I. Those who have already reached the lowest depths, who have given up even the pretense of independence, who are housed in “public institutions,” in poorhouses, prisons, insane asylums. Much may be done for these to render their lives more bearable, to help them to accept the hard lessons of their purgatory, and to learn, before they die, that one lesson which no other experience of life has succeeded in teaching them, the lesson of self-control. This has been recognized by women for years, and they have carried comfort and help, both physical and spiritual, to these unhappy beings. It has not been common, however, for women, until within a few years, to concern themselves with the management of the public institutions themselves, and although Miss Dorothea Dix began very early to devote herself to this work and spent her life in bringing about reforms in the insane asylums of many different States, still it is scarcely twenty years since such work has been generally considered to be within the sphere of women. There are now four States, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Wisconsin, in which women have accepted positions on the State Boards of Charity, and they have in these positions been very useful in bringing their critical and criticising powers and their knowledge of detail to bear upon the management of State and County institutions, besides forcing into prominence the moral aspects of the questions dealt with by the official Boards of which they are members. The first volunteer association established to visit and improve the public institutions (as distinguished from the individual inmates), and the agency which first turned the attention of women generally to their duty in this direction, and convinced men that it was one which women were competent to perform, was the State Charities Aid Association of New York, founded in 1872 by a woman, who, during the war, had discovered and proved the working powers of women in the societies auxiliary to the Sanitary Commission. The Association consists of a central body of men and women, giving much time and thought to the study of the theory and history of all questions relating to the public care of the suffering and dependent, and of an associated committee in each county of the State, engaged in active inspection of the local method of caring for these unfortunates. These County Committees appeal to the central body for advice and instruction as to the best means to overcome the evils they discover, and furnish it with facts and figures to aid its study of general principles.