KATE BARNARD
The Oklahoma charities commissioner whose administration has secured the return of a million dollars to Indian orphans under incompetent or dishonest guardians.
The legal department conducted under Kate Barnard, the commissioner, by Dr. J. H. Stolper, has taken up a vast number of Indian orphan cases. The results have been positively surprising. The legal department has not failed in one single case. The entire amount of money wrested from incompetent or dishonest guardians and returned to orphans has been nearly $950,000. The value of the land is not stated but it is probably several times as much as that of the actual cash returned. The number of minors represented in the report is 1,373 and the number of cases 1,361. These were tried out in thirty-six different county courts. The cost of handling this enormous amount of legal work as well as all the legal work in the office was less than $6,000 which covers the salary of the general attorney, that of one stenographer and the necessary travelling expenses.
The commissioner suggests that, as there seems to be some difficulty in appropriating sufficient money for the support of her office, she should be allowed to charge a uniform fee of $5 for each case of the kind which is undertaken, that fee going to the support of the Department of Charities and Correction. At present no fees are charged from any of the minors.
Beside acting as next friend of orphan children, the general attorney of the commission has been for a year or more acting as public defender. It seemed to the Legislature that there was as much need of a public defender as of a public prosecutor and accordingly, at the last Legislature a law was passed creating the office. This the governor vetoed, but his veto was not in time to defeat the bill. However, the question of the salary was not taken up and Dr. Stolper, attorney for the commissioner, was appointed public defender and has been doing the work. A number of interesting instances of miscarriage of justice which the public defender has been able to remedy are given in the report.
The report gives the usual account of inspection of institutions both state and county and shows that the commissioner with her very limited office and inspection force was able to do much more work than would be expected. On the whole it seems as though the plan of a single headed commission is a success in the state of Oklahoma.
FEDERAL QUARANTINE AT NEW YORK
THOMAS W. SALMON, M. D.
Attention has again been directed to the unsatisfactory conditions which prevail in the administration of quarantine inspection at the port of New York by the report of a special committee of the New York Academy of Medicine.
This report, which was recently made public, strongly advocated the national control of quarantine from “the point of view of convenience, efficiency and uniformity of administration, economy and law.” The subject aroused discussion in the newspapers a few weeks ago because the chairman of Governor Sulzer’s commission for the investigation of state departments urged the transfer of this function to the federal government.
In the discussion of this recommendation, several important points have been overlooked. For example, there is some significance in the discrepancy between the large sums spent by New York on the quarantine station, which protects the country at large, and the small amount expended for the State Health Department, upon which rests the protection of the citizens of the state. Doubtless, as has been pointed out, the fees charged steamship companies can be increased so that the state will not be required to make any annual appropriations for the maintenance of the quarantine station but the health officer of the port has asked for an appropriation of about $1,800,000 for needed repairs and improvements. About $180,000 is appropriated for the State Department of Health each year. This constitutes practically all the money spent by the state for the protection of the health of its 9,000,000 citizens. Out of it must be paid all salaries and expenses of administration, the cost of collecting vital statistics, maintaining laboratories for research and for the production of diphtheria antitoxin, the control of epidemics, the inspection of water supplies and, in short, all the work in the prevention of disease in which the state is engaged. If the Legislature grants the $1,800,000 which the health officer of the port requests, it will give him an amount equal to that expended during ten years for safeguarding the health of those residing in the state.