NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 2 7 1
departments are well equipped. New York is the only large American city that has done anything toward the expropriation of crowded and unsanitary districts for park purposes, and that only since 1895. For many years European cities have turned their attention in the direction of making parks, playgrounds, and other breathing spaces where they ar* most needed. This is especially true of the large cities of Great Britain — London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Dundee. Nothing has been done by public authorities in American cities in the way of encouraging model tenement enterprises, except negatively by the enactment of sanitary and building regulations. In England the public authorities have gone much farther. In the United States no steps have been taken to erect municipal tenements. On the other hand, in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, and Huddersfield dwelling houses have been con- structed and are being managed by the municipal corporations. " While in exceptional instances municipalities may be justified in providing healthy homes for the poorer working classes, the great work of furnishing homes for these people devolves upon commercial and philanthropic enterprises. Philanthropy has done much in European cities toward accomplishing this end, but it alone can do but a very small proportion of the work needed in all large cities. The great problem with respect to model tenement houses is how to secure the investment of capital on a paying basis in such enterprises." During the last twenty years large tenement enterprises have been successfully organized and operated in many cities in America, Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and Sweden. Some of these institutions are organized on a purely commercial basis and distribute all their net earnings as dividends to the share- holders. Others are semi-philanthropic, the dividends being limited usually to 4 or 5 per cent, of the actual invested capital, and the balance of the net income being devoted to improvements, extension, etc. Still others are purely philanthropic, the entire profits being applied to the extension of the enterprise. In a few German cities working people have created cooperative building funds for the construction of model tenements, shareholders being, as a rule, the occupants. The success of a model tenement enterprise is dependent upon the efficiency of the management and upon its adaptation to the requirements of desired tenements in respect to location, privacy, health, safety, and comfort. While such enterprises do not usuallv realize immense profits to the investors, it has been established beyond a doubt, both in America and in Europe, that they insure a safe and fair return on the money invested. — G. A. Weber, Municipal Affairs, December, 1 897.
Prison Reform, (i) Prisons and prisoners; (2) our female criminals; (3) juvenile reformatories in France.
( l) Prisons and Prisoners, by W. D. Morrison. — The author's experience supports the conclusion of Lord Kimberley's Convict Prison Commission of 1879, and of Mr. Herbert Gladstone's commission of 1894, viz., that, owing to the conditions of English prison life, " imprisonment not only fails to reform offenders, but, in the case of the less hardened criminals, especially first offenders, it produces a deteriorating effect." The first and most pernicious result of this deteriorating process is that it turns the casual offender into a habitual criminal. Imprisonment as now exercised does not protect society, but breeds worse criminals to prey upon society. Of the 18,000 prisoners at present in the prisons of England and Wales, more than one-half will return again after liberation. Mr. Gladstone's report ascribes the failure of the prisons in reforming their occupants to the excessive centralization. Among the good features of the bill now before Parliament may be mentioned the granting of the right to a prisoner unable to pay a fine of paying so much of the fine as possible and shortening the sentence proportionately ; also the right of a prisoner sentenced for more than nine months to work out one-fourth of the time gives hope in place of degeneracy. The bill's defects are the failure to make the inspectorships independent of prison com- mission and the keeping secret of the "special rules," resulting in a nullification of the "general rules" for prison management. Provision is needed to prevent the punishments of food deprival and close cells for those likely to be mentally affected.
2. Our Female Prisoners, by Eliza Orme. — The whole system of prison adminis- tration, so far as it affects female prisoners, requires overhauling. The inebriate should be separated from others and be kept in healthy districts, under care of a
