Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1907-09-03
PAUPERISM AND CRIME.
THE TWO COST THIS COUNTRY
ANNUALLY six BILLION DOL.
LARS.

That is Americas Record, and the
Yearly Increase of Wealth is Only
$500, oo0, 900, Or. Charles ]. Bush
nell Points Out.
This country spends $4,000, 900 900
annually on the criminal, pauper and
vicious classes, and the annual in
crease of wealth is only 100000 },
Does not that look as if the public
were bankrupt"
This statement was made in a lee
ture by DR.. Charles J. Bushnell, who
in conducting a model public play
ground at Washington, D. c. He is
a graduate elf Heidelberg University
and an authority on civic matters. DR..
Bushnell has the support of the lead
Jag citizens of Washington in his work.
Dr. BushnelPs figures are taken, he
says, from authoritative sources and
represent years of careful study. He
challenges any one to dEsprove their
accuracy. He and his wife have made
a special study of what they call the
social illness" OF the United States.
Continuing, Dr. Bushnell said:
AWhy, the $4,000. 100000 that this ma
ton spends every year on its Grim
NAL cases equals the amount spent on
all churches, public libraries, the
Young Mems Christian Association,
the Salvation Army. public hospitals,
asylums for the insane and all beneyo-
lent institutions The average factory
hand earns $40 a year, while it is
estimated that the average criminal
costs the public at least s., 200 a
year.
Disease as a result of vicious hab-
its is on the increase; suicides are in
creasing six times as fast as the popu-
lation, and murders three times times
as fast; insanity is also increasing fast
er than the population. We are MAIN
ing and killing in accidents resulting
from our industrial enterprises as
many persons as were killed in an
average of the civil war, the Philip
pine war and the Japanese-Russian
war combined In other words, we
are practically carrying ON these
three wars all the time. And these
deaths by accident, due to our fast
commercial spirit, are from two to
nine times as numerous as similar
deaths in Europe, where experts have
shown that three-quarters of such &C.
cidents are pTeventable We are liv-
ing entirely too fast.
1--WE have 10000 900 paupers in the
country, and 100000 persons are on
the ragged edge of pauperism."
DIR. Bushnell endeavored to show
particularly the need of work to OFFSET
the growing evils of social conditions
in the large cities. In 1890, he said,
only 8 per cent. of our population liv-
ed in cities of 5000 or more inhabi-
tants, while today over one-third live
in cities of this class and in the east
and northeast the percentage is much
higher even than that.
81 believe" he said, that more
and more people will move to our
large cities. This will be due to the
availability oif factory products and
the smaller need of men on the farms,
where work is being done more and
more by machinery"
The public playground where chill
dren are given outings and useful oc-
is obvdating to some extent
these conditions, it was pointed out
by DR.. Bushnell While the facts he
presented, he said, might lead one to
talue very pessimistic view of the
worlds future. he nevertheless favored
the utmost effort to turn the tide in
the other direction, and he said he
believed it could be done by herculean
efforts.