some of them, being weak in moral purpose, are apt to go wrong. It is said that these small rooms will be well ventilated because they have a window and a door. My experience in New York has been that it is impossible in a small room to get good ventilation with a window and a door. In the summer that may be so, because the window will be kept open; but in winter the window will be shut every time. It would be necessary to have automatic ventilation, beyond the control of the inmates. In a large dormitory with big windows and ventilating flues, it is possible to have excellent ventilation. I believe that morality is developed by cleanliness as well as by education and good discipline, and into this cleanliness good ventilation enters and is most important. We are told of a school where boys are compelled to enter a stream every morning, but it is impossible in every institution to get a stream of running water. The day of the trough has gone by, and now the rain or shower or spray bath is easily possible; and I believe the use of such a bath will go far toward developing firmness of mind as well as firmness and strength of body. The attempt to substitute for such a bath any of the old-time makeshifts ought to be checked. But, after all, under forceful teachers and attendants, with a competent superintendent, you will find that, whether in the open dormitory or in the cottage system, there will be good results to the state from the work undertaken in behalf of delinquents. Mr. FREDERICK ALMY, Secretary Buffalo Charitable Organization Society. It is not my understanding that the state is in favor of congregate dormitories. There are in New York three state reformatories for women and girls; and I think at all three each inmate has a separate room, and they are far from being cells. I know that at the one in Albion each girl has a room to herself. would be that the boys should also have separate rooms.

-

My belief

Mrs. ISABEL C. BARROWS. From a recent visit to both the Hudson and Bedford reformatories I may add that in each of them a separate room, tidy, cheerful, and simply furnished with table, bed, and chair, is given to each girl or woman.

Mrs. F. F. MORSE, Superintendent State Industrial School for Girls, Lancaster, Mass.- This is a subject of deep interest. I believe in the cottage system, with a single room for each girl. There is no room large enough for two girls. In our cottages the arrangement is such that three halls branch off from a central hall. The halls are sixty or seventy feet long, in wings, and at the end of each a good large door for ventilation, so that air circulates freely through the halls. Each room opening off from the hall has a good-sized window and a large ventilator over the door, and the ventilation seems to be excellent. Our girls take great pride in their rooms and in keeping them in excellent order. Their decorations are pasted on to the wall with soap that can readily be washed off. They can have just as strict oversight in the cottage system under the direct care of a competent matron, who knows each girl, as by a superintendent who has the

entire charge of a large dormitory. The matron must be a competent house-mother; and, if so, she can make up any lack that might otherwise result from the inability of the superintendent to have supervision.

Mr. FAIRBANK.- In the last house we built we placed a ventilator in each room, and there is ventilation under each door and over the door also. If there were any necessity, there could be a standpipe to draw from each room.

Mr. B. PICKMAN MANN, Agent Board of Children's Guardians, Washington, D.C.- A standpipe in the room, with a stove-pipe or a steam-pipe inside and the ventilator opening both at the floor and I know of a room where a stove-pipe enthe ceiling, would answer. ters a brick chimney, and runs through it, a chimney of twenty inches; and it ventilates the room capable of holding fifty people at all times. In Rio Janeiro the hotels have large halls cut up into small rooms, a few feet square, all open at the top. Yon can hear every one talking, but you have perfect ventilation

We have Where we

Mrs. A. M. EDWARDS, Nebraska. In the Industrial Home of Nebraska we have not the one-room system; I wish we had. rooms which two occupy, sometimes four, others five. put two in a room, we try to put a girl who may be known as a bad girl with one of the best girls. We try to make our institution a home. The girls remain with us one year, and take an industrial training. Each one must serve five weeks in each department, and for one week each girl is head girl in her own department, and there We have school is much rivalry as to whose week shall be best. from 2.30 till 5 daily, and chapel service every evening from 7.30 to 8. We have a farm, keep our own cows and poultry. We have 48 girls.

QUESTION.

Do you allow them meat?

Mrs. EDWARDS.- Twice a day.

QUESTION. Do they sleep in single beds?

Mrs. EDWARDS. Yes.

A MEMBER. As the cottage plan is substituted for the congregate, is it found possible to allow the children to converse at meal times?

Mr. F. H. NIBECKER, House of Refuge, Glen Mills, Pa.- Certainly it is.

Mrs. FAIRBANK.- We have one cottage where the girls stay for The a time before they go out, and where they have more privileges. They have electric lights, and do not retire till half-past nine. In the other officers eat with the girls, and they converse together. cottages they are not allowed to talk, except as they want something. We have a matron in charge to see after them, that they eat properly and that their conduct is right.

When I

Mr. NIBECKER. I began the method fifteen years ago. came to Philadelphia and took the school, and organized it in the

country, I told the boys that they should be allowed to talk quietly with their neighbors - not across the table, of course - instead of sitting like numskulls. Some of the old employees were rather shocked; but one of our most thoughtful and progressive managers happened to be up a day or two afterward, and he told me that they had talked this over and thought it would be subversive of discipline. But it has been going on in all the cottages ever since. There is no difficulty about it.

Mr. Allison thanked the section for its co-operation, and introduced the newly elected chairman for the Committee on Juvenile Delinquents, Mr. T. F. Chapin, of Massachusetts.

Adjourned at 4 P.M.

SIXTH GENERAL SESSION.

Saturday morning, May 31.

The Conference was called to order at 9.15 A.M. by the President. Prayer was offered by the Rev. A. H. Barr, of the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church. The subject for the morning was the report of the Committee on Neighborhood and Civic Improvements, Mr. Robert W. de Forest, New York, chairman, who presided during the session.

Mr. ROBERT HUNTER, Head-worker in the New York University Settlement. I have been really enjoying myself very much in listening to Mr. de Forest. What he said is quite true in regard to my paper; but I was not intending the discussion of the relation between charity organization society and settlements, but to show the history of preventive work in the charity organization society. We know that in all charity organization work there have been for many years important philanthropies that might be called preventive. We know that the social settlements years ago did many things in the way of housing reforms, and that the recent housing reform of the Charity Organization Society of New York was by no means an initial movement of that kind; and I did not mean to imply that. I said distinctly that the Tenement-house Committee of the New York Charity Organization Society was the most important advance which the Charity Organization Society has made in recent years in the way of preventive work.

Mr. Hunter then read a paper on "Housing Reform in Chicago" (page 343).

Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln spoke on Housing Reform in Boston" (page 355).

A paper on the "Housing Problem in Smaller Cities was read by Mr. A. W. Gutridge, general secretary of the Associated Charities of St. Paul (page 290).

DISCUSSION ON NEIGHBORHOOD AND CIVIC IMPROVEMENTS.

In opening the general discussion, the chairman asked Mr. Gutridge to speak of the public baths of St. Paul.

Mr. GUTRIDGE.- Dr. Justus Ohage, the health commissioner, founded the public bath system of St. Paul. Four years ago he bought with his private means an island of about forty acres which lay in the Mississippi River, near the centre of the city. He offered the property as a gift to the city, if the citizens would erect bathhouses upon it and the public maintain them. As his offer was not accepted, Dr. Ohage went ahead and built the bath-houses himself. After he had proved the need, the city accepted the proposition, however; and the property is now worth over $100,000. The baths are patronized by men and women of all classes. About 70 per cent. of the number taken are wholly free. A fee of five cents is charged for special accommodations. Everything is kept in the most scrupulous sanitary condition. The first year about 240,000 baths were taken. Each year the number has increased, so that additional accommodations for women and girls were found necessary this year. The island has been laid out as a park with attractive picnic grounds, refreshment stands, and a finely equipped playground with a physical director in charge. Since the opening of the baths, the atmosphere of a congested section of the city has changed; and the awakened desire for cleanliness, and that which accompanies it, is shown in the increased patronage of private baths in the city and at the lake resorts.

General R. BRINKERHOFF.- If we go into our smaller cities, we find a great many that are not attractive. They do not give to the people that upward lift that a beautiful city does give. In my own city of Mansfield we have a beautiful park; and since that was opened sixteen years ago the people, instead of going off on Sunday excursions, walk through this park,— men, women, and children,- and it is delightful. From the early summer till fall, people are picnicking there. From having a fine park the people came to desire to have the whole city beautiful, with clean streets and houses. We are not going to have the streets littered with paper and tin cans. The ladies have set to work, and they have formed an organization to study these matters and to carry out improvements. School-houses and grounds are to be beautified; and the children are to be interested, as

they already are in Cleveland, where a hundred thousand have asked for flower seeds for beautifying the home.

Mrs. SARAH M. PERKINS, Cleveland, Ohio.—It is innate in women to be good housekeepers and to make attractive homes, and they certainly can help in this great work of improving the tenement and in insisting on that cleanliness which is akin to godliness.

Mr. FRANK TUCKER, New York. In the recent tenement house movement in New York we learned certain lessons, one of which was that, to secure results in social reform, there must be unity of action. I shall never forget when in the chamber of the Senate committee on cities at Albany the chairman of this meeting, Mr. de Forest, asked those in favor of the tenement-house bill to rise, and that body of more than one hundred stood,- priests, clergymen, lawyers, doctors, business men, architects, charity workers, settlement workers,- all were there; and from that moment there was never any doubt about the fate of that bill because public opinion stood for it. If you cannot get together on any other basis in your social work, start on your housing problem.

There was another lesson. Mr. Hunter's statement of Mr. Veillier's plan is true. It was broad, comprehensive, far-seeing; but, before that plan went before the public, it was discussed, it was revised, it was pruned, it was amended, by the representative committee of volunteer citizens. And when, after the plan was put before the public, we wanted the higher qualities of generalship, when we wanted social standing, professional ability, diplomacy, judgment, and all those high qualities, we found them in you, Mr. Chairman. We learned how the professional worker and the volunteer could get together to accomplish great results.

Miss JULIA S. TUTWILER, Alabama.- It is very discouraging for us of the South to hear what great things you are doing; yet, when we learn about the condition of your tenement houses, we cannot help feeling that a Southern negro in the poorest one-room cabin, with God's light and air all around it, is better off than the city dweller in the two or three rooms of a slum tenement house. Alabama has very few cities, but a great many small towns. The greatest obstacle to the elevation of the negroes is the way in which they live in one-room cabins without windows. I had a window put into a little house, but I was discouraged in trying to rent it. The negroes would say, “I don like dat great big window it look just like livin' outdoors,— lettin' in all dat light." One at last took the house in which I had taken the trouble to put the large glass window; but she took a thick quilt and tacked it all over the window, making the room as dark as before. I was discouraged at first, but I think they are gradually getting over this surviving instinct of the primitive cave-dweller. Another discouragement, however, is that they are so unthrifty. If a circus comes to town, they come in from miles around till the streets are so crowded that one could almost