Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
evidently thinks a lot, that it would be to the interest of a good many
if they might bring up some subject that they are particularly
interested in. So we are going to have in the morning a question box,
and if any of you have questions in which you are particularly
interested and will present them at the desk of the Secretary, we shall
try to have them taken up for discussion at this round-table hour
tomorrow forenoon.
President Harding will not be here in the morning. When I spoke to
President Harding to come over and address this meeting, he said to me,
“General, you know Mrs. Harding and I are to receive this body tomorrow
evening.” I am sure that you are going to have in that reception, in the
personal contact with the President and Mrs. Harding, a joy such as you
have not contemplated.
_Seventh Session_ Friday, January 20, 1922.
GENERAL SAWYER: Fellows of the conference, as I told you yesterday we had
expected this morning to be here with the Chiefs of the Bureaus. I
explained to you why that program was changed. I told you also that you
would not be disappointed in today’s program, and now I am going to
prove it.
America produces many things. It is wonderful in agriculture, in
industry, in commerce, but one of the greatest products of America is
its men, and, strange as it may seem if you will stop to study it from
that aspect, you will find that each State of the Union has its record
for producing certain kinds of men. For instance, from Wyoming we get
our stock men; from Iowa, our farmers; from Indiana, our authors,
particularly our fiction writers; from Ohio, of course, we get our
presidents; from Illinois, a thousand miles from Wall Street, we get the
greatest of financiers. It is true that Illinois has produced more
financiers than any other State, and men who have been at the head of
the greatest banking institutions of the United States have come from
this great corn-raising, middle-western State.
I should like to remind you, before I introduce this speaker, that this
Federal Board of Hospitalization represented last year an expenditure,
in all of their various lines of work, of $750,000,000.00. We have in
our employ this morning something like 42,000 individuals, for which it
is costing us something like $42,000,000. Today we are providing 132,000
meals for the people in the government hospitals and the employees that
are necessary to take care of them. Tonight, if this northern blizzard
continues, it will require 132,000 blankets to cover them; and in the
most economical way in which we can provide for the needs of these sick
men it will cost us—it does cost us—in round numbers, a hundred thousand
dollars each day, with institutions operated as economically as they can
be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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