May the Congress over which you have the distinguished honor to preside still further enlist our people to safeguard not only our material wealth but the people themselves.
I have the honor to be,
Yours very respectfully,
Charles A. Doremus.
President White—I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. J. N. Hurty, of Indianapolis, President of the American Public Health Association, and Indiana Health Commission, who will speak on “Conservation of the Human Race.”
Address, “Conservation of the Human Race”
Dr. Hurty—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
High authority says we are only fifty per cent. efficient; that we live out less than one-half the natural duration of life, that we consume twice as much food as is needed to maintain efficient life, that we waste as much as we use, and that one-half of all human beings born either die before reaching maturity or fall into the defective, delinquent or dependent classes. In these facts we find reasons why we waste the major portion of all our resources and call it development. In these facts we find reasons for the existence of robber taxation and predatory business. For, a people who waste themselves, will, of course, waste their natural resources. Therefore, the first, the most important, the fundamental conservation, is the conservation of human efficiency. A people who cannot be brought to a realization of the fact that they lead only half lives, and, who realizing, will not end, will show the nations-to-come what fools the present mortals were.
LENGTH OF LIFE.
Length of life is a resultant of strength. “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.” It is an honor and it is a strength, for a nation to have a low sickness and a low death rate with their consequent lengthened average duration of life. In India, the average length of life is twenty-five years, in the United States, forty, in England, forty, in Germany, forty-three and in Sweden, forty-five. The natural duration is one hundred years. Metchnikoff, after thirty years of study of disease and death says, only a very few die natural deaths, most of mankind commit suicide. That is, most people do not know how, or will not, conserve their vitality, and thus results a greater or less period of disability and inefficiency with premature death. Nature does no fooling, she has her laws and they are enforced up to the handle.