Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/579

NEW YORK. 5147 were males. The percentage of male teachers has shown a constant decrease since 1880, when it amounted to 26 per cent. The total school revenue was $38,469,277 in 1901, of which $26,451,363 was derived from local taxes, $3,500,000 from State taxes, $272,477 from the permanent school fund, and $8,245,437 from other sources. The expenditure per pupil of average attendance in 1901 was $41.68—the highest expenditure of any State in the Union. Normal education is provided by 16 public normal schools which had 5426 students in 1901. The State maintained in 1901 383 high schools, with 63,549 students. There were besides 199 private high schools and academies, with an attendance of about 11,000.

The most important as well as the oldest university is Columbia, in New York City. There is no State university, but Cornell University, in Ithaca, awards certain State scholarships on examinations. The other important institutions are Union College, in Schenectady; New York University, New York City; Hamilton College, Clinton; universities at Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo; Colgate University, Hamilton; Hobart College, Geneva; the Catholic colleges of Manhattan, Saint Francis Xavier, and Saint John's, all in New York City; and the College of the City of New York. Vassar College, at Poughkeepsie, and Barnard College, now part of Columbia University, are two of the leading women's colleges in the country. Among the fifteen theological seminaries the most noted is the Union, in New York City. There are seven law schools, twelve medical schools, three dental, and four schools of pharmacy. In each of these professions there are systems of State examinations required of all who wish to practice in New York. The New York Society Library, founded in 1700, claims to be the first in the State. In 1838 the Legislature set aside part of the income from the United States deposit fund for the establishment of a district library system, and this State aid is now distributed by the Regents of the University.

The State boards of charities, lunacy, and corrections are each appointed by the Governor and Senate. The board of charities exercises an advisory supervision over the State and local charitable institutions and private institutions to which public charges are committed. It visits and inspects over 500 institutions, containing more than 60,000 inmates. A law of 1902 provides for the appointment by the Governor and Senate of a fiscal supervisor of State charities; and another law of the same year provides that the Governor, the president of the State Board of Charities, and the State Comptroller act as a commission to approve plans, specifications, and contracts for the construction of State institutions. These include an industrial school at Rochester, an asylum for feeble-minded children at Syracuse, one for feeble-minded women at Newark, a custodial asylum at Rome, an asylum for orphan Indian children at Iroquois, houses of refuge at Hudson and Albion, reformatory for women at Bedford, Craig colony for epileptics at Sonyea, women's relief corps home at Oxford, soldiers' and sailors' home at Bath, school for the blind at Batavia, hospital for crippled and deformed children at Tarrytown, and a hospital for the treatment of incipient pulmonary tuberculosis at

Raybrook. There are a number of private institutions which receive State appropriations. A total of 15,780 persons were supported in the county almshouses during the year ending October 1, 1900, and also over 70,000 were supported at the city and town almshouses. In addition more than 209,000 persons received temporary relief during that period. The various institutions under the supervision of the board expended $16,107,000 during the year ending September 30, 1900.

The board of lunacy has supervision over the State insane hospitals. These are located at Utica, Poughkeepsie, Middletown, Buffalo, Willard, Binghamton, Ogdensburg, Rochester, Wards Island, Kings Park, L. I., Flatbush, L. I., Gowanda. Matteawan, and Dannemora. In 1900 their inmates numbered 23,267. There are also 20 institutions and private houses authorized to receive the insane. These had in the same year 934 patients. The maintenance of the State insane hospitals for the year ending September 30, 1900, cost $3,594,873, or $164.79 per patient. The State penitentiaries are county institutions, of which there are six, located respectively in the counties of New York, Kings, Erie, Albany, Monroe, and Clinton. These receive short-term convicts committed for minor offenses. Counties not having penitentiaries of their own send this class of convicts by contract to the penitentiary of some other county. Convicts sentenced for terms exceeding one year are sent to the State prisons at Ossining (Sing Sing), Auburn, and Clinton, or to the reformatories at Elmira and Napanock, and to the one for women at Bedford. There are also houses of refuge for women at Hudson and Albion. The total prison population in 1902, including that of county jails, the New York City prisons, and workhouses, was 96,932, as against 149,677 in 1898. The more frequent application of the law of suspended sentence and the abolition of the fee system in the various counties are thought to have been largely responsible for this decrease. The Elmira Reformatory has acquired a widespread reputation because of its system of instruction and training. The prisoners committed to it have the advantage of an indeterminate sentence and a parole law. In New York, since 1888, death by electricity has been substituted for hanging as the penalty for murder.

New York Bay was discovered by Verrazano in 1524, but though Portuguese, French, and Spanish navigators, in all probability, visited the harbor during the sixteenth century, no important explorations were made before 1609, when almost simultaneously Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, in August, and Henry Hudson, sailing in the Half Moon under the Dutch flag, in September, entered the limits of the present State. Champlain's action in lending the Huron Indians aid against the Iroquois imbued the Five Nations with an implacable hatred for the French, and to a great extent determined in advance the fate of their colonizing schemes in America. Hudson's account of New Netherland, as he named the region, and of the great river, called at first Mauritius and then North, and finally Hudson, which he had ascended to the highest navigable point, led Dutch merchants, eager for furs, to dispatch trading vessels to the new