484 TWENTY-SECOND NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES

TWELFTH SESSION.

Thursday morning, May 30.

The morning session was called to order at ten o'clock by the President, in the Alumni Hall. Prayer was offered by Rev. Justin E. Twitchell, D.D., of New Haven.

The Reports from States were continued, Alabama, Utah, Wisconsin, Ontario.

Mr. F. H. WINES.- There are several items of business that should be attended to. I move that the Executive Committee be allowed to file a list of Corresponding Secretaries with the editor.

Voted.

Mr. WINES. I move that Mr. Luther P. Ludden be added to the list of Secretaries.

Voted.

Mr. WINES. -I wish to offer a resolution with reference to the death of Hon. George S. Robinson. I do not wish to make any speech, though Mr. Robinson was a warm personal friend of mine many years ago. His service with relation to this Conference makes it an imperative duty, a duty which I perform with pleasure, to honor his memory here; and, that we may place upon our records a testimonial of respect, I move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas the National Conference of Charities and Correction has been informed of the death of the Hon. George S. Robinson, of Illinois, formerly president of the Illinois State Board of Public Charities, and the first President of this Conference at its session in Chicago in 1879, therefore,—

Resolved, That we hereby place upon permanent record our appreciation of the admirable personal qualities of our deceased friend, especially of his integrity and kindness, and of the service which he rendered to this body in its original organization.

Resolved, That, as a mark of our appreciation and of our sympathy with his widow in her affliction, the General Secretary be, and hereby is, directed to send to her a copy of these resolutions.

Mr. F. B. SANBORN, Massachusetts. Those of us who remember the early days of this Conference, when we were not overcrowded with attendance on our meetings, will recollect the excellent qualities of Mr. Robinson. His character, his presence, and his whole conduct with respect to the Conference, as well as his management of other interests placed in his hands by the State of Illinois, entitle

him to all that has been said in the resolution offered by Mr. Wines. I wish to bear this testimony concerning an old and valued friend.

The resolution was then unanimously adopted.

Mr. A. O. Wright read the following tribute to Hon. H. H. Giles, and asked that it be spread upon the records, which was unanimously granted :

The founders of the Conference are passing away. The latest of our honored dead is Hon. H. H. Giles, of Wisconsin, who died May 10, 1895, at his home in Madison, Wis., after an illness of about two months, aged seventy-five years.

Mr. Giles was a native of North New Salem, Mass. Early in life he had experiences in connection with the Canadian rebellion - which he aided, like so many American citizens—and as an itinerant lecturer on electricity. After he settled in Wisconsin, he was conspicuous as a temperance worker. He was elected to the State Senate, and was an active political leader, though often independent of party ties.

But his best work was in connection with public charities. When the first State hospital for the insane was established in 1860, he was appointed a trustee, and remained such till he was appointed a member of the State Board of Charities and Reform by Governor Fairchild, when that board was organized in 1870. He was the first president of that Board, and continued a member till it was abolished in 1891, a period of twenty-one years. During that time he shared in all the varied and beneficent activities of that Board, and especially in the great improvements secured by them in the management of jails and poorhouses, and in the radical change in the method of caring for the chronic insane which was created and carried out by the Wisconsin State Board of Charities and Reform.

On the Board his counsels were usually wise, and in the field his actions as inspector were always characterized by courage and common sense. He took a leading part in several public investigations conducted by the Board. He helped to shape legislation on most of the subjects in which the Board was interested. But a great deal of the best work done by him, as well as by his colleagues, has never been made a matter of record, consisting, as it did, of fruitful conversations with officers of institutions leading to improvements, for which the officers were al lowed to have the credit. Some most delicate investigations required to break rooted abuses and to purify institutions of gross evils were carried out by almost single-handed, which were never published in our reports or in the papers for reason of public policy. At the end of this period of twenty-one of the work of the State Board of Charities and Reform the public institutions Wisconsin, both State and local, had been greatly improved by new metho higher ideals. For this work Mr. Giles deserved his full share of credi rest of the Board.

He was one of the founders of the National Conference of Chari rection, which began with a meeting of the State Boards of Wisco. and Michigan. He attended nearly every Conference from the first, an active part in them, serving frequently on committees and contributi

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Mr. Giles's gigantic and remarkable figure rose to its full height, and, addressing the chair, he said, Mr. President, that doesn't interest us: it doesn't interest me," and he sat down. Mr. Sanborn, who was sitting next to me, leaned over, and whispered, "What a handy man Mr. Giles is to have round!"

But it is not to his personal qualities that I would refer. We all respected and admired and loved him. I wish to call attention again to the fact that to Mr. Giles and to Mr. Elmore more than to any two other men in the United States the existence of this Conference is due. The first time I ever met Mr. Giles was in Wisconsin. The State commissioners for public charities had invited the State commissioners from Illinois to come to Milwaukee to make a tour with them of the State charitable and correctional institutions of Wisconsin. We spent several days in their society; and we derived so much benefit from intercourse and acquaintance and sympathy on that occasion that the State commissioners of Illinois returned the invitation, and requested the State commissioners from Wisconsin to make a tour of the institutions in Illinois. We met in Chicago, and that was the historical origin of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The Social Science Association afterward invited the State Boards to meet with them; and for a number of years we did meet with them at Saratoga and New York, until, finally, this Conference had grown so large so much larger than the Social Science Association that, as Mr. Elmore said, it was time that the tail should cease wagging the dog, and proposed that we should form an association of our own, and in 1879 we met in Chicago for the first time separately, and Mr. George S. Robinson whom we have just honored presided. It was there that the National Conference as a separate organization was born. Here to-day

we have honored the two men who presided over the origin of the Conference of Charities and Correction.

Mr. Sanborn reminded the Conference that since the last session Dr. D. Hack Tuke, of England, a man eminent in some of the special subjects to which the Conference is devoted, had also died.

The report of the Committee on Immigration and Interstate Migration was taken up; and the report of the chairman, Dr. C. S. Hoyt, was read (page 245)

A paper on "Interstate Migration was read by Mr. H. H. Hart (page 248).

DISCUSSION ON IMMIGRATION.

Mr. HARVEY J. HOLLISTER, Michigan. In travelling throu England a few years ago, I found organized societies for the purpos of facilitating emigration from the congested districts in Ireland; and

it was not so much a question of the character of the emigrants as a desire to get rid of them that actuated them. To go still further, in the little republic of Switzerland that we admire as doing so much to lift up men, I found this fact to be established: that a systematic effort and concentration of effort was being made to deliver that little country from all men and women who were unable to take care of themselves, and their passage was paid to America for that purpose. It does seem as though that which has been suggested by our chairman should be the rule adopted by this country through its agents and consuls abroad in regard to this matter. We certainly cannot take in this army of imbecile and dependent people, and take care of them in connection with our own and do justice to all. We must surely look after our own household first.

Mr. SANBORN. If Mr. Hart had gone into the matter, he would have ascertained that the persons who make what we call interstate migrations are at least fifty per cent., and probably seventy-five per cent., recent immigrants. The recent immigrant is more likely to perform this feat of going from State to State than the native of the country. This is true not only of those who deceive the vigilance at the seaport, but of a considerable number who have honestly sought and found work in some part of the country, and have been afterward deprived of it; and, with that ignorance and sanguine temperament which belong to so many of those immigrants, without much knowledge of where they are going to bring up, they pass on to the next State or city. The appeal to the national government to pass laws on this subject should be based, in part, upon the fact that the national government has now undertaken to regulate immigration in all its departments. Whenever the national bureau of immigration undertakes to investigate this subject, it will find that the evils do not disclose themselves at the port of debarkation. They are to be found as immigration distributes itself over the country. I think the national government will be called upon to meet this difficulty through laws. I cannot think of any process which will be in the least degree effective as legislation unless the national government takes it up. As to Dr. Hoyt's paper, I differ with him on some points. I differ also with persons in my own part of the country who are now pushing the subject of restricting immigration. You can restrict the tendency of water to run down hill and you can build a wall as high as the tower of Babel, but the nature of hydrodynamics will carry the water to its proper level. You may restrict, but you can no more prevent the entrance into this country, so long as it remains industrially attractive, of large numbers of persons, than you can prevent the Connecticut River from running into the Sound. What you can do is to take advantage of these ebbs and flows of public sentiment, and then adopt practical measures like that which Dr. Hoyt has suggested, of consular inspection. You can do more. The evils are derived largely from the failure of our