State institutions for the insane, deaf, blind and delinquent, under legislation enacted by the 1925 session of the general assembly, are now making a charge for those students and inmates who are able to pay. Further, the law provides that should a person enter one of these institutions an indigent and later inherit or acquire money or property, he would have to pay for his support or instruction as the case might be.
The constitution provides that “the general assembly may provide that the indigent deaf, mute, blind and insane of the state shall be cared for at the charge of the state.” In the next section, however, is the following: “it shall be steadily kept in mind by the legislature and board of public charities that all penal and charitable institutions shall be made as nearly self-supporting as is consistent with the purpose of their creation.” Advocates of legislation making a charge mandatory in every case where the inmates or pupil is able to pay, insisted that this was in line with the provision of the constitution declaring that institutions should be as nearly self-supporting as possible.
The institutions specifically named in 1925 legislation include the state hospital at Raleigh, the state hospital at Morganton, the state hospital at Goldsboro, the state home and industrial school for girls and women (Samarcand), the Caswell training school for boys near Rocky Mount, the Morrison training school for delinquent negro boys in Richmond county, the state school for the deaf and dumb at Morganton, and the state sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis.
The law provides that the governing bodies shall fix, at their discretion, the cost to be imposed on each patient or student.
It is specifically provided, however, that at none of these institutions shall the policy of caring for the indigent free of charge to them be abandoned, although it is further provided that any person listed as indigent who afterwards acquires means of payment shall pay. Suit for the recovery of such pay may be entered in the Superior Court of Wake County, the law provides.
It has been pointed out that the chargers of the original institutions for the care of the insane, that is, the asylums at Raleigh and Morganton, made specific provision that preference was to be given indigents and that those who were able to pay should be made to do so.
These institutions, it is said, have charged for the support and care of persons who were able to pay, from that time to the present day. It is only the institutions later created that are said not to have carried out this policy.
Governor McLean recently announced that he intended to appoint a commission headed by Dr. Watson S. Rankin, to look into the affairs of the Caswell training school and to determine definitely what class of patients should be admitted there.
Whether the governor later would conduct similar investigations of other institutions was not stated.
From page 5 of The North Wilkesboro Hustler, Wednesday, July 8, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92072938/1925-07-08/ed-1/seq-5/
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