The Atlantian (Atlanta, Ga.) 19??-current, September 01, 1911, Image 16

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

16 THE ATLANTIAN fr MEN’S NEW FALL SUITS AT MUSE’S The new season presents the advance of the best in New Fall Styles for Men at MUSE’S -JJ TUBERCULOSIS AND THE HIGH COST OF LIVING. “Preventable disease, the greatest item in which is tuberculosis and the other expenses which grow out of it, costs each family in the United States at the minimum $100 a year.” The foregoing is the verdict of a most thorough and cautious estimate by expert statisticians, and it errs, if anything, on the conservative side. It is a sentence (the nugget of the dis course), taken from an address on “Tuberculosis as a factor in the in creased cost of living” delivered at Denver by Mr. Edward F. McSweeney, chairman of the board of trustees of the Boston Consumptives’ Hospital. The guess that preventable disease has been a large share of the growing weight of living expenses is not a new one, but the thoroughness with which the proofs have been searched out by Mr. McSweeney is novel and convinc ing. The nations have searched and found five major causes of this in- creas—waste, extravagance, armed peace, inefficiency and the burden of crime, pauperism, accident and dis ease. By the most cautious estimate the yearly money cost of tuberculosis alone in the United States is $622,513,- 904, and on the present ratio of deaths annually from this disease, as com pared with the deaths from all other causes, 10,000,000 of people now liv ing will eventually die of tuberculosis. The .average family income of this country is something less than $800. It has been ascertained that in Mas sachusetts the average cost per capita of preventable disease is $15. On a basis of five persons to a family this means $75, or almost one-tenth of the family income. Of the whole popula tion of the United States “three- fourths of all persons of both sexes are either actually earning money or saving expenses by housekeeping.” The minimum individual cost of sick ness, loss of family earnings and death is $2,240. Starting with the reason able assumption that three-fourths of the 165,549 consumptives who die an nually are wage earners, their deaths represent an actual loss of $278,147,- 152, and if the cost of the other deaths is computed only at Dr. Bigg's esti mate of $800 for three years’ medical care during total disability the total annual money loss becomes $311,256, 952. "In other words, the American wage earner works one day in every six to pay for the cost of disease and its consequences. Who can dispute in the face of this overwhelming proof that preventable disease and death have a direct influence on the cost of living?" The constructive part of Mr. Mc- Sweeney’s discourse deals with the proof, in which Boston has led the world, that the treatment of incipient cases is a failure, because, returning to bad conditions, they relapse; and that the prevention of contagion from the advanced cases is where the re sistance must be focused. New York is following this lead, and it has now been recognized by Germany. The rigid medical inspection of school | children is one means of prevention, and “we will solve the tuberculosis question when we settle the problems of child labor, city congestion, long hours, and bad factory and housing conditions." This critic is emphatic that the crusade is not one primarily for physicians and charity workers: “This is essentially a business man’s crusade and should be led by the Chambers of Commerce.” KING, PRESIDENT AND BIBLE. Speaking in behalf of a few conserv ative persons who read the Bible, we desire to applaud the Carnegie Hall “celebration” of the tercentenary of the King James version, and to call attention on our own account to the happy unanimity with which it is offi cially adopted. King George’s letter congratulated persons who are obses sed with the Carnegie Hall habit that it (the Bible) “is so clearly interwov en in the history of British and Ameri can life.” President Taft jumped on the royal bandwagon with the corai lary observation that “its spirit (the Bible) has influenced American ideals in life and laws and government.” We may therefore assume that the enterprise attempted by forty-seven or flfty-one or fifty-four clerics—the number varies with the authority— and completed by Robert Barker, printer, in 1611, has won at last the sanction of authority. We can not find that King James ever accepted the dedication of the volume which moderns identify as King James’ Bi ble, but that, of course, is a mere mat ter of detail, His Royal Highness hav ing frequently entrusted vexed ques tions to arbitrators and left them to “fight it out.” The things that hap pened three hundred years ago do not in details concern us. The present fact that delights us, even to the point of duplicating the plaudits of Carnegie Hall, is that the Bible is clearly in terwoven in British and American life and that its spirit influences Ameri can ideals. During the three hundred years there have been a few wars engaging Christian nations, which had not their attention absorbed by the Bible. The newspapers today record events that do not seem exactly to square with precepts commended in the bulk at Carnegie Hall; but the obvious expla nation is that sometimes we follow the Gospels and again the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Such are some of the cynical and bitter thoughts that afflict one just before that quiet hour in which he tries to reconcile his deeds with his belief. He looks around at commercial and social conditions that seem to invite him to transgress, and he finds no impregnable refuge in many of the churches of today?. Yet at such a time the words that his father read him and his mother taught him are that man’s safest retreat and surest safeguard. It may be that the years have led him to think of the Bible as literature only; yet the years have brought him no literature higher and finer. And almost inevitably the day comes—not by connivance of king or president or self-advertising “celebra tions”—when he wishes to receive the sacred message of the Book, gathers its simplicity and dignity and beauty into his head and heart, and thanks his God that, though his forebears sinned and suffered, struggled and fell short—as he has done—the Bible en abled them at least to hold the habit of aspiration. A GREAT MISTAKE. “Why didn’t you get up and give her your seat or permit me to give her mine?” said a woman to her husband. They had just got off a car. The woman’s face expressed great anxiety of mind. “Why should we give her a seat?” the husband asked. “Just because she was so richly dressed, I suppose,” he added “Is it possible that you did not know her?” the wife exclaimed. “Of course. I am not supposed to know every well-dressed woman who comes along.” “Oh, James, she is our cook, and I am afraid she will treasure up against us our lack of courtesy.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” the hus band exclaimed. The woman did not reply, but, trembling violently, leaned heavily upon his arm. “Indians and Suffragettes are just alike, but neither of them are willing to admit it.” W. E. TREADWELL & CO. Real Estate Agents Loans Made on Atlanta “Dirt” Rate of Interest 5 to 8 Per Cent LONG OR SHORT TIME Call and See Us 24 South Broad Street