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In the present paper, I speak chiefly of women, because they form the visible links in the direful chain of hereditary pauperism and disease, but it must not be forgotten that the treatment here prescribed for them should also be applied to the reformation of the men, whose evil propensities are likewise handed down from one generation to another. During the year 1878, in thirty-four counties of the State of New York (having an aggregate population of 1,752,138), 304 women between the ages of fifteen and thirty years were sentenced to the county-jails, 95 of whom were under twenty-one years of age. Of the 304, 93 were committed as "prostitutes," "vagrants, or "disorderly;" 127 as "intoxicated," or "drunk and disorderly;" and the rest for other minor offences, as assault and battery, petty larceny, &c. During the same period, 197 women between the ages of fifteen and thirty were sentenced to the Albany and Onondaga County penitentiaries from thirty counties (fourteen of which were included in those from which the jail statistics have been taken, the remaining sixteen having an aggregate population of 1,001,939); of these prisoners 66 were under twenty-one years of age, and 98 were entered as "prostitutes," "vagrants," &c., while 100 were marked "intemperate." The offences of the rest were petty larceny, assault, &c. In twenty-seven poorhouses of counties with an aggregate population of 1,770,663, from Jan. 1, 1878, to Jan. 1, 1879, among the women between the ages of fifteen and thirty who were admitted, there were 161 (of whom 68 were under twenty-one years) who were either prostitutes or intemperate, or enceinte with illegitimate children, and several could be counted under all of these classes. Thus we have during only one year, and in only a part of the State, 662 women between the ages of fifteen and thirty, guilty of what are called "minor offences," and dependent for longer or shorter periods on the public for maintenance, 254 of whom are prostitutes, and 276 drunkards. More than a third of these women are under twenty-one years of age, so that probably, for them at least, many years of a shameful life are in store, during which time the public will maintain them.

Among the women who have entered these poorhouses during the year, 73 were enceinte with illegitimate children, and many of these women had already one, two, or three illegitimate children, either with them or placed in asylums. The name of each woman of the 662 has been obtained from the official records in the poorhouses, jails and penitentiaries, with the facts about each; but the record in regard to the number of illegitimate children is very imperfect, as is shown by comparing these official statistics with facts collected by private individuals in regard to some of these same women. The counties of New York and Kings have been entirely omitted from the inquiry which has resulted in obtaining the above statistics, and reports have been obtained from only half of the poorhouses of the State, from two penitentiaries, and from only thirty-four of the sixty county-jails; so that the above figures do not give the whole number of young women who have been sentenced and become dependent in the State of New York, through their own sin, during the year 1878.

In his essay on "The Jukes," Mr. Dugdale has computed that in seventy-five years the descendants of five vicious pauper sisters amounted to twelve hundred persons, and had cost the State of New York more than one million and a quarter dollars. The expense to which the thousand young women who last year entered the poorhouses and jails of the State, many of them already habitual offenders, prostitutes and confirmed drunkards, will subject the State during the next fifty years, becomes a serious question, and one which it is worth while to consider.

The presence of these women in the poorhouses, penitentiaries and jails, under the circumstances, renders it certain that they have less than the average self-control. They have entered on the downward course. In neither jail, poorhouse, nor penitentiary, will they find any thing to help them turn back. On the contrary, all the surroundings will force them lower and lower; and this would be the case, were they much more able to resist than they are. In the jail and penitentiary every door to virtue is closed, and every avenue to vice and crime is open. In the poorhouse they find others like themselves; and although the degrading influences may not be so strong as in jails and penitentiaries, they are there, and strong enough to prevent any chance of rescue. Having an inherited and deep-seated repugnance to labor,' these women, both in the poorhouse and jail, are supported in absolute idleness, without even the bodily exercise which is necessary for health. They are shut up in poisonous air, suffering a physical degeneration only to be compared with the ruin wrought at the same time in their minds and souls.

To rescue these unfortunate beings and to save the industrious part of the community from the burden of their support, "Reformatories" should be established, to which all women under thirty, when arrested for misdemeanors, or upon the birth of a second illegitimate child, should be committed for very long periods (not as a punishment, but for the same reason that the insane are sent to an asylum), and where they should be subject to such a physical, moral and intellectual training as would re-create them. Such training would be no child's play, since the very character of the women must be changed, and every good and healthy influence would be rendered useless without the one element of time. It is education in every sense which they need, and education is a long process, tedious and wearing, requiring unfaltering hope and unfailing patience on the part of teacher and pupil. Consequently these Reformatories must not be prisons, which would crush out the life from those unfortunate enough to be cast into them; they must be homes, -- homes where a tender care shall surround the weak and fallen creatures who are placed under their shelter, where a homelike feeling may be engendered, and where, if necessary, they may spend years. The unhappy beings we are speaking of need, first of all, to be taught to be women; they must be induced to love that which is good and pure, and to wish to resemble it; they must learn all household duties; they must learn to enjoy work; they must have a future to look forward to; and they must be cured, both body and soul, before they can be safely trusted to face the world again.