The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-27
THE CONFERENCE SERMON,
(ContInued from FIrgt Page.,

quire extensive enlargements, may help overcome this difficulty. It seems to have been demonstrated also, that, apart from the plant, the weekly cost of such institution as the one at FL mira is below that of our jails and almshouses and warehouses, where the people for whom this reformatory is largely designed now spend great part of their time.
 Pool selling, and its prohibition by our legislature, and the new law for bidding the admission to suffrage of persons of tainted moral character was spoken of, and regret was expressed at the non-passage of the proposed law for disfranchising for five years on three convictions for any jail offense within twelve consecutive months, and on repetition, permanent disfranehise- ment to follow.
 Under the present law men are dis franchised for petty thefts-as, in a recent instance, of chicken-because that ranks as felony. But men who spend the greater part of their time in jail for drunkenness and licentiousness or abuse of wife and children, go on voting with even greater regularity than the average we'll behaved citizen. Not that they care for politics more, but because they find greater profit in it.
 The pauper laws of the state are much in need of revision; and the tramp laws, largely through the withdrawal of the premium on arrests are rarely en- forced. A bill providing for an unpaid | commission to inquire Into pauperism and vagabondage, their causes and remedies, has been rejected on the un- favorable report of the judiciary com mittee
 The county homes, or most of them, need improving. The number of ideal homes of the kind is few.
 The few charity organization societies in the state seem to be in a condition of fair vigor and are evidently doing an educational work of steady increas- ing magnitude and efficiency. So far as know, only one new one has been or ganized within the past two years.
 The woman's relief corps of the Grand Army of the Republic may per haps merit mention as one of the more earnest and active of our organiz- ed charities.
 The school of sociology begun in Hartford under the care of the Society for Education Extension was commend ed,
 There is not lacking signs that public opinion in the state is becoming more and more intelligently concerned to find some improved treatment of that which appears to be the chief immediate occasion of the greater part of our crime, poverty and deterioration both physical and mental--I mean drunk enness.
 At 10 o'clock the subject, "State Boards of Charities" was taken up and the report of the standing committee on state boards of public charities was read by pr. F. H Wines of Illinois.
 The question "Is a State Board of Control With Full Executive Power Preferable to State Supervisory Board With No Executive Power?" was dis cussed by Clarence Snyder of Wiscon- sin and the Rev. Mir Nutting of Rhode Island in the affirmative and by General Brinkerhoff of Ohio in the negative. The trend of the discussion seemed to be that state boards of control with full executive power were only practicable in small states.
 "The Problems of Child Saving in New York City, was the theme of the opening paper Saturday afternoon, dis cussed by c. Loring Brace, secretary of the Children's Aid society, New York. He said:
 The sociological probl ms of New York are especially complex by reason of the ignorance and helplessness of the great numbers of immigrants from Europe who throng into certain quarters of the city.
 Each ward presents different charac- teristics and different problems, and as the numbers of these people increase the struggle of life becomes more in- tense. The breaking of the home ties with the mother country has a bad mor- al effect. They find the police less strict, the wealth about them far greater, and the boys are learning that it Is possible to live by their wits.
 The public schools do not meet this problem.
 It is not grammar schools, with aris- tocratio courses of study, turning out boys and girls fitted for nothing but shop clerks, that we most need; it Is the kindergarten and the primary school, with good playgrounds around them, that We must have at frequent intervals in the tenement districts, with bodies of intelligent trustees who are in- terested in the individual children. And after this Is done we should have trade schools for the older boys and girls.
 MT. Brace declared that tenement house life under proper conditions is not in itself necessarily degrading. If the regulations of the board of health are energetically enforced, with suff1- cient schools where the children will re- ceive painstaking attention, with read ing rooms and libraries in school base ments for the people in winter and parks for recreation in summer, with playgrounds at every school which the children may use the year round under proper supervision, and with the kindly influence of the churches and benevo- lent societies as at present, the people of the tenements will work out their own redemption. Drunkenness, de- bauchery and vice are diminishing. The people of the tenements, as a rule, are honest and virtuous, and all they need Is fair chance to train their children, a chance to rise.
 H. w. Lewis, agent of the board of children's guardians, Washington, read