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In the United States insanity is obviously increasing very rapidly. In ten years in Wisconsin the insane under public care have increased from about seventeen hundred to over three thousand. This is partly due to the causes discussed above. But it is also due to another fact, to which I think I was the first to call attention: that the ratio of insanity to the population is much greater in the older states than in the newer ones, and in the older counties of Wisconsin than in the newer ones. The rapid increase of crime in this country is, doubtless, an incident of the rapid growth of city population. But probably the more careful administration of the laws has increased the number of prisoners, while the system of reformatories for boys and girls, and all the good influences of Christian civilization, have been resisting the increase of crime. It is noteworthy that a better prison system in England than we have in this country, joined to the private reformatory work of all kinds, has brought the increase of crime to a stop, and that there is absolutely less crime in Great Britain now than there was fifteen years ago, notwithstanding the increase of population.

The same causes have made an increase of pauperism in this country -- the growth of cities and the foolish or corrupt use of public money in aiding undeserving applicants for poor-relief.

To a considerable extent these three defective classes link into one another. It is hard to say whether a tramp is a pauper or a criminal. Many criminals may be called insane, and some are so adjudged when they have money or friends to help them, and some insane have criminal tendencies. A very large per cent. of criminals become insane in prison or afterward. A considerable number of paupers become insane. The children of the one class pass easily into the other class. Street children who are the children of misfortune, are easily drawn into crime. Here and there in our country, and in every other one, are knots of defectives all tangled up together, families closely related furnishing a whole population of criminals, paupers, idiots, and lunatics among themselves. Such was the family in Ulster County, New York, called by Dr. Dugdale "the Jukes family," to disguise their real name. Such is the "tribe of Ishmael" recently described by Mr. McCulloch in Indianapolis. The interchangeability of these defects is very clearly shown in these cases.

What are we now doing with the defective classes? With some exceptions all civilized nations are pursuing the following lines of policy: Pauperism is relieved and discouraged. The treatment fluctuates between the extremes of lavish relief and stringent discouragement, but is generally a compromise between these two extremes. Insanity is cured, if possible; if not, it is usually protected in institutions of some sort. Crime is punished in prisons and prevented in reformatories.

These methods express the average wisdom of the present generation, which is far in advance of what has previously been done for the defective classes. It does not follow that this is the best that can possibly be done for them. In fact, here and there experiments are in progress which I believe represent, not the average wisdom, but the best wisdom of our times. Here and there private societies have taken up the work of eradicating pauperism, not by relief, which often encourages it, nor by merely repressive measures, but by carrying out the motto of the charity organization societies, -- "Not alms, but a friend." And Rev. J. H. Crooker of Madison has recently shown that this is not a new discovery, but is a century old, when it was more fully applied to public poor-relief than it has since been. The methods of reforming criminals and thus reducing crime have been discovered and applied in the British Isles, while in America they have been only so applied in a few places. The methods of treating the insane have been growing milder and more humane in Europe and America within a few years. In my judgment, the State Hospital of Alabama and the county asylums for the chronic insane of Wisconsin mark the highest point yet reached in the direction of liberty for the insane. At the rate of progress which we are now making it will take a generation for the average American treatment of the defective classes to reach the standard set for pauperism by the charity organization societies for crime by Elmira and Concord, and for insanity by the Wisconsin system of care for the chronic insane.

Our measures of treatment of the defective classes sometimes increase the very evils we mean to cure. Poor-relief, instead of relieving pauperism, very often increases it; insane asylums seem to increase the number of the insane; prisons, of criminals. This, however, is not a necessity of the case, but only an incidental evil, which needs to be guarded against.

We must also allow that our humane methods of treatment, in addition to the good effects which they have, do also tend to increase the numbers of the defective classes by prolonging their lives and by making their lot a more desirable one. I have already mentioned the accumulation of insanity by the mere prolongation of life in the insane in civilized countries. It is still a question whether this does not sufficiently account for the greater number of insane in civilized over savage countries. Where the insane are killed as witches, or executed as criminals, or killed by private vengeance or malice, or allowed to die by neglect, and where only the robust can survive the hardships and perils of life in any case, it is not wonderful that the insane existing at any given time are few. So also with pauperism. If no poor-relief is given, there will be no paupers, for some will starve and others will steal. But crime seems to decrease with milder punishments; whether these are the causes of the decrease or only a result of the general civilization of society, which is reducing both crime and punishment alike. It is also true that we discover and do something for a large number of cases now who would not be known as defectives under a less perfect administration of government. This is one of the causes of the apparent increase of insanity, as I have already said. Crime is more completely looked after, and things are called crime now which would not have been called so a few years ago.