Cake to Bread

To celebrate President Roosevelt's 58th birthday last week, 25,000 parties were held throughout the U. S. Their collective gift: an estimated $1,500,000 for the Roosevelt fund to aid victims of infantile paralysis. Biggest & brightest of all was the party at Washington's Hotel Mayflower, where beaming Eleanor Roosevelt plunged a knife into a big, red, white & blue cake. But just before Mrs. Roosevelt cut into the cake, the President cut into the Wagner health bill.

The bill introduced in Congress last winter called for an annual public-health expenditure of $80,000,000; the substitute plan, which the President sent as a birthday message to Congress, slashed the total to $10,000,000. This sum, said the President, would build 50 small hospitals for poor communities throughout the U. S. which need "the most elementary" health services. "Title to these institutions," he continued, "should be held by the Federal Government, but operation should be a local financial responsibility. It is an experiment."

No great surprise was this substitution of plain bread for the rich cake of the Wagner bill. Last December, when the President first mentioned a hospital-construction plan, he was vigorously supported by the American Medical Association, which had vigorously opposed the Wagner bill. And for many months, Surgeon General Thomas Parran has been conducting a painstaking county-by-county survey of hospital facilities in the 48 States. On his desk last week were blueprints of neat little one-story hospitals, some of wood, others of brick and adobe, each planned to house 100 beds. Estimated cost: $150,000 apiece, including X-ray equipment, surgical instruments, laboratory machinery, everything but bed linen.

According to the bill, each plea for a hospital made by "responsible public authorities" will be thoroughly investigated by the purse-string committee of Dr. Parran and six hand-picked hospital specialists. Most of the money will probably go to Southern villages for general hospitals.

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