74 OHIO
HISTORY
and midwestern conditions.4 Moreover,
there survives an excellent
combination of materials describing the
topic in the state documents,
which outline the structure of public
finance and inspection, in the
BOSC reports (written by Byers), which
graphically portray condi-
tions in the institutions and conflicts
between local governments and
the state authorities, and in Albert
Byers's own diaries and a brief
but interesting file of letters sent to
him in his official capacity.5 When
these materials are used in conjunction
with the annual reports of the
National Conference of Charities and
Correction, it becomes possible
to reconstruct what we think is an
illustrative portrait of the formative
period of state welfare.
The bill creating the Ohio Board of
State Charities in 1867 was ad-
vocated by Republican Party reformers
who controlled state politics
for the better part of two decades,
beginning in 1855 with Salmon P.
Chase's election as governor.6 Three-time
governor, and later Presi-
dent, Rutherford B. Hayes was the other
major figure in this group.
The reform faith that the state should
encourage education, relieve
disease, reform the wayward and aid the
victims of war had pro-
duced a substantial number of
institutions by the end of the Civil
War. Three insane asylums, a
penitentiary, a blind asylum, a reform
school for boys, a deaf and dumb asylum,
and an institution for the
"idiotic" were in operation
while a fourth insane asylum, a soldiers'
home, and a soldiers and sailors'
orphans home were about to open.
There was active discussion on the need
for a girls' reform school
4. Few southern states created charity
inspection authorities before 1900, largely
because the number of institutions to
inspect was so small. By the late 1920s, however,
with southern urbanization and
industrialization well underway, Sophonisba P. Breck-
inridge reported "central
supervisory authority" in all but three states (Mississippi,
Nevada and Utah) and everywhere a trend
toward increasing the coercive power of this
authority. See Sophonisba P.
Breckenridge, "Frontiers of Control in Public Welfare Ad-
ministration," Social Service
Reviews, 1 (1927), 84-99. For further evidence of Ohio's typ-
icality see Robert H. Bremner, ed., Children
and Youth in America, I (Cambridge, 1970),
639-50; Ibid., II. 250-58:
Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, ed., Public Welfare Administration
in the United States: Selected
Documents, Second Edition (Chicago,
1938), 237-364.
5. A series of diaries belonging to
Byers are in box 5 of the Janney Family Papers,
Ohio Historical Society (OHS). He seems
to have used them as an aide-memoire and
they consist largely of brief factual
entries and a meticulous detailing of expenses. Subse-
quently, some of them were used for
other purposes, the 1864 volume, for example, for
press clippings from 1868. These in turn
have been annotated, probably much later to
judge from the hand. See also notes 21
and 37.
6. Ohio. Laws. LXIV (1867)
257-58: Ohio. House Journal (1867), 624. Ohio was the
third state to establish a charity
board, following Massachusetts (1863) and New York
(earlier in 1867). Seven other states
(North Carolina, Illinois, Rhode Island, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Connecticut and Kansas)
followed suit by 1873. For an excellent summary of
the various circumstances shaping the
development of these boards, see Gerald N.
Grob, Mental Institutions in America:
Social Policy to 1875 (New York, 1973), 270-92.