Evening star., 1944-12-14

TAN ana all tIldt
sort of thing-I Lowell mehe"
asked Gen. Hershey's Office for the
facts. He put me up against whole
platoon of statisticians and they
filled the air with figures and ex-
planatory data. The picture that
emerged was even worse than that
suggested by the farm leader,
although the disparity shown be-
tween farm boys and city boys was
not so great.
For statistical purposes selectlve
service, dividing the country between
rural and urban regions, includes In
the rural regions towns of 2,500 or
less. A big percentage OF boys from
such towns can hardly be called
truly rural, at least they are not
farm boys.
Many Job-Deferred.
Consideration must be given also
to deferments allowed by draft
boards for productive farm work,
more than per cent OF the rural
registrants being thus deferred. The
productive farms are, of course, the
good farms and the good farms, by
and large, produce the better boys
physically: it's matter of better
food, better housing and other ad-
vantages that make for better
health. These boys do not come up
for acceptance or rejection by the
Army If deferred for farm work, so
they don't enter into the rejection
statistics. All of which serves to
reduce the disparity shown between
the health of our urban regions and
our rural regions.
Actually in the books of selective
service, rural rejectees have been
running as high as 46.2 per cent
and urban rejectees as high as 416
per cent.
These are not very pretty figures
for a country claiming the highest
standard of living in the world. But
they are not the worst. The true
farm figures are really bad. In the
period between April, 1912, and De-
cember, 1943, the rejection rate for
farmers and farm managers was
564 per cent and for farm laborers
and foremen 52.8.
There are medical men, in and
out of the Government, who think
that conditions which render more
than half of our farmers unfit for
fighting service are conditions that
need improving. One of the condi-
tions, they point out, is the lack of
hospital facilities. They are pro-
posing therefore that surplus hos
pital equipment be diverted after
the war to the rural regions. A
large surplus of valuable equipment
is anticipated, Notwithstanding the
needs of Army and veterans hos
pitalS.
Hope for Hospitals.
1t Is the hope of these doctors
that an extensive program of rural
hospital construction can be evolved,
with the Federal, State and local
governments participating, to make
use of this surplus equipment.
This group is working hard also
to reconcile differences that have
kept the Wagner -Murray-Dingell
health insurance bill stalled for a
year in Congress. They believe a
plan that will be attractive to all
doctors, as we'll as to all States and
local communities, can be formu-
lated. 1t would be one that left
doctors free to accept or reject pa
tients, to take part in public sys-
tenn or refrain from doing SO; to
continue in individual practice or
to join others in group practice.
And the average income of doctors
much lower than is generally sup
posed-would be increased, they say,
without increasing the average ex-
penditure of citizens for medical
care.
These plans apply to the country
as whole, rural and urban, but
the deepest concern now is for the
rural sections. 1t is from those
sections that our national increase
in population comes, despite the i'll
health that abounds. In American
cities the rate of births and deaths