days the decision of the lawyer as to the merits of his appeal, and what has been done.

The problem of financing the activities of the Association is a source of concern to the board of managers. The General Secretary is impressed most with the fact that if in some way the charitable people of the State could understand more clearly how much work there is to be done, how imperative it is and how much it costs at present to interest non-contributors in the Association, a considerable sum could be saved yearly which now must be expended in letters of appeal. Times are undoubtedly "harder," and not a few contributors in past years write with regret that they cannot continue their contributions, while the work of the Association has expanded and the anxiety of the executive of the Association is carried over to the several clerks in the appeal bureau, who loyally seek to devise methods whereby the interest of the public may be maintained and heightened in prison reform work. The morning mail is interrupted by the office boy, who presents an architect's card. The gentleman has been awarded first place in a competition to build a correctional institution. He calls to ask the Association if it will further cooperate with him. Cooperation in this case involves an extended study of the needs of the proposed institution and the relating of these needs to a comprehensive plan of construction which will embody the latest word in prison architecture. One of the Assistant Secretaries of the Association, who has made a special study of the subject, is sent for and most of the morning is spent by the architect and the Assistant Secretary in the first survey of the situation. The institution is to cost over $1,000,000 and expert advice is needed, which the Association is glad to give.

At this moment a long-distance telephone call comes from a county seat up-State." Another Assistant Secretary is telephoning his whereabouts. He has inspected seven county jails in five days. He has found very serious conditions in such and such a county. He reports that in two counties he has established County Committees who for these respective localities will concern themselves as to the condition of the jail, the development of parole supervision and the furthering of the probation system which has been already inaugurated in the county courts. One of the members of the Committee, a clergyman with a very large congregation in the county

seat, asks if the Association will not send a representative to lecture, with a stereopticon, on prison conditions. The Assistant Secretary inspecting the county jails will be on the road for a week and a half more. His reports will be written as soon as he returns to the office. His recommendations will be gone over by the executive officer of the Association and then his recommendations will be sent to the clerk of the board of supervisors and to the sheriff of the county. The Association has the power of inspection of all correctional institutions in the State.

Continuing now on the morning mail, the General Secretary finds a communication from the Prison Department of the State. "We have frequent letters from men in prison, the letter says in essence, "who believe that they have been unjustly sentenced or who make other requests concerning which legal advice must be had. Is the Prison Association in a position to examine into the requests of these prisoners for justice?" The General Secretary forwards a copy of this letter to the Chairman of the Law Committee of the Barrows League, an affiliated body of voluntary business and professional men, and a few days later is able to inform the Prison Department that we shall be glad to receive and examine such requests and complaints.

At 11 o'clock there is a meeting of the women's auxiliary of one of the large down-town churches. One of the Assistant. Secretaries of the Association addresses them upon the subject of prison reform in 1913. Meanwhile a group of ladies has gathered at the Association in committee meeting to develop plans for a wider and more adequate treatment of women on parole from correctional institutions or discharged from such institutions. In connection with the plans the question is raised whether there should not be a building for the temporary reception of released or discharged women prisoners in which there could also be an employment bureau, and perhaps apartments on the upper floors for social workers.

At 12 o'clock the General Secretary gives one of a series of five lectures to a large class in the School of Philanthropy on the main currents in prison reform. At one o'clock a conference, arranged jointly by the Prison Association and another charitable organization, is held at a near-by club, in connection with lunch, to discuss the choice of one of two sites for the City Reformatory for Misdemeanants. This

Reformatory is to be moved from Hart's Island into the country. Two sites, each with certain advantages, are under consideration. In order to bring as many angles of vision as possible, nearly a dozen specialists from various fields have been asked to confer. There is the Commissioner of Correction of the city, an architect, a superintendent of a reform school, a criminologist, an alienist, a real estate man, and the executives of several charitable organizations interested in the matter. The question is carefully considered and the Commissioner invites the group to make another visit to the two sites before he makes his final decision.

The afternoon at the Association is largely given to conferences. At 2:30 a meeting of the Relief Auxiliary is held. The Relief Agent of the Association reports to a group of some fifteen ladies regarding the treatment of the families in her charge during the month. Particularly difficult problems are presented for discussion. Families are assisted within the limits of the budget which can be allowed or raised. Two particularly meritorious cases of need are assigned for newspaper appeals. The ladies of the Relief Committee in their turn frequently have several committee meetings during the afternoon to attend.

At 3:30 there is a conference of a committee of the Prison Association on legislation to be sought during 1914 at Albany. A State Custodial Asylum for Feebleminded Delinquents must be established at the earliest possible moment. In the prisons and reformatories a large number of mental defectives are clogging the normal progress of those institutions. One of the members of the Committee reads a letter which he has received from the superintendent of a reformatory showing how impossible it is to succeed by reformative measures with certain mental defectives. Nevertheless, they have to be released at the expiration of their sentence if not before. The Association will cooperate with the Prison Commission. in furthering the passage of a bill providing that in place of county jails for convicted prisoners there shall be established State district workhouses.

In this connection one of the board of managers of the Prison Association, an ardent advocate of the farm industrial prison, presents to the board a very interesting and exhaustive correspondence he has had with Sheriff Tracy of Montpelier Vermont, who has developed a more than self-supporting

county jail. An ardent discussion of the restrictions placed by the New York law on the employment of prisoners by private individuals is then held and the question is raised whether in the next constitutional convention the prison labor law may not be amended to provide that prisoners may, under proper restrictions and supervision, work at certain trades for private individuals.

"

Meanwhile the Parole Agent of the Prison Association has been visiting a number of his charges. His field is not even limited by the confines of the greater city. He has to " jump from the Bronx to Brooklyn and then to Queens. As a "friend" of the men he wishes to see, he has visited them where they work. With one exception he has found them. In one case, that of a Swede, he finds that the man has violated his parole in that he has shipped as a sailor and has left the country probably to return to Sweden. The next morning the Parole Agent will transfer to paper his records of the previous day.

Other agents of the Association are at the moment going along the tiers of several of the city prisons. Little letter boxes at the Tombs prison, marked on the outside with the words "Prison Association," have been opened by a prison. visitor and the men in the cells who have written to the Association's Probation Officers are being visited. Many of these young men have the idea that the Prison Association is simply an organization to enable them, as they put it, to beat the case. The Probation Officer, a man of many years' experience, tries to make them understand that the Prison Association will help them; that if they are guilty and plead to the charge they are likely to be more leniently dealt with; that if they are innocent, the Association will do its best to help them in the preparation of their cases.

Over on the "Island," in company with the Commissioner of Correction, the General Secretary of the Association and one of the members of the board of managers is assisting in an investigation of alleged acts of cruelty on the part of a keeper at the Penitentiary. In this connection, the use of the dark cell is being looked into and as a result of the investigation the Prison Association makes a formal representation to the Commissioner of Correction, urging the abolition of the dark cells at the Penitentiary.

The committee meetings, the prison visiting and the investi

gation carry the members of the staff and of the board of managers far beyond the five o'clock hour, which with many people marks the end of the day's work. For the Prison Association, however, since this is Thursday, the work is only partly done, for Thursday evening is " reporting night" at the Association. Some forty or fifty young men on parole to the Elmira Reformatory agents will call this evening. Each will be interviewed and during the next month his statements will be again verified. Some time in the future the necessity of reporting to the Elmira officers at the Prison Association building wil be obviated, it is hoped, by an increase in the number of parole officers, so that there will not be as now, some 300 men on parole to each parole officer.

Those on probation also report, most of them once a week, for several years. Imprisonment has been remitted in their cases on condition that they will help themselves, be industrious, and in many cases make restitution for their crime.

At half-past eight in the evening, because this is the first Thursday in the month, some thirty members of the Barrows League come to their monthly meeting. They are, as has been said above, business and professional men, who are stirred by their feeling that they are to a certain extent stewards of their time and opportunities, and they give of their time or money in many ways. Some are lawyers who take free of charge, or for very small sums, cases of prisoners; there are physicians and alienists in the group who examine without charge men on parole or on probation when necessary. One of the members of the League has made an extended study of the Tombs from the alienist's standpoint. Another member of the Barrows League has for a number of years been an assiduous visitor to the prisons of the State and has influenced the lives of thousands of men. Others in the group are large employers of labor. Several of these employers take month by month a number of men from the prisons and the reformatories, giving them their first start.

On this evening there is to be an address by one of the judges of the Court of General Sessions. Last month the functions of the grand jury were outlined; the month before that a noted prison administrator from another State spoke to the League. Incidentally the League has collected several hundred dollars and from time to time assists in the preparation of an appeal or in meeting other expenses of some case handled by one of the lawyers of the League.