NEBRASKA.

Nebraska Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth, Beatrice, Nebr.-By a series of inquiries the superintendent of this recently established institution has obtained the names of 614 idiotic and imbecile persons in the State, the age of 19 of whom was not ascertained. Fifty-two per cent. of those whose age was obtained were between 5 and 18, and 2.5 per cent. under 5. The superintendent recommends that the introduction of manual training be deferred until the school-room work has been well established.

NEW YORK.

New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women, Newark, N. Y.-To obviate the evils of the promiscuous association of young women of unsound mind with the male inmates of the county poor-houses of New York, this institution was established in 1878, as a place of custody rather than of education. The teachable inmates, however, are taught to sew, read, write, and do general house-work.

New York State Asylum for Idiots, Syracuse, N. Y.-Of the 203 applications for admission since September 30, 1884, 53 per cent., excluding the cases of whom no record was obtained, were of a parentage untainted by insanity, intemperance, or disease, and in 17 per cent. the father, or mother, or both, were said to be imbecilie, epileptic, or insane. There were 5 cases having a consanguineous parentage. In the school there are two grades; the higher is instructed in reading, writing, and numbers; the lower kept occupied with peg-board, dotted pin-cushion, etc. Inmates of sufficient mental and physical capacity are put to work during a portion of the day at some occupation suited to their capacity.

OHIO.

Ohio Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth, Columbus, Ohio.-In the language of the superintendent: "The training of the school-rooms is simply a means to the more important end of developing the industrial power of the children. This has shown convincing practical results in the industrial departments here." The work of the industrial department has been greatly retarded on account of insufficient accommodations caused by the pressure for admittance.

PENNSYLVANIA.

Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children, Elwyn, Pa.-At the date of the report 590 children were lodged in the two separate ranges of buildings of the institution; the first, containing 338 girls and boys, known as the educational and industrial departments; the second, a third of a mile away and containing 252 children, as the department of the asylum, or Hillside Home. One hundred and ninetytwo children were enrolled in 8"day-schools," in which a special class of articulation was formed. In the shoe and mattress shops, the bakery, and the laundry, a number of the more advanced inmates are occupied, many of them supporting themselves, but the greater number of the inmates are employed in agricultural and domestic service. The uniformly unsatisfactory results of placing young women in private homes has induced the superintendent to refuse to permit further trial of this system. A new carpenter-shop and a cottage for young women of slightly-impaired intellect are building. Superintendent Kerlin urges the desirability of separate provision for cases denominated as paralytic, epileptic, or moral imbeciles or idiots.

III. STATISTICS.

TABLE 82.-Number of schools for feeble-minded children, the teachers and pupils in them, and their income and expenditure for 1886–87, by States and by divisions.

a The Massachusetts school alone; in the total for 1882-83 the amounts received by other Massachu setts institutions have been excluded.

TABLE 83.-Pupils to a teacher and per capita expenditure in schools for feeble-minded M dren, for 1886-87.

a Pupils of institutions not reporting expenditure excluded in making the computations contained in the column.

b One institution.

e The disproportionately large per capita here ($751) results from including the cost of site and erecting buildings, etc., of the California school.

d Omitting the pupils of the California institution, as well as those in institutions not reporting erpenditure.

Of the 5 schools established since the Report of 1882-83, those founded severally in the States of Massachusetts, Maryland, and Michigan are private, while the schools in Nebraska and California, respectively, are State institutions. The seeming inconsistency of refusing to make computations in which the number of the "teachers and other employés" is a factor, in the case of the blind, and yet making that very computation here, is to be explained thus, quoting the language of the superintendent of the Ohio Institution in the thirtieth annual report of that school: "They [the pupils of the year] came to this Institution as to a school possessing means for their training and development not attainable elsewhere. It is therefore an asylum and hospital, as well as a temporary home and school." It would seem, therefore, difficult to distinguish in such an institution between the functions of the teacher and those of the physician or nurse, both characters perhaps being united in the same person; to avoid the possible inclusion of domestics,-cooks, chamber-maids, gardeners, and the like,-who have nothing to do with the personal care of the children, the query hereafter will be "teachers and assistants."

IV. REFORM SCHOOLS.

I.-GENERAL REMARKS.

New institution.-The only new institution for the year under review that the Office has record of is the Burnham Industrial Farm, Canaan Four Corners, N. Y., an institution founded on the theory in practice at the celebrated Rauhes Haus, at Hamburg, and the agricultural modification of it that exists at Mettray, near Tours. Its object is to receive bad but corrigible boys, to awaken in them a desire for respectability, to provide situations for them where industry will be rewarded, and, finally, to guard them from relapsing into old courses. This school is established on advanced lines. It is in the country, surrounded by a splendid farm, has the cottage system of construction, the family system of government, and an unobjectionable name; and to these high and generally recognized advantages the authorities would add freedom from the vexations arising from depending on public funds and from "questions of political control and religious interference, that have perplexed the several institutions that have been founded more or less upon these [its] ideas."

Classification of pupils.—One of the most important elements, if not the most important, in reformatory education, is the removal of the offender from the influence of criminal associates. If all the youths detained were equally bad, or if the shades of their criminality varied within narrow limits, there would be little danger of contamination in congregating them. Experience and statistics testify that no such equality exists. In a paper read before the National Prison Association, Superintendent Gower, of the Reform School at Lansing, Mich., says: "A great majority of boys who come under our care are not by nature bad. They have been deprived of those influences which a good home supplies. Could they have been placed in good homes at the time they are sent to us, most of them would have been saved to society without the intervention of the institution." The reformatory at Lansing is conducted on the open system, but Superintendent Caldwell, of the House of Refuge, Louisville, Ky., an advocate of the enclosed plan, speaks to the same effect: "It seems to me a fair estimate to include in these two classes [those detained, who require care rather than reformation, and the small proportion of physical, moral, and intellectual imbeciles'] 75 per cent. of reform-school children." Turning now to the domain of statistics which the interesting and valuable table of the New York House of Refuge permits, it appears that for the decade ending September 30, 1886, 48 per cent. of the whole number of commitments to it were for crime, the other 52 per cent. for vagrancy, disorderly conduct, and the like. But it must not be supposed that the 48 per cent. were hardened criminals. In working the ratio the Office was compelled to include the number committed for petty larceny, though of such Superintendent Hite, of the Ohio institution, says: "It is a lamentable and notorious fact that guardians and even parents have had their children arrested for the most trivial offences There are at the present time boys serving out long sentences for taking articles valued at 25 cents, for jumping on a railroad train while in motion, taking a small amount of scrap-iron * commissions of other petty larcenies of similar insignificance." In Great Britain this distinction is made and met by the establishment of two classes of schools: reformatory schools for the better training of juvenile convicted offenders; industrial schools for vagrant and neglected children and children not convicted of theft. In the absence of such provision here the cottage system of construction is thought to be a substitute, as each cottage has its own play ground, and in many instances its own school and place of work; indeed, at the Ohio Industrial School 150 little boys under twelve are placed in a cottage half a mile from the 10 other buildings of the school, and never see the older boys except in marching to or from religious services on Sunday.

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The cottage system.-This system of construction, entailing as it does the family system of government, seems to be very popular. We find the board of managers of the House of Refuge at Philadelphia urging the State Legislature to purchase and convert the buildings now occupied by the school into a reformatory for men, in order that an agricultural reform school on the family system may be established with the proceeds, each family to consist of 30 or 40, thus removing "the objectionable feature of the congregate system, where large numbers are confined within high walls and prison-like appliances." At the recently established Burnham Industrial Farm, pupils are placed "in cottages with not more than 15 or 20 under one roof, so that by separation into small families a close personal supervision may be maintained," and the management of the Lyman School for Boys felicitates itself upon the success of a receut change from the congregate to the cottage plan. As to the economy of small buildings the statement of the board of control of the State Industrial Home for Girls, Michigan, is pertinent: "We find the large building, erected as an experiThe Reform School Problem, in Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1886.