THE HIGH COST OF DYING

...Explaining why he had left his job in a livery stable to become an undertaker, Chambers said: "What appealed to me mostly was when I saw one of them [undertakers] buy a casket for $17 and sell it to a poor broken widow for $265...

...For another 381, the county arranged burial in $19.41 coffins and $30 graves...

...Some clergymen have given their blessing to such exploitation...

...The idea that the burial industry is a public utility and should be operated or regulated by the state has been accepted in Europe for years...

...Blandly disregarding that they are tradesmen selling caskets, vaults, and other merchandise and services, undertakers have advanced by minimizing such mundane considerations as dollars and cents and concentrating on pride and respect and—cruelly— feelings of guilt...

...what we like are the Portuguese and the Spanish...

...The Scandinavian countries exercise strict control over burials...

...As a result of clever public relations, undertakers have gained social respectability and have even been endowed by many with a semi-clerical status...

...When a poor man attempts to make a lavish display—with all the modern trappings of questionable taste—that is obviously beyond his means, it is then that he suffers a loss of dignity and has put on an expensive show that has been cheap and vulgar...

...The oldest and most successful of these organizations is the People's Memorial Association in Seattle, which originated in 1939 when the minister of the Church of the People and several members of his congregation determined to find a "better tribute to a departed loved one than the ostentatious, emotional funerals available...

...The average price per death in 1959 was $907.83, according to the Department of Commerce estimate that $1.5 billion was spent on burials in the nation last year...

...As they have climbed the rungs from undertaker to mortician to funeral director, and as their once modest "parlors" have been transformed into sanctified country clubs, they have assumed the prerogatives of professional man and pastor...

...That attitude has been carefully cultivated by undertaking establishments—all the way from pet cemeteries to Los Angeles' Forest Lawn, three hundred preposterous acres of trees, ponds, wedding chapels, statues, paintings, and bodies: a California tourist attraction outranked only by Disneyland...

...Nevertheless, a person who can pay $19,000 for a casket with "Ever-Seal air, watertight construction, and Ever-Rite adjustable bed, all in a zestful champagne finish, with a semi-tailored interior of gold-tone, Savoy crepe" is less liable to post-burial suffering than is the widow of a union member who is charged total insurance benefits...

...My reason was this," the pastor stated...

...Today, however, many clergymen are beginning to express misgivings...

...Londa S. Fletcher of Palo Alto, California, who had been revolted by the "mock mourning of the undertakers" at a family funeral, was authorized by her Quaker group to find out what could be done to obtain a simple, dignified funeral...

...Competition in the funeral trade has not provided consumer benefits in the form of lower prices or better quality, largely because there are RUTH MULVEY HARMER l» a free lance writer who recently completed a special Investigation of the policies and practices of the funeral parlor industryfew persons who would not be repelled by the notion of bargaining over the body of a friend or relative...

...As a result competition among undertakers is fierce—at times ludicrously so: a North Carolina undertaker recently offered trading stamps to purchasers of caskets and cerements...

...Some of the clergy, apparently pleased to have help with some of the more difficult pastoral chores, have permitted undertakers more and more latitude, from choosing the music (usually not hymns, which are considered "too depressing") to receiving and ushering friends at the service and condoling and counseling with families before and after the service...

...The business agent of a Los Angeles union recently announced that he would no longer provide undertakers with information about deceased members' insurance policies...

...In 1954, the attorney general of New York State charged that some low-income families were forced to pay the last cent of the dead person's insurance policy for a funeral service that normally cost half as much...

...When the bereaved person visited the undertaker's establishment, the undertaker disparages the advertised offering and plays upon the emotions of the family in order to palm off more expensive goods and services...

...The rapid growth of such associations on the West Coast during recent years suggests a developing concern about adequate protection against exploitation during a period of defenselessness...

...The industry struck back in an editorial comment in Casket and Sunnyside, conceding that the minister has "every right to be consulted on the time of the funeral, and that he might have some say about other details, but that the price of the service is not his prerogative and he should not go into the selection room...

...In 1951, Mrs...

...Furthermore, the Archbishop continued, ". . . contemporary English distinguishes between that which is inexpensive and that which is cheap, in the sense of being vulgar . .. There is no loss in dignity because of poverty...

...After an investigation of funeral costs in Alameda County, where a random sampling of probated estates showed the average cost to be more than $950, the East Bay Memorial Association was incorporated and is now providing almost 3,000 member families with simple, rational funerals for a modest sum...

...For most people in the United States, the best and most acceptable solution would seem to be an expansion of the memorial associations that have been organized by church groups, unions, and members of consumer cooperatives...

...It is the task of those in the funeral profession," says the Psychology of Funeral Service (a trade manual) "to educate the public in the right paths...

...Archbishop Baggio, commenting on the resistance by undertakers to lower prices and simplified funerals, warned that "the alternative may well be that Christian communities, in their dissatisfaction, will set up cooperatives to operate according to the dictates of Christian conscience and to their means...

...So many are now operating that the average number of funerals that could be allotted to each is fewer than sixty a year...

...In 1954, the Berkeley Consumer Cooperative Society appointed a funeral research committee headed by Josiah Bartlett, Jr., dean of the Starr King School of the Ministry...

...One copy of the instructions is kept by the member...

...Perhaps the most shocking instance of merciless price gouging brought to public notice occurred in 1947 in Illinois, when 111 miners in Cen-tralia died in a coal mine disaster...

...We have no minimum price," was the almost universal reply, in more than one case supplemented frankly with such statements as: "We know the members of your group are generally able to have a good funeral, and we think they should," or, "We don't like your people's funerals...

...I said, 'This is awful sweet, I can't let this go.' " In spite of their claim to more-than-businessman status, undertakers have proven themselves shrewd entrepreneurs...

...The calls she made on local undertakers were enlightening, if not encouraging...

...A few years ago, a reporter for a national magazine said that he had been told by a Milwaukee pastor that the cleric had encouraged—over an undertaker's mild protest—the daughter of a deceased parishioner to go ahead with her plan for a lavish funeral...

...In 1950, the United Auto Workers made a study of Ford Motor Company pensioners who died during the year and found that while average life insurance benefits were only $1,300, average funeral expenses were more than $800...

...a third is kept on file by the association...

...The mortuary services, he said, were inferior to the services received through the association...

...Of course, other income groups are also affected, as may be inferred from advertisements on Los Angeles buses announcing "complete services" for $95 to $4,800...

...Some local undertakers charged widows as much as $1,178.50 for funerals...

...Selling funerals out of proportion to the family's way of life is also a frequent abuse...

...How profitable a sale can be was brought to public attention in 1947 at at a Senate Committee hearing when W. W. Chambers, the owner of four large mortuaries in the nation's capital, testified with disarming frankness that "a $30 casket is generally sold today for $150...

...In urban areas, the cost is considerably higher...

...But the public would hate to think there was rivalry over the dead...

...The expensive funeral did a lot to relieve her sense of guilt...

...Charges for identical services and caskets are said to have varied by several hundreds of dollars, depending on the size of the amount credited to the dead miner in the form of union welfare death benefits and state compensation...

...Robert L. Fulton for the National Funeral Directors Association, fifty-one per cent of Protestant clergymen and forty-one per cent of Roman Catholic clerics are of the opinion that undertakers exploit bereaved families at least part of the time...

...On becoming a member, each person selects a funeral from several available types and indicates his wishes about burial or cremation, music, flowers, type of memorial service, and other funeral details...

...Although the code of ethics prohibits any price advertising, "bait" advertising is common...

...In Ottawa recently, Roman Catholic Archbishop Sebastian Baggio, Apostolic Delegate to Canada, in a letter to the Funeral Directors Association, stated in forceful language that because "the cost of dying is getting out of all proportion, it might be well for the Association to make an 'agonizing reappraisal' not only of price structures but also of pagan customs and trappings that have crept into the industry...

...For example, the funerals of the 51,549 persons who died in Los Angeles County last year averaged $1,100 each...

...I know that you have competitors...

...Unlike other industries, the funeral industry is confronted with a limited market...

...Although the plans vary in detail, all are based on pre-death arrangement for funeral and burial...

...Aided by public determination to avoid "unpleasant" talk about death and by successful lobbying in state capitals, practitioners of the burial trade are generally free from all controls except what compassion they possess and the pledge some take to abide by the code of ethics of the trade association...

...The "education" has been so successful in equating lavish funerals with religious devotion, family loyalty, and true-blue Americanism that it has done mortal injury to such cherished economic theories as the law of supply and demand...

...Depressing as the situation is, it is not incapable of solution...

...Yet it has been demonstrated there, as elsewhere, that by planning rationally and cooperatively, simple, dignified funerals can cost as little as $100 to $150...

...Undoubtedly, the substitution of a rational funeral for the lavish displays born of a frenzy of grief, guilt, fear, and pride will require, as a California clergyman said, "a long, patient process of re-education...

...Existing organizations have formed a West Coast Federation, and member organizations are now affiliated with similar groups in Philadelphia, Montreal, Cleveland, Ottawa, Chicago, Toronto, and several other cities...

...Yet since some establishments count their "cases" by the hundreds, the less flourishing must make a living on only the twelve or twenty funerals they handle...

...Perhaps not the least important reason that protest against inflation in funerals has been minimal is that the chief victims are persons with relatively low incomes—a notably inarticulate group...

...when a death occurs in a family, almost no one sets out on a shopping expedition for the cheapest funeral...

...Yet little has been said—publicly, at any rate—about the even higher and more rapidly rising cost of dying, a cost which has more than tripled in one generation...

...In Switzerland, every citizen is entitled to a free state funeral...

...Steadily rising funeral prices partly reflect the unique economic nature of the undertaking industry...

...One member reported that eight months before he joined the association he arranged for the burial of his mother through a local mortuary...

...in France, any of several funerals at varying prices may be purchased from the local governments or from private undertakers who have government contracts...

...Cost of membership is $3 for each adult, and the plan provides for cremation at $100, simple memorial services if desired, and burial when that is preferred...

...A cremation fund deposit plan has been arranged with a credit union so that members are able to free survivors of that financial responsibility...

...Prices and sales are regulated in England...

...more extensively they reflect a remarkably successful public relations program that has redefined the ancient concept of respect for the dead to emphasize extravagant display...

...Since the price of the casket determines to a great extent the price of the funeral, it is in the selection room that the undertaker most noticeably demonstrates himself a salesman...

...You and the others in your profession are 'we.' You know that you have competitors...

...In Los Angeles, on the other hand, members of the organizing committee spent several months before they found the two undertakers with whom the group concluded contracts...

...The suave manners are often replaced by the "hard sell" when a family insists on the advertised price: "Do you want to put your mother in an orange crate...

...Among the 51,549 persons buried last year in Los Angeles County at an average cost of $1,100 were 1,253 "county burials...

...many others, of course, have always opposed the "pagan spectacles...

...But concern for funeral reform is growing, and there is hope that the barbaric shows for the dead may be abolished in the interests of the living...

...During the last fifty years of dramatically declining death rate, the number of undertakers has increased with frivolous disregard for the need...

...As a consequence, the cost of a funeral has become one of the most crushing expenses facing American families today...

...a year after he joined, the association arranged the burial when his father died...

...A funeral cooperative in Minnesota built its own $20,000 chapel several years ago...

...According to a recent survey made by Dr...

...Under ordinary economic circumstances, marginal operators would simply be eliminated, but not in the funeral industry...

...The non-profit organization that was formed after a neighboring Unitarian Church joined forces now has a membership of more than 3,000 families in Seattle and in seventy-eight nearby communities...

...Once the undertaker has possession of the body, it is not likely that the family will resist whatever price is set on a casket...

...Mortuary Management, a powerful trade journal, recently warned its subscribers: "You do not have competitors...

...He had learned that instead of using the information to keep costs within reasonable limits, undertakers had been charging up to the amount of the total benefits...

...Like other California groups, the East Bay Memorial Association requires a modest enrollment fee (the only charge imposed) of ten dollars a family...

...Mrs...

...As it was defined by the New York State attorney general in December, 1954: "He [the undertaker] sets up a low and extremely ^ attractive price for a complete funeral which is merely the lure for the unwary public at a time of deep grief...

...Since then, Hollywood, San Diego, and Sacramento have organized similar groups, and another is being formed in Oregon...

...Since the success of the plan depends on finding cooperative undertakers, difficulties arise in organizing such associations...

...In the Middle West, a number of cooperative groups were forced to acquire and maintain their own undertaking establishments after undertakers in the area had been threatened and some who had worked with cooperative groups had had supplies withheld...

...Overt competition has been discouraged by trade associations...

...the undertakers working with the group simply follow instructions...

...Thus for a poor man to choose an inexpensive funeral (if and when such is available) for a loved one, is eminently dignified, for it is in keeping with faith, reason, and common sense...

...The cost of his mother's funeral was $800 in contrast to the $150 charged for that of his father...

...At the request of survivors, 872 of them were cremated at a cost of $15, plus $11.89 for preparation of the body and $3.28 for its transportation...

...At present, about one thousand member families are covered by contracts with several of the area's undertakers which provide simple funerals for as little as $150...

...Many of the undertakers were frankly afraid of trade association reprisals if they signed contracts...

...one is sent to the member's clergyman—if any...

...In the United States, there has not been, nor is there likely to be, an attempt on a national level to control prices and practices...

...The common attitude has been that to draw a relationship between funerals and finances is neither relevant nor proper: the right sort of person simply doesn't consider money at a time like that...

...In Seattle, an understanding undertaker, who still works with the group, was found early...

...Fletcher persisted, and in 1952 the Peninsula Funeral Society was incorporated as a non-profit, non-denominational organization...

...When death occurs, there is no need to make decisions...

...Membership fees in some associations are even lower...

...Nor does it seem likely that local governments will take over, although they have demonstrated that they themselves are models of economy...

...Some undertakers were charged with "padding" funeral bills after determining what the savings accounts contained...

...I knew the daughter felt she had neglected her mother...