fishing them out afterward." Lowell viewed the very poor as "worthless men and women" who were "vicious and idle" individuals that needed to "learn to enjoy work". She proposed imprisoning "all women under thirty who had been arrested for misdemeanors or who had produced two illegitimate children". She blamed New Yorkers who gave to the poor for the death of a baby who was living on the streets with her poor mother during a cold winter. She believed that the very poor should be "committed, until reformed, to district work-houses, there to be kept at hard-labor, and educated morally and mentally". In 1876, Governor Samuel Tilden of New York State appointed Lowell to Commissioner of the New York State Board of Charities. She was the first woman to ever hold this position. She served actively on the Board until 1889. Josephine Shaw Lowell and the State Board of Charities established the New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women in 1878. The asylum was a response to public concerns that "feeble-minded" women needed to be housed in a specialized facility. In several reports before the state legislature, Lowell stated that feeble-minded women disregarded moral and sexual restraint when placed in the undisciplined environment of an almshouse and frequently had illegitimate children who, in turn, became dependent on the state for their welfare. Women of child-bearing age, fifteen to forty-five, were admitted into this institution, in order to "prevent them from multiplying their kind" (New York State Board of Charities Report, 1879). Lowell described these women as "promiscuous and criminalistic" carriers of a "deadly poison" which reproduced through successive generations, and charities must not allow "men and women who are diseased and vicious to reproduce their kind". Throughout her lifetime, she also founded many charitable organizations including: the New York Charity Organization in 1882 where she worked with Jacob Riis, the House of Refuge for Women (later known as the New York Training School for Girls) in 1886, the Woman's Municipal League in 1894, and the Civil Service Reform Association of New York State in 1895. Later life and death Perhaps her most wide-ranging and effective organization was the New York Consumers' League which she established in 1890. This organization strove to improve the wages and the working conditions of women workers in New York City. The League was particularly concerned with retail clerks. Lowell published a "White List" that contained