Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Senator FAULKNER. Then have you power as a board to return that child to his parents or guardian, if you think proper, at any time subsequent to the child reaching the age of 21 years?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; but not releasing our guardianship. We may apprentice a child to a third person.

Representative NORTHWAY. When a child is committed to your care, you have no public institution in which you can place it as a matter of right or law?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir.

Representative NORTHWAY. You have to go to a private institution and make a contract?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; or place them in homes.
Representative NORTHWAY. Homes provided by law?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; homes which we secure.
Senator MCMILLAN. That is the primary object?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative NORTHWAY. Those placed outside of private homes; you have to make contracts for them?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; at so much per week or month.

Senator MCMILLAN. That is only a temporary matter, however, to prepare them for the private home?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; but in many cases it is necessary to place them in the institutions permanently. For instance, some children are unfitted for moral reasons to be put in private homes and we have to place them in some institution. We had a case yesterday that had to go to the Reform School for Girls.

Representative PITNEY. Do you commit any to the Reform School? Mr. WOODWARD. We have done it where boys are incorrigible. Representative NORTHWAY. In placing them out, the children are scattered around in different institutions?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; many of the institutions have them. Representative PITNEY. How about the Industrial Home School? Mr. WOODWARD. There are quite a number of cases there. I think I have a statement showing that.

Representative PITNEY. Can you tell about how many?

Mr. WOODWARD. I think about ten at the Industrial Home School. The theory of the Board is to provide every child with a home. That is the theory, and we desire to keep them at these institutions only until they can be found homes.

Representative NORTHWAY. Does your statement cover the cost per capita for keeping children at these institutions?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative PITNEY. I notice in your returns to this committee you report that you paid the Industrial Home School $1,447.15. How many children will that provide for?

Mr. WOODWARD. I am unable to state that. It would depend entirely upon the time they were there and the number of them. The cost at the Industrial Home School is $10.25 per month.

Representative PITNEY. You have no right, as a matter of law, to place them in that school at the present time without the consent of the authorities of the school, have you?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; not as I understand it; but we have no difficulty in placing them.

Senator MCMILLAN. You mean that they are never refused?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; they are not refused unless the school is full.

Representative PITNEY. Do you think it would facilitate the Board's work to have an institution of its own?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; where the Government pays part of the support of the children.

Representative PITNEY. You have not had any trouble so far about placing the children?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; at least none since I have been a member of the Board.

Representative NORTHWAY. If you place them in these different institutions, do you have any control of them after that?

Mr. WOODWARD. That varies; some institutions are more easily approached than others.

Representative PITNEY. As a matter of law, you are constituted the legal guardian of the children?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; and we can recover a child by writ of habeas corpus.

Representative PITNEY. You can put a child in the charge of anyone you please to put it, subject to your right to recall it?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative PITNEY. And you exercise that right by putting these children in some of these public or institutional homes as well as in private homes?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative PITNEY. Do any of these institutions make it a condition precedent that you shall surrender some of your rights? Mr. WOODWARD. We would not do it.

Representative NORTHWAY. If a child is placed in one of these institutions, while it is there it is subject to the control of that institution, is it not, and you have no control over it?

Mr. WOODWARD. Of course not; if we commit it to that institution we have to abide by their rules, just as we would have to abide in that respect by the rules of a private home, if the child were placed there. I had finished reading the reply to question 3. The paper next takes up questions 4 and 5:

"The proper training of dependent children, and the disposal of dependent children.

"The trouble with children who become despondent is, that they have never had or have lost the right sort of home and family life. The thing to do with them would seem to be to supply, just as soon as possible, that which has been missed or taken away. When a man is thirsty, we give him drink; when he is hungry, we give him food. In like manner, when a child is homeless we provide him a home.

"Therefore, since somebody's home is the proper destination of every child, that training which will soonest fit a child for reception into that haven of comfort and protection is the proper training. Home life fits a child for home life, and that alone, unless he has been injured by want of proper home surroundings; in which case he has become abnormal.

"Institution life, up to a certain point, corrects abnormality and refits a child for home life. Beyond that point it fits him for institution life and that alone, which is a misfortune. For infants and very young children the principal value of an institution is as a receiving and distributing point, such children being best provided for in selected family homes as boarders while waiting the completion of arrangements for their final reception by adoption or indenture."

I will state that that clause of this paper is objected to by Mr. Miller,

one of the members of the Board, who differs from the majority of the Board.

Representative NORTHWAY. Please read that again, so that we may clearly understand.

Mr. Woodward reread the paragraph last quoted.

Mr. WOODWARD. That gives you the theory of administration of the Board of Children's Guardians.

Representative PITNEY. Who is the member of the Board that objects to that paragraph?

Mr. WOODWARD. Mr. William J. Miller. He holds that the rule is not as general as we have stated it; that institutional life does not fit a child only for institutional life, but that a child who remains in an institution during minority may yet become a good citizen.

Representative PITNEY. That is a fundamental difference of opinion? Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Representative PITNEY. You object to bringing children up by machinery?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; that is it.

Representative PITNEY. You object to bringing them up by artificial

rules?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir.

Senator MCMILLAN. That is the experience in all States where it has been tried, is it not?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; that is my understanding.

Senator FAULKNER. What is your arrangement when you put children in homes. Do you pay for them?

Mr. WOODWARD. We do if it is necessary. We try-and it is our policy to secure them homes where people will take them as their own children and see to their schooling, etc.

Senator FAULKNER. That is what you aim to do?

Mr. WOODWARD. Yes, sir; that is our intention.

Representative PITNEY. You have to undertake the care of a good many children with a moderate amount of money?

Mr. WOODWARD. As far as our appropriation goes for the maintenance of children we have no complaint to make, but so far as the appropriation for investigation of children after they are placed out is concerned, we are totally unable to do the work. We could place out all the children that are committed to us and all that will be, place them in homes that are probably free homes, if we had sufficient administrative force and means to investigate these cases as the law requires us to do. The law puts upon us the duty of visiting these homes in other States, and we can not do it. This subject is taken up farther on in this paper. In the latter part of this fiscal year we are unable to place these children out in homes, because we have not the means to visit them.

Representative PITNEY. Can you give us the number of children that you have taken into your charge since the board was created or founded? Mr. WOODWARD. I think Mr. Lewis can give you that information. Mr. HERBERT W. LEWIS. The number received the first year, 1893-94, was 203; the second year, 110; the third year, 93, and the first threequarters of the present fiscal year indicate that the number received will be about 80.

Representative PITNEY. Does that indicate, in your judgment, less need of the work of your board, or not?

Mr. LEWIS. In 1893, when the Board of Children's Guardians was created and began its work, the subsidized institutions of the District had had their income cut by 40 per cent, and they could receive only a

limited number of children; in fact, some of them found it necessary to discharge those they had, as they could not maintain them on their reduced appropriations. Then, for the next year, the amount given direct to the institutions was increased; the next year again increased, until now the amount given direct to the institutions is about as large as it ever was; I believe wholly as large as it ever was. So fast as provision has been made in the institutions in which children can be received without legal adjudication of their cases, just so rapidly the commitments to the Board of Children's Guardians have fallen off, except in cases of children who could not be dealt with otherwise than by the exercise of Government authority. Formerly many children came to the Board of Children's Guardians who were simply dependent. Now not so many of this class are received.

Mr. Woodward proceeded with the reading of his paper:

"Older children usually have acquired bad habits which need correction, or they are dull or slovenly, or indolent, or insubordinate, or are of such doubtful character and disposition that they require watching and study before it can be determined what can and should be done for them. To meet the needs of these, the modern institution is admirably adapted. Its proper work is to eradicate the effects of bad environment, to awaken the intellect, to teach habits of order, cleanliness, and obedience, to lay the foundation for a common-school education, and in general to impart a knowledge of and create a desire for a higher and better physical, intellectual, and moral life than any known to the children for whose benefit it has been created. That the better managed institutions accomplish this by no means slight undertaking is beyond doubt.

"All mention of manual and industrial training is purposely omitted here, for the reason that it is set apart for special consideration at another time.

"Finally, as to the disposal of dependent children, it is desirable that there should be available such variety of correctional, fostering, and uplifting influences as will make it possible for the Government, acting through an official commission, to do with each individual child that which his disposition, history, and capabilities indicate as most likely to bring forth the best results.

"Having assumed charge of children in obedience to orders of the court having authority to commit, the child-caring commission should, through an expert superintendent, at once decide what is to be the situation of such children for the immediate future-whether to be paroled and sent home, to be watched over by wise and skillful agents, sent into a reformatory, placed in an institution created for the purpose of receiving such children pending further study of their habits and characteristics, placed at once in foster homes, boarded out, or left in the custody of one or the other parent, such parent being placed, without expense to the State, in a position to control and provide for his or her child. The court of jurisdiction should also be authorized to order the collection of a contribution toward maintenance from parents able but unwilling to provide for their offspring, and to enforce such orders by attachment issued against the property, wages, and person of such parent, the children remaining under the protection of public authority. By the operation of such a system, children found in temporary distress will be promptly removed to appropriate institutions or placed in selected boarding homes until their parents have so far improved their condition that the children can safely be restored to them. Consideration of comparative advantages will not, however, control the reception or

retention of children. The question to be decided will never be one arising out of comparison between the wealth of the institution or the comfort of the boarding home and the bare surroundings and meager support of the parental home, but whether it is morally and physically safe that those directly under consideration should continue to reside with their parents.

"There should be no hard and fast rules laid down for the government of cases wherein municipal or statutory laws have been disregarded by children. Such children should be committed to the care of experts whose life's work and profession it is to decide what should be done in each case dealt with. Some should be at once released on parole, returning to their former homes; some deported to distant family homes and carefully and judiciously guided into better ways, and some should go at once to reformatory institutions, there to learn, under more or less hard conditions, those lessons of industry, personal honor, and self-control which alone will enable them to use wisely the larger liberty to which they will, by and by, be restored."

One point there that needs to be made manifest is that we have no law in the District of Columbia compelling a parent to support a child. An act was introduced, but it has never come to a finality. We can therefore simply use the threat of commitment-that the child will have to be provided for or committed. There is no law to compel parents to provide for their children, either legitimate or illegitimate children.

Senator MCMILLAN. Have we not passed an act of that kind through the Senate?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; I think not. It has just been introduced. Senator MCMILLAN. I thought we had that up before.

Mr. MOORE. It passed the Senate, but failed in the House.

Senator MCMILLAN. I was under the impression that we passed a bill of that kind through the Senate.

Mr. MOORE. It was Senate bill 2426, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session.

Mr. WOODWARD. There is a Maryland law which provides for summoning a father of an illegitimate child before a justice court and compelling him to give bond for the care of it. I think the very first step should be to see that an act of this character, compelling a parent to support his child, is passed, because I believe that the expense to the state would fall off from one-third to one-half if we had that law. Senator MCMILLAN. That is very important.

Representative PITNEY. Yes, sir; it is very important and should not be overlooked.

Representative NORTHWAY. Many of our States have statutes compelling parents to provide for children. Have you investigated that? Mr. WOODWARD. The board has done so, and I think they have found such laws to be efficient. I think this act which is before Congress was introduced at the instance of our board. We have nothing here to show how efficient it would be in the District.

Representative NORTHWAY. We have one in the State of Ohio, and I know personally of two or three cases where it could not be enforced. Representative PITNEY. We have a law on our statute book in New Jersey and it is enforced. It prevents the abandonment of children. Representative NORTHWAY. What is everybody's business is nobody's business, and they are seldom enforced.

Mr. WOODWARD. Mr. Lewis informs me that under the statute of Ohio the proper body in Cincinnati collects $1,000 a month.