Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/201

Rh The state boards of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, and Massachusetts have the same power of inspection of private asylums and retreats for the insane as of public hospitals. In Illinois the state board has the power of licensing them. The power of the state boards of New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Montana extends to institutions receiving aid from the public as well as to those wholly supported by it.

One of the most important duties of the boards and their secretaries is that of collecting statistics concerning the various questions with which they have to deal. In some of the laws great emphasis is placed upon this. In North Carolina the board is to examine the "general condition of the state as affected by crime, vagrancy, and pauperism," and it is to "give special attention to the causes of insanity, defect or loss of the several senses, idiocy, and the deformity and infirmity of the physical organization." The county commissioners are to make an annual report to it on the question of pauperism. In Connecticut the board is to collect statistics in regard to pauperism and poor-law administration and to publish them in its annual report. This will suffice as illustration. Similar provisions are found in nearly all the acts creating the several state boards.

The boards are to report annually or biennially to the governor or to the legislature, showing the conditions of the various institutions and recommending needful changes in the law or its administration. Each board is expected to plan a system for the legislature to attempt to arrive at, and to map out a policy to be pursued by it, in its legislation.

This is the constitution and these are the powers and duties common to the advisory state boards. Their functions have been determined by the conditions existing in the several states. As the charitable work of the states has extended, new powers have been conferred upon the boards and new duties have been added. Nearly all the state boards were organized as purely advisory bodies, but, owing to the exigencies of the situation, few remain so now. The executive powers conferred upon them are varied and many.

In Massachusetts and New York, where there is a distinction