Comparison of appropriations received in 1900, asked for and recom- mended for 1902-03 Insurance premiums and Architects' fees.. Heating and lighting.. Comparative statement of population, expenditures, officers, averages and per capita.... Maintenance expenditures Expenditures per capita of inmates. classed INTRODUCTION. To the Members of the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: In compliance with an act passed by the Sixty-first General Assembly of the State, approved January 16, 1899, the committee appointed by the Governor under the provisions of said act submits herewith its report, as follows: The committee realizes that the value of its report depends upon the thoroughness of its investigation, the care and completeness of its report and the wisdom of its conclusions. It realizes the difficulty of making a report that will convey sufficient information to the Legislature without being too voluminous. That some institutions seem to be more economically and systematically managed than others is not to be questioned. That mistakes have been made in the past and are likely to be made in the future in every institution, is but a natural conclusion. It is the purpose of the committee, however, to avoid either harsh criticism of any institution or unnecessary praise. With the earnest endeavor to do justice to all institutions it has been the purpose of the committee to determine what are the absolute needs, and to discriminate between needs which are most pressing and those worthy of consideration, but for which there is no urgent demand for immediate provision. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. These institutions-Purdue University, Indiana University, the State Normal School, the Institution for the Education of the Blind, and the Institution for the Education of the Deaf-are graduating more than two hundred students annually, and educating in higher branches of learning and in special departments of training about 4,000 students. There is invested in real and personal property at these institutions $2,267,000, not all of which, (5) however, has come from the State, for as will be found elsewhere in this report, many liberal endowments have been received from other sources. These institutions rank with the best institutions of learning in the United States and are under the management of some of the ablest men in the nation. BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS. The seven institutions in this class are caring for 5,796 dependents of the State, of which 4,512 are insane or feeble-minded, the remaining 1,284 being about equally divided between the Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home. It is evident that with the increasing number of this class of persons, the capacity of these institutions must be increased. There are now in jails and poor asylums of the State 1,431 unfortunates who ought to be within these institutions. The State has invested in these benevolent institutions in real and personal property $4,845,006.78. The good accomplished by them with the money thus invested can not be estimated. Some of these institutions are more crowded than others, and the committee believes that some arrangement should be made by which patients may be transferred from a crowded hospital to one less crowded, or admitted from a district in which the hospital is crowded to a less crowded hospital in another district. CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS. These consist of the State Prison, State Reformatory, Reform School for Boys, and Industrial School for Girls and Woman's Prison. The number of persons in charge of these institutions is 2,553. The total value of property, real and personal, is $1,596,671.91. The reformatory idea was introduced into these institutions but a few years ago and has accomplished most satisfactory results. It is the opinion of the committee that the theory of reform has been carried further and with better results in the Prison and Reformatory than in the Reform School for Boys or Industrial School for Girls and Woman's Prison. The committee believes that there is a more productive field in the last two institutions for the introduction of the reform idea than in the first two. It is believed that more satisfactory results could be obtained in the Indus trial School for Girls and Woman's Prison if the inmates of the Industrial School were so separated from those of the Woman's Prison as to remove the influence of the latter class from the former. While these institutions should be separated, they might still remain close enough together to continue under the same management. The committee desires to commend in general the management of the institutions visited, believing that Indiana now has the services of a number of the ablest men in this country at the heads of many of these institutions. |