The Coolidge examiner., 1935-12-20

4,113OOO stamps had been sold and paid for
about two for every man, woman and child in
the country. The children's hospital had to its
account in the savings bank 6S 900 kroner through
this penny subscription:
"That was the first years showing when the
matter had been talked Of only month or two
saw in the Danish papers that last years re-
ceipts-the third SeaSOns-were nearly four
times big: The hospital is built, 1 suppose, by
this time under way, and out of a small be-
ginning has grown great benefaction. But that
is not the greatest thing about it, to my mind
The thought itself, with it's power of setting
everybody to thinking of great wrong that can
only be rlghted through everybody's thinking of
it deserves that place. What else is the tubercu-
losis scourge than such wrong?
Nothing in all the world is better proven
today than that it is a preventable disease and
therefore needless. And yet in our own country,
to bring the matter home, it goes on year after
year killing an army of one hundred and fifty
thousand persons, and desolating countless homes
in which half million men and women are al
ways wearily dragging themselves to graves dug
by this single enemy. Perhaps / feel strongly
about it, and no wonder. 1t killed six of my
brothers, and 1 guess 1 know. That was in the
days when there was no help for it. There is now.
what want to know is why we cannot bor-
and do as they have done. Why should we not
have a Christmas stamp, printed by tubercu-
loss association, not for the purpose of building
a hospital-let each state or town build its own
but for the purpose of rousing up and educat-
ing the people on this most important matter!
Look at the photograph of the three-year-old
letter here. 1t is just as it came to me, except
that in the upper row, whence collectors had
pirated three stamps, three of last years have
been pasted in instead, while in the lower right
hand corner have placed one of the 1905 kind,
so that all the three years are there represented.
Assume that the practice became general of
putting on letters even one or two Christmas
stamps and think of Uncle Sans mail in the
same breath What might it not mean in reve-
nue. to finance the cause that creeps along where
it ought to run? But, much more than that, what
might it not be made to mean an educating
medium in fighting the white plague?
practically every man who saw this stamp on
letter, or on postal card-it is pasted on both
in Denmark-wOuld want to know what it meant.
And when people want TO know, half the fight is
won tits because they do not know few amaz-
ingly simple things that people die of tuberculosis.
why should it not be done? Is the country
too big? The bigger the mortality from this
pestilence, the bigger the results to be got from
that kind of education. Are the mails too heavy?
There would not be any more letters because of
it, and even If the number of stamps per letter
were limited to save labor in canceling, the OBJ
ject would be attained. Would there be rush
on the government by all the charities in the
land for like privilege? That could be pre-
vented by giving notice at the outset that per-
mission to use the mails for this purpose was
only for the one cause because its appeal is in
comparaby the greatest The object attained,
it should be dropped At any time it might be
revived in the face of a national emergency, for
which alone it should be used
"At the very time, three years ago. when the
Christmas stamp was invented in Denmark to
provide a hospital for tuberculous children, the
National Association for the Study and Proven
ton of tuberculosis was formed in New York.
Upon basis of careful and conservative cOmputa-
ton, its president estimated that the mere loss
of revenue to the country in nursing and bury
ing tuberculosis victims was three hundred and
thirty millions of dollars.
THE society often spoken of as the Tubercu-
lOsis Committed has today 400 members, doc
tors and laymen. Education is it's shibboleth.
The three points it tries early and late to i'm
press upon the consciousness of the people are
(1) that tuberculosis is infectous t2) that, if
infectious, it is preventable; and (3) that, in
the early stages, it is, as a rule curable
ut has organized associations in 10 states and
"A towns and maintains a tuberculosis exhibition
that travels about the country, from city to city
leaving a wave of aroused, intelligent interest
in its wake. A campaign is now being planned
for the SoutE, where it is badly needed, but