The Weston Democrat

The Insane Asylum.

For the last four or five years the Wheeling Intelligencer, Clarksburg Telegram and State Journal have been furnished, just prior to the meeting of the Legislature, with numerous communications from this place, charging extravagance upon the managers of the Insane Asylum: this, too, in the face of the fact that the cost for boarding, clothing, medicine and the salaries of officers and attendants, is only $2.35 1/2 per week for each patient. This burden of our mimetic reformer's cry is as to the salary paid the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent: yet the largest reduction claimed would only give about 11 cents a year to each reformer in the State. Now we claim for Lewis county as many patriotic reformers as any other county in the State can boast of, but candor compels us to admit that we do not believe we have one in Lewis county so completely devoted to reform as to write all of these communications (we believe they will number from 30 to 40 in the last five years) for the sole purpose of saving to each voter 11 cents a year. We are therefore reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the writer of these letters is moved by some other and less patriotic motives; but the object of this article is not to discuss the motives of the writer, but the fact of these communications. That they are calculated to create an unjust prejudice against the institution, no one who has read them can doubt: consequently, such prejudice will tend in a great degree to impede, if not prevent entirely, an appropriation for constructive purposes, and in order to correct such prejudice, we have examined the official reports from other hospitals, and we find the salaries paid and cost of keeping patients as follows: The Nebraska Hospital for the Insane pays the Superintendent $2,500 per year, with 99 patients—cost per week per patient, $7 35 1/3. The Superintendent at Williamsburg, Virginia, gets $3,000, and the total amount paid in salaries is $7,724 76—cost per week $4 17. Central Asylum, Virginia, (colored) pays $7,999 68 in salaries—has 238 patients, at a cost of $4 20 per week. The Asylum at Long View, Ohio, pays the Superintendent $3,500, the Assistants $2,200, Steward $1,400, Clerk $1,200, total $8,300. In addition to this amount they pay for two Supervisors $4,240 store-keeper $360, gas-maker $350 florist $540, teamster $360, laundry-man $360, dairyman $260, porter $300, 2 laborers $580—total, $4,109 for all of which our Hospital substitutes other help, without one cent extra. It will be seen also that they pay a Steward $1,500, and a Clerk $1,200. Our Hospital, by the aid of the physicians, pays only $600 for Clerk, saving thereby near $2,000 per annum. In Kansas it costs $9 36. Rhode Island $8 10, Maryland $8 70, Texas $7 85. Utica, New York, $8 50, and Pennsylvania $9 per week for each patient.

As to the suggestion of "Reformer" about a committee of the Legislature visiting and examining into the management of the institution, we heartily approve. In Virginia, a committee consisting of members from each house visited all of the institutions of the State yearly, and report upon the management and wants of the various institutions, and we believe it to be a good plan for the Legislature of this State to adopt.