The daily press of January 14th, 1925, reports that a bank official in a prominent town in this State committed suicide that day, and gives as the cause the fact that he had tuberculosis and was afraid of transmitting the disease to his wife and children. This report brings forcefully to the attention of our people the question at the head of this article.
In some instances I think the question could be answered in the affirmative, for example: An intelligent man has a wife and four children. He and his wife have been looking forward to the time when their children would be large enough to enter college, and have planned to give each one of them a college education. Against that day, they began early to be economical, and out of every month’s salary, except when there was sickness in the family, they laid by a small part for this particular purpose. Likely, too, some of the savings were being placed in Building and Loan, and perhaps some in Life Insurance, to help provide for the family in case of accident, and to help toward the education of the children. Possibly they had a little home with a mortgage still plastered on it for perhaps the last one or two payments. And now before he had gotten well started on this plan, he finds that he has tuberculosis.
He knows that in all likelihood he must stop work for a year, maybe two or three years, at the best. He sees his income stopped, his life insurance forfeited, his savings used up, debts accumulated, his home sold under mortgage. While, if he had died quickly, (and the truth that tuberculosis does not kill quickly like diphtheria, typhoid fever, and pneumonia, makes it the most expensive disease there is; in fact more expensive than all other preventable diseases put together) the insurance enabling the wife to pay off the mortgage on the home, and with the savings pull herself together, go to work and raise her family.
Is there any greater tragedy than this? The fact that the bank cashier committed suicide makes this particular tragedy “news” as the newspapers say, but the greater tragedy still is that it is happening every day in our state, and some time several times a day. There is one bright side to this tragedy, and only one, to wit: with the small amount of money being spent in the fight against tuberculosis in North Carolina only one-half as many tragedies of this character are occurring today as occurred 11 years ago when the state began feebly to do active work in the fight against tuberculosis.
Surely tragedies of this kind ought to be sufficient to cause the people of our state, through the legislature now sitting, to multiply many times the amount of money being so well used in the fight against tuberculosis.
From the front page of The Franklin Press, Jan. 30, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074069/1925-01-30/ed-1/seq-1/
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