women are sent from the police courts, and occasionally from the juvenile courts. They are sent on short terms of from six days, up to thirty and sometimes ninety days. We have had women discharged on Saturday and returned to us on Monday, showing us very clearly that they were not able to care for themselves. This class of people should be kept under custodial care as long as they live. It may seem harsh, but it is kindness to the women to be placed under custodial care, on a farm, where the woman may be able to work, where she may be taught sewing, gardening, poultry raising and many other things. This farm, or home, might become self-supporting, or almost so. It is a crime, in my mind, to send out these women and send them back into the old environment, back to their homes. I hope the time is not far distant when every State in the Union will realize how necessary it is that this class of women should be kept under custodial care. They are not only a menace to themselves but to society. I hope every woman will raise her voice in order that we may have such a home.

Mrs. Lola G. Baldwin, Superintendent Women's Protective Division, Department of Public Safety, Portland, Oregon: The Oregon State Industrial School for Girls has been in operation since 1913. They have a farm of fifty acres located just outside of Salem. Five units have been planned, the first of which is now in operation. The first building cost $30,000 equipped, and provides for thirty girls. This new Oregon institution is modeled after the best schools and is thoroughly up to date as to instruction and methods. It differs from other state institutions in having an advisory board of three women appointed by the Governor.

Referring to my own work, I will say that the Women's Protective Division of the Department of Public Safety of Portland, Oregon, was the first definite protective and preventive work established for women by any city in the United States. It was inaugurated in March, 1905, and deals with all matters pertaining to the safety and welfare of women. The department occupies a suite of offices in the Municipal Building and has a corps of four women workers, all under civil service.

Two lines of work are carried by this department. First we aim to protect the good girl by keeping local conditions so that it

is easier for her to do right than to do wrong; and second, to help the woman who may have transgressed to make a moral recovery. We have had ordinances drafted in many instances to better conditions under which women are employed. Through our efforts an ordinance has been passed prohibiting women from working in pool halls, bowling alleys and cigar stands adjacent to saloons, also an ordinance abolishing public dance halls, road houses, etc.

We carry the probation and parole work for the Municipal Court, and have assisted in establishing a Morals Court for the separate hearing of women's cases. Special attention is being given to venereal disease, and women serving sentences are given medical attention.

During the year 1914 we handled the cases of 731 new girls, which is the largest number the department has ever dealt with in one year. One hundred fifty-five girls were given after-care, 2,432 persons came to the office for interviews, and we made 604 special investigations, not including ordinary cases. The number of runaway or missing girls was 111, as compared with 75 the previous year. There were 53 sick girls and 24 insane; 134 cases were sent to institutions, which included hospitals, rescue homes, and state and county institutions. We have furnished 143 lodgings and 469 meals.

Under the Probation and Parole Department, we receive the women's docket every morning and attend those cases in court where we feel that we can be helpful, giving after-care in these cases also. We have handled 266 court cases, as compared with 95 in 1913, and we had on parole 61 girls, as compared with 17 the previous year, thus showing greater efficiency under the Morals. Court plan.

For the past three years the department has had state-wide authority, the superintendent being a special agent of the Governor.

Dr. Sessions: The Bible says "Without a vision the people perish". We are so often in our work consumed with the technique and our own particular plan of procedure and the system we are working out and the many details, that we almost forget the vision and we almost forget that after all it is the grace of God that saves. Mrs. Booth, I am sure, will give us the vision.

ADDRESS.

MRS. MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH, NEW YORK CITY.

I wish we had had all the men representatives of the Congress here this afternoon, as well as the ladies, for there are many questions, I am sure, that have already been spoken from the platform which would have had a vital interest to all in this association.

As I understand it, this meeting was convened not to speak only of woman's work and prisons but to touch from our standpoint the great field in which we are all so vitally interested. It seems to me that all through our Prison Congress meetings there naturally is a tendency for all of us, whether wardens or chaplains or physicians or prison workers, to bring to the thought and mind. of our associates the difficulties, the hard places, the perplexities in our work; and sometimes when I sit and listen it seems to me that the outside audience must imagine that we have a terribly hard and discouraging problem and that there are some very hopeless and desperate things in it. That is merely because we are threshing out that side of the question. But if we could have meetings in which we forget our problems and our difficulties and talk only of the bright and happy and successful side, you would have a mass of testimony that would send you away with your faith strengthened, your heart thrilled and with the realization that our work is most wonderfully worth while and that we are in a field where through God's mercy and blessing we have been placed to undertake for Him a work which in days gone by was looked upon as almost hopeless, but which has been revealed to us as one of the greatest, most wonderful and most productive fields in the world.

As I said to the chaplains, there is many a pastor who when preaching in the pulpit realizes that half of his work is thrown away because he is preaching to people so righteous that they shift all his remarks on to their neighbors' shoulders. They do not need them. But when we stretch out our hand to our "boys" and "girls" in prison, when we come in contact with those in the shadow, it is an audience that recognizes its need. When they go. into the prison school and have the opportunity of learning, they go hungry and eager because they realize their disadvantages in

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the past. When they are being taught a trade they realize what they have lacked and what it is going to mean to them in the future. When we go to them with the blessed message Divine, it falls upon ground that has so long lacked the touch of the blessed dew or rain from heaven that we find it gladly germinating and bringing forth good fruit. We have learned to look upon it not as a desert place but as a great and wonderful corner of the vineyard which only awaits workers who have faith enough and belief enough to take the message and to sow the good seed.

I believe this meeting has been called not to speak only of the woman's side of the question within prison walls but rather to bring the woman's point of view, the woman's touch to the field, as we have seen it. As I have studied this great prison field for the past twenty years, it has seemed to me that our difficulties on the inside are what they are today and especially what they were yesterday, in the hard, pioneer days, because of society's attitude toward any soul that has sinned or strayed, especially toward the soul who was caught and had to suffer for it, for the world draws a very strong line of demarcation. It allows many a sinner to pass in and out, unchallenged, as long as he is not caught or branded, but the world's attitude in the past throughout our country, it has seemed to me, as I look over the broad expanse of experience, has been that the moment a man or woman was detected in crime and came under the shadow of the law, that moment they lost their place in the human family forever.

There was a little incident recorded in the papers on Long Island this summer which I should like to relate. From among a flock of beautiful white pigeons, one strayed away in a terrible gale and storm, and the foolish weak creature did not know where to find shelter. By and by, of all places to choose, it found shelter in a chimney. When the storm was over it came forth once more, its wings covered with soot, and flew home again. There was a great disturbance in the dove-cote, for the others seeing this black creature come among them fell upon it and killed it. There came in due time a shower of rain from heaven and the rain washed away the soot and showed the white features of the pigeon, and then it was noted that they gathered around it and mourned over what they had done, for they recognized it as one of their own family.

That has been very much the attitude of society. When a man or woman, boy or girl, has strayed, they are looked upon immediately as something outside the human family. Perhaps just their own mother stands by them, but they know only too well that when they come out into the world it will be to take the place of an outcast. In the past all of our high vaunted sentiments about "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" were made to apply to our foreign missions and the great wide world of the free, even to our colored brethren of the South, but when it came down to the one who had sinned and been caught, oh, no, it did not apply there.

That is one of the reasons that has made the problem what it is today. Now, however, there is a change of sentiment, and I think we could truly say that today the world is gathering around its failure and lack of charity in the past and is mourning over what in its ignorance it has done. I believe that the world stands today aroused. I believe it realizes the cruelty and injustice that made almost impossible the path of the man and woman returning from prison. With our new laws the indeterminate sentence, the parole law, suspended sentence, the juvenile court-hope is entering in to guard and protect these people, whereas in the past every guard and protection was thrown away and they were cast out into the world branded to take a position among their fellows which was absolutely impossible. The wonder is that not so many went repeatedly back again and again to prison, but that any of them were strong enough and brave enough to stay out. The attitude of society has complicated the work attempted within the institutions. That is one reason why the American Prison Association has been formed, that we may bring to the world the realization that this responsibility lies at their door as surely as at ours; it is just as much the problem of the American church today as is the problem of the heathen, and if we send to heathen lands our missionaries, if we do what we can to bring the christianizing influence to them, then we must send within the prison walls the realization that we have not forgotten them, and we must try in our home and business circles in the world outside to open the door of escape; of honest labor to these coming out to face life. again. We do not fail to recognize the next phase, which is important, and that is the fact that those who are within prison walls are