Arizona republican., 1910-02-09

Solu tlelu could compare Wltn H., ana
 probably one-half of that army had
 no ''commissary department" but in
 the truest sense of the phrase expected
 to Tive off the country" In other
 words a very large number of these people expected whatever country they
 might stop in to supply them with food and lodging and comforts on which to get we'll
 In what might be called the great
 panic of the disease physicians siezed,
 honestly perhaps. but wildly and with out sufficient investigation. upon the idea that climate was the supreme fac- tor in recovery and sent their patients
 westward as if the very touch of their
 feet upon the soil of Colorado or New Mexico or Arizona would work a cure.
 It is twenty years since Arizona be- gun to feel the first -riple of the incom-
 ing tide. ten or twelve since it was at
 its full. and now she is doing for alien and stranger consumptives year by
 year more than or as much as many of the boastful states do for their own.
 To appreciate the condition in its be-
 ginning we must remember that Ari-
 zona was new land. remote from
 large centers of population. wealth. or supplies. Busy with the problem of developing her mines, ranges. water systems and other sources of growth. and with no internal reasons for an organized system of charity work or relief for the sick and indigent on a large scale.
 Arizona had then. as now, no large number of native indigents and not enough sick people to form any sort of problen-except the problem of how her physicians were to get a living in a land of healthy. busy people. Then entered upon the scene the advance guard of the health seekers
 They came in increasing numbers year by year as the climate was seen to be of great value in leading toward a cure-other things being favorable. But other things were often far from favor able: .; Is hard for a sick man or wo- man to work. even when light work is obtainable. and the demands upon priv ate and public charity begun and in- creased till a genuine burden vas laid upon all of the most thickly settled parts of the territory.
 From the first it was met generously by business men. lodges. churches. county and city authorities. With no adequate organization tol take charge of the distribution of funds and to in vestigate and pass upon the merits of the cases this warm-h hearted help sometimes failed to req ch the most urgent need, but 1t was lgiven with generosity which should be forever written down to the credit of Arizona.
 Many picturesque private charities witness the quick respohse of this earlier time. one big-heatred man kept on the road through the summers what he called his "St. Luke's buck board" a strong, comfortable camp wagon outfItted 10 take several sick people out into the opeh and keep them there till they had d the chance to know if camp life would help them.
 But no private charity or unor- ganized public charity tan deal with such problem as presented itself to Arizona and all the southwest. The ranks of the sick and needy were being constantly increased by hundreds of helpless people sent dut with little more than a charity ticket in their pockets and with no provision for SUD- port during the time that must pass before they could hope to be self-cup- porting, if such a time could ever come.
 Some of the sections where the dis ease has its most prolific hotbeds solved their own problem by sending their poverty-stricken sick out on charity tickets for. Arizona to take care of and to bury. The whole ques- ton for Arizona has been, not how to prevent the development of con- sumption among her own people, but how to take care of the consumptives that came to her with the disease fixed upon them and who were strangers which she must tax her own people to care for.
 Year by year experience has shaped. directed, the best plans which could be evolved out of the demands of the situation. and Ar'izona is a long way on the road to a lust and gener- ous solution of the Problem forced upon her from the outside and in working out her own methods has land southwest
 1nefe Has btcii HoT fnOuey to SpdIt for prevention while, as during the year of 1909, the city of Phoenix and the county of Maricopa. spent, from all sources available. about s25,000 in the care of it's sick and needy. most of whom were citizens of other states. | Nor is there room for just criticism when our charity records show that ] during the year of 1908 the great city of Philadelphia supported one indigent to every sixty-five persons in it's popu- lation. most of them being citizens of state or city. while in the same 1 year the charities of Phoenix support ed one indigent to every sixty-fiye of its inhabitants. and twO- thirds of those cared for were utter strangers. whose 1 own home places had sent them adrift to fare as best they might.
 For year now Naricopa county has | supported a tuberculosis ward in its 1 county hospital and is about to build l q separate hospital for its tuberculosis poor, the indigent sick sent into Ari l zona from other states.