“I realize that these measures are the extreme and radically opposite to the customary prison methods; and it may be necessary to proceed cautiously in following them. But they have proved effective, and they promise the only hope of betterment that I know of. We can begin to work toward them by gradually abolishing our city prisons, with their dark, cheerless interiors, and building our future houses of correction out in the country, where the sun and wind can get in and where all the men who do not forfeit such right can work in the open fields. There’s nothing dangerously radical in that!” Professor Kirchwey, of the Columbia university faculty, spoke of the new sense of oneness in society as it is related to the problem of crime. “We can no longer think of society as arrayed against a group of its so-called enemies,” he said. “The criminal is a part of society. The motive power that must drive our reforms is not mere humanitarianism nor sentimentality, but a passion for society as a whole--a realization that society falls short of its oneness, its wholeness, so long as one of its little ones shrivels in the fire.” He spoke of the institute’s work as a three-fold work: first, to reform criminal judicial procedure; second, to administer remedial measures; and, third, to study conditions, hereditary and environmental, with a view to determining the causes of crime. The third is the most important, he thought, because it is aiming to prevent crime. “It is,” he said, “a field of sanitation, of preventive medicine, of anticipating and preventing the social cancer of crime. “The state has not been ashamed to avow itself the guardian of the delinquent child. May the time come when it sees there is no distinction of age in all its erring children. Why limit the guardianship of the state to the delinquent or dependent child? It’s impossible to draw the line between the delinquent child and the child not delinquent. They are all entitled to the care and guardianship of society of which they are a part. Society as a whole is responsible for all its members.” The growing amount of crime among women was discussed. One-seventh of the number of women committed to prison are old offenders. The growing activity of women in industry was declared by President MacChesney to be responsible for a surprising increase in crime. “In Massachusetts crime among women is much more an economic than a moral problem,” said Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly. “The overwhelming majority of women in industry are low wage earners, often victims of seasonal trades with their alternate periods of over-work and semi-starvation. “These young and unsettled workers, many of them homeless and suffering from malnutrition, are ignorant of business customs. Working at machines and trades that are soon learned, they are entirely at the mercy of their employers.