Expressed in dollars and cents, then, the growth of pauperism and
crime was such in the decade which began with 1880, that we now spend
more than a million each year in excess of the sum spent then for the
same purposes. If we have grown in population so rapidly that the
percentages remain unchanged, the fact cannot be ascertained for want
of data. Nor is it important. The weighty fact is this, that pauperism
and crime have gained upon us. Riches are greater and poverty is
greater.
The moral and social retrogression indicated in this item of the
Comptroller's report is thrown into bold relief by another item, the
expenditures for schools. While the paupers and criminals have grown
upon us by an annual expenditure of more than a million in excess of
the sum needed in 1879, the school children's share of the public
funds has grown by less than a million in excess of the requirements
of 1879.
More shameful still is this retrogression when the item of police
expenditure is considered, for this exceeds outright the appropriation
for the Department of Education, and has grown more rapidly than the
expenditure for schools. It appears that, under existing conditions,
when property appreciates half a billion in value, it is necessary to
have four and one half millions' worth of police to watch over and
protect the half-billions' increase in assessed value from the ravages
of our paupers and criminals.
It seems also that in 1879 our police cost less than our schools,
while they now cost more. The problem assumes a still greater aspect
when the expenditure for paupers, criminals, and police are taken
together, for it then appears that they cost nearly twice as much as
the schools.
Thus the community is clearly moving in the direction of more
demoralized masses of population kept in check by the brute force of
an armed police, since each year the excess grows which is spent for
paupers, criminals, and police over the expenditure for education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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