APPALING by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 15.

“APPALING.”

By Editor

WE are generally told that the world is growing better, but occasionally we get some statistics that stultify the usual claim. Here is a specimen from Dr. De Costa:—

There is something appalling in the revelations of the census; the condition of the marriage relation alone would preclude happiness. Think of from forty to fifty thousand immoral women in New York; think of 328,716 divorces in twenty years, the hundreds of thousands of homes ruined by drink, with 82,392 criminals in prison, and an annual production of homicides amounting to 7,386, besides 73,045 paupers in almshouses, and a million tramps, vagabonds, and pensioners of all sorts scattered far and wide. One of the most serious signs of decay is found in the increase of insanity. Years ago it was found that society was “dying at the top,” and it was computed that 1 in 250 of the population was insane; but now the number has been put at 1 in 127. New York City to-day has 1 in 300 in her asylums, and the city is full of persons of unsound mind, rendering it probable that the estimate of 1 in 127 in the country at large is correct.