HEALTH AND BUSINESS 29 



more prosperous parts of the community are under a nervous 

 strain. Hence at such times there must be more deaths than 

 during the prosperous times which are supposed to follow good 

 crops. Hence I looked for a rise in the deathrate during hard 

 times and a fall in good. 



This line of thought may sound reasonable, but it is fallacious. 

 The statistics from 1870 to the Great War show that a high 

 deathrate regularly precedes hard times, while a low deathrate 

 precedes prosperity. By no possibility can the reverse be made 

 to appear the case. Health is a cause far m ore than an effect. 

 Apparently fluctuations in health are a cause of changes in mental 

 efficiency, in drunkenness, in bank deposits, in prices, and in 

 immigration. I know that this seems incredible. When I first 

 compared the curve of health with that of business in one form and 

 another, such a close connection seemed impossible. Now, how- 

 ever, I see no escape from it. The psycholosrists are apparent ly 



rig'ht. ^^ ]1s i]1PSS f'j^loo oppooy fr> /Inpnn^ loy^Alj nn the ^m^Bl a^ 



attitude of the cQ mninnity, fin^ tH i^^^<-°T gffifnrio depends on 

 health. 



So sweeping a conclusion can be accepted only on the basis of 

 most thoroughgoing proof. Let us begin with the variations in 

 health. The most delicate index of the health of a community 

 is the deathrate. Figure 1 illustrates the changes in the death- 

 rate year by year from 1870 to 1910 in Massachusetts, Connecti- 

 cut, New York City, and Chicago. Strange as it may seem, these 

 places are the only parts of the United States where an approxi- 

 mately reliable record of deaths is available as far back as 1870. 

 In Figure 1 and subsequent diagrams, as is shown in Appendix A, 

 the gradual change from decade to decade, the so-called "secular 

 trend," due in this case to improvements in medical practice, has 

 been eliminated. Hence in Figure 1 the numbers on the left show 

 the percentage by which the deaths in the various years exceeded 

 or fell short of what would have occurred if the improvements 

 wrought by medical science had been the only reason for changes 



\ 



