The South Carolina Senate has passed a bill providing that after its ratification the State shall make no contract to hire its convicts to railroads or other corporations, and that counties or townships using them on public roads shall pay the State at least one dollar per day for each convict. The bill provides that existing contracts shall not be abrogated by the

act.

A school for short-termed prisoners has been started at the Baltimore City Jail.

New York City has recently decided to purchase 585 acres near Middletown, Orange County, New York, for a reformatory for misdemeants.

A women's prison, shortly to be built at Cincinnati, Ohio, will be nine stories high and will cost $450,000.

Mr. Charles E. B. Russel has been appointed Chief Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in England.

A "Junior Republic" in England has been recently organized and will give that movement its first European test. Under the name of the "Little Commonwealth" 6 boys and 4 girls were brought together with four helpers and a local superintendent during the first week of July There has already been a meeting of the Council and further developments are of daily occurrence. The commonwealth is situated at Dorset Heights, some ten miles from Sherborne.

The British "Mental Deficiency" bill has passed the House of Lords. It is not a final or satisfactory solution, but is in the right direction, according to the Penal Reform League of England, which body by the way, issues frequently most interesting bulletins and reports..

A remarkable step in the development of the science of penology is reported in the latest number of the "Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalis

tik." An imperial criminalistic institute has been established at the University of Graz in Austria. It has now, after barely a year's existence, developed the following preliminary program or curriculum: 1. Lectures on criminal psychology, 2 criminal anthropology, 3 criminology, and 4 criminal statistics. II. A library covering all the branches of criminology and penology. III. A criminological museum. IV. A laboratory for the detailed study of all branches of police methods, etc. V. Practice work in the actual application of the theories dealt with. VI. An official organ and scientific journal. All of which could be said to be "going some."

A boy in a Chicago court, charged with vagrancy, told the judge his home was in Detroit. The judge wise in his generation, immediately asked the boy about the Detroit baseball club and the young fellow with no little zest named off the batting order of the Tigers and the names of the substitutes on the team. The judge smiled and admitted the boy's story to be true.

Reports are trickling through from Minnesota that the new State Peniten

tiary is the finest prison in the world.

State Prisons in New York has directed John B. Riley, Superintendent of that, beginning on October 5 and every Sunday thereafter, the Auburn and Sing Sing prisoners shall receive a cooked dinner served in the prison mess hall, the fare being equal to that served on work days.

This is regarded by the convicts as a much needed reform. In the past they have had light fare on Sundays and it was served to them in their cells.

In Iowa the experiment of using convicts on road work is being tried in a small way. Thirteen were taken from the reformatory, under the supervision of the warden and two guards, to Ames where they will be employed on road work under the State Highway Commission.