A Swiss example of a virtual Forced Labour Colony carried on as a part of the machinery of the Poor Law is the Kühlewyl Poorhouse belonging to the municipality of Berne. This institution was created some eighteen years ago for the reception of several distinct classes of inmates (to the exclusion of children), and principally for (1) persons permanently unable to work and support themselves, and having no means of subsistence, and (2) persons either altogether or partially unable to maintain themselves whose lodgment in such an institution seemed "justifiable in the public interest." The latter phrase is a significant one. What it implies will be best understood from a passage in a report addressed to the Municipal Council Committee, which, under the guidance of the mayor of the day, formulated the scheme. "We regard it," they said, "as of the greatest importance that there be established for Berne a Poorhouse in which all such adult poor may be lodged to whom this mode of maintenance is suited. They include, not only a large number of the infirm and incapable, but particularly all the good-for-nothings and depraved people who become a burden on public charity, whose conduct is a cause of annoyance, and who cannot be improved except by systematic discipline, by work, wholesome food and regular life." In fact, one great object was to clear the streets of Berne of the lazy and immoral of both sexes--people who could not, in a democratic country, be arbitrarily packed off to a prison, yet who were rightly regarded as social pests. The first of these two classes certainly far outweighs the second, but the second is by no means a small one. To this extent the Poorhouse has much in common with the Cantonal Labour Houses already referred to. The number of persons who entered or passed through the Poorhouse during the year 1908 was as follows:-- ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +----------+----------+---------- Detained on January 1 | 202 | 152 | 354 | | | Admitted during the year | 54 | 24 | 78 | | | Discharged during the year | 36 | 26 | 62 | | | Detained on December 31 | 220 | 150 | 370 ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- Of those admitted during the year, seven were sent because of feeble-mindedness, twenty-two because of bad behaviour, seven because of unemployment, twenty-nine because of age and sickness, and thirteen were convalescents needing care in the country.