The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-05-11
URGES HEALTH
INSURANCE AS
ASTATE Dept
Thus Give Proper Medical
Treatment to All.
Ten Million WOrkmen Ill Dur
ing Each Year.
THE MOVEMENT IS GROWING
st. Louis Business Men Order
Rating of Charities.
National Conference ON Civic
and Domestic Problems.

| indianapolis, Ind, May l11.-Ad-
dresses on subjects bearing on the
family and the community, feeble
mindednes and insanity, public and
private charities, children, health and
inebriety were made today at the Ma
| tional Conference of Charities and
Corrections meeting here.
| Treating of health Insurance" T.
NJ. Rubinow, Phi. D., executive secre-
| tary of the social committee of the
American Medical association, New
York, said in part;
! Health insurance is perhaps the
most important constructive proposal
IN social legislation before the Ameri-
/ can people today. Statistics indicate
the occurrence among the wage work
! ers OF the United, States of perhaps
| ten million cases of illness, a year, of
which two and a. half million cases
Hast four weeks or over and cause Seri-
Gus economic distress for as many
families.
No Doctor for 40 Per Cent Sickness.
| Proper organization of medical
| aid is, perhaps as important a meas
ure as the granting of financial as
sistance. Statistics indicate that per-
| haps 40 per cent of illness among
wage sworkerS remains without medi-
cal aid at present and a good deal of
the aid furnished is insufficient in
kquantity and inefficient in quality. 1t
should be the object of compulsory
/ health insurance, as agitated in this
country, to bring within the reach of
the working class, the latest achieve
mentS of medical science and art.
Only in this way can the health con-
serving effect of insurance be realized.
| That the health insurance move
ment is rapidly growing in this coun-
4 try is. evidenced by the introduction
of bills in New York and Massachu
sets and by the existence of a social
insurance commission in California
and the employment of a social in
surance investigating committee in
the United States congress"
| Woman Worker Speaks Frankly.
| Miss Amy F. Acton of Boston.
lawyer and representative of a new
department of the Massachusetts,
state board of charity, speaking on
state chartering of incorporated char
tiles, said that everything done in the
name of charity is not defensible. She
tstartefs out .witlf--the theme that a.
private charity is public trust
| Through failure to realize that the
community is the real party in inter-
est, that private charity is public
trust, the private charities in most
Estates occupy a practically uncharted
fstakes. claim Miss Acton said in
| conclusion.
| That social agencies. like a certain
we'll known make of automobile,
might be run through a standardizing
process and be turned out guaranteed
| one hundred per cent efficient, was
implied in an address by Charles M.
Hubbard, secretary of the St Louis,
Mo-. Provident association in paper
on Standardization of social agencies.
Want Charities Rated.
in st. Louis" he said. arrange
ment has been made by the Business
Mems league for a six weeks exam
inaticn of all the social agencies by a
national expert. The rapid multipli-
cation of agencies made it necessary
to sort out and grade them according
to efficiency"
Bureau for Social Research, Philadel-
| phia, revealed the silver lining to the
| "Organized charity, squirt and iced
In the name of a heartless statistical
| Christ"
Alcohol Campaigner Talks.
In a paper on Mobilizing Against
Alcohol, Mrs Elizabeth d. Tilton,
chairman of the poster campaign
/ against alcohol. Boston, Mass, said
| among other things:
| What makes men stop drinking?
If you study the large declines in
| various drink-consumption tables, you
find that they usually work back to
two things,-education and forms of
| prohibition, making liquor harder to
get. This is true in Sweden, Norway
and of the United States.
| There is no one thing you can do
that will help the world SO much as
fighting alcohol and the way is to gen.
| crate the state of mind that brings
down drink consumption. Get the
facts, the cost to the people Get the
thinkers back into the cause; teach
them. Form an alcohol education
| committee, set it to .asfng posters like
the posters of the Boston Associated
| Charities, which make alcohol new
and news and carries 1t into the press
and so to the people"
Alcohol Not INDISPENSABLE
| Educational Work to Prevent Alco-
holism," was discussed by Haven EN-
erson, NJ. D.. commissioner of health
New York City, who, read a section of
the sanitary code of the New York
City charter and explained the extent
to which the public authority had
gone in a practical way. Alcohol was
described as depressing, habit-form-
ing drug causing easily recognized dis
eases of the brains nerves and special
senses. The speaker said:
when alcohol is used SO moderate
" as to cause none of the special dis