters for which some statistics are given. In the statistics of the State Board for the year in which the above placing-out was done, 10,772 children were returned to parents or guardians by the institutions. Now, the institutions are not over-accurate in this designation, for any one who is not a total stranger to the child is usually classed as relative or guardian, so that we may take for granted that some of these 10,000 children returned to parents and guardians should be classed with the placed-out. Chapter 264

of the Laws of 1898, known as the Placing-out Law, defines placing-out as "placing a child in a family other than of a relative within the second degree." Now, it is almost certain that

many of the relatives, classed as guardians, are far removed from the second degree of relationship to the child taken; especially is this the case where the child is able to earn its own living or be of service to the family. It should be borne in mind, then, that the statistics of the placing-out work of placing-out agencies alone, in no way represents the actual placing-out done in this State, and also that the institutions caring for children do more placing in family homes than all other agencies combined.

Now, as regards the supervision of children placed in family homes, I must say this is the most defective part of our whole system of dealing with dependent children. One looks in vain for any law or authoritative rule compelling visitations of children placed-out. It is left wholly to the discretion of the placing-out societies or institutions. It is true, they all claim to do this work faithfully and conscientiously, and no doubt they do, but where is the public record of it where is the law or rule making it a duty? Both the Poor Law and the State Charities Law of 1896 make regulations for the placing of children in family homes but none for their visitation. Neither is there anything on this point in the later Placing-out Law of 1898. Neither do the rules of the State Board, amended as late as July of this year, make any provision for this defect. In the whole law, as far as I can find, the only vague reference to the subject is that in which it is stated the State Board of Charities or its agents may, in its discretion, visit any placed-out child, not legally adopted. There is ample inspection of children placed in institutions by several departments and bodies; by the State Board of Charities, by the Finance Department, the Department of Charities, the Board of Health, Boards of Supervisors, Superintendents of the Poor, Department of Education, etc., but no inspection for children placed in family homes, except that given by the parties who placed them there. This