EDITORIAL 



503 



individuals or to corporations, but to 

 the school board of that city. 



So long as the people as a people re- 

 tain these lands, every stroke of labor 

 bestowed, every dollar of capital in- 

 vested, every unit of increase in the 

 population upon these lands adds to 

 their value, and consequently to the 

 wealth of the American people as such ; 

 but when once the people have parted 

 with the lands the value goes to others. 



The Conservation of Human Resources 



OF ALL our resources the most im- 

 portant are our people. Rome is 

 said to have fallen because of "a failure 

 in the crop of men." Whatever fate might 

 befall our material resources, such a 

 crop failure would inevitably end our 

 own career as certainly as it ended that 

 of the World Empire. 



We place a cash value upon the horse, 

 the ox, the swine. At an earlier day we 

 placed it upon the black slave. How 

 many, however, recognize in the citizen 

 a national asset, and realize that prema- 

 ture death or impaired vitality of men 

 and women is a loss to the Nation in 

 precisely as real and valid a sense as 

 is the loss from the burning of buildings 

 or the swallowing up of territory by an 

 earthquake ? 



A clearer view was had by the Na- 

 tional Conservation Commission. In its 

 report of December 7 may be found a 

 section entitled, "National Efficiency." 

 The report recognizes that the length of 

 human life may be materially extended 

 and the death rate materially dimin- 

 ished. Our annual mortality from tu- 

 berculosis is placed at 150,000. "Stop- 

 ping three-fourths of the loss of life 

 from this cause and from typhoid and 

 other prevalent and preventable dis- 

 eases, would increase our average length 

 of life over fifteen years." More than 

 half the illness in the United States the 

 Commission holds to be preventable. 

 Following this, they say : 



"If we count the value of each life lost 

 at only $1,700, and reckon the average 

 earning lost by illness as $700 per year 

 for grown men. we find that the eco- 



nomic gain from mitigation of prevent- 

 able disease in the United States would 

 exceed $1,500,000,000 a year." 



In closing, the Commission wisely 

 suggests the concentration of the sev- 

 eral governmental agencies now exer- 

 cising health functions into "a greater 

 health service worthy of the Nation ;" 

 in other words, into a bureau of public 

 health. 



Our common failure to appreciate the 

 public significance of health, longev- 

 ity and physical vigor on the part of our 

 people is but another of the dead sea 

 fruits of the rampant individualism 

 which, until yesterday, characterized us 

 as a people. If an individual died, we 

 might sympathize with his family, but 

 we experienced no sense of public loss. 

 If thousands of our population rotted in 

 slums, we saw in this fact merely a dis- 

 gusting condition, which we attributed 

 primarily to the shiftlessness and un- 

 thrift of the slum dwellers ; possibly we 

 tossed a coin in the name of charity and 

 dismissed the matter from our minds. 

 If tens of thousands of children toiled 

 in factories when they should have been 

 improving minds, morals and physiques 

 in school, we thought of the condition 

 primarily as a business necessity unfor- 

 tunate only for those immediately in- 

 volved, if even for them. 



One of the few redeeming features 

 of the calamity known as war is that it 

 compels a nation and its leaders to take 

 a social rather than a purely individual 

 view of human life. A great war is 

 largely a test of resources ; among these, 

 human beings rank foremost in impor- 

 tance. In numbers, vitality, energy and 

 c pirit, they are vital factors of military 

 success. The nation which, with a mili- 

 tary future before it, permits whole sec- 

 tions of its population to waste away 

 through disease, poverty and dispiriting 

 conditions, ranks in folly with the nation 

 which deliberately throws its powder 

 and ball into the sea. 



But a point which all have not yet 

 grasped is that international competition 

 need not be exclusively military ; that 

 there are battles of bourses, struggles 

 for markets, and contests for supremacy 

 or leadership in a thousand different 



