What the Care of the Insane Costs.—The total cost of the care of the insane, in this country, has been estimated to be $165,000,000 a year. In estimating the cost of the insane we must take into account the value or worth of each adult to the State. This value has been computed to be $700 a year. If, upon this basis, we count the adult membership of the insane class between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, we find that their worth is roughly about $132,000,000.
The cost of maintenance in the various insane institutions is about thirty-three millions of dollars a year. It would be quite possible to justly increase this total by estimating the worth of the help whose whole time is devoted to the care of the insane. If these individuals worked at some other trade or profession, their time
would. be of value to the state in general—not to a class who should be non-existent. The cost to the state of the potential criminal is not included in this estimate.
From the above figures it may be observed that it costs more to simply maintain the insane each year than it costs to work the Panama Canal; or to pay for the total cost of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial departments of our government. The total cost is more than the entire value of the wheat, corn, tobacco, and dairy and beef products exported each year from this country.
Alcoholic Drunkenness.—Alcoholism is a sign and a symptom of degeneracy and is a distinct indication of unfitness for parenthood. The only cure for alcoholism is to prohibit parenthood. It has been proved that alcohol taken into the stomach can be demonstrated in the testicle or ovary within a few minutes, and, like any other poison, may injure the sperm or the germ element therein contained. As a result of this intoxication of the primary elements, children may be conceived and born who become idiots, epileptics or feeble-minded. It is asserted that 48 per cent. of all the idiots and imbeciles are the offspring of alcoholic parents.
Recent experiments show that parental alcoholism alone can determine degeneration. Mr. Galton quoted the case of a man who, "after begetting several normal children became a drunkard and had imbecile offspring"; and another case has been recorded of a healthy woman who, when married to a drunkard, had five sickly children, dying in infancy, but in a later union with a healthy man bore normal and vigorous children.
Dr. Sullivan found on inquiry that:
.... "Of 600 children born of 120 drunken mothers 335 died in infancy or were still-born, and that several of the survivors were mentally defective, and as many as 4.1 per cent. were epileptic. Many of these women had female relatives, sisters or daughters, of sober habits and married to sober husbands. On comparing the death rate amongst the children of the sober mothers with that amongst the children of the drunken women of the same stock, the former was found to be 23.9 per cent., the latter 55.2 per cent., or nearly two and
a half times as much. It was further observed that in the drunken families there was a progressive rise in the death rate from the earlier to the later born children."
Dr. Sullivan cites as a typical alcoholic family one in which the first three children were healthy, the fourth was of defective intelligence, the fifth was an epileptic idiot, the sixth was dead born, and finally the productive career ended with an abortion.