Under these circumstances the only course is to transfer as many classes of prisoners as possible to the care of a larger unit of government that is able economically to segregate. This transfer actually began in some of the older states in the eighteenth century. Massachusetts led the movement by erecting a special prison on Castle Island for the most desperate type of convicts. In 1796, New York began the construction of two state prisons in New York and Albany. In 1816, Ohio built a state penitentiary at Columbus and in 1839, Michigan completed its first state prison at Jackson. Reform institutions in this country began to be established in Massachusetts in 1846 when juvenile offenders were removed from local jails and state prisons. Since then separate institutions for boys and girls have been established in nearly all of the eastern states. New York in 1877 erected the first reformatory to which adult convicts could be committed under an indeterminate sentence. As for the care of the insane, this was the first department of public welfare administration that was taken over by the whole state, beginning with the establishment of the first hospital in Utica, New York, in 1843. From time to time other states have followed New York’s example until nearly every state has one or more hospitals. With the increase in the number of institutions in a given state further segregation and classification of inmates has been possible. State institutions now furnish the means for appropriate education for the mentally defective who formerly were left to shift for themselves in mismanaged county almshouses. The deaf, dumb and blind have been taken care of in similar fashion. Indeed, the function of county poor relief would now seem to approach as its ideal, the complete transfer to the state of all charity functions except possibly a certain amount of temporary “out-door” relief. But even this rather narrow field has been invaded, for, in New England and New York, at least, a class of “state poor” is known to the statutes.