PAUPERISM with us is not the grim menace which it is in Europe. True, the vagabond pauper otherwise the tramp has given us a vast deal of trouble; but lie is as much outlaw as pauper, and, such as he is, he is a distinctly novel figure in American life. The normal, quiet, legally supported pauper has never taken enough money from us to startle us out of our apathy. This is peculiarly the case with the pauper whom the State supports entirely, the indoor pauper, as the reports style him. Commonly, his misfortunes or his vices are stowed away in a remote farm-house on a muddy road. Politicians do not concern themselves with his fate, for he has no vote; benevolent people have their hands full helping the poor who are not yet sunk into paupers; the very newspapers seek him out only when his woeful lot has acquired the lurid attraction of a horror. Yet this neglected and repulsive being has claims upon our attention, because upon our fears. Pauperism has increased rapidly within the last decade. Few people realize how much money is spent annually for the support of our almshouses, to say nothing of what we spend upon our other paupers, partially supported outside, or wholly supported in hospitals, insane asylums, and asylums for orphan children. The State of New York spent, during the year ending November 30, 1879, the sum of $1,618,867.63 for the keeping of 57,925 persons in almshouses and poorhouses. These same almshouses and poorhouses gave temporary aid to 79,852 persons, at an expense of $692,465.77. Pennsylvania last year supported 20,310 persons in her almshouses, at a net cost of $1,515,290. Massachusetts paid $1,776,778 for pauper support and relief. The whole number entirely supported was 13,989, and the number of the partially supported was 72,881. Ohio, which is not especially afflicted with pauperism, pays more than half the money obtained by the state taxation for the welfare of her criminals and paupers; and the estimate does not include the public charities of her cities, or any township aid. She has an almshouse population of 13,599 during the year. The Michigan paupers, in 1878 (when the last biennial report was published), showed a rate of increase four times greater than the percentage of increase in the population. Such statistics could be multiplied indefinitely. It should be stated, however, that there has been a great lessening in the number of out-door paupers aided, since the business of the country has improved; the number of almshouse inmates remaining about the same. Undoubtedly, many of the indoor paupers came to the almshouses during the hard times, but the better times fail to draw them away. Indeed, once a pauper, always a pauper, has become an almshouse axiom. The pauper being thus expensive and pertinacious, we must needs be interested in our manner of dealing with him, however unpleasant he himself may be. In this article I shall try to describe, as fully as my space will permit, the Indoor Pauper, what he is, and how we treat him. I shall not discuss here any question of the necessity of poor-laws; whatever their defects, however tragical their unforeseen results, the argument in their favor has been reinforced by the kindly sentiment of generations, until now the popular heart makes the legal care of the poor a part of our Christianity, and assaults upon such care excite overwhelming opposition. Yet, granting the necessity of poor-laws, their warmest friend will admit that they may be so framed and so administered as to do grievous wrong. To tempt the poor into pauperism is a bad business; but it is the business of every State which is unwisely lavish with its poor-fund. To brutalize men, and ruin women, and corrupt children, are acts usually called by harsh names; but they are the acts of every State which gives over the management of its almshouses to ignorant officials To load with chains helpless creatures, proven guilty of no crime; to beat them, starve them, shut them up in underground dungeons, cold and damp, with mouldy straw for furniture and rats for company, and there leave them for months and years untended, save for the daily pushing of their coarse food through a hole in the door, this conduct, when we read of it in the history of the Inquisition or the Bastile, we say is wicked cruelty; but it is cruelty which has been practiced by every State that has abandoned its insane paupers to almshouse tending.
Perhaps as easy a way as any to answer the question will be to describe a visit made by the writer, a few months ago, to a large rural almshouse in Illinois. I select this particular house because it is not the best, and is a long way from being the worst, within my knowledge. The house stands in the centre of a great coal district, thirteen miles from the county seat, but only two from a little mining hamlet. The road is fairly good in dry summers; when the weather is wet, and through most of the winter, it is almost impassable. My companion was a clever young physician, of considerable experience among the insane. After a long drive we stopped before a cluster of buildings, to which a tall windmill gave something of a picturesque and foreign air. There was a neat brown cottage; a large, bare brown house, without blinds, and seeming to have a disproportionate number of windows; along, two-storied building, shining with new paint; and a number of out-buildings, in appearance much like those to be seen on any large farm, even to the detail of a brick-red barn. The yard in front of the house had a number of trees, and a little to the right was a large garden. We saw no flowers, except the great white snowballs weighing down a half dozen huge bushes; but green things were sprouting and springing up all over the garden beds, and the foliage and the short scant grass had the fresh beauty of May. A man opened the gate. for us. He was a short, squarely built fellow, in dingy yellowish garments; and he had chains on his feet, making him take queer, short steps. His face was pale and sodden, with blear eyes and shapeless features; somehow, he seemed all of a color, hair, skin, eyes, and clothes. Several other men, also in chains, and more or less of a color like him, were hobbling about the yard; and one young man, in a long blue jean gown, was sitting chained to a post. Those must be the insane, said the doctor. Mingling with these men were others without chains, men and women, some of whom were painfully deformed. No one appeared to pay them any attention. The superintendent was away; but his daughter, a rather pretty, slim girl of eighteen, offered to show us through the house. The brown cottage was the keepers house; this we did not visit, but passed directly into the large frame building, the home of the sane paupers and of the harmless insane. At the time of our visit the house contained ninety-seven paupers, including some thirty-seven insane people and nine children. The first room we saw was a small store-room. Besides stores, there was a shelf filled with medicine bottles. The almshouse being so far from the county-seat, the almshouse keeper acts as resident physician.
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We did not see a book or newspaper, nor indeed the slightest means of diverting the mind, not so much as the customary pack of greasy cards. There was no hospital, and the bathing arrangements were most primitive; but, judging from the paupers aspect, they did not bathe often enough to be troubled by any deficiencies. The keeper, himself, would gladly have had both bath rooms and a hospital, but the supervisors thought them too expensive. I have no reason to suppose that any cruelty was shown to the sane paupers, or any wanton cruelty to the insane. The keepers wife and daughters, whom we saw afterward, were neatly dressed, and gave every token of being of a kindly disposition. I believe that they tried hard to make their charges comfortable, and that whatever abuses were apparent were caused in the main by the construction of the house, which made cleanliness difficult and discipline impossible.
(Footnote: Extract from Report of New York Board relating to Causes of Pauperism, page 190. The meaning of these words may he gathered from a. few figures: 2,453 of the paupers examined were in families; from these families there were known (during three generations) 14,901 dependent on public charity, 4,968 insane people, 844 idiots, and 8,863 drunkards.)
Ohio seems to treat her insane rather worse than Illinois. Looking through her last report, one finds such cases as these: A man becomes a violent maniac; his neighbors, scared, bind him with cords, put him on a sled, and draw him over the snow to the infirmary. There he is taken to a room without fire, and left through a bitter-cold night; in consequence, he freezes both feet, and one has to be amputated. A doctor writes a pathetic letter to the superintendent of an insane asylum, imploring him to admit an epileptic girl, whom her parents dare not send to the infirmary, because of its known immorality. The family; are in a sorrowful condition, he says, and if this distress is not alleviated it is my opinion that the mother will be an inmate of an asylum before six months. An old man, whose habits are troublesome, falls ill; he is taken to an out-building, and left there; he grows worse, but no doctor is called; at last, one of the paupers informs the county physician, who finds the old man dying; a few hours later he is dead. A hundred and fifty-six Ohio lunatics and fifty-six epileptics are reported as secluded, which rather poetical term means that they are kept in narrow stalls or iron cribs in small outer buildings, usually dark, almost uniformly without drainage or ventilation; and that they are untended, save as meals are carried to them. Others, not in seclusion, are restrained with handcuffs, chains, and hobbles. But the reader recognizes the old story; there is no need to repeat it. These three States, the most wealthy and populous in the West, may serve as examples of the treatment accorded the pauper insane by the Western States, which have central boards of inspection. 2ff7e9595c
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