The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-07-10

ing recognized there will be but scant illness.
 But that is not possible. Air comes dear in the tenements. Water is polluted long before it reaches the thirsty in the slums. The high pri- ces preclude anything like sufficl- ency of wholesome food and hence disease is inevitable. And the funny part of it is that when the wise scientific men combat the disea- ses winch poverty gives rise to, the last thing they think of is of eli minating poverty.
 Instead they will discover serums or toxins or some other dope which will kill off the germs when they make their appe pearance ;n the system Of the afflicted ole. They will be able to cure providing that the victim has the money to pay for a cura, but there Will 5e no prevention.
 How many thousands die from tuberculosis annually we don't just recall. But the number is enorln- ous.
 Now every one of those lives could be saved by prevention.
 Everyone of those lives could be shaped so that tuberculosis could affect them pot at all. Prevention is better than cure, said the old saw But because the prevention of these diseases of poverty means the extirpation of poverty first of all, there can be no such thing as prevention.
 To our present scheme of civiliza- tion, no matter how we beat about it, poverty is an essential. We must have lots of very poor willing to sell their labor power to employers. We must have tenementS so that the few can have mansions. We must have poorly paid workers so that the department store, mali order houses, mills, factories ana manufacturing plants can make lots of money.
 We can't do without poverty, pov- erty the most abject under our pre- sent scheme of things. It is not so much condition as an institution. It is part of our civilizations like the tenderloin, or the slum, or the jail or the pest house or the crimi' nal court or the crooks, the graft CTS, the parasites. And with it go the diseases of poverty, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis, sleeping sickness venereal disease.
 John D. Rockefeller spent millions trying to cure sleepng sickness in the south. Ills fame, thanks to ju- dicious publicity by 26 Broadway, was blest by hundreds in conse- quence. But the fact was not stated that this same sleeping sickness is due merely to mal-nutrition. It ex- ists because the vctims arc not sui ficiently fed. They don't get enough to eat. They are in state of chrome hunger All of which be ii respectfully spoken is part and par eel of this same civilization which grinds out industrial derelicts like these diseased victims of poverty and industrial overlords with man. sions in the Catskills.
 So when people talk about pre- paredness let it be remembered that the civilization that they in- tend to uphold is this same system of civilization which breeds poverty as an essential.
 And it would be welcome thing to discover some person in the high places of government who would de- wise some kind of preparedness plan which would consider the de- struction and total abolition of pov- erty from the scheme of things.
 There would be something worth while.
 It surely would be worth while to know that here is country where the tubercular victim could haunt us no more with his stricken pre- sence; that here is a city where the babe in arms would be safe from the cruel suffering of infantile para lysis; where dread occupational di- seases would not spread their slimy development into something worse. and where the most hateful of all