Grace Carlson Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 52, 28 December 1940, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
|
(The author of this authoritative article on the ravages of tuberculosis among the workers is now starting a cross-country speaking tour. Among the subjects on which she will speak in 35 cities will be The Right To Life, the workers’ struggle for health and happiness. Watch the Appeal for news of when Comrade Carlson will speak in your city.) |
In their fight against low wages and bad working conditions, the trade unions are also fighting disease. Take, as one example. tuberculosis which kills 64,000 people in the United States annually. Three-fifths of these deaths occur among individuals from 15 to 45 years of age. Tuberculosis is caused by germs which are passed from sick to healthy people who in turn become sick from tuberculosis and infect others. Nevertheless, the individual who is in a run-down condition is more likely to break down from tuberculosis than the individual who has strong resistance.
Strong bodily resistance is produced by good food, warm clothing, decent living conditions, adequate rest and freedom from worry. No trade union can feel that its wage scales are high enough so that its members can purchase all of these requisites for strong bodily resistance to disease. A good start has been made, however, and the fight must go on.
Evidence that poverty breeds tuberculosis has been accumulated by the National Tuberculosis Association. In a recent study, it was shown that nine unskilled workers died from tuberculosis to every professional or business man who died of this disease. The death rate from tuberculosis among skilled workers as well as office workers is three times as high as the rate for professional and business men. Tuberculosis is more common among poorly paid workers than among those who are well paid. Although a few occupations like mining, stone-cutting and grinding are a definite hazard for tuberculosis, the chief influence of occupation on tuberculosis is the wage level and the standard of living that goes with it.
Another study shows that the death rate from tuberculosis is five times as high among families paying $10 to $20 per month rent than among families paying $55 and more per month. Poverty itself does not cause tuberculosis (only the tuberculosis germ can do that), but poor housing and the subsequent crowding make it easier for the germ to spread from person to person.
Because the Negroes are the most poorly paid, poorly housed and altogether most exploited section of the population, they suffer greatly from this terrible scourge of the poor. Deaths from tuberculosis among Negroes are about three times as many as among whites. As a matter of fact, the death rate from tuberculosis among Negroes today is the same as it was among whites in 1910. It is clearly apparent that the progress of medical science, in cutting down the death rate from tuberculosis, has not aided the Negroes as it has the whites. This in a land of “equality”!
Tuberculosis, could be wiped out if the conditions of poverty which breed tuberculosis could be eliminated and if every person with an active case of tuberculosis could be placed in a sanatorium for the “cure”. The germs that cause tuberculosis grow in the lung of the person who has the disease. These germs are very small so that thousands may be present in a tiny drop of sputum. They are passed from individual to individual by direct or indirect contact.
When tuberculosis germs attack the body, certain natural forces of the body fight back. These forces are called “resistance.” Strong resistance withstands the attack of a few tuberculosis germs and the body may remain well. However, even strong resistance will not withstand the attack of many tuberculosis germs. Weak resistance, on the other hand, will give way to the attack of even a few tuberculosis germs and if many tuberculosis germs attack the body, a complete breakdown from tuberculosis is almost sure to follow.
Because so many workers do break down with tuberculosis because of the conditions of poverty under which workers live, the individual worker should realize that he has probably been exposed to the disease from his many contacts with fellow workers. If a case of tuberculosis is discovered in an early stage, it is not difficult to cure the patient and restore him to productive life. It is very tragic that over 90 per cent of the patients admitted to the sanatoria of the country are in far advanced stages of the disease.
Anyone who is familiar with the problems of the working man can understand why a man continues at work for weeks and months after he shows signs of illness before he seeks medical advice and is sent to a sanatorium. Even where he is in a union, there is little sick leave allowed to the worker by his boss. Long periods of illness for the breadwinner of the family mean hunger, cold, worry, and undernourishment for the wife and children of the worker. Small wonder, then, that workers struggle along at their heavy jobs for long periods with the burden of coughing, indigestion, pain in the chest and other symptoms of tuberculosis rather than risk unemployment.
Tuberculosis will not be conquered until poverty is abolished from the face of the earth. Even medical science cannot keep patients well if they must return to the terrible conditions of hunger, cold and over-crowding which prevail among large sections of the workers in the population.
In many parts of the country, especially in the south, the conditions for the treatment of the tuberculous are extremely bad. The sanatoria are crowded to the doors, the technical equipment for the modern treatment of tuberculosis. (collapse therapy) is lacking, out-patient clinics do not exist. However, even when tuberculosis patients are treated in well-equipped, modern sanatoria they must be discharged into a world of poverty and unemployment. The meager rations of relief budgets are not adequate to keep them in good physical condition.
Many patients become disgusted with the terrible life on relief and return to jobs which are too heavy for the person with an “arrested” case of tuberculosis. Large numbers of patients break down again because of these conditions and must return to the sanatorium—many times to die.
American capitalism pays lip-service to the fight against tuberculosis in the yearly Christmas seal campaign. Throughout the rest of the year the “one-third of the nation” continues its losing fight against tuberculosis, the great scourge of the poor. Moreover, American capitalism is finding it necessary to withdraw benefits from the workers rather than to add to a social security program. Public health officials will be instructed to concern themselves primarily with the health of the prospective conscripts. Thus money allotted for public health work will be turned over to the armament program.
Today the fight for health, for decent living conditions, for even a minimum of social security becomes a fight against the basic structure of American capitalism itself. There is no longer a “middle way”. The worker must take a stand either for the preservation of capitalism which denies workers and their families the necessities of life, or he must accept the revolutionary socialist position and work for the establishment of a society of peace and plenty.
Grace Carlson Archive | Trotskyist Writers’ Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 14 November 2020