Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

“The facts are cold and bare—one million, five hundred thousand persons must die in the United States during the next twelve months; equivalent to four million, two hundred thousand persons will be constantly sick; over five million homes, consisting of twenty-five million persons, will be made more or less wretched by mortality and morbidity.

“We look with horror on the black pages of the Middle Ages. The black waste was but a passing cloud compared with the white waste visitation. Of people living to-day, over eight million will die of tuberculosis, and the federal government does not raise a hand to help them.

“THE NEGLECT OF HEALTH A NATIONAL EVIL”

“The Department of Agriculture spends seven million dollars on plant health and animal health every year, but, with the exception of the splendid work done by Doctors Wiley, Atwater, and Benedict, Congress does not directly appropriate one cent for promoting the physical well-being of babies. Thousands have been expended in stamping out cholera among swine, but not one dollar was ever voted for eradicating pneumonia among human beings. Hundreds of thousands are consumed in saving the lives of elm trees from the attacks of beetles; in warning farmers against blights affecting potato plants; the importing Sicilian bugs to fertilize fig blossoms in California; in ostracizing various species of weeds from the ranks of the useful plants, and in exterminating parasitic growths that prey on fruit trees. In fact, the Department of Agriculture has expended during the last ten years over forty-sixmillions of dollars. But not a wheel of the official machinery at Washington was ever set in motion for the alleviation or cure of diseases of the heart or kidneys, which will carry off over six millions of our entire population. Eight millions will perish of pneumonia, and the entire event is accepted by the American people with a resignation equal to that of the Hindoo, who, in the midst of indescribable filth, calmly awaits the day of cholera.

“During the next census period more than six million infants under two years of age will end their little spans of life while mothers sit by and watch in utter helplessness. And yet this number could probably be decreased by as much as half. But nothing is done.

“In the United States alone, of the eighty millions living to-day, all must die, after having lived, say a little more than three billion, two hundred million years of life, on the average slightly more than twoscore years. Of these years, one billion, six hundred million, represent the unproductive years of childhood and training.

“Consider that the burden of the unproductive years on the productive years is 20-20, or say 100 per cent. Could the average length of life be increased to sixty years, say to forty-eight billion years lived by eighty millions of people, the burden of the unproductive years would fall to 50 per cent. In the judgment of men competent to hold opinions, this is not impossible.”

It was the reading of this paper, which led to the formation of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health, of which Professor Irving Fisher of Yale is president, and which includes among its members such men and women as Ex-President Eliot of Harvard, Dr. Lyman Abbott, Miss Jane Addams, Luther Burbank, Horace Fletcher, Professor Chittenden, Dr. Kellogg, and Dr. Trudeau.

The primary and immediate purpose of the Committee’s work is to promote the idea of a national Bureau of Health; but the field open to the committee includes the whole subject of public sanitation and hygiene. President Roosevelt has formally endorsed the work, in a letter from which the following is an extract: “Our national health is physically our greatest national asset. To prevent any possible deterioration of the American stock should be a national ambition. We cannot too strongly insist on the necessity of proper ideals for the family, for simple life and for those habits and tastes which produce vigor and make more capable of strenuous service to our country. The preservation of national vigor should be a matter of patriotism.... Federal activity in these matters has already developed greatly, until it now includes quarantine, meat inspection, pure food administration, and federal investigation of the conditions of child labor. It is my hope that these important activities may be still further developed.”

And in his notable message to the country, rather than to Congress, which he issued in December, 1907, President Roosevelt wrote: “There is a constantly growing interest in this country in the question of public health. At least, the public mind is awake to the fact that many diseases, notably tuberculosis, are national scourges. The work of the State and City Boards of Health should be supplemented by the constantly increasing interest on the part of the national government. The Congress has already provided a Bureau of Public Health, and has provided for an hygienic report. There are other valuable laws relating to the public health connected with the various departments. This whole branch of the government should be strengthened and aided in every way.”