degraded, and debased; the child entirely helpless. A widow woman thirty-six years of age, and a female child of twelve, idiotic, crippled and helpless; the woman fairly educated, but has formed habits of drink. A man of thirty-nine, with his wife, thirty-three, and a female child two years old; the man ignorant and intemperate. An unmarried man thirty-seven years old, ignorant and intemperate; the mistress of this man, also an inmate, degraded and intemperate. In this latter poorhouse, with thirtytwo inmates, thirteen of the men (eighty-seven per cent) and three of the women, were intemperate. In Rensselaer County poorhouse, with 156 inmates, fifty of the men, or ninety-one per cent and twenty-two women, or sixty-six per cent, of those whose habits could be ascertained, were intemperate. The families represented by the inmates in this poorhouse numbered 136. The burdensome, unfortunate, and vicious classes, which had sprung from these families in three generations, as far as known, had been as follows: Paupers, 197; insane, 24; idiotic, 10; inebriate, 103; criminal, 15. Thirty-six of those under care were said to be heads of families, in which were numbered eighty-nine living children. The condition of fifteen of these was unknown, forty-five were providing for themselves, and thirty were dependent. Of the latter, twenty-four were in poorhouses, and six were in asylums. In Richmond County poorhouse, all the men except three, whose habits could not be ascertained, admitted practices of inebriety, and twenty-seven of them, or over seventy-seven per cent, were known to be habitual drunkards. The habits of the women were classified as follows: abstinent, 16; moderate drinkers, 8; periodical drinkers, 4; confirmed inebriates, 2. In addition, the fathers of fifty-one, and the mothers of twenty-three, were intemperate. But the story grows monotonous. A visit to any poorhouse in the land will furnish collateral evidence, were it needed.

In view of such facts, I ask you, has the State any rights which these people are bound to respect? Has she any right to say what a man or woman shall eat or drink? Let us take another page of the evils of intemperance, and see how much insanity, that greatest poverty of all, is affected by it. To satisfy ourselves that intemperance is one of the main causes of insanity, we have only to examine the reports of hospitals in this country and others. A few examples from the reports of 1877 show that, of those admitted for the year, the number caused by intemperance was as follows:

that of Utica, N.Y., 35; Blackwell's Island, 80; Northampton, Mass., 20; Longview, O., 18; Ward's Island, N.Y., where nearly all are men, the intemperate admitted for the year were 225; moderate drinkers, 210; abstinent, 51; unknown, 2.

In the statistical tables published by the metropolitan commissioners of lunacy (England) in 1874, we find that out of 12,007 cases whose supposed causes were returned, 1,499, or nearly 15 per cent, are set down to the account of intemperance; but besides these, 551, or nearly 5 per cent, are attributed to vice and sensuality, in which excessive use of alcoholic liquors shared.

In the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, for seven years, the proportion which this vice bore to other causes was 19 per cent.

Says Dr. Tuke, an eminent English author: "The teaching of lunacy statistics points to two facts: that wherever there is the most pauperism, there, as a general rule, will be the largest amount of insanity; not merely because insanity pauperises, but because mal-nutrition and the manifold miseries attendant upon want, favor the development of mental disease, and that here intemperance stands out in lurid relief as the foremost cause of the disease."

his appetite dictate.

Examples may be multiplied indefinitely; but, to make some practical application: if pauperism, individual pauperism, is so largely caused by this one element, it is clearly the duty of the state to confine that element; and, if it cannot go further, it can certainly prevent its reproduction. A person who indulges in strong drink to the extent of unaccountability, who makes himself a nuisance, is put in durance vile; and, when sobered, discharged, to again commit the same offence when his means will admit, or Would it not be wise to place that man for one year in an asylum for drunkards, a new institution we are to have in the land? While in confinement let him be compelled to work at some useful trade. If he does not know one, let him be compelled to learn one, or do the menial work. He should thus be made self-supporting. The community has for the time disposed of one case of pauperism; for I am considering every man a prospective pauper who becomes drunk. When the man is discharged, he will very likely be sober and industrious for a while; but let him know that so surely as he gets drunk again, he will again become a ward of the state, bound to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and he is going to be careful about taking a first glass. Besides, nothing so much tends to the eradication

of a habit as a long abstinence from its indulgence. Well, what have we done toward the prevention of pauperism? We have made a sober man out of a drunken one. We have taught a man a trade, perhaps, who never knew one before. He is again able to do his share of the world's work. But we have done more: we have taught him, his neighbors, his family, and all who have been associated with him, the majesty of the law, and the heinousness of the offence a man commits every time he attempts to perpetrate actual or moral suicide, or takes bread from his children's mouths, not only impoverishing them, but making a brute of himself. It will sound very differently to his ears," drunk, and charged five dollars," or "drunk, and committed for a term of years to the asylum for inebriates."

I hear some one say, You have disposed of the drunkard, what will you do with those who have been dependent on him for a partial or full support? I would make the dealer in rum pay such a tax to the community as would support the temporary widows and orphans of the men whose money had made him rich. Do not imagine all drunkards' families would be left destitute. Many of the rich or well-to-do become intoxicated; and I am disposed to believe that as much misery and suffering of a peculiar kind follows the intoxication of that class, as of those who spend their last hard-earned penny at the doggery. But you ask, Why do you not propose a law to prevent the sale of all that intoxicates? I would be glad to see it done; but it has been tried in half the States from Maine to Colorado, and only God knows with what results.

Let us turn to the other subject, hereditary paupers, or paupers whose dependence is the result of a bad inheritance. I suggested, in my last biennial report, that the marriage of all who had been, at any time, insane, epileptic, or inebriate, should be made a penal offence; and that all persons acquitted of crime on the ground of insanity should be kept in custody the remainder of their lives. I would go further: the state should prohibit the marriage of all persons who had, at any time after arriving at the age of eighteen years, been supported in any penal or charitable institution, or who are suffering from any incurable bodily infirmity or deformity. At the first view, this may seem unjust. An inmate of a deaf-anddumb asylum, or blind asylum, may become capable of supporting a family if he or she should marry. Why deprive them of the comforts of a home? These persons, as a rule, are defective in

their organization, and their offspring generally inherit the same, or a similar infirmity. Why, then, should they be allowed to propagate an inferior class, who will, undoubtedly, some time, have to be supported by the State. It is not generally known to how great an extent disease, licentiousness, deformity, and criminality, and resultant poverty, are dependent upon hereditary transmission; nor how the degeneracy is intensified as it goes on from one generation to another, till abhorring nature refuses to transmit the evil longer, and sterility is the result. The historical Margaret, mother of criminals" is only one of the thousand instances which the history of almshouses, jails, and hospitals could show.

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The stream can never rise higher than the fountain. You can not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles; then why expect a life worth preserving when either parent is deformed in mind or body?

Says Burton, in that dull, clever book, "The Anatomy of Melancholy," "It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born; and it were happy for human kind if only such parents as are sound in body and mind should be allowed to marry. A husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon the land. He will not rear a bull or a horse, except he be right shapen in all parts; and how careful, then, should we be in begetting of our children. In former times, some countries have been so chary in this behalf, that, if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made way with him. At one time, in Scotland, saith Boethius, if any were visited with the fallingsickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded, and a woman kept from all company of men. And this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted. A severe doom, you will say, and not to be used among Christians, yet more to be looked to than it is. For now, by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man free from some grievous infirmity or other. It comes to pass, our generation is corrupt; we have many weak persons, both in body and mind; many feral

1 It was a shrewd question, that of the man who asked Christ, Was it this man or his parents sinned, Lord, that he was born blind?

diseases raging among us, crazed families, our fathers bad, and we likely to be worse."

We cannot, in this Christian land, go to the extent recommended and actually practised in less enlightened countries and ages; but we can, in preserving the living unfortunate, save him from being a curse to generations yet unborn. If it is the prerogative of the law to decide within what limits of consanguinity marriage may take place, it may justly be extended to the prohibition of marriage where the offspring is certain to be, in some manner, maintained by the state. Carlyle says, more marriages would be happy if the selections were made by Register-General. I believe the sum total of a nation's happiness and prosperity would' be greater, if no man or woman was allowed to marry, who could not show a clear record of health, honesty, and industry.

We sometimes hear the remark, we are too much governed; we have too many laws already; that from their very number and ambiguity they are so frequently disobeyed. So much the worse for the statute-books. Let us have a new code. Let us start again, as our original colony did. Let us treat drunkards as criminals, whose presence in a community is a blight and a curse. Let us stop the propagation of the imbecile, the weak and depraved. Let us stop giving bread to the man who refuses to earn it; make our almshouses workhouses for the adult, and schools for the children. It is no time to talk of being too much governed, when lawless mobs may any day barricade our streets, put out the. red flag of communism, board our railroad trains, enter our houses, and demand the bread they have never earned, and go unpunished because they are many. I believe the world is growing better, but so slowly, you and I may never recognize the change. We have got into ruts, and only a short turn will get us out. We need a new departure. For the blessings of the past, let us be truly thankful; but let us not hand down to the next generation the important work which should be done in this.

IV. PAUPERISM IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. — THE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AND ENFORCED LABOR.

BY HENRY E. PELLEW OF NEW YORK.

In dealing with an acknowledged evil, it is beyond our present object to go into the causes which have led to such simultaneous alarm about the results and the development of an unwelcome