The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has just issued its thirty-second annual report. It is an extremely interesting little volume and is distinguished in that it is not composed principally of the stiff, technical matter that makes so many reports unreadable. The style of composition and arrangement is quite characteristic of the powerful and unique institution whose report it is, and the subject matter shows how diverse its activities are and comprehensive its scope.

President Lindsay pays this beautiful tribute to that woman whose great deeds made her, alive, respected of all the world, and dead, recognized and honored universally: "It was fitting, indeed, that the funeral cortege of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts should pause in Westminster Abbey, where her mortal remains were to be interred, to pay silent tribute at the grave of Lord Shaftesbury. The Baroness and Lord Shaftesbury were, in the lifetime of each, among the greatest benefactors of the lowly, both man and beast, the world has ever known. This noble woman has bequeathed to the human race the example of a life dedicated to the unselfish and disinterested rescue from misery of all living beings. Her establishment of great bishoprics throughout the world, her cleansing of the foul

est spots in the world's largest city, her saving of a nation from starvation in time of famine and her annihilation of the pest of pirates from the entrance to the far East-these were but incidents of one of the loftiest and most useful lives that was ever lived. Standing above all her other great deeds, her association with the work of prevention of cruelty to children, her benefactions toward its extension, and her example and advice in that great work will be of fresh memory, even when the walls of her tomb are turned to the dust from whence they came."

The Society collected during the year the sum of $31,579 from parents whose children were cared for as public charges, and turned this amount over to the city, whose annual subsidy of $50,000 was thus reduced to a comparatively slight amount.

Superintendent Jenkins says, as a result of years of experience and with some degree of authority, that moral suasion is a fallacy with drunkards and brutes until they are compelled to see and to do their duty. "Not so much," adds the superintendent, "is our work distinctive in the prevention of cruelty to children as in the punishment of offenders against them. The record of criminal prosecutions instituted by the

Society, the startling number of convictions, the well-filled cells in the state's prison, speak more forcefully than statistics of the result of the work of prevention which had its origin in this city. It is not limited to the removal of children from unfit homes. Unfit homes there are, as there ever were, and probably ever will be, and it is in these places that the Society finds its great work. No one can ever know but the persons concerned, what it means to visit a 'home' of neglect and dissipation amid miserable conditions, to administer an official warning, to return and find a partial improvement, and, as the visits continue, to see unclean rooms become clean ones, children better clad, and drunken parents become sober bcause they fear the law." The details of some forty cases are given, each telling its own story of frightful abuse or neglecct; one, of the rescue in America of a kidnapped Russian child who was returned to her mother's home in Poland; others of villains who were sent to prison-the aggregate of prison sentences being 201 years; of scheming and conniving parents who used their children in unlawful and dangerous occupations on the stage and of little ones neglected to a degre that one is loath to believe did the statement not come from so reliable a source.

An amazing record is made of 8,422 children removed from grossly improper surroundings and placed in homes and

as

institutions. This is a small army of boys and girls started on the march to better things and better ways. We fail to grasp the enormity of the situation unless we for the moment make a few comparisons. The Society rescued many children in the year as there are soldiers in eight battalions; as there are citzens in what are considered good sized communities, or an average of twentythree a day. It is difficult to appreciate this without some knowledge of the complex conditions in the Metropolis, with its "native" quarters and sections of foreigners who hate to abandon their own ways. And in spite of this vast number, the Record is informed that juvenile crime in New York forms less than one per cent of a juvenile population of 750,000.

The Court of Appeals of New York State has rendered a remarkable decision that societies for the prevention of cruelty to children are quasi public institutions, branches of the Courts, the District Attorney's office and the policce deparments. This decision resulted from an endeavor of the New York State Board of Charities to center in itself control of the confidential records of the New York Society, in which attempt it was successfully combatted by the efforts of Commodore Gerry.

One of our Associate Editors, Thomas D. Walsh, is an official of the Society in New York and a writer on children's subjects.

Such Is Meaning Its Officers Place on Action of the Legislature.

"Since June, 1905, when the Juvenile Court was instituted, 927 cases of juvenile delinquency and dependency have been brought to its attention. In some of these cases two and three, and even more children were involved, so I believe it can be safely said that fully 1,600 children, all told, have come under the jurisdiction of the cou't in that time. The result, as was shown by the legislature passing the Juvenile Court bill over the veto of the Governor, is that Multnomah county now, more than ever before, feels the need of just such a tribunal as ours."

This is the statement made by Marion R. Johnson, chief probation officer of the "For the good that has been done the youth of this county by the Juvenile

Court, Judge Frazer is in the main to be credited. No one who is at all familiar with the work of the tribunal, or who has seen him devoting his noon hour and working until 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening in the interest of errant youngsters, can fail to be impressed with the high character, breadth of view and earnestness of the Judge. He has made the Juvenile Court what it is.

"This is the view of not merely an official of the court, such as I, but the sentiment of hundreds of parents, whose children are admittedly better because the Juvenile Court exists. That hundreds of children have not only been improved morally; that scores have been saved from criminal careers, and that there will, in the future, be less work for the criminal courts as a consequence of the work of the Juvenile Court, is a matter that no one well informed will dispute."