In a later period the standards for the treatment of prisoners have been advanced somewhat more slowly but along the same scientific principle of classification and segregation, but less with reference to psychological and sociological causes or the nature of crime than to the conveniences of administration. But segregation has been prescribed by law in generous measure according to certain crude principles of decency and justice. Thus the New York Prison law provides at least ten classifications, involving separation of men from women, men from boys, persons awaiting trial from those under sentence, civil prisoners and witnesses from criminal prisoners. So much for the modern standards. Against such standards the success or failure of the county as a humanitarian agency must be measured. THE POOR First as to the poor. We can do no better than to recount the performances of certain typical states. Certainly in New York the substantial improvement of this class has come through no strong impulse within the county itself, but rather as the result of the activities of unusually strong volunteer organizations which forced the fact of the evil conditions upon the attention of the officers and the people of the county and upon the state in general. But lest it should be supposed that New York State is a model in this field, let it be recorded that when by more or less of an accident Mr. V. Everit Macy, a real friend of scientific charity, was elected to the office of superintendent of the poor, he found a system more ideally fitted to take care of “the boys” in the “organization” than the poor themselves. In describing the system he said: “The law ingeniously divides responsibility so that the superintendent has no power over the admissions to the almshouse or hospitals or of children to institutions but only the negative power of discharge, while the local committing officials have little control after the adult or child is committed. This often results in setting up an endless chain of commitments and discharges, for, as fast as the superintendent discharges an adult or a child, the local official may recommit. “The superintendent is on a salary but practically all the overseers are paid on a _per diem_ basis, and the justices of the peace are paid a fee for each commitment. If an Overseer issues an order for groceries or signs a commitment, he can collect his two dollars for a day’s work. “Could ingenuity devise a more absurd and wasteful method of relieving suffering or one where responsibility and control could be more disastrously divided to the injury of the taxpayer and the poor?”[5]