Note 3 — VIII TILLERS OF THE SOIL

The scandals that occasionally arise in connection with that saintly institution, the Foundling Hospital at Naples, are enough to make humanity shudder. Of 856 children living under its motherly care during 1895, 853 “died” in the course of that one year—only three survived; a wholesale massacre. These 853 murdered children were carried forward in the books as still living, and the institution, which has a yearly revenue of over 600,000 francs, was debited with their maintenance, while 42 doctors (instead of the prescribed number of 19) continued to draw salaries for their services to these innocents that had meanwhile been starved and tortured to death. The official report on these horrors ends with the words: “There is no reason to think that these facts are peculiar to the year 1895.”