BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS 23 



of securing accurate reports of population from some institu- 

 tions the enumeration is not quite complete. The establish- 

 ments for which figures are lacking arc, however, among the 

 least important as to size. Could their population have been 

 ascertained, the three totals given above would have been 

 somewhat larger, particularly the number of admissions and 

 the number of inmates remaining at the end of 1904. But the 

 statistics given are sufficient to illustrate the size and move- 

 ment of the institutional population. It should be observed 

 that they are exclusive of the 156 dispensaries and the 166 

 nurseries. Neither class of institutions can be said to have 

 inmates in the ordinary sense of the term ; moreover, in many 

 instances, no count is made of the individuals frequenting them. 



The number of admissions during the year is extraordi- 

 narily large and appears altogether out of proportion to the 

 year's increase in the number of inmates. In other words, 

 there were more than seven times as many persons admitted to 

 benevolent institutions in the course of the twelve months as 

 there were in them on the first and last daj^s of the year. The 

 gain in population of the institutions for the year 1904 is 

 represented as 553, but this is probably considerably lower 

 than a perfect enumeration would have disclosed, as more 

 institutions failed to report the number of inmates than to 

 state population at the beginning of the year and the number 

 of admissions. 



The movement of institutional population is greatest in 

 the hospitals. In 1904 this class of institutions reported more 

 than one half of the total admissions (1,064,512). Second in 

 importance are the temporary homes, to which there were 

 868,657 admissions, or about three times the number of in- 

 mates on the specified dates. Although the orphanages and 

 permanent homes report, respectively, 70,825 and 29,353 ad- 

 missions, their daily population is known to be largely in excess 

 of these numbers. The institutions for the deaf and blind like- 

 wise display a comparative stability in population, the number 

 of admissions in the course of the year being about one half of 

 the number of inmates on either of the census dates. 



For the whole of the United States the number of inmates 

 of benevolent institutions in each 100,000 of population on 



