Read Online Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking by Jessica Mitford - Free Book Online
Authors: Jessica Mitford
Tags: Literary, Biography & Autobiography, Language Arts & Disciplines, Essay/s, Literary Collections, Journalism
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Is a new folklore being created—a specifically twentieth-century American form of funeral rite which may seem as out-landish to the rest of the world as the strange burial customs of the past revealed by anthropological studies?
QUAINTCUSTOMSOFOTHERPEOPLE
Babylonians were embalmed in honey; Indians required self-immolation of the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre; Vikings were buried with their ships. Are these customs any weirder or more inappropriate than those described in the American funeral industry’s house organ? Etruscans buried the deceased’s treasure at his side—a practice hardly likely to win the approval of the modern funeral director, who generally manages to arrange for a different disposition of the deceased’s treasure. Indeed, many mortuaries provide a form with disarmingly direct emphasis on such questions as, “Location of Safe Deposit Boxes; My Banks Are; Savings Accounts; Location of Insurance Policies.”
Perhaps some of the frankest testimony ever uttered on the subject of funeral costs was that given by W. W. Chambers, million-dollar operator of four large mortuaries in Washington, D.C., at a 1947 Senate committee hearing:
“An undertaker never protects anybody but himself. The first thing he asks is, ‘How much insurance have you got, and how much of it can I get?’ ... In dealing with anything you buy, you have the refusal of it, but if your mother dies and you get in the hands of an undertaker, he just soft-soaps you along. You do not oppose him much as to the price.... A $30 casket is generally sold today for $150.” Explaining why he left his job in a livery stable to become an undertaker, Mr. Chambers continues: “What appealed to me mostly was when I saw one of them [undertakers] buy a casket for $17 and sell it to a poor broken widow for $265. I said, ‘This is awful sweet, I can’t let this go.’ ”
The U.S. Coal Mines Administration, investigating funeral charges demanded of the 111 Centralia mine disaster victims, found the average funeral cost was $732.78; the highest, $1,178.50 ( The New York Times , August 3, 1947). To add insult to injury, when Centralia’s businessmen were asked to contribute to an emergency relief fund for widows and orphans the funeral directors made their contribution in the form of a discount on funeral charges—the discounts ranging from $11.85 off a $567 funeral to $22.50 off a $937.50 funeral!
Not only the survivors of sweeping community disaster feel the financial blows inflicted by the cost of modern funerals. A recent study of twenty-two Probate Court cases taken at random in the San Francisco Bay Area disclosed that the cost of funerals ranged from $344 to $3,027. The average of the twenty-two was $952. A similar study in St. Louis showed average funeral costs were $900.
It would be wrong to assume from these facts that morticians are a special, evil breed. It should be borne in mind that the funeral industry faces a unique economic situation in that its market is fixed, or inelastic. There are only a certain number of deaths each year and the funeral directors must compete with each other to obtain their share of the business. The television industry touts the advantages of a TV set in every room; auto salesmen advocate several cars to each family; cigarette manufacturers urge “a carton for the home and one for the office”—but in the funeral business it’s strictly “one to a customer,” and the number of customers is limited by circumstances beyond the control of the industry. Very likely many a funeral director has echoed with heartfelt sincerity the patriotic sentiments of Nathan Hale: “My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Some morticians handle as few as twelve funerals a year, and the national average is under sixty a year. From these few funerals enough
Is a new folklore being created—a specifically twentieth-century American form of funeral rite which may seem as out-landish to the rest of the world as the strange burial customs of the past revealed by anthropological studies?
QUAINTCUSTOMSOFOTHERPEOPLE
Babylonians were embalmed in honey; Indians required self-immolation of the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre; Vikings were buried with their ships. Are these customs any weirder or more inappropriate than those described in the American funeral industry’s house organ? Etruscans buried the deceased’s treasure at his side—a practice hardly likely to win the approval of the modern funeral director, who generally manages to arrange for a different disposition of the deceased’s treasure. Indeed, many mortuaries provide a form with disarmingly direct emphasis on such questions as, “Location of Safe Deposit Boxes; My Banks Are; Savings Accounts; Location of Insurance Policies.”
Perhaps some of the frankest testimony ever uttered on the subject of funeral costs was that given by W. W. Chambers, million-dollar operator of four large mortuaries in Washington, D.C., at a 1947 Senate committee hearing:
“An undertaker never protects anybody but himself. The first thing he asks is, ‘How much insurance have you got, and how much of it can I get?’ ... In dealing with anything you buy, you have the refusal of it, but if your mother dies and you get in the hands of an undertaker, he just soft-soaps you along. You do not oppose him much as to the price.... A $30 casket is generally sold today for $150.” Explaining why he left his job in a livery stable to become an undertaker, Mr. Chambers continues: “What appealed to me mostly was when I saw one of them [undertakers] buy a casket for $17 and sell it to a poor broken widow for $265. I said, ‘This is awful sweet, I can’t let this go.’ ”
The U.S. Coal Mines Administration, investigating funeral charges demanded of the 111 Centralia mine disaster victims, found the average funeral cost was $732.78; the highest, $1,178.50 ( The New York Times , August 3, 1947). To add insult to injury, when Centralia’s businessmen were asked to contribute to an emergency relief fund for widows and orphans the funeral directors made their contribution in the form of a discount on funeral charges—the discounts ranging from $11.85 off a $567 funeral to $22.50 off a $937.50 funeral!
Not only the survivors of sweeping community disaster feel the financial blows inflicted by the cost of modern funerals. A recent study of twenty-two Probate Court cases taken at random in the San Francisco Bay Area disclosed that the cost of funerals ranged from $344 to $3,027. The average of the twenty-two was $952. A similar study in St. Louis showed average funeral costs were $900.
It would be wrong to assume from these facts that morticians are a special, evil breed. It should be borne in mind that the funeral industry faces a unique economic situation in that its market is fixed, or inelastic. There are only a certain number of deaths each year and the funeral directors must compete with each other to obtain their share of the business. The television industry touts the advantages of a TV set in every room; auto salesmen advocate several cars to each family; cigarette manufacturers urge “a carton for the home and one for the office”—but in the funeral business it’s strictly “one to a customer,” and the number of customers is limited by circumstances beyond the control of the industry. Very likely many a funeral director has echoed with heartfelt sincerity the patriotic sentiments of Nathan Hale: “My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Some morticians handle as few as twelve funerals a year, and the national average is under sixty a year. From these few funerals enough
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