The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-06-27
KNOW NOTHING.

Scientists who have been deVOtlng profound and prolonged study to in fantile paralysis have returned negative report.
 The investigation was financed by the Rockefeller institute, and the result is: nothing.
 Infantile paralysis killed off thou sands last summer in New York City. It crippled permanently far more. It was real menace. IL was costly plague and the loss to the nation in those potential fac tors for the country's man-power may not be written off in dollars and cents.
 Nor is this all. Notwithstanding the efforts that are being made against the great white plague tu bercuIosis goes merrily along claim ing it's thousands of victims: occu- patioual diseases that cause death and maiming proceed unhampered; serious ills like cancer and the like long regarded as incurable still defy the enort of the physician and the social worker.
 Society does not face these real menaces at all.
 Doctors return negative reports and admit that they know nothing.
 Yet consider the boundless energy displayed in this war with Germany The entire machinery of govern ment is placed in such efficient shape that it may devote itself wh0leheartedly and effectively to that. 4 tithe of the energy and the earnesness and the determination and the authority used to enforce this war would wipe tuberculosis off the American map, would make infanitle paralysis impossible, would forever destroy any such thing as an occupatiOnal disease and long ago would have found a remedy for even the most intractable disease that flesh is heir to.
 What is done and why it is done are important matters for us. Yet we cannot but contrast the tremend ous fatalities from preventable diseases, from those which could have been eradicated long ago, from the persistent victimizatiOn of the workers in industries with our so- cial negligence and wonder at it all
 The average doctor is a man who has to contend with endless difficult ties. It just takes about all he makes, even if he charges stagger- ing fees to supply himself with in- struments which will fill the most moderate requirements of his pro- fessison: medicine has to depend upon the ostentaious charity of some person of wealth. and scien- life research is forbidden by reason of his restricted means to the aver age physician.
 It's a funny old world. While nations devote billions to killing ono another off, there's tax pay CTS howl if millions are spent to save lives.
 The reason however is not far to seek Life is about the cheapest thing in the world. A loss of a , mule or hog or a sheep or COW is d definite loss. The loss of a human being is a loss that strikes no one as very serious. The person is not such sacred thing at all, except when someone driven crazy by con ditions runs amuck and kills an other.
 But when the life is taken. as thief takes a purse, stealthily by q preventable disease, by an occupa- | tional illness, by an industrial accl- | dent by failure of society to devote itself earnestly to the cure and pre- vention of scourge, no one both | CTS. The individual responsibility | is lost in the social responsibility | and no one is moved at all.
 When the Lusitania went down shudder of pity and shame and horror was felt throughout the world, especially for the little ones that met their watery grave. It was natural and in a way a fine sympathetic feeling. But day after day, week after week. year after year, millions of little ones are be- ng killed off by social conditions in