Library Collections: Document: Full Text

In 1895 the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics undertook an investigation of the connection between pauperism and drink in the state pauper institutions, the results of which are corroborated on a larger scale by the Committee of fifty, as shown below: --

PAUPERISM AND INTEMPERANCE.

The only comparable foreign statistics which are available are those of workhouse pauperism in England. (56) Charles Booth found 12.6 per cent of 634 inmates at Stepney, London, to have been pauperized by drink and 21.9 per cent of 736 inmates of St. Pancras. These percentages seem very small when compared with American experience, but Mr. Booth himself said that it was probable that research into the history of these people might disclose a greater connection between pauperism and the public house. (57)

(57) Booth, "Pauperism," etc., p. 11.

Table XV. shows the effect of intemperance in producing destitution and neglect of children. The data of 5136 cases were obtained from three groups of institutions: (1) societies for the prevention of cruelty to children or humane societies which deal with children of the most depraved; (2) state organizations of the National Children's Home Society, under whose treatment come a large number of illegitimate infants, (3) two state public schools which are, in fact, asylums for orphaned and dependent children.

Although the number of colored children represented in Table XV. is too small to be significant of itself, yet the smaller percentage of destitution due to drink is in harmony with statistics previously quoted. Comparing native-born with foreign-born children, there is a difference of 6 per cent in favor of the former; comparing children of native parentage with those of foreign parentage, the difference rises to 13 per cent. As in the case of women, the mere arithmetical fact that nearly one-half the destitution of 5000 children was due to the drinking habits of those hav-ing charge of them does not adequately represent the concomitant misery. Irrespective of transmitted tendencies to degeneration, the children of drunken parents fare badly because of neglect and privation. Whether the mother herself drinks, or is merely linked to a drunken husband, her life during the period of gestation is almost inevitably such as endangers the well-being of the child. The fact that when a large part of the family income goes for liquor, other branches of expenditure must be curtailed, is so obvious that it only needs to be mentioned. Moreover, the irrational and often brutal treatment received by children of the intemperate makes right development almost impossible for them. One fact brought out by the statistics of the Registrar General of England may be given as showing in an extreme instance the perils attending child life when parents drink: a much larger number of children are suffocated in bed on the nights of Saturday and holidays than on other nights of the week. This prompt extinguishing of infant life is hardly a greater misfortune than for the child to grow up with irrational guidance and the evil example of drunken parents.

TABLE XV.
INTEMPERANCE AND DESTITUTION OF CHIDREN (1896-1898).
Arranged from Koren's Tables, Chap. IV.

In addition to being ill nourished and often cruelly treated, such children grow up under the influence of a degenerating personality. Wilson says: --

"Typically the action induced in the brain -by alcohol- is of the nature of a progressive paralysis, beginning with the highest level and its most delicate functions, and spreading gradually downward through the lower. Moral qualities and the higher processes of intelligence are, therefore, first invaded." (58)

Children growing up under the influence of parents subject to such degeneration are not likely to develop the higher qualities at all, since the development of such qualities comes very largely from imitation. The utter lack of foresight, and the impossibility of postponing present gratification for the sake of future gain, is one of the pronounced characteristics of the drunkard, and is also common among the distinctly pauper class.