on conservation, we must consider also the money
question, the loss to the nation in time and money of these great wastes
of health and life.

There are no trustworthy statistics as to wages. The average yearly
earnings of all persons, from day laborers to presidents, is estimated
at seven hundred dollars; but as not more than three-fourths of the
people are actual workers, three-fourths of this amount, or five
hundred and twenty-five dollars is taken as the average wage.

From these figures the money value of a person under five years is given
at ninety-five dollars; from five to ten years, at nine hundred and
fifty dollars; from ten to twenty years at $2,000; from twenty to thirty
at $4,000; thirty to fifty years at $4,000; fifty to eighty at $2,900
and over eighty at $700 or less. The average value of life at all ages
is $2,900 and the 93,000,000 persons living in this country would be
worth in earning power the vast sum of $270,000,000,000. This is
probably a low estimate but is more than double all our other wealth
combined.

Now let us see how much of this vital wealth is wasted. As the average
death rate is at least eighteen out of each thousand, we have 1,500,000
as the number of deaths in the United States each year. Of these,
forty-two per cent., or 630,000 are classed as preventable--so that a
number equal to the entire population of the city of Boston die each
year whose deaths are as unnecessary as is the waste of our forests by
fire.

If some great plague should carry off all the people of Boston, not the
people of the United States only, but of the whole world would be roused
by the appalling calamity and every possible means would be employed to
prevent other cities from sharing such a fate; but because these
preventable deaths are not in one city, but are widely scattered, we
have long remained indifferent to this terrible and needless waste.

Then there are always 3,000,000 persons ill, 1,000,000 of whom are of
working age. If, as before, we count only three-fourths of them as
actual workers, we find a yearly direct loss from sickness of
$500,000,000 in wages. The daily cost of nursing, doctor bills, and
medicine is counted at one dollar and fifty cents, which makes for the
3,000,000 sick, a yearly cost for these items of more than
$1,500,000,000. What should we think if nearly all of the people of the
city of New York were constantly sick, and were spending for doctors,
nurses, and medicine as