The thirty-year clause of the act of 1909 was designed to protect society against the professional criminal. It is another absurdity of our criminal procedure that we release such periodically to renew their depredations on society. A dangerously insane person we put away until he is cured; and if he is never cured he is never released. We guard society against the contagion of certain virulent diseases. But when the habitual criminal has every now and then squared himself with the State by serving a term in the penitentiary, we again give him his freedom, though he may have hatched out another plot even before he leaves his place of confinement. Some other States have grown wiser. New York and Indiana sentence the habitual criminal for life on a third or fourth conviction; Connecticut to thirty years on a third conviction; but in Pennsylvania a thirty-year sentence, with a minimum not exceeding seven years and a half, seems to have been considered too drastic. Better let society suffer than the criminal! In amending the law of 1909, which, under its intelligent administration for two years was yielding most happy results, Pennsylvania has clearly been compelled to take a backward step. There was no public demand for a change; those charged with the administration of the law did not desire a change, but opposed it; and there is ample ground for the belief that the change was inspired by reasons of a purely private and personal character. Nor is the last Legislature to be commended for what it failed to do. In his report of November 10, 1909, Mr. Bromley Wharton, General Agent and Secretary of the Board of Public Charities, called attention to the needs of the county jails in these words: “This is a matter which has received serious attention at the hands of your Board. The prevailing system of government of the county jails is, in many respects, unsatisfactory. In most of the counties the jails are in charge of the sheriff, who, as a rule, knows little or nothing of hygiene or sanitation. Few jails have yards for exercise, or workshops, which results in the prisoners loafing in the corridors, smoking and playing cards. The filthy and unsanitary condition of some of the jails causes the long-term prisoners to welcome their transfer to the penitentiary.”