inherited institutions
of a more ignorant and indifferent time. The first woman to serve on
the State Board of Charities in New York, Josephine Shaw Lowell, whose
motherhood in the family and the state knew no bounds and whose
statesmanship comprehended every social relation, is not the last to
so serve. "The lady with the lamp," Florence Nightingale, who
pioneered in trained nursing has had many a follower in this as in
other countries. The annals of all charitable agencies show that at
every step, whether recognized as responsible members of the body
politic or not, women have done the work in large and efficient
measure when the state took over a new job of life-saving and of
life-nourishment.

In the realm of penology we have moved far from the old private prison
into which the noble could cast his enemy and no one question his
acts. We have moved far from the early prison which was easily
neglected in all sanitary as in all moral conditions, since it was
then only a stopping place, often for a short time only, on the way
from court condemnation to hanging or mutilation, flogging or exile.
When the prison became a place for longer sojourn, and sentence to it
became in itself a legal punishment, humane men and women began to
feel the importance of knowing what went on in the places set aside
for offenders against the law, and Howard and others set the tendency
toward a more humane and reasonable treatment of criminals. We now are
at work finding out who are real criminals and who are accidentally
caught in the meshes of hurtful circumstances, who among the offenders
against the law are mentally responsible, and who are but children of
adult bodily size, and what to do for and with the intentional enemy
of social order. We have not yet learned to apply the ideals we have
gained in wise and effective treatment of the small minority of men,
and far smaller minority of women, who cannot or will not walk the
safe and well-outlined road of the law-abiding, but we have some
concepts that promise to guide us in this particular and the new
Penology is born. Men and women alike are working out details of
direction and shouldering the heavy social work demanded. The thing
that is most conspicuous in Penology is the new attitude of courts of
law, of judges and even of juries. This is an attitude of humane
inquiry into causes of moral breakdown, and humane dealing with
criminals as of right entitled to a fair chance. Surely this