Page images
PDF
EPUB

is being extended to more and more of our citizens, and we may hope to see eventually something approaching a real equality in this respect. In the meantime, health insurance is of great importance in enabling the poor to deal with illness. Even if the present number of something like three million people seriously ill at every given moment in this country is considerably lowered in the near future, there will still be need of provision for those who cannot afford proper doctoring, proper food and care for their sick, and cannot afford the loss of income caused by the illness. Hundreds of thousands are cast into serious financial straits every year through the illness and the death of wage-earners. Most of these

people cannot afford the premiums which private companies charge for life and disability insurance. Indeed, these premiums are usually far too highmore than half the money spent on them going, in some cases, to operating expenses and profits, leaving less than half to be paid in insurance.

Whether health and disability insurance should be left in private hands, or managed by the State, or by the several industries, can not be here discussed. But in some way the vicious circle must be broken whereby poverty leads to ill-health and ill-health increases poverty. A wise insurance system will do more than keep the sick and their families from destitution, it will include early diagnosis and advice, the insistence upon proper hygienic precautions, and the education of the community in the prevention of illness.

In such ways, and in ways yet to be devised by the coming generation, we may hope not only to see America made the healthiest nation on earth, but to see health and long life the perquisites of every

American, the humblest as well as the most gifted and most highly rewarded. This would be but the logical carrying out of our founders' dreams of Equality, rudely upset by the conditions of a close-compacted industrial society, but secured and made permanent by the vigorous efforts of our people.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Chap. XV.

L. H. Gulick, The Efficient Life.

Woods Hutchinson, Handbook of Health.

C. R. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chapters IV, V, XIV.

Lawrence Veiller, Housing Reform.

Jacob Riis, The Battle with the Slums.

R. A. Woods, The City Wilderness.

W. H. Allen, Civics and Health.

T. C. Horsfelt, The Improvement of the Dwellings and Surroundings of the People.

J. S. Gibbon, Infant Welfare Centers.

L. D. Cruikshank, School Clinics at Home and Abroad.
Florence Kelley, Modern Industry, Chap. II.

Charles Zueblin, American Municipal Progress, revised ed.,
Chap. VII.

W. A. Brend, Health and the State.

H. W. Hill, The New Public Health.

CHAPTER XII

WORK FOR ALL

ANOTHER Corollary of the American ideal of Equality is the demand that every citizen shall be a worker, whether with hand or brain; that neither the possession of wealth or position, or the possession of a roving and vagabond disposition, exempts any one from the duty of contributing his share to the productive work of the nation. In the Old World from which our founders came, there had always been a leisure class, that looked upon labor as menial, debasing, ignoble; a gentleman might be a warrior, showing prowess in killing, he might be an employer, exploiting others' labors, but he must not handle tools himself, or earn his living by the sweat of his brow. Because the life of gentlemen and ladies was a life of leisure and lazy trifling, the Heaven pictured by wistful souls of all classes came to be dreamed of as a place where all work should have an end; and labor was looked upon as the primal curse.

This, however, is not in accordance with the instincts of normal human nature, which finds one of its deepest satisfactions in work. And it is this more normal attitude which has received the stamp of American approval. The late President Harper of Chicago University said on his deathbed that he was looking forward to the world beyond not as a place of rest but a place where he would have more work to

do. Our best-loved poet crystallized this American spirit in the now so familiar lines,

[merged small][ocr errors]

Let us then be up and doing . . ."

President Roosevelt, using an adjective that has come to be peculiarly associated with him, declared that "our country calls us not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor.'

The title of a recent volume on America by a distinguished Frenchman is significant: The People of Action. The Author, speaking of the apparent passion for money-making, declares that "it is a question not of being rich, but of becoming so. . . . To be rich, for an American, is not to be a social parasite, but a social force." We do not seek to become rich in order then to stop working; our rich men on the average work about as hard as the poor. Emerson, in his essay on Wealth, said that the American "is born to be rich; not to amass money, which is despicable; not to enjoy it, which is trivial; but to master himself in mastering it." The power that expresses itself in conquering obstacles, and the new power that comes from success in the game, appeals to our manhood. We despise the idler, whether a tramp or the son of a millionaire.

It is not that work is "noble" in some mysterious way, it is that working is interesting, working calls into play our powers, develops our character, gives us the solid satisfaction of feeling ourselves of use, and a vital part of the nation's life. And from the social viewpoint, a life of productive work is the only fair life to live. For there is so much work that must be done; and if one man shirks his part, others must do more than theirs.

Indeed, there is a vast deal of work that cries to be done but must go neglected for lack of hands and brains to do it. We need thousands of miles of roads built in this country-only twelve or fifteen per cent of our roads are surfaced. We need more railway tracks laid, more terminal facilities, more engines and cars built, more tunnels and bridges. We need canals, and deepened waterways, levees and reservoirs and irrigating channels. We need plants to utilize our waterpower, over ninety per cent of which is now wasted. We need the planting of millions of trees to replace the lumber that has been cut. We need hundreds of thousands of houses built for those who are now packed too closely in tenements. We need more schools, we need more teachers, we need-but the list is too long to complete.

There is a perennial tendency in this country toward the aping of the old-world aristocracies and the growth of an idle class. During the War this tendency was overborne by the pressure of an aroused public opinion; and even upper class women who had hardly done a stroke of useful work before donned their khaki, rolled up their sleeves, and got into the game. With the coming of peace again, there has reappeared the type of rich man whom the French call the flâneur, and our irrepressible American slang terms the "lounge-lizard." Still more in evidence is the well-to-do woman, who has servants to do her house-work, and spends her time in a round of social calls, bridge parties, or other trivialities, with perhaps a little ineffective "social work" to salve her conscience, and piano-practice to keep her essential uselessness from being too apparent.

This social approval, or tolerance, of a class of drones in our busy American life, must be vigorously

« PreviousContinue »