The amount which the
state of New York expends yearly on the maintenance of its insane wards,
is greater than it spends for any other purpose except education; and in
a very few years, if its insane population continues to increase at the
present rate, it will spend more on them than it does on the education
of its normal children. The cost of institutional care for the socially
inadequate is far from being all that these people cost the state; but
those figures at least are not based on guesswork. The annual cost[78]
of maintaining a feeble-minded ward of the state, in various
commonwealths, is:
Illinois $136.50
Indiana 147.49
Minnesota 148.05
Ohio 155.47
Wisconsin 159.77
Kansas 170.16
Michigan 179.42
Kentucky 184.77
California 208.97
Maine 222.99
At such prices, each state maintains hundreds, sometimes thousands, of
feeble-minded, and the number is growing each year. In the near future
the expenditures must grow much more rapidly, for public sentiment is
beginning to demand that the defectives and delinquents of the
community be properly cared for. The financial burden is becoming a
heavy one; it will become a crushing one unless steps are taken to make
the feeble-minded productive (as described in the next chapter) and an
intangible "sinking fund" at the same time created to reduce the burden
gradually by preventing the production of those who make it up.
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