The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1875-01-21
The Economy of Charity.

The State Board of Public Charities in
its annual reports to the Legislature has
repeatedly urged the principle that the pre-
vention of crime, by the care of the desti-
tute and neglected children of the Com
monwealth, is not only high duty, but
the very best economy. The cost of train
ing child in the way Of virtuous living,
as compared with the maintaining of a
criminal in the penitentiary, or the insane
pauper, who has destroyed his own dissipa-
ton, in the almshouse, is so trifing that
the Commissioners of Public Charities have
continued to press upon the Legislature
the great Importance of providing by law
for the better care and education of these
neglected classes and the wisdom of this
policy is being rapidly recognized by intel
igent people.
One of the most startling illustrations of
the fearful cost which neglected crime in
ficts upon the state, and the dreadful in
heritance of wretchednesS and pauperism
thus entailed upon society, has recently
been given by most reputable physician
of New York, DR.. Harris, who has recent
ly stated case known to him, the truth of
which, amazing as it is in its record of per-
pctual crime, we have 10 reason to ques-
ton.
DR.. Harris states that in small village
in 4 county on the Upper Hudson, about
seventy years ago, a young girl was set
adrift on the usual charity of the inhabit-
ants She became the mother of long
race Of criminals and paupers, and her pro
geny has cursed the country ever since.
The county records show t,co hundred of
her descendants who have been criminals
In one single generation of her unhappy
line there were twenty children ; of these
three died in infancy and seventeen survi-
we'd to maturity. OF the seventeen, nine
served in the State prisons for high crimes
an aggregate term of fifty years. while the
others were frequent inmates of jails and
penitentiaries and almshouses OF the
nine hundred descendants, through six
generations, from this unhappy girl who
was left on the village streets and abandoned
in her childhood, great number have been
idiots, imbeciles, drundards, lunatics, pau
pers and prostitutes but two hundred of
the more vigorous arc on record US crinli-
nalg.
This neglected little child has thus cost
the county authorities, in the effects she
has transmitted, hundreds of thousands of
dollars in the expense and care Of criminals
and paupers, besides the untold damage she
has inflicted on property and public morals.
Seventy years ago the people took small
concern about such matters. They had lit
tie appreciation either of the moral or
econmical obligations which the State owed
to itself and to its children And out of
this common Indifference and ignorance
have grown results such as these results
whose inhences must project themseles into
the future generations of this poor child Of
crime and neglect, for all time to come.
And if from single root, not only two hun
dred criminals, but long line of idiots,
drunkards, lunatics, prostitutes and paupers
have sprung to be burden and scourge
and cost upon society, how shall the aggre-
gate results of similar neglect in thousands
of other cases be estimated ?-Erening
Bulletin.