St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-10-23
sECRETARY's REPORT.

October 81, 1884.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board of.
Managers;
The number of applications for the quar-
ter just ended is 1873, this being 104 more
than for the corresponding quarter of last
year, and of these sixty-one, less than one
third, were Catholics.
The relief afforded has been as follows:
By clothing to families or individuals, 81
cases, 307 pieces.
By half fare charity permits on railroads
and steamboats,, 80 cases, saving S20S.01.
BY orders obtained from city board of con-
troll, Is cases.
BY lunch tickets at Forney's Temperance
House, Sc cases.
By nights lodging, 50 cases.
BY donations of wood, cases.
By medical attendance and medicine, 5
cases.
By orders for groceries, z cases.
By help to pay rent, 2 cases.
By help to get stoves, 2 cases.
BY permits obtained to city hospital,
cases.
By permit obtained to st. Lulze's hospital,
l case.
By permits obtained to Home for the
Friendlsss, 6 cases.
By permits obtained to Protestant Orphan
asylum, 3 cases.
BY help to bury children, 2 cases.
By help to find homes for children in pri-
vate families, 3 cases.
By help to find employment, 90 cases.
The estimated amount of material aid af
forded which does not appear on the treasu-
rer's book is s377.71.
Warm clothing of all kinds for boys and
girls of all ages, especially shoes and stock
ings, is now greatly needed, for our supply
is exceedingly small, considering the near
approach OF winter, and applications are al
ready increasingly numerous and urgent.
The Woman's Industrial Society and Work
exchange, which at our last quarterly meet
ing had just closed for the summer, after
pleasantly occupying a room in our building
for nearly two years, concluded it necessary
for the success of its work to be more in the
thick of business, and has left us and opened
quarters at 1S8 East Seventh street, change
which, in business point of view, we are
glad to know, is proving for their advantage
The regular weekly meetings of the Ladies'
Auxiliary and the Industrial school also sus-
pended during the summer, have recently
been resumed, and the Kitchen Garden
company, we are informed, expects soon to
resume.
Every Monday evening during the summer
the Young Women's Christian Temperance
union has met and entertained the newsboys
and bootblacks in the hall above, where also
three lodges of Good Templars and an as
ISOLATION of woodworkers have gathered four
nights a week, leaving the hall unused only
Saturday and Sunday nights.
In conclusion l wish to call the attention
of the board to the increasing frequency with
which the secretary is solicited to afford relief
by furnishing home and employment to
homeless and vagrant boys and girls. Some
are not criminals yet, nor strictly speaking
incorrigible, and are not therefore according
to law, perhaps, bit subjects for the reform
school. And where they are actually
criminals, and incorriglble, it seems that
their criminality and incorrigibiity must
come to be of an aggravated character before
any commitment or even hearing and trial
with reference to a commitment to the re-
form school can be secured. There is almost
an impossibility therefore of doing anything
effective for their relief or their salvation.
II they are not incorrigibly bad, they are ter
ribly exposed and are going to the bad very
fast Few are the desirable homes that will
from charity receive vagrant boy or girl,
who is already partially corrupted. What
shall be done with such cases Is there not
need of new institution In st. Paul, not
for st. Paul alone, but for the
state, state institution, in fact, to receive
such cases and deal with them! Homeless
and vagrant children are found all over the
state, and they are constantly drifting into
st. Paul from all quarters, from other states
as we'll as our own. If the difficulties and
delays in the way of getting such children
committed to the Reform school begin to be
as great elsewhere in the state as they are
here in st. Paul, allowing, as we have, such
a case as August Gabel, just arrested for the
Menominee burglary, to educate himself for
his last crime right here in our midst by
years of idleness, brazen faced beggary, ly-
ing and theft, and never get into the Reform
school, it would seem that the want of new
institution must be general over the state,
and not simply want of our city. A new
institution or new rules of commitment TO
the Reform school, aud a new born willing
ness on the part of the officers of the law to
prosecute and commit would seem to be the
alternative, and would seem to be indispen-
sable in order to arrest a rapidly growing
evil and arrest deadly peril which threatens
us from our homeless and vagrant boys and
girls. Respectfully submitted,
Il. HALL, Secretary Relief Society