Local Hospitals Needed, But How Should We Pay for Them, Asks Editor, Dec. 5, 1924

Still Figuring on a Hospital

A few nights ago a group of progressive men met at Pinehurst to consider further the hospital situation at the McConnell hospital. This hospital is about self-sustaining during a part of the winter, but in summer it has hard sledding, and the generosity of a few of the open-handed men of the community carries it through. But to live from hand to mouth with no assurance of the day that is to come is not conducive to ambitious or aggressive work. The man or the institution that has all the time to be thinking about the daily bread is not able to go wile over doing his best work.

Moore county has a large number of people who need occasional hospital facilities, and this is true about many of the women of the rural regions who lead more or less unexciting lives, and who are worn and tired and badly in want of a little restful and recreational treatment, not for any serious ailment, but chiefly for continued overwork and unbroken struggle. It is not necessary that the McConnel hospital should be a big operating hospital, but this county and every other county in the state needs such an institution as will accommodate at a moderate price that group of people who cannot pay high prices, yet who an pay a sum sufficient to permit some hospital attention, and whose cases will not make heavy demands on the institution.

The Pilot, not being gifted with all the wisdom in the world, does not profess to say how this result is to brought about, whether through sufficient private contribution, or from state or county aid to a limited extent, or from the continued liberality of a small number of men who bear the burdens of the common cause. But in the county is sufficient brain to hatch up a scheme that can be readily workable, and which is of sufficient need to be carried through.

One of the most pitiful tragedies of this and probably every other county in the whole United States, is the number pf persons, and women more particularly than men or younger members of the family, who are in need of hospital care, even though not much, and the tragedy is the grater because so little would help to such a great extent. It is an open question, free for everybody to offer his opinion. And with the option, a check would be mighty harmonious.

From the editorial page of The Southern Pines Pilot, “a paper devoted to the upbuilding of the Sandhill Territory,” Friday, December 5, 1924, Stacy Brewer, Owner.

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