Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/510

 496 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of the Metropolitan Company, gives the more recent develop- ments of this nursing experiment :

I beg to advise you that the company instituted its experiment in the direction of giving nursing service to its policy-holders in June last. At the time, the experiment was tried in a small section of Manhattan. The results which were obtained warranted us in gradually extending the experi- ment so that today visiting nurses are being sent to sick industrial policy- holders in the entire boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx and in the cities of Baltimore, Washington, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis. On January i the experiment will be extended to include Montreal.

The material at our disposal is still too insufficient to permit us to draw any definite conclusion. I may say that we have distinct evidence of specific cases where lives have been saved through the service of our nurses. How many more of these have been saved and, in particular, in how many cases life has been lengthened through the nurses' administra- tions, it is impossible to say.

The purpose of this service is to attempt to reduce our mortality and thus enable us by this saving on mortality to reduce our premium rates, or, what is the same thing, to increase the amount of insurance which we can offer for present premiums. If the experiment is finally demonstrated to be successful and if the cost of the same permits of it, the company will very carefully consider its extension to all of the industrial policy- holders of the company.

A few months ago we distributed nearly four million copies of a pamphlet entitled A War upon Consumption, a copy of which I am send- ing you under separate cover. You will note that in this pamphlet we suggest to our policy-holders who were or who might become tuberculous that they communicate this fact to us and we would send them a list of institutions where they might obtain treatment. Under separate cover I am sending you a set of these lists, which you will note cover not only the United States but Canada and give the sanatoria, dispensaries, hospi- tals, associations, etc., in these two countries. We are having quite a demand for these as well as for the pamphlets, not only from our policy- holders but from outsiders, particularly from the anti-tuberculosis associa- tions in the various cities.

I am also sending you a copy of the last number of the Metropolitan which is issued by the company five times annually. I wish to call your attention particularly to the articles in this number, enitled : "Care of Babies," "Ring Out Old Shapes of Foul Disease," "Just Little Things," "The New View of the Housekeeper," "School Children and Their Needs," "A War upon Consumption," and "Sanitary Maxims." You will note that these articles are expressly written for the policy-holders with whom