| Tuberculosis | $1,000,000,000 |
| Typhoid | 250,000,000 |
| Malaria | 100,000,000 |
| Other insect diseases | 100,000,000 |
A hopeful sign of awakening is the endeavor by life insurance companies to bring home to the people the possibilities of race betterment. One company sends out among its policy holders trained nurses, who give plain talks on health subjects and offer practical suggestions as to hygienic living. This, to be sure, is on the economic basis of money saving, but if that is the only thing that will appeal to the people is it not wise to seize upon it as a lever to lift the standard of well-being?
The possibility of saving the enormous sums that are lost by reason of premature deaths was an alluring subject to the insurance men. It gave to the world what, up to that time, it had lacked—a body of powerful men who recognized that they had a financial interest in preventing the needless death of men and women.
A table has been prepared showing that if insurance companies were to expend $200,000 a year for the purely commercial object of reducing their death losses, and should thereby decrease them only twelve one-hundredths of one per cent, they would save enough to cover the expense.
“If such a plan as this were placed on a purely scientific basis and carried out by good business methods, and all the companies pulled together for the common good, I should expect a decrease in death claims of more than one per cent; and a decrease in the death claims of one per cent would mean that the companies would save more than eight times as much as they expended, or would make a net saving of more than seven times the expense, which would be about a million and a half dollars a year.”[4]
“While it would be impossible to state in general terms how rich a return lies ready for public or private investments in good health, these examples (life insurance) show that the rate of this return is quite beyond the dreams of avarice. Were it possible for the public to realize this fact, motives both of economy and of humanity would dictate immediate and generous expenditure of public moneys for improving the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, as well as for eliminating the dangers of life and limb which now surround us.”[5]
Undoubtedly a moral force is to be strengthened by spreading the biological lesson that man cannot live to himself alone, but that his acts or failure to act affect a large number of his fellowmen. Also, a stimulus to personal ambition is to be supplied in the suggestion of better health and consequently more money to spend as a result.
Civic pride and private gain will be brought into the endeavor to show man that to understand himself, to exercise the same control over his activities that he uses over his machines, is to double his capacity, not only for work, but for pleasure. This control is now possible through the application of recently confirmed scientific knowledge as to man’s environment.
It is the aim of this book to arouse the thinking portion of the community to the opportunity of the present moment for inculcating such standards of living as shall tend to the increase of health and happiness.