Of course, all workhouses are not so bad as this, but many are, and have been during the three-quarters of a century of their existence. Can we, therefore, wonder that week by week some poor and honest parents commit suicide rather than see their children starve, or be separated from them in the workhouse! The people we thus drive to death are many of them as good as we ourselves are; yet the "Guardians of the Poor"—well-to-do gentlemen and ladies—go on administering it week after week and year after year without protest or apparent compunction. Such is the deadening effect of long-continued custom. CHAPTER XII INDICATIONS OF INCREASING MORAL DEGRADATION There are in the Reports of the Registrar-General a few statistics of special importance because they clearly point to certain kinds of moral degradation which have been increasing for the last half-century, thus coinciding with our exceptionally rapid increase in wealth; and also, as I have shown in preceding chapters, with various forms of national, economic, and social deterioration. The first of these is the continuous increase in deaths from alcoholism, in proportion to population, since the year 1861. Most persons will be amazed to find that this is the case, because the drinking habit has certainly diminished; but when the habit becomes so powerful and lasts so long as to be the direct cause of death, we are able to see the dimensions of the most exaggerated form of the drink evil. The following figures are taken from the successive Reports referred to:— _Deaths from _Average Alcoholism per of Years_ Million living_ 1861-1865 41.6 1866-1870 35.4 1871-1875 37.6 1876-1880 42.4 1881-1885 48.2 1886-1890 56.0 1891-1895 67.8 1896-1900 85.8 1901-1905 78.4 1906-1910 54.6 There are some irregularities, the ratio being nearly equal for the first twenty years, after which there is such a continuous large increase that from 1876-80 to 1896-1900 the mortality is doubled, but for the last ten years there has been a decrease, which in the last five years is very marked. But a still worse and more disquieting feature is the recent large increase of mortality from alcoholism in women. Figures for the separate sexes were not given till 1876, and the following table shows the comparison up to 1910:— _Deaths from _Average Alcoholism of Years_ per Million_ _Men_ _Women_ 1876-1880 60.1 24.0 1881-1885 66.6 31.0 1886-1890 73.6 39.2 1891-1895 86.6 50.2 1896-1900 106.2 66.6 1901-1905 95.0 63.0 1906-1910 66.6 43.6