The number of moral imbeciles that are in the state institutions is simply appalling, and there are object lessons enough in Chicago to cause any one who will give the subject but a moment of good, unselfish thought, to go to the polls and declare that no longer shall be fostered in our midst that which in the course of time will make us no better than a nation of lepers. Some day parents will recognize the responsibility of bringing children into the world. The American woman of the fashionable set lives in a whirl of unhealthful stress and excitement. She sleeps too little and keeps her nerves constantly on the Qui Vive. She tipples and drugs, she is often a degenerate and a mother of degenerates—if, indeed, she be a mother at all. This drinking among women is more prevalent than we are willing to believe, and it is one of the greatest dangers with which we are confronted today. The hurry and fret of Chicago life is turning out degenerates at a rate that will one day stagger the world. Ignorance and bad parentage are doing the work in many instances, and girls comparatively good are led off by bad men and worse women. Children who have been well born and should have been well reared, find their way into the schools of delinquents, the jails, penitentiaries, and insane hospitals. The heredity of many of these children is appalling and the environments does the rest. The “barrel-houses” are located in the poorer sections of the city where the liquors of the vilest kind are sold. Their customers are the poor and wretched. Only the cheapest and poisonous liquors are sold here as a rule. It is impossible to estimate the amount of drunkenness in Chicago. The arrests represent but a small part of it, as thousands upon thousands of habitual drunkards manage to keep out of the hands of the police. Respectable men patronize the bar-rooms regularly, and are constantly seen reeling along the streets. So long as they are not helpless, or guilty of disorderly conduct, the police do not molest them. Systematic drinking, which does not amount to actual intoxication, but kills by slow degrees, is very common. Among the most liberal patrons of the bar-rooms are young men and even boys, who thoughtlessly begin their careers that will one day end in sorrow. Drunkenness is by no means confined to men. Women are largely addicted to it. Out of some twelve arrests for this cause three are women. In the more wretched quarters of the city, women drink heavily and are among the most constant customers of the cheap groggeries which thrive among the poor. Even women of respectability and good social positions are guilty of the vice of intemperance. They all do not frequent bar-rooms, however, but obtain liquor at the restaurants patronized by them, and it is a common sight to see well-dressed women, married and single, rise from a restaurant table under the influence of intoxicating drink. * * * * *