mended their clothing. So marked was the benefit thereby derived by these patients that presently the trustees fitted up another farm cottage for a second and different class of women patients, at which the industrial idea was limited to household duties, such as cooking, sewing, laundry work, embroidery, etc. Instrumental music and singing were features of the lives of both of these communities, which were liberally furnished with books, illustrated periodicals, flowers, and with the wholesome product of their own toil.

"The latest achievement at the Norristown state hospital is the adaptation of an old but excellently built stone farmhouse and its occupation by those of the women patients who suffered from consumption of the lungs (phthisis), thus forming an industrial farm colony for consumptives, in which the work done is, of course, very light, and adapted to the strength and ability of the patients. This latter colony is especially to be commended, as it removes the consumptives from the crowded wards of the main hospital and places them together in a secluded country spot, where, in favorable weather, they are all day in the open air.

Nine years ago, at the state hospital for the insane at Warren, Pennsylvania, Dr. John Curwen, its illustrious medical superintendent, established, with the approval of the Board of Trustees, an outlying colony for women patients, known as "Hygeia. Hall," and situated on a most beautiful and healthy site, and about half a mile distant from the institution. Here the work accomplished by the patients is light, and mainly consists of domestic pursuits. Its effect upon the patients has been most beneficial.

Two years ago Dr, Curwen fitted up a good farm building, barn and outbuildings, yet more distant from the main hospital, as a farm colony for male working cases, who were carefully selected for that purpose from the large number of inmates who were daily employed on the farm and in the vegetable gardens. This colonization has proved so useful that the legislature of 1899 granted to the trustees of the Warren Hospital the sum of $25,000 for the erection of new buildings to be used as dormitories at the farm colony for male insane patients.

At the state hospital for the insane at Danville, Pennsylvania, a commencement has been made in the direction of colonization, and there is no doubt that the trustees will take steps to further develop the project.

One of the most striking and successful examples of farm colonization in Pennsylvania was manifested during the erection of the state asylum for the chronic insane at Wernersville, in the years 1892-1894. Upon the track of ground purchased for the asylum site, which consists of 500 acres, were several large, stone farmhouses, with their barns and appurtenances, together with a stone building, which had been used as a grist mill. These were adapted for dormitory purposes and served as "temporary quarters" for about 240 able-bodied, indigent, chronic insane patients who had been selected from the several state hospitals of Pennsylvania, transferred to Wernersville and domiciled in these farmhouses and other structures. A sufficient number of female insane were also drafted into these quarters to cook, keep house, wash sew, and do other domestic work for the male patients, as well as for themselves. A small force of experienced attendants accompanied them, and a steward and a matron were in charge of all. A neighboring physician called daily at the "temporary quarters," but he found during their entire occupancy very little medical service to perform.

The male insane helped to build their asylum; cleared up the farm; got the vegetable gardens in order; prepared the bed of the stream, which was the main water supply; built dams, bridges and roads; constructed stone walls and conduits; laid pipe; constructed filter beds and system for disposal of sewage; set out trees and shrubs; made and repaired fencing; cleared away undergrowth, and did an immense amount of grading, digging and moving of earth and heavy material. It was the happiest, healthiest and most contented insane community I have ever seen. There were remarkably few escapes, deaths or injuries, and during the entire period there was not one serious accident or unfortunate occurrence. Here was "farm-colonizing" of the insane upon a large scale in scattered buildings, hastily adapted for the purpose, and it was a most marked success.

Y

F

CHRONIC OFFENDERS.

BY HERMAN OPPENHEIM, ST. PAUL.

There is a colony of persons in every large city in the United States that is very peculiar and very interesting. It is the colony of professional crimi nals. They meet and talk over crimes and the noted criminals they have known, and brag of the offenses that they themselves have committed. This class of persons has its aristocracy. The professional confidence man and pickpocket looks down upon the petty thief as a "clothes-line grafter," and the petty thief looks up to the bank robber as a "good gun" and a "big guy." The "good thieves," as they are called by the detectives, are mostly men over forty-five years of age, whose word out of court a detective can rely upon. They never, under any circumstances, commit an offense in the town where they live, and they are very often valuable helps to the police depart ment in discovering an offender. Some of them have families who do not know that they are criminals, and many of them have scarcely ever been ar rested. They "go out on the road" and commit offenses in towns other than their own, and especially in small and poorly-policed villages. Some of them follow circuses from place to place, picking pockets; others rob banks, and others haunt the railway stations in large cities and confidence unsuspecting persons out of their money. They are ever alert, and always looking out for a chance to obtain other people's property by whatever means is most convenient. When they have enough money, they come home and live on it. None of them ever commit crimes of violence unless they do so in order to escape arrest. They are, as a rule, outside of their criminal occupation, well balanced and well behaved, and very much as other people. They bor row money, one of the other, and always repay it. Many of them even give to charity. These criminals are almost entirely creatures of environment, or, having recklessly committed some unlawful act while they were young, acquired the name of being criminals, and continued so. Some of them, and I have found this true of every class of habitual criminals, are criminals mostly through sheer recklessness and love of adventure.

When Coxey's army marched across the country, a great mass of citi zens sympathized with its members. It was mistaken sympathy. In the main, it was a mass of lawless hoboes, permeated with treason and crime, and hating property and government. The criminal who in the last five years has been the greatest pest in the United States is the hobo. He wanders throughout the country in summer, and winters mostly in large cities. His existence is due to a combination of circumstances. During the last terrible panic many men were thrown out of work, and they began wandering about the country, mixing with the tramp and the vagrant. They were sympathized with, catered to and pampered by demagogue politicians; they met in large bodies, and got to thinking that the world owed them a living, and that they did not have to work. The result is, the hobo. The hobo life is the principal refuge of degenerate and incompetent persons, who are fascinated with its adventure, and his ranks are being continuously filled by hoboes getting honest, ignorant working men and young boys to go with them on their wanderings. The hobo is one of the most dangerous of criminals by reason of his cowardice and ignorance. He destroys a vast amount of property and

life, which a more clever and less cowardly scoundrel would find it useless to molest. The professional hold-up man steps in front of a pedestrian, and, at the point of a revolver, tells him to stand and deliver. The hobo sneaks back of him and hits him over the head with a short iron bar, or, if it be in a thinly populated district, shoots him in the back, not caring whether he kills or not. He then goes through his prostrate victim, sometimes getting only a few cents. This form of spreading criminality should be promptly suppressed. Hoboes travel from place to place on the trucks of railway cars, and have very often been known to steal an entire freight train. They get onto freight cars in such numbers and are so vicious that the train men are often intimidated. During the last four years a number of train men in the United States have been shot, killed and wounded by hoboes. They have no particular form of criminal occupation, but will commit any crime, no matter how cowardly or brufal, although when they have to they will work at honest labor for a short time. Every summer the railroad companies scatter, free of charge, thousands of these cowardly, lazy, habitual criminals throughout the country districts and the western portion of the United States, and every fall the same railroad companies carry them back to the citles and to the southern parts of the country. Public sentiment will not now submit to criminal prosecution for stealing a ride on a railroad. This nuisance, which is growing worse every year, will never be wiped out until every man stealing a ride on a railroad is promptly arrested, prosecuted and punished. It is claimed by temperance advocates, and statistics show, that excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages is responsible for a great deal of crime. I believe this to be greatly exaggerated. A criminal always has some excuse to offer when convicted of crime, and the most common one offered is drunkenness. This excuse seems to create sympathy in the minds of courts and juries. It is so often given when there is no justification for it whatsoever. Over half of the criminals who plead guilty to offenses in order to get short sentences from the court plead drunkenness as an excuse. Habitual drunkenness is responsible for a great deal of crime, but not for nearly so much as is attributed to it.

The method to be pursued in restraining and preventing people from becoming habitual criminals is almost indeterminable. Conviction and confinement in the penitentiary for crime has a tendency to make habitual criminals. Pride in a good name prevents more people from committing crimes who are naturally so inclined, than any other force I know of. After a person is branded as a felon, this pride departs. On the other hand, one is met by the fact that persons who escape punishment after committing their first offense, lose the fear of detection and are liable to repeat. Famliiarity with the courts and with crime has a tendency to create habitual criminals. The sons of detectives and police officers very often become criminals, and I attribute it to their familiarity with criminals, their hearing so much talk of criminals, and the things not seeming so far off and terrible to them. One of the oldest, best and most intelligent detectives on the St. Paul police force had a son arrested some time ago for a petty crime. It was the boy's first offense. I was the prosecutor, and told the father that on account of its being the boy's first offense I thought that the case should be dismissed. But he said: "No, I wish him sent to the workhouse for a full term of ninety days. There are too many sons of policemen who have become thieves on account of escaping punishment for their first offense." The boy was sent to the

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2. That few causes of pauperism (meaning by that dependence on public relief) are in America so fruitful as persistent insanity.

3. That therefore this disease must be treated, not so much for recovery (since a majority of all cases never recover) as for care, and for the economic minimum of pecuniary burden imposed on every community in fast accruing

amount.

Mr. Sanborn says, on "Family Care in Belgium," that, of the 13,000 insane now estimated in Belgium (a ratio of about 1 to 500 of the popula tion), about 2,000 are under the direction of Dr. Peeters, in the town of Gheel and the country regions about it, a territory in all of forty-three square miles. Less than 100 of the 2,000 are in a central hospital; the rest being in town houses, villas, cottages and farm houses, in this area about as large as an old-fashioned New England township. Dr. Peeters declares his op position to the close asylum for the chronic insane who are not dangerous in the following language: "For patients, harmless and incurable, imprisonment cannot be justfied. They are not dangerous, medical treatment is useless for them, and they can have outside of an asylum prison the general care they need. I go farther: Asylums by no means give a favorable atmosphere for the restoration, or the mere keeping up, of the cerebral functions. They lack the natural, customary stimulants of mental activity. Family life, the miniature of society, and society itself (which excite in the sane man an activity of mind), do not exist for the imprisoned insane. The groans and complaints of some; the shouts, the singing, and the wild laughter of other companions; the mad notions of all sorts which these afflicted souls are eager to communicate-all this can but confuse and weaken mental faculty." Such testimony as this challenges the attention of all thoughtful students, and deserves the most searching examination.

The burning question for the statesmen and philanthropists of the United States to consider is, Shall the humane and economic policies of public care for the chronic insane find a fairer exemplification in the opening years of the new century?

It is a charge upon the conscience and intelligence of the present day that some of the lessons learned in the centuries of experience of the old world in the care of the insane shall be noticed in the improving policies of the new; that the massing of misery under a false plea of economy shall be stopped; that the hospital flags which float over the shelters for the defenseless victims of misfortune shall warn away the camp followers of political armies; and that the men and women of a Christian generation shall recon secrate themselves to the need which pleads the cause of the worried and helpless insane.

DISCUSSION.

PRESIDENT ROGERS: We have had several references to what is known as the Wisconsin plan. I am very glad to say that we have with us this morn ing Judge Lyon, of the Board of Control of Wisconsin. I am very sure the conference would be glad to hear him.

JUDGE LYON: Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen-When I came here this morning nothing was further from my mind than the idea I should be called upon to say anything. Down home it is very well known that I do

not pose as a public speaker at all, and yet when I am challenged to talk a little about our own system it perhaps would be cowardly were I to decline. Mr. Faulkner has made my speech about the Wisconsin system, very nearly. He said very kind things of it, and I thank him for his commendation of it.

Our system is a process of evolution, I think. I do not believe anybody invented it. It grew up, started from the county insane asylum built by county authority alone, for the convenience of their own insane. The idea occurred to somebody, to some legislature, that by a little state aid the benefits of those institutions might be extended, and in that way has grown up our system of county insane asylums for the chronic insane. It is the best thing for us, we think, within our reach, but we do not claim perfection for it by any means. I never go into one of our institutions, but I see what I fear are evils in the system. We have twenty-six of them. Since the 4th of July I have visited nineteen of them, and expect to visit the rest during the current month. And I never go into one but I see what I wish could be remedied, and one of those features was very graphically alluded to by Mr. Faulkner; that is, the incongruous grouping together of classes of insane that ought not to be together. The quiet, the peaceable, the retiring (and there are a great many of them) are disturbed by the ravings of the more maniacal or by the disturbance made by epileptics. A great many of the latter are in those institutions. All we can claim for our system is that we minimize this. These county institutions contain usually from 100 to 150 inmates. They are adapted to that number; a few of them, in the larger counties, have more. As a general rule, they are quiet and peaceable. There is but little of the element of a prison, of confinement, of restraint. There is, so to speak, in all those institutions a sort of esprit de corps (if that is the right expression), by which each seeks to give the largest amount of liberty to the inmates, and it is surprising how far some of the institutions are able to carry it, how little restraint there is. Our system probably comes nearest to the home life that any public system, any system of collecting the insane in aggregate bodies, can come. I think it does. There is a great deal of the home life in those institutions. People go there and remain there for life, or remain there for a great many years. There are scores and hundreds of them who have no other homes, who have been insane and in public institutions so long that they are either entirely alienated from their families or their families are scattered or dead, and there is no place for them but the institution, and that is the home; and the object is to give them as many home enjoyments, as many home surroundings, as little restraint, with proper employment, aspossible. Hence all these institutions have connected with them quite large farms, and the men and women work there with all the zeal and interest and energy that they would in their own homes. Those people are better off there, doubtless, than they would be anywhere else. But that does not include the whole of the number.

tion shall re the worried

what is know with us this

am very sure

en-When I the idea Is I known that!

The great benefit that we claim for our institution is this: There is not to-day in Wisconsin an insane person necessarily in a poorhouse, a jail or a private family-not in all Wisconsin-and there need not be for an indefinite time to come under our system. Now, the system can be carried on and extended without legislation. Now, it is a terrible affliction for the authorities managing these institutions (and I presume some of you gentlemen here understand it) to be compelled to go to every session of the legislature for every necessary of the institution. You get full; you don't know what to do with your insane; they are in your poorhouses and perhaps in your jails and in your private families. You go to the legislature for money to build new institutions and the legislature may have a fit of economy on, and will not give you the appropriation, and there you are. With us, any county, with the permission of the State Board of Control, may build a county asylum. Without the permission of the State Board of Control it cannot do so. The State Board of Control supervises the location and the plan and the construction of the asylum. Now, Mr. Chairman, I know I am using up too much time; just rap me down when the time is up.

PRESIDENT ROGERS: You have about three minutes more, judge.

JUDGE LYON: There are always plenty of counties ready to build asylums, and when it seems that, in a year or two, another asylum will be