The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-09-25
THE CoUNTRYs INVESTMENT

Disease and Misf0rtune-Ehe Portentous
Estimate Made Ia Dollars and Cents,
| Not in Blasted Lives.
1t is an admitted fact by the highest
medical authorities of the United States
that there is vast and rapid increase
in the criminal, defective and insane
classes of our population. The in
crease does not depend upon the natur-
al growth of the population of the
country, but goes on much faster.
There is a constant and alarming in
crease cf the ratio which the total of
these three classes bears to the total
population of the country.
1t is an equally admitted fact that
three-fourths of the crime in our land
is the direct OF indirect result of indul-
gence in intoXicants. Three-fourths of
the enormous total cost of the ponder
GUS police and criminal court machin-
cry of the country is directly chargea-
bic to the account of rum.
Likewise is it an open and acknowl-
edged fact that fully three-fourths of
the cases of insanity in our asylums and
almshouses are also the result of rum.
The percentages given by the various
Investigators, in various asylums of our
country, run from fifty per cent.-one-
half-up to ninety per cent! We take
three-fourths as a fair average of the
percentages given by these various au-
thorities. Not only is it meant that
the insanity results directly from the
effects of rum-drinking on the patients
part-though these cases are many,
and the chief of any asylum can point
out a large share of runs direct vic
tins among his patients-but it is the
result of loss of social standing, of
wealth, upon the wives of drunkards,
and of a thousand other proximate
causes which have their origin in the
accursed rum traffic.
Also is it an admitted fact by all ex-
perts, that idiocy and insanity, espe-
cially the former, are the heritages of
woe to the children of drunkards A
child begotten by an intoxicated parent
is very liable to be an idiot Where
the parent is confirmed drunkard,
his physical system soaked and perme-
ated with rum, its whitening presence
constant in the blood. brain and nerves,
if the unfortunate child escapes idiocv
and insanity. then epilepsy. melan-
cholia, and the long train of ipcurable
and obsure nervous diseases are liable
to be the inherited result; or the child
may be a cripple, or deaf and dumb.
Nay, more; that mysterious law by
which hereditary curse so often skips
over enc generation only to reappear
in full vigor in the second generation,
often comes into play, and where the
children of sots themselves escape,
their own children pay the awful pen
atty of their grandfathers' slavery to
rum.
The result of all this is, that the
criminal, the insane, the idiotic, the
deaf and dumb, are increasing at a
greater rate than the mass of the pop
ulation; and year by year the burden
of their maintenance by the State in
creases. Our prisons are enlarged to
find cells for the increasing criminal
classes; our asylums and hospitals are
being daily added to that room may
be found for the insane and defective
classes; our poor-houses are constantly
crowded with the homeless and help
less. And rum rs the great cause of
the States being compelled to imprison
or care for at least three-fourths of the
sum total of all these people.
The system by which these people
are supported divides the authority up
so completely that the average citizen
is entirely in ignorance of the enor-
nous total of the burden which is thus
thrown upon the State-or rather upon
the taxpayers. Leaving the moral
side of the matter out of sight, let us
look at its pecunary relations, and find
out approximately what rum costs the
people of the United States in this in
direct way-for it is to be remembered
that this expenditure is entirely aside
from the enormous direct annual out
lay for rum.
According to the census of 1880,
there were 400, 900 insane, idiotic, deaf,
blind, pauper and criminal inhabit-
ants. These cost the people of the
country, on an average, not less than
S175 per year each, directly and indi-
rectly. This makes total of SO, 200,
900 year. This is a per capita tax of
$3.50 on every man, woman and child
in the country, and we pay it, in
our taxes and otherwise. almost with
out our knowledge. And it is abso-
lutely certain that a large share of this
at least threc-fourths-is due entirely
to rum.
Let us take the business way of esti-
mating this burden. 1t is a common
method, among business men, in tigur-
ing upon some annual, regular ex-
penditure, to find what principal it
represents Well, S75, 100000 year
is the interest at three per cent, on
$1,000, 000 900. This principal is so
vast that we can reach its size only by
comparison. The national bonded
! debt, on September 1, was only ST.
pol, 015.112. Hence the S75, 100000 a
year we pay represents the interest, at
three per cent, on over double the
bonded debt of the United States.
That is, to state the matter in another
shape, our permanent investment in