Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/83

Rh of which I refer those interested to Dr. Richardson's address, as well as for plans for the warming and ventilation of the houses, and for the safe and effectual sewering of the city; also for most important suggestions in regard to public laundries and the carrying on of certain industries (dress-making, tailoring, etc.) in the homes among the children of those engaged in such work. In connection with the last-named point, the author cites an instance as having come under his own observation, in which the half-made riding-habit, destined to figure among the fashionable frequenters of Rotten Row, was made to serve as a coverlet for the poor tailor's child, stricken with malignant scarlet fever—an incident eminently likely to occur under our present system, or want of system, of sanitation—the dangers from public laundries, as at present managed, being equally conspicuous.

It will be seen that no expense is to be spared in the building and administration of the city of Ethica. Money is abundant in the favored country of its location; the vast sums also which are expended in other cities in the support of almshouses, penitentiaries, jails, and other places of detention of incapables and criminals, are largely saved to the public treasury. As a matter of economy merely these methods would pay the best in the end, not only in the results which we have especially in view, but in actual eagles, dollars, dimes, and cents. In the State of Pennsylvania alone there are, in round numbers, five thousand insane and five thousand feeble-minded persons, who constitute a heavy burden upon the community. Those who understand the true nature of many of the causes of idiocy and insanity know that both are, to a great degree, as strictly preventable as are small-pox and diphtheria.

In that startling record of a criminal family—"the Jukes"—covering the history of several generations, it is estimated that a loss of over a million and a quarter of dollars was caused by this single family, so far as its members could be traced, without including the money expended for intoxicants, and without taking into account the entailment of pauperism and crime, or the incurable disease, idiocy and insanity growing out of these unwholesome lives—all of which bring heavy expense upon the public. But it is clearly shown in this history that the perpetuation of criminal tendencies, as of other traits, depends on the permanence of the environiment, and that a change of external conditions may, in time, bring about a change in character. Do our laws, our courts, our jails, our almshouses, our insane hospitals, our schools and churches even, deal with the real questions presented in these statistics? Is not an exact and scientific treatment of the subject of morals, in its entire breadth and fullness, emphatically demanded; and will not the city of Ethica, when it shall arise, prove an economy in every sense of that so-often falsely used word?

But, in the pursuit of the twofold object for which Ethica is to be founded, the intelligent co-operation of all its citizens will be essential