LAST-DAY CONDITIONS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 10, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 19.

LAST-DAY CONDITIONS.

By Editor

Under the heading, "The Pace," the New York World thus speaks:

In 1868, in New York, for every 10,000 of population there were 13.5 deaths from heart disease and Bright's disease; in 1901 the number of deaths had risen to 29.68.

These are Board of Health figures. They are something to think about. High living, mental strain, worry, over-exertion, and too much alcoholic drink are among the conspicuous causes of the diseases named. The figures show, then, through an exhibit of penalties, a startlingly increased following of "the pace that kills."

When a man unused to such exercise runs hard and fast for a train, and falls fainting or dying at the end of his run, his folly is the theme of comment—but nothing prevents another man, equally unfitted for the test, from trying the same feat in self-destruction.

In New York, the rashness of the runner for the

train is daily and hourly emulated by racers for wealth and more wealth, for position and higher position, for a desperate "keeping up" with some equally foolish courser. The pace is such that no custom could harden one to it. The contestants multiply marvelously. It is too much to expect a warning Board of Health bulletin to stop the chase. But for all that, the simple life is not merely a fad.

This item teaches its own lesson: The drift from the simple normal life to the utterly unnatural life of pleasure and greed.