Excerpt from Sixth Annual Report of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts: To Which Are Added the Reports of the Secretary and the General Agent of the Board; For the Year Ending September 30, 1869 The actual powers of the Board under its organic Act were few and unimportant. It had, indeed, authority to transfer the inmates of certain public institutions to other institutions; and it had a regulating power over the acts and the appointments of its Secretary and of its General Agent; but beyond this, its functions were solely those of investigation, supervision, and suggestion. Nor has it How any material increase of authority. If the Board sees wrongs in icted on the helpless, it has little power to prevent or redress them. Misdoings that should be reformed at once grow older by a year, before they can even be reported on and reports, like sermons, are proverbially but little heeded. Responsible in the eyes of the public for the whole system of our charities, reforms and corrections, the Board has but little actual power. Its work is done, its disbursements are made, through officers whom it does not appoint nor even nominate, but for whose proceedings it is considered responsible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."