one which, in addition to providing for increased sanitary measures and housing accommodations to promote health, would encourage the development of a condition of greater insurance against misfortune among wage-earners. That this is true particularly in relation to health insurance is shown by the statistics of corporation voluntary relief associations. For instance, the statistics of the benefit association of one of our most humanitarian industrial enterprises the International Harvester Company-show that in a period of seven years there has been paid out for sickness claims $727,697.90, as against $144,721.96 for accidents. This ratio, showing great excesses of claims for sickness over those for accident disabilities, has persisted since the establishment of the insurance association in question. Inasmuch as the organization includes all types of employees in various climates and different parts of the country, it is safe to assume that the situation with regard to it fairly typifies the condition with reference to the wage-earning population in general.

It is granted then that the development of some form or forms of health insurance is greatly to be desired, if not an imperative need; but the important factor is the method to bring the greatest relief to the beneficiaries.

It is believed by leaders in the labor movement that the American workingman should be left in the position to choose his method of insurance whether it be through the trade union fund, the fraternal order, the industrial insurance company or the employers' relief department.

Mr. Hugh Frayne, a leading organizer of the American Federation of Labor, in a public address, December 5, 1914, stated:

"I realize that this is one of the big subjects and problems confronting the people of this country. I readily understand that the sympathies of a great many people might be won over in the support of a movement to establish either state or federal control in the way of social insurance.

"The dangers have been pointed out to you by Mr. J. W. Sullivan, of the Typographical Union, and Mr. George W. Perkins, President of the International Cigar Makers' Union, the latter stating, 'We are primarily opposed to having any of our economic activities chained to the police power of the state.'

"We shall oppose the enactment of any law to establish social insurance, either state or federal, unless the same has first received the approval and endorsement of the American Federation of Labor. (It has not to date had that endorsement.)

"We are fighting not only for our members but we are fighting the battle of humanity, that there may be a better day, a better time for the men and women and the children of this country, that they may enjoy better things than they do now, so that some day we may wipe out poverty and charity, and, by the establishment of living standards through our unions, we will have made it possible for the man who has worked out his natural period in life to sit down in his old days by his own fireside and feel content that in his early period he had worked for himself, for his fellow-man and for society; to establish himself in such a condition in life that it is unnecessary to ask for charity from any source, but depend upon that which has been accumulated by his own effort and co-operation with his fellow-man; and instead of asking charity, he will be, in that ripe old age of life, able to extend advice, help and charity to those who might need it."

The argument that only the provident insure may in general be well taken but that does not furnish justification for abolishing individual initiative or for bringing to our country a foreign system of doubtful benefit.

England and Germany are quoted to us in this connection as though the problem had been completely solved in those countries and no additional problems created.

And yet the American advocates of compulsory health insurance legisla

tion, prone to recognize as authorities on other subjects Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, utterly ignore in this case their strongly critical report on the operation of the English act in "The New Statesman."

In one of the passages of this criticism the report says that the country was fitted with a scheme embracing, with dramatic suddenness, "a vast multitude who were already providing what was requisite for themselves. This enormous stretch of Governmental responsibility over territory yet unoccupied and very imperfectly surveyed left all sorts of gaps and omissions, which have now, per force, one after another, to be made good."

As a matter of fact, the compulsory method in Great Britain, which supplanted a steadily progressing voluntary system, has not brought the amount of relief expected, while it has undoubtedly created hardships. The benefits are so small that to the American workingman they would mean next to nothing. The whole scheme of the British act went into effect only eighteen months before the war, leaving the outcome in many places problematical.

Even in Germany, where the citizen is accustomed to regulation and discipline of the individual by the government in all matters, the compulsory arrangement is admittedly still in the experimental stage. In democratic France effort to develop compulsory invalidity insurance brought such resistance on the part of a large proportion of the workers that the government was unable to secure enforcement of the measure. Could we succeed here is a question moment.

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We have not as yet in this country adequate actuarial data upon which we may base any system of health insurance. The crude estimates made in the interest of the pending legislation on the subject purport to be based on Austrian, German and English experience, particularly the first named. No

careful person can assert that they can be applied to this country; nevertheless, they are set forth impressively with a view to influencing American legislators. Rash, general statements are offered by those who should be aware that there is no known basis of information in the light of which such a system could be instituted here safely.

American insurance companies, which in the last four years have been experimenting tentatively in health insurance, are doing so at a considerable risk of loss, which will continue until they can secure sufficient statistical data to enable them to develop that field on the sound principles of other lines of insurance.

The American Fraternal Experience Commission has collected through the fraternal insurance associations all existing data as yet available. According to the President, Mr. Lee W. Squier, the commission inaugurated in 1908 at Chicago a system for collecting statistics representing 268 occupations, the aim being first of all to establish the data upon which any system of social insurance might have a scientific foundation. This commission, which was appointed by the Associated Fraternities of America, comprising two score fraternal insurance societies with a combined membership of three millions, has been striving all these years to develop logically classified statistical tables. Each society sought information from every member. This brought to the commission one million cards for actuarial use, and it is proposed to develop five millions in all. The classification of the data as to disabilities and mortalities incident to or growing out of peculiar occupations involved enormous effort. A plan is under way to add the experience of other insurance funds, to be tabulated on the same basis; but until this is accomplished the commission will not claim to have any reliable information from any source upon which it may predicate calculations.

A

T Hawaii meteorology is given a Fortunatus choice, for every graduation of temperature, altitude and humidity, with varying force and volume of wind currents, is to be found in our sister territory, while many subtle potencies pervade the atmosphere from sea to mountain top. Moreover, each grove, beach, vale, summit and belt of land preserves its respective climatic attributes almost unchanged throughout the year.

Thus it is possible for invalid or epicurean to select a climate and change it as often as may be desired. Something like the rotation of the seasons in "temperate" latitudes may be had, with no danger of meeting those sudden lapses of temperature so shocking to sensitive organizations.

Each of the principal islands is an immense but extinct volcano. Only one active crater exists-Kilauea, on a spur of Mauna Loa. A charming laboratory imbedded in ferns, it serves as an escape-valve, its dangerous freaks easily avoided; in fact, these are quite under the control of the friendly goddess Pele. As the traveler gradually ascends, he finds the air becoming cooler and usually clearer with the increasing elevations, and the cooler temperature often as equable as the warmer at the base of the mountain island. By way of illustration: a few hours' ride from the hot marge of Kawaihae, palm-fringed and with the thermometer ranging between 80 and 92 Fahrenheit, brings the horseman well up the plain of Waimea, a region keenly inspiring to every sense. Here the air, save for a short rainy season, is clear and quite sharp with occasional frosts. Over the mountain side roam immense herds of cattle and wild horses; the pursuit of these is the chief

occupation of natives, and of whites, whose noble muscular development is clearly the effect of a lawful tonic in the mode of life.

On Island Maui, at an elevation of four thousand feet, is a belt of large sugar plantations. In these little worlds of varied industrial requirements, hospitality is generously dispensed. Here the climate is ideally delightful-sufficiently cool, while yet no frosts nor chilling winds are ever known. Through admirably irrigated grass-tracts multitudes of violets appear, with many another flower and fruit of New England, growing at peace with their tropicborn comrades. Perhaps nowhere else out-of-doors does so varied a collection of plants thrive.

In dalliance with our theme before we reach statistics, let us picture an afternoon's recreation-a trip through the mountain forest, pleasant to recall. We rode with slight ascent through long weeds and grass. Nearly a thousand plants from the ravines and mountain jungles are catalogued, twothirds being said to be indigenous and not found elsewhere. It was perfectly safe to trample the thicket, seeking tree-shells and ferns-for there is no snake nor any venomous reptilian life to be found on beautiful Hawaii; safe, while listening to the monotonous chant of my companions, "Aloha i ka lio nui" (praise to the big horse), to scoop the fingers through a brook for small fish, then eat them alive (the natives do not even chew their squirming captives). Ever pushing aside the thicket as we forced our way, we were drenched by the water-laden branches. of tall shrubs; a dash would flounce from tree or skirmishing cloudlet, until our clothes dripped as if we had waded through a river. It was a sanitarium

quite committed to hydropathy-here warmth and reeking moisture are present at a height which in other lands would be the realm of snow; here the mists are ever condensing into shower and clarified by rainbow sunshine; the light clouds hesitate, touching the treetops; the soft wind bears no aroma but that of the mountain dews, evanescent, earthy and soothing.

At Honolulu and Hilo modern conveniences find place. Good hotels, plenty of boarding houses, driving and guiding natives, and the mild exhilaration of governmental crises, ever renewed under benison of a vast rainbow which, with second and third attendant prisms, often faintly a fourth, always hovers over the town.

What usage may obtain today the writer does not know; but a few years since, as the newcomer drove along the embowered ways of Honolulu, citizens, evidently of the better classes, both ladies and gentlemen, would bow courteously or raise the hat in salutation. Gratefully I now recall this pleasant antidote to homesickness.

So searching is the scrutiny of all new arrivals at Honolulu that quarantine proves effectual and contagions are mostly held at bay.

Favored are they who become guests on Mt. Tantalus, or at Pearl Harbor, sheltered and loved by the sea.

At reef-guarded Waikiki, Honolulu's sea-suburb

"Like truant children of the deep,

Escaped behind a coral wall, The lisping wavelets laugh and leap Nor heed Old Ocean's stern recall. All day they frolic with the sands,

Kiss pink-lipped shells in wanton glee,

Make windrows with their patting hands

And, singing,sleep at Waikiki!"

We will now consider in detail the climatic endowments of these islands, viz., temperature, altitude, humidity and, finally, the practical influence of the Hawaiian climates upon health.

The temperature, though necessarily

During five years the highest temperature registered at Honolulu was 88, the lowest 54; yet the daily average range for a year is less than 15, about half that of the Eastern United States. Here, too, it is made clear that a humidity of about 70 and the prevailing influence of the faithful trade wind may so temper the heat that the thermometric record is seldom a record of discomfort. Only in November and February, when southeasterly storms prevail, is there discontent among these sybarite citizens, pampered in the luxury of their climate.

At Lahaina, on Maui, the former capital of the islands, the heat is great (though with the glass seldom above 90), yet here a moderate sea-breeze fans before noon. The same equability of temperature is further displayed at Waianae, the hottest leeward shore, by a range not transgressing 91.4 nor 69. At Kealakekua, Hawaii, 1,580 feet, the extremes in 1893 were 58.2 and 78.6. The limits noted on the summit of

Mount Mauna Kea (13,825 feet) are 13 to 108 F. There are, it is true, sudden tempests ("Mumukus" on northern Hawaii) where the cold air at the mountain top, compressed wedgelike by the force of the trades, rushes downward upon the plain.

The mean of Hawaiian temperatures is from two to ten degrees lower than in other countries occupying the same latitude, a fact thought due to the cool ocean currents blowing thither from Japan.

Attitude bestows important qualities on all climates. In these islands heavy mists seldom invade the heights. This exemption from mists belongs also to lower altitudes, where what we call fog, bearing dust and smoke, is of course unknown. Even the beaches are singularly free from mist. On the southern lee side of every isle the mountain has usually robbed the trade wind of its moisture; on the weather side (north), where warm vapor from the sea meeting cool air from above precipitates in rain, sunshine is still almost perpetual. The sunshine impresses the newcomer before aught else. Accustomed most probably to the smoky haze of populated regions, he is astonished at the clear atmosphere of Hawaii. During the first few days he feels saturated with sunlight; in its wealth the tropical leaves look varnished; "it seems as though the cane fields were only converting sunshine into warm-colored sugar; the reefs, sand beaches and surf lines are dazzling with it.'

Owing to the rarity of the atmosphere an elevation of four thousand feet approaches the highest that can be borne by invalids of excessively nervous temperament; the stimulation is likely to cause wakefulness or fever or intensify the general excitation. When repeated hemorrhage from any part of the body has lately taken place, or at time of an active hemorrhage, the danger of removal into rarefied air is obvious. Such thoracic disorders as involve softening and cavities, aneurism, disease of the large blood-vessels, or valvular disease of the heart forbid

air highly rarefied; also conditions of great feebleness, such as extreme age and general loss of courage, preventing the patient's making constant outdoor effort these cases should be placed at lower elevations. Women will here often find themselves unfitted to take vigorous exercise in the open air.

But many rheumatics, hepatics, dyspeptics, brain-taskers and sedentary people need the uplands. In early cases of lung disease, even if hemorrhage has occurred, so the patient be young and hopeful and in neither evil plight above noted, the factor of rarefaction is most desirable, leading to frequent deep respirations, while the sensory nerves are stimulated by the cool, dry air.

Low altitude is friendly to anaemic or exhausted people (let the specific ailment be what it will) who at home, simply through sensitiveness to cold air, endure peculiar suffering, aggravation and relapse, but who are not debilitated by warm weather. For such shall there be chronic content where changeless warmth is found-warmth reliable by night and by day along many a fringed brook or beach, or even on verdureless lava wastes on the rainless side of Hawaii. Caution must be exercised at these lowest levels, for safe residence here depends chiefly on the nature of the soil. The stranger should locate on volcanic ashes or sand, and where this surface or its clayey or rock bottom has sufficient declivity for drainage. Warm, rich, fermenting humus is poisonous in a tropical country. I quote a graphic analysis of this matter by Dr. Russell, of Honolulu: "When rain upon level ground is going down it sucks into the earth a fresh supply of atmospheric air, necessary for fermentation; on rising it displaces into the atmosphere all the poisonous gaseous products. Thus a sort of ground respiration is established." Fortunately few Hawaiian districts answer to this evil picture, for lava is king.

When fancy chooses isolation, or disease enforces it, a patient may occupy a tent or loosely built straw hut. Beef, fowls, fish, yams, native fruits, garden