Grant County Herald

The Addition to the Asylum.

It is hard to see how any person, not governed by inveterate prejudice, can examine our insane asylum and all matters connected with it, and not favor the improvements necessary to render all its accommodations fully available. While in some parts of the building the accommodations are good, yes, superior, for nearly one hundred patients, in other parts they are wretchedly defective for even forty. It must be remembered that when that building was planned the county asylum business was an experiment and the planners were not guided by the light of previous experience, and under such circumstances it is inevitable that the work of human beings shall be in some parts defective.

The readers of the semi-weekly Herald, especially those into whose charge the county has intrusted its business, ought to read carefully the statements of the three members of the state board, published on the first page of this issue. These gentlemen are evidently actuated by motives of sincere and deep philanthropy—it is impossible to see any reasonable grounds for attributing to them sinister or selfish motives, and they have made this subject a study for many years and have much experience and wide observation to guide them. It is true their impatience with those with whom they come in contact who, lacking their wide experience and knowledge of the subject, cannot see as they do, sometimes renders their manner toward county boards peremptory, dogmatic and somewhat offensive, thus stirring up stubborn and unreasoning antagonism; but men who have been trusted with the public business of forty thousand people and the welfare of a very helpless and unfortunate class, ought to be able to rise above these feelings.

It seems indisputable that if the members of the county board will carefully look over the asylum and the figures which have been presented in this case (figures which may easily be verified) they will be fully convinced that to refuse to make the addition will be false and short-sighted economy—saving at the spigot to waste at the bung.