The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1877-05-23
PAUPERISM.


The investigation of the New York state
board of charities reveals the moral standing
of the inmates of the county poor houses TO
be such that sentimentalists and theorists
must be convinced of the inheritance of
son from father or mother of vicious, idle
habits. The board prepared sixty questions
so constructed as to elicit answers bearing
upon The whole subject of pauperism, com.
pelling facts and statements, regarding not
only the inmates of the almshouse, but their
ancestors for two or three generations. We
are apt to conclude, without previous inves-
tigation, that children and very old people
make up the great mass of paupers, and that
therefore pity and charity for their helpless
condition should overweight every other
feeling, and that the city or state authorities
are only taking care of those who through
weakness or infrmities are too weak to take
care of themselves. But this official state
ment OF the committee giving figures
properly vouched for in every instance de-
stroys that theory and reveals the age and
character of majority of the people who
seem to regard the poor house as perma-
nent home, where they may be fed and
clothed by charity, n matter how well fitted
they may be for labor. OF the II, GA paupers
questioned 1881 were between 10 and 20
and 1927 between 20 and 40 There were
but 90 over TO- and only 2,O12 under 10
years of age. Thus the idea of infancy or
advanced old age being the cause of the
great mass of pauperism must be abandoned.
Only very few of the adults had ever
owned any real estate or any considerable
amount of personal property, but had lived
from ''hand to mouth" until they had drift
ed into what seemed to them harbor of
peace and plenty-the county poor house.
One thousand three hundred and sixty-one
paupers were the children of pauper parents,
and this state with many existed as far back
as the third generation. The men and wo-
men in one county had frequently relatives
who were paupers in adjacent counties, and
the same family name could be found on the
records of half a dozen asylums. In one
place a young woman was found with ten
children, seven of whom were lllegitimate;
in another mother with five boys of the
same standing; in another comparatively
sensible, young, good looking woman who
has had four pauper husbands and eleven
pauper children, and she and her two last
husbands and eight of the offspring are liv-
ing off of the charity of the county. Wo-
men go out into the world from these places
and return again and again, bringing with
them each time new born child whose life
will be passed in the poor house, and whose
father is either poor degraded wretch, too
poverty stricken to care for his never &C
knowedged child, or too rich and proud to
desire to aid either the mother or his illegit-
innate brood. This tainted blood will show
itself for Neutrality-suspicious. daughters
and granddaughter walking the same dis
honest, VICIOUS path, and giving to
their children the same propensity
for crime and filth. Intemperance, either
alone or associated with kindred weaknesses
and passions, is prolific source whence pau
pers are furnished, and the poverty of fam
lily can be directly attributed to the habitual
ease does not reduce many to the ranks of
pauperism as would be imagined, but where
1t does it is generally of the most loathsome,
foul description, Accidents and wounds
cripple and MAIN a few of the men and
women who are obliged to ask shelter in an
almshouse, but after while such persons
find some occupation, and preferring labor
and privation to idleness and ease, go out
from under the care of the authorities. But
the habitually lazy. idle. vicious, IMPROVE
dent and weak-virtued, are the common in
mates OF county poor houses, and the chill
dren of great majority of these people will
take their places as fast as they are vacated,
unless habits of industry and thrift are i'm
planted in their minds and they are forced
to work.