Union. The present Trustees have no hope of being able to execute this object in their lifetime. They but look forward to these handicrafts. In Paris at the present time there are ninety schools which are giving instruction in art industry.

Now we have located in this neighborhood the armory of the Sixtyninth Regiment, which is soon to be vacated. This armory belongs to the city, and if the city would turn it over to us after it is vacated, for the establishment of these classes of handicraft work, I am very sure, from what I now know, that I can secure an endowment sufficient to carry on the work. This would cost the city nothing, and there would be no burden on the city for keeping it up. The city would merely appropriate the armory for the work in the same way that they have appropriated land and buildings for the establishment of the Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History.

By the time our new laboratory is done, the Astor Library will be vacant. The building in itself is of no value except as a library, and we need it for a library. It is admirably designed for this purpose, and is admirably located for the extension of the work of this institution, and in proximity to this building, where the work of administration would have to be carried on. The most economical use to which it could be put would be to turn it over to Cooper Union, as otherwise it would be of no value except for the value of the land. Now I hope it will enter into the heart of some one, after I am dead and gone,though I do not object if they do it while I am alive, to add to the Cooper Union one or both of these great buildings for the extension of the work we are carrying on here. We could then remove our reading-room and library to the Astor Library, and that space could be devoted to the Art Museum, which I think is getting to be one of the most instructive additions to the education of New York.

If Dr. Slicer had not told me it is the old men who have visions, I should think that I was a young man. Perhaps it was after all not a mistake, but a twist of the tongue. I am in my eightieth year. I am seeing visions because I am so much younger than some of less years than are mine, because I am still young and fresh. If so, I shall be quite glad to live to see any extensions to the Cooper Union which may be possible. In conclusion let me again quote the Scriptures, and say, for the Trustees, that we have "fought the good fight. We have finished our course with joy." And for myself, since I have got in the quotation line, I think I am quite prepared to say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

The account of Peter Cooper's early life printed in the present leaflet is described by Professor J. C. Zachos of the Cooper Union, who prepared it for publication, as an "autobiography written by another." It is the record of conversations by Mr. Cooper upon his early life, and was prefixed to a collection of "The Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper," published by Professor Zachos in 1877. What Professor Zachos properly calls the "crowning glory" of Mr. Cooper s life, the Cooper Union, is hardly mentioned in the autobiography. The speech by Abram S. Hewett in 1902, here appended to the autobiography, tells the story of the founding of the Union and of the remarkable series of gifts by which in recent years its work and influence have been so largely expanded. This speech was made by Mr. Hewett in his eightieth year, the year before his death. Mr. Cooper's sonin-law and associate in business, and one of the trustees of the Cooper Union for more than forty years, no other understood so well as Mr. Hewett its history and its founder's purposes. The Union was incorporated and the building (begun in 1854) completed, at a cost of $634,000, in 1859, in the centre of the industrial and trading population of New York. In an address to the graduating class in 1864, Mr. Cooper spoke as follows of the idea which prompted the founding of the Union:

It happened more than thirty years ago that I was elected a member of the Common Council of this city. At that time I became acquainted with a gentleman who had then lately returned from France. That gentleman informed me that while he was in Paris he had attended the free Polytechnic school provided by the government. He spoke in glowing terms of the great advantage he had received from the consummate ability of the teachers and the perfect appliances used for illustration. What interested me most deeply was the fact that hundreds of young men were there from all parts of France, living on a bare crust of bread a day to get the benefit of those lectures. Feeling then, as I always have, my own want of education, and more especially my want of scientific knowledge as applicable to the various callings in which I had been engaged, it was this want of my own, which I felt so keenly, that led me, in deep sympathy for those whom I knew would be subject to the same wants and inconvenience that I had encountered.-it was this feeling which led me to provide an institution where a course of instruction would be open and free to all who felt a want of scientific knowledge, as applicable to any of the useful purposes of life. Having started in life with naked hands and an honest purpose, I persevered through long years of trial and effort to obtain the means to erect this building, which is now entirely devoted, with all its rents and revenue of every name and nature, to the advancement of science and art."

There is a biography of Peter Cooper by Rossiter W. Raymond, who knew him well; and in its chapters Mr. Cooper's active interests in municipal affairs and national politics, as well as in business, invention, education and philanthropy, are clearly set forth. Various pamphlets and addresses by Mr. Cooper upon slavery, currency problems and other public issues were published during his lifetime. In 1876 he was the nominee of the Green back party for the presidency. He died in 1883. His funeral was an almost unexampled manifestation of public love and veneration. In the great multitude which passed through All Souls' Church, where his body lay, were 3,500 students of the Cooper Union, who cast flowers upon the coffin. See "Recollections of Peter Cooper," by Susan N. Carter, in the Century Magazine, December, 1883, and other magazine articles.

Old South Leaflets.

No. 148.

Memorial to the

Legislature of Massachusetts 1843

BY DOROTHEA L. DIX.

Gentlemen, I respectfully ask to present this Memorial, believing that the cause, which actuates to and sanctions so unusual a movement, presents no equivocal claim to public consideration and sympathy. Surrendering to calm and deep convictions of duty my habitual views of what is womanly and becoming, I proceed briefly to explain what has conducted me before you unsolicited and unsustained, trusting, while I do so, that the memorialist will be speedily forgotten in the memorial.

About two years since leisure afforded opportunity and duty prompted me to visit several prisons and almshouses in the vicinity of this metropolis. I found, near Boston, in the jails and asylums for the poor, a numerous class brought into unsuitable connection with criminals and the general mass of paupers. I refer to idiots and insane persons, dwelling in circumstances not only adverse to their own physical and moral improvement, but productive of extreme disadvantages to all other persons brought into association with them, I applied myself diligently to trace the causes of these evils, and sought to supply remedies. As one obstacle was surmounted, fresh difficulties appeared. Every new investigation has given depth to the conviction that it is only by decided, prompt, and vigorous legislation the evils to which I refer, and which I shall proceed more fully to illustrate, can be remedied. I shall be obliged to speak with great plainness, and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from

which my woman's nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness. But truth is the highest consideration. I tell what I have seen— painful and shocking as the details often are that from them you may feel more deeply the imperative obligation which lies upon you to prevent the possibility of a repetition or continuance of such outrages upon humanity. If I inflict pain upon you, and move you to horror, it is to acquaint you with sufferings which you have the power to alleviate, and make you hasten to the relief of the victims of legalized barbarity.

I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane, and idiotic men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our almshouses. And I cannot suppose it needful to employ earnest persuasion, or stubborn argument, in order to arrest and fix attention upon a subject only the more strongly pressing in its claims because it is revolting and disgusting in its details.

I must confine myself to few examples, but am ready to furnish other and more complete details, if required. If my pictures are displeasing, coarse, and severe, my subjects, it must be recollected, offer no tranquil, refined, or composing features. The condition of human beings, reduced to the extremest states of degradation and misery, cannot be exhibited in softened language, or adorn a polished page.

I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

As I state cold, severe facts, I feel obliged to refer to persons, and definitely to indicate localities. But it is upon my subject, not upon localities or individuals, I desire to fix attention; and I would speak as kindly as possible of all wardens, keepers, and other responsible officers, believing that most of these have erred not through hardness of heart and wilful cruelty so much as want of skill and knowledge, and want of consideration. Familiarity with suffering, it is said, blunts the sensibilities, and where neglect once finds a footing other injuries are multiplied. This is not all, for it may justly and strongly be added that, from the deficiency of adequate means to meet the wants of

these cases, it has been an absolute impossibility to do justice in this matter. Prisons are not constructed in view of being converted into county hospitals, and almshouses are not founded as receptacles for the insane. And yet, in the face of justice and common sense, wardens are by law compelled to receive, and the masters of almshouses not to refuse, insane and idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and privation.

It is the Commonwealth, not its integral parts, that is accountable for most of the abuses which have lately and do still exist. I repeat it, it is defective legislation which perpetuates and multiplies these abuses. In illustration of my subject, I offer the following extracts from my Note-book and Journal:

Springfield. In the jail, one lunatic woman, furiously mad, a State pauper, improperly situated, both in regard to the prisoners, the keepers, and herself. It is a case of extreme selfforgetfulness and oblivion to all the decencies of life, to describe which would be to repeat only the grossest scenes. She is much worse since leaving Worcester. In the almshouse of the same town is a woman apparently only needing judicious care, and some well-chosen employment, to make it unnecessary to confine her in solitude, in a dreary unfurnished room. Her appeals for employment and companionship are most touching, but the mistress replied "she had no time to attend to her."

Northampton. In the jail, quite lately, was a young man violently mad, who had not, as I was informed at the prison, come under medical care, and not been returned from any hospital. In the almshouse the cases of insanity are now unmarked by abuse, and afford evidence of judicious care by the keepers. Williamsburg. The almshouse has several insane, not under suitable treatment. No apparent intentional abuse.

Rutland. Appearance and report of the insane in the almshouse not satisfactory.

Sterling. A terrible case; manageable in a hospital; at present as well controlled perhaps as circumstances in a case so extreme allow. An almshouse, but wholly wrong in relation to the poor crazy woman, to the paupers generally, and to her keepers. Burlington. A woman, declared to be very insane; decent room and bed; but not allowed to rise oftener, the mistress said, "than every other day: it is too much trouble."

Concord. A woman from the hospital in a cage in the almshouse. In the jail several, decently cared for in general, but