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The almshouse buildings in New England, having been occupied in most cases for forty or fifty years, and sometimes for eighty or one hundred years, are not at present well adapted to modern ideas of comfort and convenience. New almshouses are now built in Massachusetts at the rate of about five in a year, including such extensive rebuilding and enlargement as gives the town practically a new almshouse. Generally speaking, these new structures are well adapted for the comfort and separation of the inmates; and some of them are very costly. The town of Lancaster, not far from Worcester, with a population of 2,100, has built within the last year an almshouse of brick and stone, with new farm buildings, and capable of receiving some 50 inmates, at a cost, including furniture, of nearly $30,000; yet the present number of inmates is less than 10, so that the average construction cost for each inmate of the present number is about $3,000. This, however, is more than twice as costly as any other new almshouse known to me. The State is building, and has nearly completed, an almshouse department at the State Workhouse in Bridgewater, at a cost, including furniture, water supply, heating apparatus, etc., of about $90,000 for 300 inmates, or an average of $300 construction cost for each inmate. These buildings are entirely of brick and stone, as near fire-proof as any such structures can be, and very well adapted to the care of the almshouse population on the dormitory plan; that is, in a large common room, both for dormitory and hospital purposes, and with very few single rooms. At the Lancaster almshouse, just mentioned, there are single rooms for the inmates; and this, of course, is a more costly style of building. Generally speaking, the Massachusetts almshouses, except that at Tewksbury and those in a few of our cities, are not crowded with inmates even in winter, when their population is about thirty per cent. greater than in midsummer. Many of the rural almshouses have room for twice their present number of inmates; and, in half our towns at least, the almshouse population is not increasing from year to year. In most of our twenty Massachusetts cities, it increases considerably.

The number of children in the Massachusetts almshouses is less than that of the insane; and in half of them at least there are no children at all, except the feeble-minded. The Connecticut almshouses have lately been relieved of many children by the establishment of county homes under a new law passed in 1883-84. The secretary of the Connecticut Board of Charities writes me as follows concerning them: --

"The County Temporary Homes are in operation in all the counties under the enclosed law, and draw a great many children from poorhouses, and prevent a great many from going to them. You will find an account of them up to January 1, last, pages 56 to 72 of the report. Since that time, they have made good progress. There is a home in each county, -- eight in all, -- and from 175 to 200 children have been in up to date, October 7; and not far from half of that number have been provided with suitable family homes."

No movement so extensive as this to provide separate homes away from the almshouse for poor children is going on elsewhere in New England; but, in Massachusetts, we have for some years been placing such children in families with very good results. And our cities, which contain nearly half our almshouse population, are forbidden by law to retain children above certain ages in the almshouse. This law is not completely enforced as yet, but takes effect more and more each year. There is, in other respects, a very perceptible improvement in the management of the Massachusetts almshouses since I first began to visit them, twenty years ago. What is now much needed is the union of several towns in the support of a single almshouse, so that the number of inmates may be large enough to warrant the employment of a better class of officers than we now find in many of the smaller almshouses, and an increase of the salary, until the average, instead of less than $400, as now, should be $500 or $600. This amount would secure in Massachusetts the services of very competent men and women, such as are now employed at this rate in our better almshouses. The State laws permit such unions among towns; and these would be better in our State than county almshouses, could such be established. But, with our laws and customs, county almshouses could scarcely exist in Massachusetts.