Montana labor news., 1938-11-24

cruelty shocking. 1t IS a many times
more bitter indictment of the bru-
tality that capitalism has bred in us
than the n I have placed in quota
ton marks above.
De Kruif hasn't time in this book
to expose the degrading corruption,
in%adequacy, graft, and crime in com
petitive medical practice. Having
recognized the profound social and
individual truth that s~elf-preserva-
ton isn't the first law except insofar
as self-preservation and welfare is
realized through preservation and
welfare of the group, he asks this
question: What is the chance for
victory against death) in a nation
organized for profit, not for life?"
His answer is that the conquest over
preventable deaths is the very
soundest of capitalistic economics,
excluding all humanitarian view
points whatsoever.
His story is the story of the fight
for life on five fronts: against pei
lagra, maternal mortality, infantile
paralysis, tuberculosis, and syphilis.
1t is a great story, told in de Kruif's
breathless1 journalistic style that will
not let the readers attention waver.
In each instance the fight for life
cannot be separated from the fight
to convince the lords of life that it
is cheaper to keep people alive-to
crush out these diseases-than it is
to let them die-or live manned, use
less eXistences-or die slowly, an
enormous burden of expense to their
communities. When Detroit discov-
cred that it cost only half as much to
cure an early minimal case Of tuber-
culosis as it did to let an advanced
case drag on to death, it had hold of
a fact that even the most narrowly
money-motivated businessman could
understand.
And yet they haven't, except in a
few isolated instances, they don't.
What is true of the tuberculosis fight
is true Of the whole battle.
Over all this intensely dramatic
story, charged with de Kruif's
poignant awareness of the criminal
ity of needless suffering and need
less death, you feel the awareness
of a man who knows a SOLDERING
thing-that the fight for life must
be a peoples fight, demanded and
carried on by the masses of the peo-
pie, and in the peoples name. That
capitalism isn't interested in intelli-
gent l%ong-range economics, in ulti-
mate thrift, in a coldly realistic
balancing of lives against dollars.
That to capitalism life is so cheap
that it feels no necessity to plan for
saving it.
Groups thinking about cooperative
health associations and plans for
socializing medicine should read this
book. If they're not already think
ing about cooperative medicine, they
will be when they finish it. What
economic obstacle" de Kruif asks,
SIS in the way of giving the people
life, when it is costing our whole
nation-its rulers and owners in
cluded-billions to keep the people
only half alive and to let them die?
Evil the people wait, will they
be patient when they know there is
not even a rotten economic reason
why their dear ones should drown
in the blood of consumptive death,
perish with childbed fever, go blind,
become heart-wrecked, and go mad
with syphilis?
"The people are beginning to
know that life is no longer a ques-
ton of do 1 live or do / die. No, in
their onward march of life it now
becomes do we live or do we die"
And then Paul de Kruif states his
"That the relief of suffering and
the prevention of dying cannot best
be served, for all, so long as there
remains any money consideration
between the people and the fighters
for their lives.
"This reporter believes that all
consideration of private profit are
not only wasteful but infamous if
they Illustrate the fight for life, if
they deny the right of n human
being to live"
RICHARD LAKE.