The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-01-18

It is a remarkable fact that in state institutions, the number of curables is much larger than those who are finally marked as incurable while in Morningsido, it is as Lifts says, many go in but very, very few come out. It is further a fact, that i those who have come out all seem to unite in describing that institu- tion as den of terror. It is further a fact that not one has come back to this Division with kindly memories of place where they owed recovery to patient, kindly. humane treatment, above all needed and above all apparently missing in such institutions.
 More often than not the Alaskan insane are victims of broken nerve. They are not desperate cases. They are on the contrary cases which with tender care and patient solici- tudc, with careful nursing and bright and cheerful surroundings would be certain to recover.
 No such thing is provided at Morningside. On the contrary men who have recovered have spoken of 1t to the paper from time to time as they would speak of a vcritGble hell where the attendants functioned as the satellites of Satan in their mind: cold, cheerless, disciplined, rigorous, gloomy, nerve racking and irksome and dreary beyond words.
 Unrescrvcdly, the Industrial Worker will say that it would be hard to imagine a more desperate situation than a person is real ly sane finds himself when shut in, as Lifts was shut in, without friends, without counsel, with no means whatever to recover what is after all dear even to the least of us beyond words: personal freedom. This hell in life, this living death is sufficient in itself to secure the insanity of the sanost person that would be confined there. There IS no doubt at all about it. . How long does any person think that nerv- ous temperament could endure the terrific condition described by Lifts without himself going insane even though upon entry they had minds as vigorous and free and healthy as it was possible for a vigorous and free and healthy body to have.
 It is a duty that all the people of Alaska owe to themselves and to their friends that the hateful system of farming out the Alaskans insane to an institution outside should be abolished. There is no reason why it should not. Alaska can well afford to care for it's own enfeebled bodily or mentally. All aska can we'll afford to render this service to its own, just as it looks after its physically stricken or it's maimed.
 This is a matter which should tc attended to. It is a matter which can easily receive more attention than it has received from the vari- Ous institutions of Alaska. There is no organization in this country put will sooner or later have some of It's members in the same situation in which Lifts found himself. Therc | is no organization which cares to think that it Is turning over its brethren to the tender mercies of an exploiting institution which the longer it keeps him the more shall be its profit; that the less expensive the food. the nursing, the creature comforts which are afforded, the more money will the owners have for themselves. Why, then. should a single one of them look lightly at a standing disgrace, standing re- proach and standing scandal to this very Territory. The best poss- ible institution that could exist un- der such a system would be scan- dal and a disgrace and reproach. And too many, altogether too un- animous have been the complaints about Morningside from time to time, to permit the territory look ing on with unconcern at its taking charge of the people who are stricken mentally in their work of developing this northern country.