Until the county jails are taken over by the state, Governor Foss thinks they ought to be improved. Accordingly he is in favor of a bill now before the legislature providing for prison schools. This measure permits the prison commissioners to maintain, in not more than five houses of correction, schools for the mental and manual instruction of prisoners. The state board of education is directed to devise plans for the organization and administration of these schools and to maintain supervision over them. The teachers and instructors are to be appointed by the prison commissioners from civil service lists. It is declared by many persons engaged in prison administration that this apparent division of responsibility between the State Board of Education and the prison commissioners is disadvantageous to the best administration of prison schools. It is said that while there ought to be close co-operation between the educational and prison authorities the actual supervision of the schools should be in the hands of the latter. NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCES TO PROMOTE RURAL PROGRESS Conferences devoted to various aspects of rural community life were held in Boston during the first week in March. Perhaps the most important was that which drew together professors from the state colleges, representatives from the state boards of agriculture, directors of the experiment stations and men in charge of extension work, delegates of the state granges, and scores of farmers throughout New England interested in the promotion of agriculture. This was the fifth annual New England Conference on Rural Progress. As an earnest of its purpose to do actual constructive work along some of the lines of rural betterment it has heretofore talked about, it changed its name to the New England Federation for Rural Progress. To further this purpose, the association enlarged its executive committee and created a working advisory council to include representatives from each of the New England states. The new constitution also provides for three classes of membership: first, state federations and state organizations; second, local, district and county organizations; third, individuals. Some of the more important discussions were by H. W. Tinkham of the Rhode Island State Grange, urging the establishment of municipal markets; C. E. Embree, general manager of the Farmers’ Union of Maine, describing its plan to establish consumers’ stores in New York and other large cities; Leonard G. Robinson of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, telling of credit to the sum of $1,500,000 given by the society to over 2,500 farmers in twenty-eight states; and Kenyon L. Butterfield, president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, setting forth the program to which the organization should hold: