fully refer to the accompanying statement of the Treasurer, by which
it will be seen, that for the year ending will; the thirty-first day
of December last, the receipts were twenty-seven thousand, seven
hundred and ninety nine dollars and forty-four cents, ($27,799
44) while the disbursments were twenty-three thousand, two hun-
dred and seventy-three dollars and twenty cents, ($23,273 20)
thus leaving a balance of four thousand, jive hundred and twenty-
six dollars and twenty-four cents, ($4,526 24) with which to
commence the operations of the current year.

If from the sum of expenditures be deducted the amount
chargeable only to permanent improvements, say, $3,851 80, the
actual cost of support was $19,421 40, which with an average,
as before stated, of 181 inmates, makes the cost of each at
29 39.100 cents per day, for which sum the child is fed, clothed,
educated and kept under constant healthful moral restraint by
proper supervisors.

The balance on hand, as above, and about an equal amount of
other immediately available resources constitute our only present
fund for support, and this in all probability will be exhausted by
the first of April, leaving for the expenditures of the remainder
of the year only the quarterly instalments ($2,500 each) of the
State's appropriations. With the data just given as to the cost of
maintenance, it will be seen by a very easy calculation how far
this will fall short of our absolute necessities. The Board feel
very sensibly that all this is anything but encouraging, but at the
same time they trust that the statement of the fact will in itself
prove a convincing argument in securing the desired relief.

As a matter of acknowledged importance, and indeed, of ne-
cessity, it will be the earnest endeavor of the Board to lessen
materially the cost of support. What they have had to en-
counter heretofore with this view is, however, only what has been
the experience of all similar institutions in the commencement of
their operations. Every year will give more light in matters of
administrative economy. With increasing practical knowledge
and the constant study to bring down the expenditures to a point
which judicious frugality may safely indicate—with reference al-
ways to the health and true wants of the inmates—we have no
doubt that in due time the cost per head will be brought to as
low a sum as that secured by any other House of Refuge in this
country. As an earnest of this, the Board have the satisfaction
of pointing to the fact that with an increased number of in-
mates, the expenditures of 1857 were less than those of 1856,
and even a more striking decrease would have been manifest but
for the largely enhanced price of provisions during the whole of
the past year, especially of flour, meats and potatoes, the staple
articles of house diet, to say nothing of sugar, molasses, and al-
most every other article of consumption.

It can never be expected that the labor of the inmates of a

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