The Harvester World: Volume 3, number 2, February 1912

              The Harvester World

31

from contact with those who are well, those who are absolutely ill. Now, this is a very serious proposition, and means taking out of the family the father, the mother, or the child who is ill with tuberculosis and is a source of contagion on and on and on, taking that person out of the family and separating him from the others, and is one which brings every human feeling of revolt forward against it. And I say to you that until this is done with the tubercular individual who is spreading tuberculosis about him in the congested dis¬ trict in which he lives, and that individual is placed in a comfortable home somewhere to pass the rest of his life, thereby protecting his children and his home as¬ sociates from contagion, the progress of tuberculosis in this world will not be stamped out. This is a very serious question, as it involves the expense of provid¬ ing proper homes for these people where they can be kept and where the danger to the community will be lessened.    This, however, is not the whole question.
There are other phases to the question like this: We know that tuberculosis is curable in the early stages. We know also that it is curable only at an early stage, and the question before the world, then, becomes how to get at it in its early stages. There are two ways of dealing with tuberculosis in the industrial world. One is to deal with it as it casually arises, and the other is to go out and find it. The objection to dealing with it as it casually arises is that it is not detected under these circumstances until it is well advanced, and it is a serious matter to remedy the condition, because it is a long time before that has been reached. The plan of going out to detect it is the plan the International Harvester Company is pursuing, whereby the persons under suspicion are systematically and comprehensively investigated, and the cases which appear suspicious are placed in some sanitarium to determine whether or not they are tubercular, and the situation is dealt with as it arises in various ways after that. Now, that is the logical way to deal with the situation, and that is the thing which I present to the superintendents of the various industries allied with this association at large. The onlj- thing you can do which is going to be effective in protecting your working force is to perfect the machinery of education. I am not going into that subject now because it will take too long. Suffice it to say that it is perfectly practical to take your whole working force and take those of the suspicious class and put them under expert judgment, and finally arrive at a conclusion in every individual group as to the health of the group. Mr. Ranney, who is working out this detail in connection with the Company's welfare work, knows the scheme is perfectly practical. It is astonishing  the   amount   of   tuberculosis   there is in
working groups you don't know anything about and you have no suspicion of.     It is astonishing!
What has been done about it from an economic standpoint ? What is the industrial value of a tuber¬ cular man or woman? Ninety, seventy, and even fifty per cent of applications go to show that the individuals have gone from job to job as their efficiency failed and they dropped from one occupation back to another. These are not the low class, but from among our best laborers. Take the ordinary laborer who gets glS.OO a week, and he gradually goes down to the point where he earns only ^4.00 a week. There never was a minute when he was worth the wage he got, and he has been paid that wage for inefficient labor.
Now, from an economic standpoint there is abso¬ lutely no defense for it. Moreover, there is no necessity for it. If you should take the average, not unfavor¬ able but the favorable, tubercular person, and find out at the beginning when that thing was started, the majority of them could go on with their work, regain¬ ing health while at work under proper conditions. There is no excuse for carrying inefficient laborers who are progressively going toward the point of complete ultimate dependence when you might be doing some¬ thing in a preventive way. Health is a prime factor in industrial efficiency.
Now, I want to come right into the office. I want to say a word about the office force, the managers, the superintendents, and clear up to the top, and say to you that, so far as your business is concerned, your menace is not with your day laborers. Your menace from a health standpoint is with reference to the people I see before me tonight. What is the health record of these individuals? Most of them are too young to give up. What is going to be their record as their efficiency fails day by day and month by month? An efficiency which should be an increasing quantity rather than a decreasing (luantity. My observation has been that there is no doubt but that the element of efficiency is closely related to health, and in this organization it is an important factor. You know that in the first place there is an enormous amount of work to be done, and you know that this organization works its men for all they are worth. You know, furthermore, that your work is done under a severe strain. Work that is within the capacity of individuals never hurts anybody, but work which is done under a strain, work which is done at the expense of bodily power from day to day, is a killing business, and the money you are seriously considering spending on this present plan will not only aid your business but increase the efficiency of your employes, and I want to congratulate you on what you have done.
The Shack at Naperville
An ideal place for curing incipient cases of tuberculosis