PRESIDENT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS 33 



But 1 should not be fair to a Conference like this, above 

 all on a people's Bank Holiday, if I did not tell you what 

 the Insurance Act is doing whatever its merits or demerits, 

 and time alone will decide that question. I think time is 

 already deciding on the right side. At this moment 500,000 

 persons are receiving medical benefits at a cost of something 

 like 100,000 per week; 270,000 are receiving sick pay at 

 the rate of 110,000 per week, and as I said before, 18,000 

 mothers are receiving maternity benefit per week. The fact 

 is, Sir Thomas, the rapid concentration of our people on 

 health matters is the wonder of all the foreigners that I 

 meet, and the marvellous diminution of our death-rates, 

 especially from particular diseases, is to them a subject 

 almost of amazement. Speaking as I do, as one who often 

 walks about the streets in poor districts, I say there is no 

 comparison between the child you now see in the streets of 

 Deptford, of Bermondsey, of Battersea, or Rotherhithe, as 

 regards his clothes, his boots, his cleanliness, his teeth, or 

 his general physique and demeanour, and the children that 

 I saw when I was a boy, and I mention this as an instance 

 of the progress that has been made to stimulate you to 

 greater endeavour. Some will say is it true that notifi- 

 cation has done that, that medical agencies have done this, 

 that the doctor has done his share, and the nurses and the 

 matron have done the rest? No, it is not altogether true, 

 and each should not claim more than their proper share. 

 Never forget this : During the last six or seven years that 

 you have been most active we have had .extraordinarily good 

 trade. For instance, the general death-rate has dropped 

 down 13 per cent, in seven years, but your pauperism has 

 dropped 25 per cent, in the same period; whilst your outdoor 

 pauperism has dropped 36 per cent, in the same seven years. 

 That may mean that with higher wages, with less distress, 

 with more employment, accompanied by wiser spending, the 

 people have of their own volition and of their own means 

 been able to do a number of things that some of us are 

 accounting to ourselves for righteousness and to the effect 

 of the particular cause with which we are identified. Well, 

 the fact is, medicine reacts on economics and economics 

 reacts on medicine. My own view of the ideal condition of 

 life is that of the Vicar of Wakefield, whose tastes were 

 simple because his wants were few. But this I do believe, 

 that if bad trade were to come to-morrow (and there are no 

 signs of it I am glad to say), if pauperism were to increase 

 and unemployment to grow, I do not believe that we shall 

 ever go back from the solid achievements that your Con- 

 ference has secured in the improvement of the health of the 

 mother and the child. 



