The Gem worker and the Idaho labor herald. (Boise, Idaho) 1914-1917, 1916-04-20
A STUDY OF POVERTY
Low Wages the Underlying Cause Of Sickness
and Degeneracy

Washington.-The United States
Public Health Service has just pub
1ished startling expose of American
industrialism and its blighting, death
dealing effect on the lives and hap
piness of the 100000 American
wage earners.
Strain and overwork in the shop
and factory, poverty and anxiety at
home, are breaking down the health
of American workers and sending mill
lions to their graves before they have
approached old age.
All the platitudes of the political
orator and the shallow patriot are
swept aside by the facts of science as
niarshalled in Public Health Bulletin
No. 76, entitled Health Insurance,
It's relation to the Public Health.
The authors are DR.. B. S. Warren,
surgeon, United States Public Health
Service, and Edgar Sydenstrickcr,
public health statistican III the same
service The bulletin embodies the
result of an investigation undertaken
for the Commission on Industrial Re-
1ations and continued for the Public
Health Service Copies may be had
on application to the government
printing office in Washington.
The Warren-Sydenstricker report
concludes with plan for compulsory
health insurance for wage earners, to
be administered by the state and fed
; eral government. But its chief vaule
ahd importance in the stunning indict-
ment of American social and industri-
al conditions contained in its impress
sive array of indisputable facts and
figures.
Proved Ten Times Over
BY combining all reports made by
State and federal Investigators and
those employed by reputable universi-
ties and societies during the past ten
years, the government experts have
proved ten times over their conten-
ton that low wages are playing havoc
with the lives and health of the work
ers.
After reading this government re-
port, no man or woman could longer
fail to realize that preparedness means
radical changes in the economic con-
dition of the wage earners before it
means anything. else; that the losses
on European battlefields and the dam
ger of foreign aggression are less than
the day-by-day slaughter being
wrought here at home by our pre-
vailing industrial and economic re-
gime.
Supplementing this Committees es-
innate that 250,0O0 adults are killed
and 100000 wounded each year by
poverty and preventable disease, the
report finds that each OF the 30,000,00C
workers in the United States loses on
the average about nine days every
year on account OF sickness alone"
How Poverty Kills
Having Established the~prevalencc
of disease among wage earners, the
government experts proceed to lis
causes and devote twenty-eight pages
to what is in effect an indictment o
American industry The causes o
disease are given as follows:
The occupational hazards of dis
ease; irregularity OF employment; un
healthful conditions Of living the EN-
ploy1nent OF women in industry unde
modern conditions of work, particul
arlv OF married women; and the eco
nomic disadvantage at which larg
proportion OF wage workers and thei
families are placed as the result c
low wages and insufficient annual in
come.
The report makes it clear that "ece
nomics disadvantage" is cause OF dis
ease and overshadows all the rest, fc
example, inadequate diet is set dow
as the first OF "unhealthful condition
Of living and the report says;
"Incone statistics published by rec
eral and State governments in the ia'
few years indicate that considerabl
proportion OF the families of waa
workers have not been able to mail
tain diet that will provide for prop'
nourishment
"A larger proportion can maintai
an adequate diet only at the sacrifi'
Of healthful environment and of 9TH