194 LENA K. SADLER 



those suffering from all other diseases combined, including tuberculosis, 

 cancer, childbirth, etc., and they are increasing at the rate of 72 per day. 



In 1928 nearly sixty thousand people entered State mental hospitals for 

 the first time, and in addition, fourteen thousand were admitted who were 

 suffering from a recurrence of mental diseases for which they had received 

 earlier hospital treatment. This is an increase of nearly ten thousand over 

 the previous year. 



In New York State, one person in ten who reaches adulthood will enter a 

 mental hospital before he dies. It is estimated that four out of every one 

 hundred children who enter school in the United States and Canada will 

 some time be admitted to a mental hospital — a larger number than will 

 graduate from college. 



Eighteen per cent of all the people in the world are dull normals. They 

 never have gone, and never will go, farther than the fourth grade in school. 

 Two per cent of all human beings are feebleminded. It is estimated that 

 there are 650,000 feebleminded at large, outside of institutions. The num- 

 ber of epileptics in the United States, now nearly two hundred thousand, 

 is increasing year by year, and of them a large per cent are feebleminded. 



There are one hundred thousand paupers in almshouses. They are a 

 rapidly shifting group, drifting into, and out of, these county institutions, 

 which suggests that they are inefficient and of low grade mentality. 



In 1929 there were more than a hundred thousand (116,000) inmates in 

 prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, and institutions of detention in the 

 United States, an increase of nearly ten thousand in a single year. 



Let us look for a moment at the money thrifty citizens annually pay in 

 taxes to care for this vast army of defectives and delinquents in the penal 

 institutions, state hospitals, almshouses, etc., of the United States. For 

 the fiscal year 1928 there was expended for the deaf, blind, and mute over 

 thirteen million dollars ($13,075,666); for the mentally diseased, over one 

 hundred million ($103,239,249). If the rate per cent charged for institutional 

 depreciation and the per capita cost for legislation, courts, etc., be added, 

 the annual sum expended in this field by tax payers amounts to almost one 

 hundred fifty million ($143,353,933). If we add to this a fair estimate of 

 the loss of future net earnings of the average first admissions to hospitals 

 for mental disease, the total is nearly seven hundred million dollars a year 

 ($686,603,410). The annual cost of the care of the inmates in our penal 

 institutions and houses of correction is over fifty-five millions ($55,824,887). 

 Putting all these figures together, but omitting court costs and legislative 

 and institutional depreciation, we are annually taxed for the care of the 

 mentally diseased, the defective, and the delinquent, 35 per cent of the total 

 expenditure by all the states for public school education. 



