Re-Education

Excerpt from book: Whether these individuals will be able to continue that support 1st, as under existing conditions; 2d, according to the ratio of growth; If it appears that they cannot continue that support, how can such change be made with the least waste to the existing or- f ganizations? 3. THE NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT Judging from the utterances of the press, the lecture platform, and the pulpit, it seems that the vast majority of the people of the United States ? even of the thinking classes ? consider the institutions of our country as being not only satisfactory, but permanent. The popular opinion is that our institutions are making very considerable headway against the onslaught of sin, insanity, and disease, if, indeed, they are not entirely overcoming them. That opinion is not shared by the individuals most closely in touch with the actual conditions of our corrective and curative endeavors. The first division of my effort will be to show in simple terms what the actual condition of our institutional system is, and what we may expect it to be if the fundamental laws of physics and of finance hold true. 4. A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW NECESSARY It seems that, up to the present, society has regarded only the different elements ? that is, each separately ? which made up its institutional system as a whole. The prison, the hospital, each branch of dependent life, has received careful and elaborate analysis, investigation, and, in general, well-deserved praise. But society should consider not only whether this or that particular branch is economically fulfilling its obligations. It should also consider whether or not the sum total of all the efforts of these different factors is producing a change in the life of society, outside of the institutions, of sufficient importance ...