ents, if not a dangerous element in society. There are on In the same year, 1887, the Norfolk Hospital for the Insane, costing $84,292, was opened for patients. The main building of this hospital was erected in 1885, and in 1887 it was opened for patients. Since the meeting of the last Legislature two wings to the main building have been erected. The report of the superintendent shows that during the two years from December 1st, 1888, to November 30th, 1890, there were admitted as new cases, two hundred and nineteen, one hundred and thirty-seven males, and eighty-two females. Total under treatment for the two years, three hundred and forty. The percentage of recoveries, based on the total number under treatment for the last two years, has been over forty. In 1888, the Home at Grand Island was completed for the reception of soldiers and sailors. The report of the commandant of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home shows that there have been 238 members admitted to the Home during its existence. Of this number there are at present 150 members on the rolls of the Home roster. Of these forty-eight have been honorably discharged, twenty summarily, and four dishonorably discharged. Sixteen have died at the Home. There has been an average attendance for twenty-eight months, or since the Home was opened, of 68. Appreciating the hardship of separation of husband and wife, and actuated by a humane instinct, a provision was inserted in the law for the admission of the wives, and children under fifteen years of age, of the soldiers who were compelled by their straitened circumstances to seek homes within its walls. Seven double cottages were erected accommodating fourteen families. Congress enacted a law providing for the payment to each state which has a soldiers' home $100 a year for each in mate of that Home. This will aid largely in payment of the running expenses of this institution. By an act of the Legislature of 1887 a Nebraska Industrial Home was established, to be under the supervision of the "Women's Board of Associate Charities." The institution was located and opened for the admission of inmates May 1, 1889. Whole number admitted to November 30, 1890, is fifty-nine, thirty-eight of whom were of American parentage and seventeen of foreign. The average number of adults present in each year is twenty-eight. Average number of children cared for in each year is twenty-three. Good homes have been found for seventeen. There are now in the Home thirteen children. The object of the Home is to reclaim the fallen, to bring them under good, wholesome, Christian influences, and thus secure their reformation. I believe it is fully accomplishing the purpose for which it was created. It is in consonance with the spirit of true philanthropy and good will, and should be encouraged. On account of the over-crowded condition of the asylums for the insane at Lincoln and Norfolk, and the policy of separating the incurable from the more hopeful, another building was prepared at a cost of $63,900 located at Hastings. This institution was opened for the reception of patients August 1st, 1889, at which time were received forty-four patients from Lincoln; November 12th, 1899, fifty patients; and again April 26th, 1890, thirty-two patients, making a total of one hundred and twenty-six patients received from Lincoln. November 12th, 1889, there were received from Norfolk twenty-two patients. There have been received since August 1, 1889, from the different counties twentysix patients, making a grand total of one hundred and seventy-four received. There are at present one hundred and sixty patients in the institution, one has been discharged as cured, one is out on parole, and one has escaped. Since August 1st, 1889, there has been eleven deaths. To a Governor who feels himself the head of a great family, every member of which was entitled to his official and humane attentions, in case of unforeseen calamity, the drouth sufferers of 1890 appealed with painful demands. On the first intimation of privation and suffering he recommended the county commissioners of the stricken district to organize means of relief. By November he called upon the public to give heed to the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us"; and in order to add to his knowledge and make it critical, sent two agents to traverse the counties. The result was his organization of a Relief Committee, with which the contiguous railroads co-operated by carrying sup plies free of charge. In his message to the Legislature of 1891, he said: It is safe to conclude from the information thus obtained that six thousand and eleven families will require fuel and provisions during the winter and spring, and nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-eight families will need grain and seed. Those people in the portions of the State in which crops have been blasted by hot winds and the drouth, have become the victims of misfortune from no fault of their own. They are worthy, honest, and industrious as any people in Nebraska or any other state in the Union. They are our own kith and kin-they are our own fellow citizens. This question of relief is of such a magnitude that it has become a state affair; Nebraska cannot afford to permit the report to go abroad that any one within its borders had died of cold and hunger. It is rich enough, it is able enough to take care of its own people. We want no help from abroad. I most earnestly recommend an appropriation with an emergency clause of two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000) for their relief. Further appropriations will be necessary. The necessities of those people require it; in the highest sense, Christian duty sanctions it; humanity dictates it, and God Almighty commands it. The injunction, "Remember, the poor and the needy" is as binding now as when uttered by the Holy One two thousand years ago. The subjoined recommendation closed an earnest appeal to the Legislature in behalf of the Columbian Exposition. I recommend an appropriation of $150,000 with an emergency clause, for the purpose of inaugurating and maintaining our exhibits. Citizens of Nebraska who attended the Paris Exposition were humiliated by the small and insignificant exhibition of its products made there. I trust Nebraskans who shall attend the Chicago Exposition, and all should attend it, will not be subjected to a like humilia tion. The display from this State should be such as will Ordinarily, Governor Thayer would have been called upon for his retiring message as soon as the Legislature of January 6, 1891, was organized and ready in joint session, to receive it; which would have been followed by the inaugural of his successor. But, inasmuch as the speaker of the house, on account of a contest pending, on the part of J. H. Powers, Independent candidate for Governor, against James E. Boyd, refused to examine and proclaim the result of the election till such contest was settled, and only did it by virtue of a mandamus issued from the Supreme Court of Nebraska, and as the contest was not abandoned till the latter part of January, his message was not called for until the following day. Thus Governor Boyd delivered his inaugural just one month after the commencement of the Legislative session. In the meantime, on the 13th of January, John M. Thayer commenced proceedings, in the State Supreme Court, to oust Governor Boyd from office, charging that he was not a citizen of the United States when elected, having been born in Ireland, and never naturalized in the United States. The case having been argued March 12th, 1891, and the opinion of the court having been announced May 5th, reinstating Thayer and ousting Boyd, which was just one month after the adjournment of the Legislature, these officials changed places once more-Thayer to act as Governor till a successor should appear, "elected and qualified," and Boyd to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. After nine months, in the highest tribunal known to our laws, an opinion in favor of Governor Boyd was delivered by Chief Justice Fuller, reinstating him, and retiring Governor Thayer to private life. The contest waged by Governor Thayer against James E. Boyd, was upon the basis that if naturalized, the laws of the United States, in that behalf, had been the instrument by which he had attained to citizenship; and that he should be able to show court records establishing the fact. Admitting the correctness of this position the Supreme Court of Nebraska decided that James E. Boyd was not a citizen when elected Governor. But the Supreme Court of the United States gave Mr. Boyd an equivalent for court naturalization, in "collective naturalization" by the admission of the State of Nebraska, and from the "legal presumption" that his father had been naturalized during the son's minority. If that mode of gaining citizenship had been previously amplified as the Supreme Court gave it prominence in this instance, it might be a question whether this action would ever have been filed, on the decision obtained from the Supreme Court of the State. Prior to this time the legal profession had never been furnished with so voluminous a digest of sporadic cases of naturalization. These are fully set forth in the statement of Governor Boyd's administration, in this volume. |