heir career leads down
to crime and poverty. The more drunkards, the more courts of law, and
almshouses, and insane asylums, and greater the taxes. Statistics show
that from fifty to sixty per cent. of crime is due to drunkenness; and
we all know how large poverty is due to this cause. Drunkenness is alone
responsible for from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of all our insane.

"We assert, and believe it can be proved, that reclaiming the drunkard
is a greater gain to the State, practical and immediate, than any other
charity.

"It is a low estimate to say it costs every county in the State three
hundred dollars yearly to support a drunkard; that is, this amount, and
more, is diverted from healthy channels of commerce, and is,
practically, lost to the State. At an inebriate asylum, but little over
that amount would, in a large majority of cases, restore them as active
producers again.

"Figures cannot represent the actual loss to society, nor can we compute
the gain from a single case cured and returned to normal life and
usefulness. Inebriety is sapping the foundation of our Government, both
State and National, and unless we can provide means adequate to check
it, we shall leave a legacy of physical, moral and political disease to
our descendants, that will ultimately wreck this country. Inebriate
asylums will do much to check and relieve this evil."

We conclude this chapter, which is but an imperfect presentation of the
work of our inebriate asylums, by a quotation from the _Quarterly
Journal of Inebriety_, for September, 1877. This periodical is published
under the auspices of "The American Association for the Cure of
Inebriates." The editor, Dr. Crothers, says: "We publish in this number,
reports of a large number of asylums from all parts of the country,
indicating great prosperity and success, notwithstanding the depression
of the times. Among the patients received at these asylums, broken-down
merchants, bankers, business men, who are inebriates of recent date, and
chronic cases that have been moderate drinkers for many years, seem to
be more numerous. The explanation is found in the peculiar times in
which so many of the business men are ruined, and the discharge of a
class of employees whose uncertain habits and want of special fitness
for their work make them less valuable. Both of these classes drift to
the inebriate asylum, and, if not able to pay, finally go to insane
hospitals and disappear.

"Anoth