NUMBER AND COST OF TOWN PAUPERS. Full Support. The number receiving full support any part of the year has been 5,523. The average number has been 3,851.17, viz. : in almshouses, 2,680.38; in hospitals and private families, 1,170,79. The cost of full support has amounted to $590,858.34, an average cost of $2.06 per week for each pauper. The amount and average weekly cost at the almshouses has been stated above. Those for outside support have been $216,172.42 and $3.60, respectively. Partial Support. Relief to an extent less than that of full support has been furnished to 23,775 persons within the year,-1,399 less than in 1870. The number of families, or individuals without families, making application for relief has been 9,518, two-fifths of the applicants being males and three-fifths females; 2,322 were new cases; 4,600 had settlements in the town aiding them, 800 having a military settlement. In more than one-third of all the cases, the aid has been rendered through the authorities of other towns. Upwards of 900 are reported as intemperate, a number much too small to represent those whose poverty was caused by intemperance. The amount expended in relief has been $303,670.73, or about $12.70 for each recipient. Vagrants or Travellers. The number of vagrants reported for the year is 35,911. The lodgers in the Boston station houses, sometimes classed as vagrants and numbering 33,868, as well as those in one or two of the smaller cities, of which no return has been made, would raise the apparent number of vagrants (acts of vagrancy would be a more correct expression) to 69,779. This reported number of vagrants is somewhat larger than that of 1870, but there is no good reason for supposing that the real number of this class exceeds 25,000, as stated on page 20 of this Report. Nine-tenths of them are males and eight-tenths are adults. Some attempt has been made, in the returns of this year, to ascertain the cost of entertaining the vagrants. The amounts SECRETARY'S REPORT. reported is $13,108.91; the real cost is probably twice as great. In many cases no report of the actual or the estimated cost was made, and in others the statements were confessedly imperfect. Besides, in some of the larger towns, as in Boston, most of the vagrants receive the attention of the police, and expenses thus incurred, even if it were possible to distinguish them from the general police expenses, would never find their way into the pauper accounts. In many towns the vagrants lodge at the almshouses, and their expenses are then merged in those of the almshouses. In one town where there is no almshouse, vagrants receive from the town authorities small sums of money, that they may provide for themselves, because no one can be found willing to entertain them. Such a practice is likely to increase the evil of vagrancy. Summary. The whole number receiving full support within the year has been 5,523; the number receiving temporary or occasional relief has been 23,775; the estimated number of vagrants entertained has been about 25,000; making a total of 51&2 who received more or less assistance from the overseers within the year. The entire cost has been $894,529.07, viz. for full support, $590,858.34, and for partial support, including vagrancy, $303,670.3, the reported cost of the latter being $13,108.91, and the cost, as estimated, $25,000. From the total expenses as reported, certain deductions should be made: for cases where two owns report expenses for the same paupers; for a part, at least of the sums expended for sick State paupers which will finally be paid by the State; and for the cost to the towns of children in the State reformatories. The probable amount proper to be deducted for these cases is not above $50,000, leaving the cost of town paupers $840,000. e PAUPERISM, CRIME, DISEASE AND INSANITY. PART TENTH. PAUPERISM, CRIME, DISEASE AND INSANITY. GENERAL RESULTS OF STATISTICAL TABLES. The statistics of pauperism have been referred to in Part Ninth, next preceding, pages 185-188. Those of disease and insanity have been referred to in the review of institutions supported by the State. Those of crime, to be given in full in the Appendix, are aggregated briefly as follows: The number of commitments during the year ending September 30, 1871, to the State and county prisons, including the House of Industry and the State Workhouse, has been 18,639, against 16,999 the previous year, an increase of 1,640. Of these commitments, 10,523 were for drunkenness, an excess of 1,157 over those for the year ending September 30, 1870, the commitments for the last named period having been 9,366. The number of persons committed has been 15,533, against 14,315 for the last year, showing an increase of. 1,218. Of the whole number of persons, 3,335 were females-less than one-fourth of the whole. The number committed under 15 years of age has been 122 (114 males and 8 females), against 231 persons (222 males and 9 females) committed last year, showing a decrease of 109 during the present year. Of the 15,533 persons committed during the year, 8,977 were born in foreign countries, 2,360 in other States, and 4,196 were natives of this State. Of the whole number of persons committed 4,795 were unable to read and write; 7,349, nearly one-half, were married; and 2,395 were minors, the last being an increase of 41 over the number of minors, committed during the preceding year. There has been an increase of 225 over last year, in the whole number of crimes against the person; and of 1,484 in SECRETARY'S REPORT. crimes against public order and decency; while there has been a decrease of 72 in the crimes against property. The views presented at length in the former report of the Secretary upon habitual offenders and executive pardons, after further reflection, seem to him correct and to call for serious consideration. The results of the observations of the year upon pauperism, crime, disease and insanity, and the methods of dealing with them have already been given as far as the usual limits of this Report admit. The experience of the year encourages activity in all movements for the extirpation of these evils. Not, indeed, in our day, if ever on earth, will they disappear. But the vision which com prehends history sees them yielding day by day to human effort blessed of Heaven. Each man and women, each family, each generation must do the duty at hand, however rich or meagre the fruit, trusting in the gracious Providence which giveth the increase. There is a moral economy in the universe which allows neither material substance nor moral effort ever to be lost. Every deed done, every word spoken, every aspiration breathed for the welfare of mankind, is an imperishable gift to the present and bequest to the future. In that faith it becomes us to live and work, anxious that nothing shall be left undone which may help the poor, the disabled and the criminal, and never losing heart if not permitted in our own day to realize the full frution of our toil. BOSTON, 1 December, 1871. EDWARD L. PIERCE. |