404 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 27,

structed with special reference to the needs and requirements
of the insane; modern improvements in heating, lighting
and ventilators have been introduced, although the expenses
incurred in the construction of the heating apparatus and in
operating the same seems to your Committee to have been
extraordinarily large, and every convenience approved by
experience has been employed for the security and sanitary
advantages of its inmates.

The officers, from the President down to attendants, seem
to have been selected with due regard to those traits of char-
acter that ensure firm but kindly treatment of the insane,
and your Committee were pleased to find none of those evi-
dences of brutal treatment which are said to be the approbia-
of many of the so-called asylums.

The capacity of the institution is sufficient to accommodate
two hundred and fifty patients comfortably, and by crowding,
three hundred might be taken care of within its walls, at
present its patients number one hundred and sixty, about one-
third of whom are pay patients and the rest supported by the
counties.

The institution is in debt for the completion and furnishing
of the building, to the amount of fifty-three thousand one
hundred and fifty-three dollars and eight cents, and ask an
appropriation to cover this amount. At present it relies upon
its pay patients as a chief resource for the payment of its ex-
penses, but its visitors suggest that it would be more equita-
ble to conduct it as a purely charitable institution, and to
divide the whole annual cost of conducting the establishment
by the number of patients it will accommodate, and having
thus ascertained the cost per patient, to allow each county to
end as many as its proportion of a general tax would at
that rate pay for,

The Committee have also visited five other charitable in-
stitutions, and beg leave to report as follows in reference to
them.

1. The Baltimore Manuel Labor School is located one mile
from the Spring Grove Hospital, and is devoted to the care
and education of indigent boys who have lost one or both
parents, or whose parents are of such character and habits
as justify the removal of their children from their influence.
These boys are instructed, in addition to the usual elementary
branches of an English education, also in the arts of hus-
bandry and gardening, and, at a suitable age, are bound out
to either farmers or mechanics. Some sixty-three bright,
active, healthy boys are now in the institution, subject to
such daily instructions from the Superintendent and Teachers
as they may respectively need. The school has the appear-
ance of a large family, and seems to have been quite success-