SCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF SUPERSTITION

Because man has lacked accurate knowledge about the world around him, he
has been the credulous victim of countless generations of swindlers,
fakers, fortune-tellers, mountebanks, and others experienced in chicanery.
Speculators used to consult clairvoyants, crystal gazers, astrologists
and card-readers for a forecast of business conditions. To-day, through
accurate knowledge based upon statistics relative to fundamental factors
in the business situation, they forecast the future with remarkable
accuracy.

The practice of medicine was once a combination of superstition,
incantation, ignorance and chicanery. In those days people were swept into
eternity by the millions on account of plague, cholera, and other
pestilences. To-day medical practice is based upon knowledge, and people
who are willing to order their lives in accordance with that knowledge not
only recover from their illnesses, but are scarcely ever ill. The ignorant
man pays $1.00 for a small bottle of colored alcohol and water which some
mountebank has convinced him is a panacea for all ills. In his blindness
he hopes to drink health out of that bottle. The man who knows eats
moderately, drinks moderately--if at all--smokes moderately--if at
all--does work for which he is fitted and in which he can be happy,
secures recreation and exercise according to his own particular needs, and
almost never thinks of medicine. Should he need treatment, however, he
goes to a man who has scientific knowledge of diagnosis and materia
medica. The first man, in all likelihood, goes to an early grave,
"stricken down by the hand of a mysterious Providence." The second man
lives to a ripe old age and enjoys life more at eighty than he did at
eight or eighteen.

Fifty years ago, mothers relied upon tradition and maternal instinct in
the care of their babies. More than one-half of all the babies born died
before they were five years old. The wise mother of to-day knows what she
is doing, and, as a result, infant mortality amongst the babies in her
hands becomes an almost negligible quantity.

NEGLECT YIELDS TO SCIENCE

Because we did not know how to take care of them, we neglected our forests
until they became well nigh extinct. To-day, by means of the science of
forestry, we are slowly winning back the priceless heritage we almost
threw away. Because of our ignorance, we neglected the by-products of our
fields, our mines, and ou