Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-15
AMUSEMENT QUEST
AIDS MOVIE TRADE
Statistics Show Mortality
Rate Is Lower in Indus
trial Depression.
BY LEMUEL F. PARTON.


NEW YORK, September 15.-With
the hesitant and faltering upturn of
stocks amusement securities continue
to show vitality. The Department Of
Commerce reports that this has been a
boom year for the sale of sporting
goods, with sales 10 per cent greater
than for the same period last year. The
Tom Thumb golf craze has pried loose
many millions of stagnant capital and
set it to work in industries which con-
tribute to this happy dementia.
While 1t is thus obvious that the
American play appetite has invaluable
economic uses, there are by-products
and derivatives of all this which vital
statistics. rather than economists, will
record. When P. B. Heintz, president
of the National Casket Co, said people
weren't dying so fast since the market
slump of last year and that mortality
rates always we're better in times of
depression, he was argued off the ros-
trum by insurance statisticians and
doctors, who said 1t just couldn't be
true. But the returns aren't all in yet.
Welfare Workers Reports.
Social agencies, social settlements,
welfare workers and official and nom
official observers, who clock the endless
run-around of bad and good times, find
convincing evidence that public health
improves when times are bad-prepos-
ferrous as this may seem. Maybe the
answer Is to be found in these sporting
goods and amusements statistics Does
unemployment get people out in the
open and build up their resistance to
gloom and doom?
"All men die of creeping common
sense" said some current philosopher.
Maybe this temporary release from the
common sense of jobs and money is
cutting down the mortality rate-it is
definitely less since the big slide
started
Going away back to the big teamsters'
strike in Chicago, nearly Is years ago,
it is found that health averages were
better in the families of the strikers
while the strike was on. Chicago social
agencies investigated this at the time
and were puzzled by their findings. The
findings have been the same in studies
of the great railroad textile and coal
strikes. For some reason, in spite OF
the burdens of fear and the obviously
deteriorating effects of poverty, there
is some mysterious recompense which
works its way into the vital equation
in times of unemployment.
Naturally sociologists feel delicacy
in discussing the subject, as any sug-
gestion that poverty is anything to
cheer about would be decidedly of1-slde,
particularly at time of real stress.
Better Mortality Rates.
A New York physician and hui
manitarian. specialist in neuroses and
active in public welfare work, comment
| ed today on this subject. as follows:
mo sane person would appear as an
| apologist for a situation which endan-
/ gers security and threatens family well
| fare. But 1t is true that frequently,
/ for a limited time and above certain
| economic levels, community upsets, or
even calamities, such as strikes or UNI
employment, stimulate better mortality
rates
ANY deductions as to causes must, Of
course, be purely theoretical In wal
| time l have no doubt that men in great
numbers are stimulated and Wtalized
| not only by the mass excitement, but BY
being able to drop for time the
routine of jobs and clock-punchinf
which they have carried for years.
There is a lot of wear and tear or
the human organism in sticking to
routine job for few years. Deplorabl'
| as the effects of unemployment are
there is unquestionably decided pub
lie health value in rest, sport and rec
reation. On the other hand, II the sal
carries any considerable numbers 0