HEALTH TO SELL

...The mail has come jolting down by stage from the nearest railroad point, fourteen miles distant, and has been distributed from the post office which is also the general storo and the council-house of the locality...

...Not all consumptives can receive treatment and instruction in sanatoria: the number of these institutions is far too few lor that But the sanatorium method can be, and is taken into the home by the visiting nurse...

...On a total income of ?30,C0.0 a year, only $18,000 of which is net income for working outlay, it conducts an organization more widespread than any business in the state, through a network of agencies which cover the entire map...

...first, catch your dollar...

...But the main selling force is always the school children, and here the campaign is double edged...

...So they are...

...Nothing," answers the stranger, setting up still another placard, and stepping back to estimate the effect...

...The recognition and development of this principle is the striking feature of the Wisconsin propaganda...

...In my various health investigations I have encountered many organizations which proudly boast that they are businesslike...

...into the world dependent upon his own resources, break down, again become a victim to the scourge, and so return upon the state as a charge...

...Remoto and forsaken indeed is that settlement which at some time or other hasn't been visited by the emissaries of the propaganda...

...Selling Red Cross Seals ONCE a year, for one month, the Association goes into the business of merchandising Red Cross seals...

...One month's service of a visiting nurse given free to the community making a. certain record of Red Cross seal sales has been one of the Association prizes referred to above...

...The Great White Plague marched on...

...Education, more education, and still more education...

...Oh, yes...

...One year's relaxation of effort might well be reflected in ten subsequent years of increased tuberculosis mortality...

...But don't your millionaires respond when you ask them for contributions...

...Accommodations were arranged at the Reserve, and an experiment started which seems foreordained to success and to emulation by other states as fast as knowledge of it spreads...

...or the agent may be a butcher or a clergyman or the busy mother and housekeeper of an overflowing household...

...The Pennies Do It BEFORE you can make money work for you you must get the money...

...If the marked decrease in infant mortality isn't partly due to those Home patterns then there's a screw loose between cause and effect in Wisconsin...

...no cost...

...Now, here is romance for the young of the hamlet...

...It has completely commercialized a splendid endeavor...

...The population, gathered in from a considerable radius, is talking a little politics, chewing a little tobacco, speculating a bit on the likelihood of rain, and yawning itself into readiness for home and bed...

...Women's clubs, church federations, business men's associations, chamber of commerce anniversaries, all these are possible fallow ground for the sowing, and Werle is ever on the trail...

...Patent medicine feller, I guess," surmises one...

...Upon their arrival the farmer said: "How much is your fee, Doc...

...Knight-errantry at fifty miles an hour...

...Hello...

...fatter and healthier babies, and a small but hopeful reduction on the charts of that high line of tuberculosa mortality...

...That you, Mr...

...others are not...

...In communities of sufficient size a local society is formed, which places the seals and retains half the proceeds of the sales, this sum being expended locally in some public health work (always under the approval of the general association) which may or may not be anti-tuberculosis effort, according to the needs of the community...

...Goodbye...

...The Dearholt Idea IN STUDYING any social activity it is always well to start with an out-Bide view of It I got a number of outside views of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association, from business men, journalists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, politicians, and social workers...

...and in order to sell effectually they must themselves have a clear idea of the main features of the tuberculosis problem as it affects their locality...

...Public causes such as this do not, unfortunately, go on of their own momentum...

...open windows in schools which had before been hermetically sealed half the year...

...The defence is the "people's penny" offered not as to a charity but as to a fund for mutual protection against the common and ever imminent destroyer...

...The blamed liveryman wanted five dollars to drive me home...

...in a way...

...Selling health is indeed the actual business of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...All this goes from the schools into the household, the younger generation enlightening the older, the "Wisconsin idea" applied to tuberculosis, seeping down through a whole populace...

...not infrequently the postmaster...

...There is a period of some months, after the infection is subdued, when the patient, too much weakened to endure the strain of industrial or economic competition will almost inevitably, if thrust out...

...in fortunate instances some local politician who knows the people of his district and is liked and trusted by them...

...Making "News" Work, Too THIS matter of getting at "the man who don't care a hang" brings me back again to Bradley and his press service, in which he is shrewdly abetted by Miss Downes, untrained in journalism, but nevertheless the possessor of that indescribable mental quality, *news sense...

...Selling health," was the response, given in a manner that carried conviction...

...One day a friend surprised him prowling about a news stand examining the magazines but not looking into any...

...commercialized it not for private profit but for the public gain...

...Not a penny goes out from headquarters but bears to some other its message of life-saving...

...Seldom are these products stamped with the organization's hall-mark...

...Always the central office is in close touch with these men and women...

...We don't ask 'em," said Bradley...

...In a place, for example, where there is a high hot-weather infant mortality, the money might well go for improving the quality of the milk-supply, and the association would give its hearty assent...

...For the penny Is the unit of efficiency in this campaign...

...Nobody, but we offer everybody the opportunity to join in financing the movement upon a co-operative basis...

...So are our poor people...

...If she cannot always protect the wife and children wholly she can, at least, by early diagnosis, afford them an excellent chance of cure, when a little later might be too late...

...As a sort of by-product of its machinery, it manufactures ideas...

...If a labor union conference is due, Werle points out to the leaders the sacrifice of life through tuberculosis in various occupations, and gets an invitation to send a lecturer or to show moving pictures or both...

...each the newcomer has his brief but courteous answer, all the time busy with his preparations for spending the night in the open...

...Or, to get down to the Dearholt basis, your penny...

...There may be commercial organizations in this country, which have as complete and pervasive a system as that organized under Dr...

...How to "toughen" these subjects to a condition of fitness for the struggle of life was as serious a question in Wisconsin as elsewhere, and as unanswerable until the Anti-Tuberculosis Association took thought and said: "Why not the Forest Reserve...

...That too, in a way," says the motorist Curiosity is now at its height The crowd couldn't be driven away" by a thundershower...

...I don't believe there is another concern in the world so under-capitalized...

...comes the direct question...

...The cycle pop-pops itsflf into a stationary phase...

...A Factory of Ideas BUT when the central organization has taken in its grain of pennies, and ground out its grist of health-education for distribution, its day's work is by no means done...

...Practically the only source of revenue is the sale of the red cross seals...

...ASUCCESSFUL business man, meeting one of the officials of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association recently, said to him: "See here...

...one an-ivement organi-other them-jrs, re-icasioii...

...I insisted...

...It travels by motor cycle "and tower and town and hamlet have heard" not, indeed, "the trumpet-blast," but the chug-chug of the Harley-Davidson whizzing the message down the road...

...Why, yes...

...Supper is over...

...Last year five of the association's bills passed the legislature, every one unanimously...

...In the morning all that remains at the cross-roads to tell of the visitation is a little heap of ashes, some queer marks in the dust where the heavy-studded tires have passed—and a germinating seed of education...

...This skipping spirit was presently allayed with many cold drops of discouragement as increased interest and intelligence brought to public notice the real facts and the tremendous magnitude of the problem...

...Not only is the sale of seals by this method a source of revenue, but it is a most potent and practical agency for educating the young American at the age when he or she is most plastically receptive to new ideas, in the nature and danger of the Great White Plague...

...This is as the organization workers would have it...

...asked the other, staring...

...It's the man who don't care a hang that we've got to get...

...To catch the man who is already interested is easy," says he...

...that it can be conquered only ijy the individual...

...For one of his trips the Home Pattern Company gave Werle 5,000 patterns of babies' dresses...

...On the social side the anti-tuberculosis forces have taken this cue, and there is no other state where education on this topic is carried to the country dweller as it is in Wisconsin...

...We were to cure our scourge by a comprehensive system of sanatoria...

...The boys and girls believe that they are learning to sell goods...

...Newspapers are not receptive to uninteresting matter...

...So related a principle, new, in quasi-official pub-the man on the '- one of the «ystem...

...That, in the main, is the Dearholt idea...

...Conway...

...For the Dearholt idea is not narrowly confined to tuberculosis alone...

...Par up the dusty road there is an approaching commotion, perceptible both to ear and eye...

...She carries her message across the threshold and into the family...

...Werle would probably repudiate the term "evangelist...

...The gospel has come to Shucktown...

...One of the hardest-working local heads in the state is a multi-millionaire whose name is known where advertising adorns the bill-boards...

...What are you sellin', Mister...

...Every newspaper in tho state is on their list and most of them are on their staff...

...I am strongly urged not to write about Dearholt (by Dearholt himself) and shall therefore confine myself to the statement that, trained a doctor, and with an apparent ambition to cultivate his business traits, he is, I believe, the most practical educator now engaged in public health work...

...He has a hawk-eye for any gathering at which he may get a foothold to propagate his doctrine...

...how much of the disease there is in the district, what it represents in economic loss, what the special local needs are, and so on...

...A Nurse as a Prize FOR purposes of direct missionary work, the Association has found the visiting nurse highly effective...

...Once the local agent takes hold on his work, it becomes a matter of pride with him not to be outstripped by his rival of the same class, and thus he works with the stimulus of honorable competition...

...Dearholt and perfected by Mr...

...but the vital lesson which they are sub-conscibusly absorbing is the truth which teaches them to protect themselves, their households, and their city from the most destructive of all scourges...

...Ap-predating this, Bradley has trained himself to a specialized "news sense," and there is very little dead matter emanating from the Association headquarters, the result being that the educational propaganda of print, much of it so cleverly devised that the educational feature is not apparent to the reading public, is just so much "velvet" to the editors, and through their columns flows in a steady stream even into those far corners beyond the reach of Werle's whirlwind itinerancy...

...Not a penny comes in to headquarters which has not bought somebody a lesson ot health in the giving...

...Thus the mind of the uninterested citizen is insensibly affected and influenced by that most far-reaching of all thought-agencies, the news of the day...

...In other words...

...for, as I have said, no activity which makes for life-saving is alien to the interests of these workers...

...It is done with a very conversational, homely and personal touch, so that the audience is encouraged to ask questions about individual symptoms, the danger of "catcbing" the disease, the chances of cure for this or that friend, what hospital will take old Mrs, Tinkley, bed-ridden now for six weeks, and so on through the roster of health and sickness topics which make up so large a part of the immediate interests of countryfolk...

...I'll be there tomorrow night to speak...

...Presently he unfolds carefully a case containing placards, setting them up one by one against the stone fence...

...And all the time quackery threw its lurid and delusive light upon the problem through the medium of the public prints, now promising sure cure by the use of some fraudulent patent medicine, again exploiting the charlatanries of a Friedman or a Dukert...

...Through this focus, the children can be reached with the lesson of health and right living...

...It is the working basis of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...Siddallville...

...Yes...

...Now to a Wisconsinite, an organization dependent upon public support, which does not beg, and beg mainly from the rich, may not afford occasion for wonder...

...the frank, courageous facing ot the fact that tuberculosis cannot be conquered by society...

...every effort focused on that one vital point...

...What is it...

...Oftentimes this is the school teacher...

...It is the only campaign in scores that 1 have studied, in which there is no waste...

...It required a genuine wrench of the mind to adjust myself to this radical fact, that one hundred dollars (unsolicited, by the way), is the largest contribution in money ever made to the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...Effective Team Work FIFTY-SIX cities and villages are "covered" by local organizations...

...Tuberculosis does...

...First came the period of buoyant optimism when medical writers exulted over the imminent "conquest of consumption"— "principally con," as some satirist of the day observed...

...The "Flying Squadron of Health" SEVEN o'clock of a June evening in the lake country to the north...

...So he studies how to make tuberculosis interesting...

...If you don't ask the rich, whom on earth do you ask...

...How any citizen of Wisconsin, unless he is a real badger and lives in a burrow, can escape getting his chance to purchase a seal and thus contribute his cent to the cause, is difficult to imagine...

...The newcomer has nursed the situation until he has an absorbed attentiveness when he addresses the people in direct and simple words, explains why he is there, and talks to them about the peril of consumption and the ready-to-hand methods of guarding against it using the charts which he has set up to fortify his telling points...

...Here y'are," said the farmer handing over the money...

...the honor of their paternity goes to the official who presents them...

...The tasks are mostly individual, and of the piece-work order...

...Givin' out samples...

...aiding them with suggestions based upon knowledge of local conditions, enlisting the support of the newspapers for the enterprise, stirring up interest through lecturers sent out free of cost, furnishing lantern slides and even "movies" for school or club meetings, making the individual worker feel always the inspiration and support of a compact, expert organization behind him...

...There never comes a time when any community can safely say, "The campaign is going on well: let it take care of itself...

...occasionally the local health officer (in accord with whom, in any case, the central organization always strives to work...

...Finally came realization...

...That "is the difference between them, and you can see it In the men themselves...

...So the cheery gospel of fresh air, sane clothing, sound food, and proper habits of life is propagated...

...The penny's primary business is to save life, Catching 'Em Young OFTEN, local organizations already qualified to do such work, take cnarge of the campaign: Women's Clubs, Advancement Associations, the Chambers of Commerce or Business Men's Associations, Church Societies, and the like...

...Bradley, but I have yet to hear of them...

...I inquired...

...he would be more likely to regard himself as a drummer "placing" his line in a new country...

...Naw," controverts another, "He's sellin' pictures, can't ye see...

...Werle—Health Drummer THAT courteous, brisk-spoken, friendly young man—"folks-y" was one old farmer's characterization of him—is Theodore J. Werle, the evangelist of the Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...Seen a couple of 'em over to Humphreys last fall...

...But these fifty-six are inconsiderable compared with the total number of units in the state-wide crusade, which is 1100 plus, each with its local organizer...

...Some of them are business-like...

...better food in the luncheon pails of the pupils...

...You've got ability and business sense...

...perhaps even more interested...

...But Where there is no town, or store-center or even church, there is always the school...

...Is there a teacher's convention projected...

...Generally speaking, institutional printed matter is about as dreary reading as the telephone directory...

...of the business of selling health by the Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...From Thanksgiving Day to Christmas eve is the selling season...

...Ain't goin' to preach, be ye, young man...

...seven-thirty tomorrow...

...Health to Sell The "People's Penny Proposition" of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association By SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS (Author of "The Great American Fraud," "The Clarion," "The Health Master," etc...

...No one factor I believe has been more influential in the success of the Dearholt method than the conviction amongst all classes of volunteer workers that "those fellows up in Milwaukee know their business...

...He —or rather she, since the most successful one was a woman, keeps in touch with the public business, makes friends and allies of officialdom at the capitol, aids different localities to present their sanitary and hygienic needs, takes a hand, where she can aid, in draughting legislation, and does for her principal, in short, what a skilled liquor lobbyist does for his cause or a railroad legislative agent for his interests...

...To stimulate salesmanship prizes of skates, books, toys, and the like are offered, frequently through contributions by the local merchants...

...Because I've got the biggest job in the state right now," replied the young man...

...Hoyt E. Dearholt the Executive Secretary of the Association, who, on the testimony not only of the outsiders but also of his associates in the concern, is the originator and standardizer of the principles, unique so far as my experience goes, whereon the association conducts this work...

...Lobbying For Health TO FURTHER its projects the Association maintains a lobbyist...

...To combat it, there must be the unremitting effort of those combined scientific and social forces which alone can control it...

...T'he New Wisdom ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS activity in the United States has passed through several phases since the beginning of the century, from which it may date as a general campaign...

...It is all out-of-door labor...

...He has found a method of making money not only talk but teach...

...Got a show...

...They are content to "take the cash, and let the credit go...

...About three million seals are sold each year to a population of a little more than two million, the highest per capita sale achieved by any state except Rhode Island, which is simply a succession of towns and cities strung closely along railroads and trolley lines, whereas Wisconsin's population is largely rural...

...With those for an introduction he made his way into 5,000 farm houses, presented in each a pattern, talked to the mother about her little ones, and with every visit implanted some wisdom as to the physical welfare of the child and the household...

...The general policy of Wisconsin is care for advanced cases of consumption through county sanatoria, incipient cases through state sanatoria, convalescent cases through convalescent camps, and cured cases-well, what of the cured cases...

...All you have to provide is the hall and the audience...

...Conjecture, by this time, is at the point of exi-plosion...

...Questions begin to fly...

...The one is the shrewd, executive, ingenious, constructive manager, the other the idealist, enthusiast and missionary working on a basis of practical psychology, and getting his hearing by the same skill, art and knowledge of human nature as the orator, the actor or the itinerant charlatan...

...The Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association is not business-like...

...It Is business...

...All of them said one thing first, "Dearholt" "Dearholt" is Dr...

...There aren't any," said Otto F. Bradley, the business expert of the concern...

...It is a saturated solution of selling...

...It is impos--ible with their small staff to carry ugh one one-hundredth of the pro-" their fertile ingenuity...

...Presently the center of it materializes in the form of a motorcycle bearing a man and a pack...

...He was studying the covers for ideas to catch and fix the casual eye, which he might employ on his charts...

...sleeping porches on the farm houses...

...Long consecutive hours are not required...

...His very charts— and ordinarily there is nothing drier than a chart—have a direct, popular, sometimes even a humorous appeal...

...The work is light, setting out small trees and plants, guarding the vegetation against insect pests, transplanting, training and the like...

...queries a third...

...The news runs amuck in the locality and in no time there is a growing gathering...

...Aren't your wealthy people interested in your campaign...

...Three dollars,'' said the physician in surprise...

...The "flying squadron of health" has become noted throughout the country, among hygienists...

...Successful Farming...

...I've got everything...

...But Werle is much more than a rural pilgrim...

...Quietly they are passed along to other people in a position to handle them effectively, and one day Senator So-and-so wins the approval of press and public by his admirable scheme for a better registration of tuberculosis, or Health Officer Wiseman enhances his official repute by a plan to convert the local unused pest house for smallpox (which doesn't exist in his district any more) into a sanatorium for tuberculosis— which emphatically does exist...

...Caring For the "Cured" ONE instance of the Association's value as a projector of schemes is so likely, in my opinion, to exert eventually a nation-wide and perhaps a world-wide influence upon the tuberculosis problem, that it calls for mention in detail...

...Each has its local agent, a volunteer worker, handling the seals under the direction of the central office...

...But to me the principle was revolutionary...

...In every instance the nurse so proved her value to the community that the system has been continued...

...There was the Reserve, ready to hand, calling for men...

...You're a hustler...

...With the American passion for results, tangible and definite, the weight of endeavor was then thrown upon cure...

...It is a very small squadron...

...Werle...

...lys and ,,ve them a miosis, to secure you .natorium if you are sick, to you to take up health work as a vocation if you are clever, and you will find them always with a surplus of enthusiasm and expert knowledge for your need...

...Schools Are Gospel Centers MUCH of the adult populace is so scattered as to be unreachable through any communal agency...

...Not exactly...

...Every experienced hygienist recognizes this as one of the most serious problems of the disease...

...In city councils and municipal administrative offices, too, the anti-tuberculosis lobby is alert, supporting such measures as medical inspection of school children, better factory ordinances, water or milk regulations, and so on...

...The nurse is interested quite as much in the health of the family as in that of the consumptive...

...Why don't you get out and get a bigger job...

...Every two-room and one-room school house in Wisconsin — there are more than 7,000 of the latter alone—is circularized, and the teachers supplied with simple educational literature, the gist of which they are urged to pass on to the little ones under their care...

...Scientifically, Wisconsin's distinctive achievement has been its investigation into and determination of rural tuberculosis...

...The Anti-Tuberculosis Association has an exhibit-room all ready on tho ground by the time the first delegate arrives...

...When the talk is over the visitor asks for the telephone, calls up a town perhaps fifty or sixty tniles away, and those who are near enough to cock an ear hopefully (which includes as many as can crowd into the store) hear something like this...

...I'll furnish the rest...

...But, unlike Bradley, he has no goods to sell, only to give away...

...by the wholesale exportation of the stricken to favorable climates, to high lands or dry lands or what not...

...In short, it is the ideal occupation for the cured consumptive not yet restored to full strength, giving him his chance to earn a per-hour wage by useful, productive labor...

...For, through the teachers, themselves instructed by the central organization which sends them lectures, stories, and educational literature besides keeping in personal touch with them as far as possible, the pupils get a training in actual salesmanship...

...Rural or urban, every community Is included in the campaign...

...Both ideas come from the busy factory of the Anti-Tuberculosis Association...

...Cheaper Service A farmer rushed up to the home ot a country doctor in the village late one night and besought him to come at once to a distant farmhouse...

...What's that...

...They are taught how to sell seals...

...Familiar with the easy-money collections of the big New York organizations, I naturally inquired, in my quest for the sources of support, who were the large donors...

...All that society can do is to instruct the citizen and trust to him to protect himself and his household...

...The man dismounts, gives a pleasant "good evening" to the gossiping group, appraises the immediate lay of the land with a practiced eye, unstraps a pack or two, and in an incredibly short time has a light silk tent up in a chosen spot by the roadway, a cooking kit laid out, a Dutch oven set, and the "makings" of a fire gathered near it...

...and there have been in past years school and community prizes given by the association, all of them of a distinctly though often subtly educational nature...

...There is no city or village or cross-road hamlet but comes within the scope of the system...

...But what it lacks in numbers is compensated for by its extreme mobility...

...Gypsy ing a la mode...

...The medicine man hitched up his horse and they drove furiously to the farmer's home...

...In fact there has never yet been a negative vote on any bill put forward by the Association, even though it carried an appropriation with it...

...by overfeeding, or specialized diets or various devices, any one of which might possibly be effective in one case out of ten...

...Along the paths of those motor pilgrimages, have blossomed tangible and visible flowers of the seed of education...