No. 123.] REPORT OF COMMISSIONER. 13 



have poultry plants. The institutions with which these farms 

 are connected range from prisons through reformatories for 

 men, for women, for boys and for girls to almshouses and homes 

 for defectives, sanatoria for tuberculous men, women and chil- 

 dren, and a hospital school for making self-supporting men 

 and women out of boys and girls badly crippled, crooked and 

 twisted by disease. 



Naturally the first care of the superintendents is the insti- 

 tutions as a whole, and with chief reference to the purpose for 

 which the institution was established. Occasionally there is a 

 superintendent who likes gardening or farming and finds recrea- 

 tion in quite closely following up farm projects of all kinds. 

 But more often the farm occupies a side place in administra- 

 tion. Any one who has first-hand information of institutions 

 recognizes the necessity for farms and the large place they 

 occupy as adjuncts to institution life. Much in the way of ref- 

 ormation of character and the development of mind and body 

 is associated with touch with the land. 



One large group of institutions in another department has so 

 many and such large farms that in the business management of 

 the department an agricultural expert has been employed for a 

 number of years. But in the three departments here referred 

 to the farming has gone along without any general oversight, 

 without much co-operation between farms in the same group, 

 and still less between farms in different groups of institutions. 



As requested by the Legislature several years ago the State 

 Auditor has prepared an excellent set of blanks for the annual 

 reporting of farm operations at all the institution farms. These 

 reports are filed annually with the commissioners concerned and 

 with the State Auditor. Neither the commissioners nor any one 

 in the Auditor's office are trained agriculturally. And when 

 one of the commissioners had a clerk attempt to "reconcile" 

 the farm reports with the analysis sheet of the institution 

 finances for that year, it was speedily found that mere statisti- 

 cal methods were insufficient. As a result, first this commis- 

 sioner, and very soon thereafter each of the two other com- 

 missioners, asked this Department if it would co-operate with 

 them and make something of a study of the institution farms, 

 their efficiency, ways in which they could be best utilized for 



