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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. Vin., No. 190- 



concert dance-halls, which day and night, year ia 

 and year out, keep up the infernal work of peopling 

 these islands. There would be something like 

 logic and thoroughness in such an exposition. 



The extent and magnitude of this social waste 

 no man knows, and no man can know. There are 

 outlying hidden realms of developing, maturing 

 mischief and evil yet in the egg, scattered, unsus- 

 pected items of blemish and loss, which no report 

 ever tabulates ; and we are thrown back upon the 

 depressing consciousness that the larger part of 

 this under-world, like the freighted steamer or the 

 floating iceberg, lies well out of sight. 



Let us take a rapid account of stock, and, in 

 part at least, see where we stand. First these 

 islands : Blackwell's, nearly two miles long, flushed 

 by two swift channels of the river it divides, full 

 ninety acres in extent, studded from end to end 

 with the epileptic and paralytic, maternity, and 

 charity hospitals, the New York penitentiary 

 sprawling athwart well-nigh from shore to shore, 

 the almshouse, the workhouse, and the women's 

 lunatic-asylmn and its growing population of more 

 than seven thousand ; then Ward's Island, lying 

 in a nearly rectangular area of two hundred and 

 sixty acres, at the junction of the Harlem and 

 East rivers at Hell Gate. Here are the lunatic- 

 asylum for males and the homoeopathic hospital, 

 together having about three thousand inmates. 

 Immediately north, and separated by Little Hell 

 Gate, some two hundred feet wide, is Randall's 

 Island, a sliield-shaped area of a hundred and sixty 

 acres, and, with Ward's, lying close to the city. 

 Here are the infants and Randall's Island hospitals, 

 an asylum for idiots, a branch of the penitentiary, 

 an insane-asylum for the young, and the house of 

 refuge. Advancing a mile, we find Riker's Island, 

 for the exclusive use of correctional institutions, a 

 fair domain of sixty acres ; and yet farther up the 

 sound, some seventeen miles from the city, the 

 advanced post of this ever-growing colonization, 

 with its area of some fifty acres, its hospital for 

 incurables, and branch workhouse and lunatic- 

 asylum (nearly thirty-five hundred inmates), and — 

 the ghastly halting-place of all this interminable 

 procession — Potter's field, with its myriads of 

 friendless, dishonored dead : we reach and stop at 

 Hart's Island. 



Here are more than six hundi-ed acres of the 

 fairest islands lying all the way close to the city 

 frontage, now become a rank witness of its loss 

 and shame. Who will venture an estimate of the 

 present and prospective value of this perverted, 

 sequestered real estate, and the outlay represented 

 in its multipUed structures ? Add to these assets 

 of the Board of commissioners of charities and 

 corrections a fleet of transports for the service of 



more than sixteen thousand colonists, Bellevue 

 hospital, the various buildings in the service of 

 the department, the hospital service at police 

 stations, ambulances, equipments, prison vans, then 

 the police stations and properties, the jaUs and 

 prisons, and a just allotment of court and justice 

 chambers, where the selections are made and the 

 harvest of tares gathered, — this is but a fraction 

 of cost and loss to the people, — a shameful invest- 

 ment, which, as will shortly appear, feeds the 

 sources and energies that exact it. 



We must not lose sight of the millions spent in 

 the erection and support of foundling-asylums, 

 reformatories of various sorts and uses, dispen- 

 saries, children's aid societies, infirmaries, and 

 hospitals founded and sustained by individual 

 and private beneficence, — all part of the great 

 total exactions wrung from the public thrift, and 

 turned aside from legitimate uses and benefits ta 

 the nourishment and maintenance of this terrible 

 under-world. 



It is equally impossible to measure the yearly 

 outlay in this account with social waste. The 

 board of commissioners alone send in estimates 

 for their own disbursements for 1886, amounting 

 to 11,947,607.50. According to the city comptrol- 

 ler's report for 1883, the appropriations for asy- 

 lums, reformatories, and charitable institutions, 

 presumably outside such as are committed to the 

 care of the commissioners of charities and correc- 

 tions, was $1,039,953.53, and this had in 1885 

 grown to 11,108,957.51. This total ratio of growth 

 in the increasing cost of social waste must not be 

 lost sight of, for the colonies grow by a visibly 

 advancing ratio : so does the cost in all the 

 municipal departments having special care of 

 them ; while the conservative reparative institu- 

 tions lag behind the constantly increasing devel- 

 opment of the city. The Board of education, for 

 example, for ten years past, scarcely breaks the 

 even tenor of an annual appropriation, which fell 

 to 13,400,000 in 1879, and rose to $3,769,086 in 

 1874, and only reached |3,750,000 in 1883. These 

 data are drawn from the comptroller's report of 

 1883. Later accounts might throw light upon this 

 apparent decline in the educational enterprise of 

 the city. In this hurried glance at the schedule 

 of assets, we are not to lose sight of the police 

 department, — a standing army, keeping guard 

 night and day, trained, ofiicered, armed, and paid, 

 — the picked brawn and muscle of the town, 

 banded together for the public protection. Add 

 to these another army of keepers, attendants, 

 nurses, deputies, resident bodies of medical men 

 and their student assistants, and we begin to catch 

 an outline of the magnitude and proportions of 

 outlay in money, values, time, and men, sub- 



