Arizona republican., 1909-07-25
BILLION AND A HALF
 YEARLY LOST ID J. s. CRIMINAL WASTE OF NATIONAL
 VITALITY. Wholesale Sacrifice of Lives and
 Money Unnecessary.

That the people of this country are annually throwing away a sum of money that represents fifty per cent more than it costs to operate the governmental cold figures, a billion and half-is statistically shown in Professor Irving Fishers new work issued by the government printing office, and entitled "A Report on Ma tional Vitality"
 Professor Fisher is a member of the faculty of Yale university, and a member of the National Conservation commission appointed by Theodore Roosevelt. He is also a member of the Committee of One Hundred on national health During the last ten years Professor Fisher has been en- gagged in collecting the material that forms this important work, and which is now for the first time made public.
 In the connection of national waste in lives Professor Fisher shows that there are three million persons need nessly and continuously i'll in the United States, and that this condition might well be prevented by strict attention to even the simplest hygi- chic measures. He shows. also, that tuberculosis alone is responsible for 500,000 persons continually i'll. and that it is entirely possible that this scourge be wiped out within one generation. Typhoid alone costs the country 350,OOO0O0. and this is 9 disease that can wholly be wiped out by attention to neglected details. In support of this statement, and show ing what can be done in an individual instance, the author cites the case of the city of Lawrence, Mass, which, by the introduction of a new water supply, reduced this typhoid mortality by over eighty per cent.
 It is shown by carefully gathered data that malaria costs the country $1OO.OOO, 900. and that this is wholly preventable, as instanced by the ac- ton of several cities that undertook with successful issue, the elimination of the malaria mosquito.
 Professor Fisher also shows that our present wasteful policy is easily remediable and cites Professor T. s. Lambart. who. in his Sources of Longevity" stated That it costs no more to raise a man capable of liv ing for eighty years than it does to grow one who has not the capacity of living to be forty years old"
 The subject of eugenics. or mar riage selection, is also discussed at length, and instances of the beneficial effects of the operation of the law in Indiana are startlingly shown, it be- ing stated that by this law no fewer than 800 persons who were shown to be incurable of confirmed degenerate tendencies had been sterilized. In support of the efficacy of this law. the author takes up the history of two famous criminal families, the "Jukes" and "The House of Ish- mael," and shows that the former, out of 1900 descendants in seventy-five years, furnished 557 criminals who spent an aggregate of 2,300 years in jails and poor-houseS.
 Professor Fisher says:
 "The gain or lengthening and strengthening of the life which it measures can be secured through medical investigation and practice, re striction of the labor of women and children, the education of both public and private hygiene, and through i'm proving the efficiency of our munich pal. state and national health ser vice"