Reforming a broken America

Throughout the pas month or so, our class has been focusing on the social reform that occurred in the 19th century. The topics we focused on was the protestant revival, transcendentalism, prison reform, education reform, and temperance. From this we decided to find one more primary source about any of these topics and write about it. Below are excerpts from a document written by Dorethea Dix, a prominent figure in the prison reform movement. Therefore, the document will be heavily bias towards the problems in these places. That is to say, while conditions were horrid, she will write focusing on that. Around the time this was written, the movement was close to just starting. The document was written by Dix in 1843, to the legislature of Massachusetts. This document teaches us about the condition these people had to face, from beatings into obedience, to rooms without heat. It, however, does not truly give a complete picture, as it only is one persons recollection of the events. While her word means a lot, it is still only one person. In the excerpt below, Dix talks about People being chained, and put into cages to keep them still. They were rarely watched by people, and few wanted to remember these people existed. In the author's word choice, she is trying to convince readers of the disgusting conditions these people were in. She words it realistically, with generalizations with the most common problems in these places. She wants people to listen, and feel the pain these people felt.  

          Besides the above, I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of cages all but universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using them; chains are less common; negligences frequent; willful abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding from ignorance, or want of consideration. I encountered during the last three months many poor creatures wandering reckless and unprotected through the country. Innumerable accounts have been sent me of persons who had roved away unwatched and unsearched after, and I have heard that responsible persons, controlling the almshouses, have not thought themselves culpable in sending away from their shelter, to cast upon the chances of remote relief, insane men and women. These, left on the highways, unfriended and incompetent to control or direct their own movements, sometimes have found refuge in the hospital, and others have not been traced. But I cannot particularize. In traversing the State, I have found hundreds of insane persons in every variety of circumstance and condition, many whose situation could not and need not be improved; a less number, but that very large, whose lives are the saddest pictures of human suffering and degradation. I give a few illustrations; but description fades before reality. . . .

1. Dorethea Dix, excerpt from  Old South Leaflets, vol. 7, p. 489-519.