The several institutions should state, each for itself, what are their facilities to care for dependent children.

The Board of Children's Guardians is provided with adequate legal authority to extend to dependent children every kind of care-physical, mental, and moral-which they need. Were it provided with the funds required for the extension of this care in all needed directions, it might alone care for all the dependent children of the District.

Existing District institutions do not provide all the facilities needed for the care of dependent children, so that the extension of adequate care to these children requires now recourse to institutions beyond the limits of the District, and adequate provision for all the needs of these children would demand an unreasonably large expenditure, which might be avoided were changes which seem practicable introduced into some of the existing District institutions.

So far as the exercise of public authority is concerned, and the assumption of public duties toward the children is involved, it appears desirable that there should be but one tribunal to determine the question of what children should be taken up under public care, and that the judicial tribunal. All interested parties, whether private or official, should have the right to bring cases before this tribunal.

The several institutions existing or to be established for the training of children should be so specialized that each shall have its special work to do, and shall have that work assigned to it. If special work be found needed for which no provision has been made, the appropriate institution for doing this work should be established, or some existing institution should be induced to so modify its scope as to cover this need. Duplication of agencies should be avoided.

Whether the duty or the right of placing out children be vested in one only or in several institutions or agencies, the corresponding duty of adequate visitation of the children placed out should be inevitably imposed. If such placing out and visitation are to be at public expense, it should be, for the sake of economy and efficiency, performed by a single agency. If to be exercised by several agencies, it should be either under common control or common supervision.

What changes are necessary in existing District institutions to adapt them to the care of all dependent children, properly so called, are alluded to above. It would appear inappropriate for any one institution to recommend special changes in any other. The facilities offered by existing institutions being known, and the needs not yet provided for being set forth, inducements to change in existing institutions for the supply of the needed facilities can be made in the form of provisos to appropriation bills, or in the form of direct legislation for the government of official agencies.

The principal need at present appears to be for an institution, not a reformatory, suitable for the detention and training of insubordinate children awaiting transfer to homes or awaiting final disposition in reformatories or elsewhere. Neither of the District institutions is willing or able to take charge of such children, who either have to be sent to jail or set at large when taken into custody. The jail is no proper place for them.

It seems too obvious to require comment that all children,"dependent" or other, should require such training as to fit them to become useful to themselves and to the community. This, in its broadest sense, is "industrial training."

Experience in all countries and ages has shown that it is possible to secure homes for children generally, but this can not be done without

effort, nor well done without system. As the securing of such homes relieves the public purse from all the burden of maintaining the children, it is a matter of economy in money that adequate efforts be made possible and required to be put forth to this end.

The experience of the Board of Children's Guardians during the present year, when the lack of means to secure homes for the children, its wards, has resulted in the considerable increase of the number of its wards on expense for maintenance, proves how short sighted is the economy which curtails the expense for administration of the work of the board.

Mr. PRATT. I wish to state that the Board of Children's Guardians and our society work in no conflict whatever. There is perfect harnony between them.

At 4 o'clock and 20 minutes p. m. the committee adjourned.

S. Doc. 185—8

SIXTH HEARING.

DEPENDENT CHILDREN; FOUNDLINGS.

APRIL 19, 1897-2 o'clock p. m.

Present: Hon. James McMillan, chairman; Hon. Charles J. Faulkner, Hon. S. A. Northway.

SIXTH HEARING.

Subject: Dependent children; foundlings.

To be heard: Officers of the Children's Hospital; officers of the Washington Hospital for Foundlings; officers of St. Ann's Infant Asylum; officers of the Board of Children's Guardians.

TOPICS.

1. The work of the foundling institutions in the District of Columbia. 2. Extent to which public aid may properly be granted.

3. Mortality.

4. Placing out and adoption of children.

5. Visitation of children.

6. Private foundling asylums.

Senator MCMILLAN. Gentlemen, the committee is now prepared to hear the officers of the Children's Hospital. Who represents that hospital?

THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL.

Mr. M.W. GALT. Mr. Chairman, we represent the Children's Hospital. Dr. Lovejoy is chairman of the executive committee, and, with your permission, he will submit our views.

Senator MCMILLAN. What is your relation to the Children's Hospital, Dr. Lovejoy.

Dr. J. W. H. LOVEJOY. I am one of the directors and chairman of the executive committee.

In the programme published in the Evening Star we find that we are expected to be heard to day upon the subject of "Dependent children; foundlings." If our understanding of this subject is correct, it is one in which we have no special interest in this connection, and we are not prepared to discuss it. It seems from this that the Children's Hospital is regarded as an asylum. It is not in any respect an asylum, but a hospital for the treatment of sick children under 12 years of age. When they cease to be sick they can no longer remain in the institution under

the provisions of the charter; consequently, when a patient is admitted, a parent or guardian or friend must be responsible for its removal when cured or when it is decided that no further benefit can be derived from its medical treatment.

On application by parents or guardians any child of the lawful age and likely to be benefited by medical treatment is received, cases of infectious diseases alone being by special law excepted.

It has been proposed that the Government should take possession of all the hospitals and that certain officials of the Government, as the health officer and his assistants, or a board appointed for the purpose, should have the power of directing what patients shall be admitted into them. Such an arrangement we most emphatically protest against as decidedly injudicious and impracticable. In our hospital, as in all of the others, as far as we are acquainted with them, there are the members of the attending medical staff's, all physicians of repute and ability, who are, by their continued daily application and experience in their private practice, as well as hospital duties, much better fitted to judge as to the proper cases to be admitted into the hospital than any health officer constantly occupied with his official duties can be. Besides this, these staffs are composed not only of general practitioners, but of the vari ous specialists in medicine. We think that by the proposed change the hospitals would be more likely to be filled with improper cases than by the present method.

When application is made for admission of a child the resident physician receives it, subject to the approval of the attending physician, under whose care it is to be placed on his arrival at the hospital.

As for the Children's Hospital, it is a corporation, owning a large square of ground, upon which its buildings are erected. This property is estimated to be worth $185,000, exclusive of furniture, medical and surgical appliances, etc. In addition to this there is invested property of the value of about $75,000, a legacy from the late Dr. James C. Hall, who, from its organization until his death, was a director of the hos pital. The income of this legacy and the amounts raised every year by the exertion of the board of lady visitors, and by contributions, with the $10,000 usually appropriated by the Government, afford the sole means of supporting the institution, much of which is precarious and of late has been insufficient. Surely the Government would hardly desire to control this large property and delegate to others than the incorporators the management of it, merely upon the plea that it had been for a few years donating $10,000 toward its support. It can not be supposed that a board of directors and a board of lady visitors could be found to work so assiduously and enthusiastically without salaries for the Government, and under control, as when free and untrammeled. People who work for the Government expect, very properly, to be paid.

The resident physician and the pharmaceutist, who each receive only $40 a month, and the superintendent, who receives $1,000 a year, and who devote their entire time to their hospital duties, are the only employees receiving salaries, except the nurses, engineer, and servants. The services of directors and physicians are entirely gratuitous. This hospital has been always purely free. None but patients whose friends are unable to pay have been admitted. In fact, no fees have ever been established with a view of receiving paying patients. No distinction is made as to color in the reception or treatment or accommodation of patients, and the reports have always shown a large preponderance of colored over whites. The hospital is in no sense under sectarian control.