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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters . 
greater tendencies to pauperism I ascribe to the fact that in most European 
countries the laboring class is on the verge of pauperism and is continually 
being pushed over into it by sickness or old age. In England two per cent, 
of the population are paupers and a large part of the agricultural laborers 
end their days in the workhouse, for the reason that they barely get a liv¬ 
ing when able to work and therefore cannot save anything for old age. 
The paupers in this country are a great deal less than half of one per 
cent, of the population. Where the laboring classes are brought up to ex¬ 
pect to end their days in the poorhouse, it is not wonderful that in coming 
to this country they seek relief easier than the natives do. 
Negroes furnish a larger proportion of crime and a smaller proportion 
of pauperism than the waites. As the negroes are mostly massed in the 
southern states, we may look at the condition of society there for part of 
the explanation of this. Negroes get little sympathy from whites in the 
south and consequently do not easily get into poorhouses, but do easily get 
into prison. Negroes do not consider petty theiving very wrong, having 
learned that during slavery times. A negro will not starve as long as there 
are smoke houses and chicken coops in the neighborhood, and the climate 
does not require much in the way of houses, clothing or fuel. But the 
penitentiaries are filled with chicken thieves. Alabama has three large 
penitentiaries and Wisconsin one small one, the popalation being nearly 
the same. 
The effects of climate have not been much considered. But I believe it 
will be found that warm climates do not have so great a proportion of in¬ 
sanity as cold climates. It is certain that in Europe, Greece has a much 
less proportion of insanity than Norway. In this country there is less in¬ 
sanity in the south than in the north in proportion to population. A 
part of this is due to the negroes in the south having a small proportion of 
insanity, and the foreigners in the north having a large proportion. But it 
is possible that climate has also something to do with it. I cannot discover 
that climate has anything to do with crime. Pauperism is increased in 
cold climates by the greater difficulty of getting a bare subsistence. 
Much has been said about the rapid increase of the defective classes, 
especially of the insane. Statistics show this both in Europe and America. 
But statistics of the mere numbers of insane at any given time are very 
deceptive. The greater humanity with which the insane are treated now 
than a hundred or even twenty-five years ago has preserved their lives 
and thereby caused an accumulation of the insane. This greatly increases 
the numbers who are alive at any given time, but does not show that any 
more persons become insane in any one year than ever. Careful statistics 
have been kept in England with reference to the latter point and it is 
found that there was an increase in the proportion of commitments to the 
total population up to a recent time, but that it now seems to have reached 
its highest point and become stationary. It is believed that the increase in 
the commitments was caused partly by the discovery and placing in insti- 
