There are thirteen institutions which receive state aid, (not including the penitentiary). The number of city and county alms or poor houses, etc., (including county jails, city prisons and the private insane asylum at Batavia,) is very nearly two hundred. The law requires the payment by the board of about two hundred annual visits of inspection.

The board is required to make special examinations into alleged abuses in any of the public institutions of the state, whenever the governor shall direct.

The points of inquiry, at each regular visit of inspection, prescribed in this act, are as follows:

First.-Methods of instruction.

Second.-Government and management of the inmates.

Third.-Official conduct of trustees, directors and other officers and employees.

Fourth.-Condition of the buildings, grounds and other prop

erty.

Fifth.-Financial management: economy and wisdom of the expenditure of the moneys derived from the public treasury. Sixth.-Efficiency of each institution in accomplishing the objects of its creation.

Seventh.-Compliance or failure to comply with the general and special laws relating to each.

Eighth. Usefulness of each institution to all parts of the state alike.

Ninth. All other matters pertaining to the usefulness and good management of each.

To facilitate thoroughness of examination, the law provides that the commissioners shall have free access to the grounds, buildings, and all books and papers relating to any of the institutions, alms houses, etc., which they are required to inspect. All persons now or hereafter connected with the same are directed and required to give such information and afford such facilities for inspection as the commissioners may require. Authority is granted to the commissioners, or to any one of them, to administer oaths and examine any person or persons in relation to any matters connected with the inquiries authorized by the act.

The commissioners are especially charged with the responsibility of full and careful inquiry into the ground of each applica

tion by any public institution for special appropriations, the purpose for which it is proposed to use the same, the amount which will be required to accomplish the desired object, and any other matters connected therewith.

The result of these various investigations is to be reported annually in writing to the governor, on or before the fifteenth day of December, together with such other information and recommendations as the board may deem proper. The commissioners, or any one of them, are also required to attend upon the session of the legislature, whenever any committee of either house shall require their attendance.

Power is given them to appoint a clerk, who shall hold his office during their pleasure, and to fix his salary.

They are forbidden to have any interest, direct or indirect, in any contract for building, repairing, or furnishing any of the institutions under their supervision.

They receive no compensation for their time or services, but the actual expenses of each one of them, while engaged in the performance of the duties of their office.

RELATIONS. The official relation of the board of charities is that of a confidential advisor and counselor, both of the legisla ture and governor, on the one hand, and of the institutions, almshouses, etc., on the other.

The legislature, when in session, is overwhelmed with business. The visits of legislative committees to the state institutions are necessarily hasty, and sometimes almost entirely formal. Under the most favorable circumstances, a single visit does not suffice to make a visitor acquainted with the real spirit, management and inner working of a great institution, numbering hundreds of inmates, and expending annually tens of thousands of dollars.

Neither can the governor spare the time from his other official duties, to inspect in person and thoroughly master the condition and wants of so many public institutions as have been already established in Illinois, to say nothing of others which will be needed in the future.

Yet such inspection and knowledge are indispensable in order to enlightened legislation regarding these institutions, and the vast and varied interests which they represent. Frequent, faithful inspection secures fidelity in the discharge of duty, and econo

my and prudence in the expenditure of public funds. It stimulates the energies of honest officials, by insuring their approval and commendation. It serves as a check upon the unscrupulous. It enables the state authorities to decide wisely what burdens of taxation for the relief of suffering to lay upon the people. It reveals whether the expenditures made for this end are or are not remunerative.

The board of charities furnishes the only instrumentality for the supervision of the county jails and almshouses—a supervision very necessary, and likely to be fruitful of good results.

To all the institutions under their care, the commissioners of public charities come in the capacity of accredited agents of the legislature and the governor. To the governor and the legislature, on the other hand, they are the representatives of these institutions, and the spokesmen of the classes for whom they are specially provided.

In a word, they have two objects to accomplish by their action, namely to insure to the dependent and suffering a just measure of relief, and to guard the public at large from extravagant demands in the name of charity. Their function is to give simplicity, unity and increased efficiency to the system of state aid; to secure the largest results at the least relative cost; to diminish, as far as it is in the power of the government to diminish, the sum of suffering and of crime within the limits of the state. By the test of success or failure in the accomplishment of this aim, the board is willing to be judged.

PRINCIPLES OF ACTION.-The board has adopted for its own guidance the following principles, by which to regulate its official action. The board conceives that the true spirit in which to approach the various institutions subject to its inspection is that not of distrust, but of confidence, which will not be withdrawn until it is forfeited; that minor faults of administration ought not to be made the theme of injurious animadversion; that complaint, even of serious errors and of positive wrongs, should in all cases be made first to the officers in charge; that it is the duty of the board to know the entire inner life of each institution, and to communicate to the governor and to the legislature every fact which, if known, would affect or modify their official action; that such communications may be make publicly or privately, as the

public interest may seem to require; that all recommendations made by the board should be based on actual knowledge of the facts; that in case of any apparent conflict of interests, the lesser interest must give way to the greater; and that success in the work entrusted to the commissioners depends upon the careful avoidance of all encroachment upon the legislative or administrative functions of other state officials, and upon a thorough, accurate, systematic acquaintance with the dependent classes, their character, condition, wants and relations, together with the methods of dealing with them at home and abroad, and their respective results.

ACTION OF THE BOARD.-The work thus far accomplished is as follows. The results will be stated in detail, later in the report: First. In accordance with section fourth of the law creating the board, the commissioners, or some one of them, have twice in each year visited all the charitable and correctional institutions of the state in actual operation, receiving state aid, except the penitentiary. The board has not, however, visited the institutions in process of erection quite so often, for the reason that it seemed to be unnecessary.

Second. In accordance with the fifth section of the law, requiring the commissioners, or some one of them, once each year to visit and examine into the condition of each of the city and county alms or poor houses, and other places where the insane may be confined, the board divided the one hundred and two counties of Illinois into five nearly equal districts, with reference to the convenience of the individual commissioners, and assigned a district to each. During the year 1869, chiefly in consequence of the withdrawal of Judge Thomas from the board, the commis. sioners visited only sixty-nine counties, in which they found fortythree almshouses and sixty-five jails. During the year 1870, they succeeded in visiting nearly every county in the state.

Third.-At the suggestion of the trustees of the Southern Insane Asylum, the board, in 1869, issued a call for a conference of state officers, trustees of insane asylums, and others, which was held on the tenth day of November, in the state library. At this conference, the relative merits of the so called congregate and segregate systems in insane asylums were discussed, and resolutions were adopted approving of some modification of the existing system of almost absolute restraint.

Fourth. The board has made an investigation, by means of personal correspondence with every physician in the state, of the number and nature of cases of insanity and idiocy in Illinois.

Fifth.-It has collected the nucleus of a very respectable library of reports and documents on insanity, idiocy, pauperism, crime, and the other affiliated subjects.

Sixth.-The secretary of the board, in addition to his other labors in the office and through the state, under its direction, has visited the offices of the Massachusetts and New York boards of charity, has visited between twenty and twenty-five public institutions outside the limits of Illinois, and has attended the annual meeting of the association of medical superintendents of the insane, at Hartford, in June, 1870, and the national congress on prison and reformatory discipline, at Cincinnati, in October.

A record of miles of travel and days of labor, had it been kept, would show that the commissioners and their secretary, with an assistant employed by the secretary at his own expense, have traveled nearly thirty thousand miles in the discharge of their duties, and have given in all nearly three years' aggregate time to their work, in the short space of eighteen months.

EXPENSE. It was estimated, at the time of the creation of the board, that it would cost ten thousand dollars per annum, or twenty thousand dollars, in two years.

The actual disbursements have been as follows:

To this must be added the expenses of the last quarter, the amount of which is not yet ascertained. The staetment above