The presiding officer at the evening session, Mr. Hallam F. Coates, member of the Board of Managers, Ohio State Reformatory, and President of the Association of Governing Boards of Penal, Reformatory and Preventive Institutions, introduced Mr. H. Grotophorst, of Wisconsin, who addressed the meeting on “State Boards of Control,” and claimed many advantages for these as compared with the ordinary boards of public charities. In Wisconsin such a board, consisting of five members (one of them a woman), is charged with the maintenance and government of all the reformatory, charitable and penal institutions established or supported by the State. This board holds in trust all the property and money conveyed or bequeathed to the different institutions; appoints the superintendents, wardens, physicians, etc.; discharges these for cause; directs how the books and accounts of all the institutions shall be kept; formulates the rules for their government; supervises the purchase of all supplies; makes all contracts; locates new institutions; and has the power of parole and of transfer from one institution to another. The speaker claimed the following advantages for such central control, to wit, constant visitation of the institutions; proper coördination between them; the elimination of controversies to which separate boards often give rise; uniformity in rules, salaries and methods of administration; freedom from politics; and above all far greater economy in expenditures. In his paper on “Prison Management,” Mr. John C. Easley, member of the Board of Directors of the Virginia State Penitentiary, said in part: “There has been an increase of about one hundred per cent. in the proportion of colored felons in Virginia since 1870. There are nine times as many felonies committed among one thousand blacks as among one thousand whites. In 1880 we found one white felon for every thirty-nine hundred and thirty-two of white population, and notwithstanding the more rapid growth in our urban communities, where the percentage of crime is always greater, and notwithstanding a very considerable influx of foreign population, we found in 1900, when the last census was taken, that the proportion of felons among the whites had been reduced to one in every forty-eight hundred and forty-nine, thus demonstrating that with our present system of public education the percentage of crime among the whites has decreased. Whatever the reason for the increase in negro crime, whether our system of negro education is faulty, whether the negro lacks moral tone, whether his political diet is too strong, whether we are trying to fix the keystone in place while the arch lacks foundation, the situation must be met, and coming consequences must be provided for and against.