we will have. Why should women be returned time after time for drunkenness and for other dreadful causes? Why? Just because there is no woman's reformatory. Women can be reformed as well as men and should be.

Commodore A. V. Wadhams, New York-I am a member of the Board of Parole of the State of New York, and consequently have some knowledge of the work that is being done at Auburn Prison, to which Mrs. Booth has so gracefully referred. It is not necessary for me to say anything more than that Mrs. Welshe is working along the line we have heard with regard to outdoor employment. As you may know, an act has been passed by the New York legislature for the purchase of a 250-acre farm especially for women. Several sites are under consideration. We want especially to cultivate vegetables and small fruits. I am sure I express the sentiment of all present when I say we are fortunate in the State of New York in having a woman thoroughly prepared for the work of superintending such a farm. We hope to do much good for the women prisoners.

Timothy Nicholson, Indiana-The first woman's prison in the United States managed entirely by women was created about thirty-five years ago (1873) at Indianapolis, Indiana. It was located in the city limits, with a few acres of ground. In connection with it was a school for girls, and it was called then the Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls. Outdoor work was furnished both the women and the girls on their respective grounds. After a great many years of struggle the girls were moved in July, 1907, to a tract of 12712 acres of ground in the country. The superintendent, Miss Charlotte Dye, is here, and I hope she will tell us something about the work.

F. G. Pettigrove, Masachusetts-It is a matter of no consequence to this subject. but the truth of history compels me to say that we have always believed that the first woman's prison to be controlled and officered by women was the reformatory prison for women at Sherborn, over which Mrs. Morton now presides. I want to say further that the method in Massachusetts, we believe, has been very successful in dealing with the women

prisoners. When the reformatory prison for women was created, of every 100 prisoners in Massachusetts, about twenty were women. Last year of every 100 prisoners committed to the prisons in that state, only nine were women. In the general progress of civilization women have advanced more rapidly than men, and they are not as incorrigible as men. In a word, the women are better than the men, and so we do not get as many into prison, but we think that the instrumentalities that are used in the reformatory for women have been very helpful; and in its purpose, in its methods it has never been better than under the present administration of Mrs. Morton.

Mr. Nicholson-Are not some of the managers of the board men?

Mr. Pettigrove--At first, in 1877, there was an advisory board of the prison consisting wholly of women. Two years after that the prison was brought under the authority of a new board of prison commissioners which consisted of three men and two

women.

Mr. Nicholson-Our prison antedates that some.

Miss Charlotte Dye, Indiana-What has been done the present year at the Indiana Girls' School has been in rather an unscientific way. All of us were somewhat inexperienced. We had a farmer for a gardener. We have an old, run-down farm. Twenty acres of this was sown in wheat and we gathered about twothirds of a crop. We had some twenty or twenty-five acres in truck garden, and in spite of the long drought we gathered produce to the amount of $1,200, as many muskmelons and watermelons as the girls cared to eat, and all the vegetables necessary to supply our tables throughout the summer season, with some for winter use. We also raised about 1,465 pounds of navy beans for winter use.. Next year if Providence favors us with good weather and if the legislature will add to our small farm a few acres of good ground we expect to raise enough vegetables to provide ourselves throughout the whole year. There never was found in the State of Indiana a happier set of girls than those on the farm at the Girls' School. They simply clamor for a

chance to clean the yards, hoe potatoes, pick potato bugs and do the things that many girls do not like to do, and we know it is making better girls of them. They come to us pale and sickly looking, and now you will not find a more rugged, healthy set of girls than in our school. They are not bad. They are unfortunate. There is a chance to save nearly every one of them and we are doing a great deal for them by this outdoor life.

Mrs. Ophelia L. Amigh, Illinois-I have now more than seven hundred girls under my care. The State Training School for Girls is the name of our institution. We believe in outdoor work, and work generally all the way through. The girls are obliged to take a regular training along all domestic lines. We have a farm of about two hundred and forty acres, and raise all the vegetables we use with the exception of potatoes. We had one cabbage patch this year containing nine thousand heads. Our girls take care of all the garden. We have a woman gardener; the men plow the ground and then the woman takes the girls out, and with their help makes the garden and looks after them altogether. They also take care of all the lawns, which is not a small job when I tell you that we have eleven cottages besides the main building. These cottages are situated eighty feet apart, and each one has a pretty good plat of ground in the way of a lawn. The girls also husk all the corn. We have plenty of outdoor work for our girls, as Miss Dye said about the girls in her school. (By the way, Miss Dye was principal of our school of letters for three years, and I think she has imbibed something from us.) The girls come to us in a very anaemic condition and apparently unable to do anything, but they soon regain health and strength and become more capable along all lines. It has always been a mystery to me, having been brought up on a farm myself and taught to do many things learned only there, why more women do not take this up, for health's sake if for nothing else, even if not obliged to work. We are now building a greenhouse, and we expect to make that quite a feature of the training and put our girls on this kind of work when they leave us. We find a good many men who are running a business of this kind would very

gladly employ girls if they could get them. I would recommend this as one of the industries that it would be right and well for girls to follow when they leave the institution. Many of them do not like to do housework, and I believe many girls who are sent to schools of this kind do not, as a rule, like to sew. Almost any active employment is better for them physically and mentally. We believe that they should learn to sew, and we have them learn. They make their plain garments and all the clothing they wear in the institution, but when they go out to direct their own lives I believe they will take to active work more easily than to sedentary employment. We are constantly learning new things in regard to this work.

I wonder how many of the wardens or those here in charge of inmates that have been sent to them through the courts find a large percentage of really normal persons, either mentally or physically, among them. I find but a small number of normal girls among those in our school. I also find they can learn to do things better with their hands. They are more capable of that than of the higher education. We have exceptions of course, but I am talking now about degenerates. I shall continue our plan of outdoor employment, and if you hear of our building roads and laying cement walks we shall only be following in the steps of Dr. Davis, of Bedford, N. Y.

Mrs. William L. Guillaudeu, New York-I am heartily glad that those who preside over this Congress have given the women a session. There are many women over all this broad land who are working heart and soul for this cause, and it is pleasant and encouraging to have this recognition of their service. I regret that so few women's prison associations are represented here. I myself come from one of the oldest organizations in the country, the Women's Prison Association of New York City. We are a band of twenty-five women and our president, or "first director," as we term it, is Mrs. William Emerson, Jr., daughter of one of the founders, Mrs. Abby H. Gibbons. We have in our employ a prison visitor, Miss Alice Woodbridge, who each month regularly visits the jails, prisons, workhouses and police courts

of Greater New York and reports their condition to us. Upon this information we act, and are constantly instituting reforms and changes through the proper authorities.

This association was organized in 1844 by some of New York's early philanthropists. We have, therefore, just celebrated our 64th anniversary. We were among the very first to take steps toward the amelioration of the sufferings of women prisoners. By the careful, conservative management of our receipts and disbursements we have been practically self-supporting all these years, and have been obliged to call upon the public for financial aid only at rare intervals. That is why we have not been more in the public eye. But many great things have been accomplished in this quiet way. To us belongs the introduction of matrons into the police courts and the enactment of laws regulating child labor. Through our efforts patrol wagons were brought into the city of New York, the women having been dragged through the streets by policemen up to that time. We had a law enacted making police matrons members of the uniformed force of greater New York, thus securing to them the privileges of a pension fund, to which they had subscribed regularly without advantage to them.

We secured the enactment of a law providing that children born in the State Prison, or taken there during infancy, should at the age of two years be placed in the care of relatives or removed to institutions where they would receive education and industrial training.

An outgrowth of this association, also, is the Bedford Reformatory for Women, at Bedford, N. Y., about two hours from the city. This reformatory is for women and girls between the ages of sixteen and thirty years. Its term of incarceration is three years, and it is presided over by that resourceful woman, Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, so admirably equipped for this position, morally, mentally, physically and spiritually. "Bedford" was conceived in the mind of one of the first presidents of our Women's Prison Association, Mrs. Abby H. Gibbons, and brought into being through her unremitting efforts, coupled with those of our Association. The benefits of outdoor employment