PROFIT AND LOSS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9073, 25 April 1908, Page 4

PROFIT AND LOSS.

A proverb says "there is no great loss without some small profit." The converse is also the case. Here is an instance. The sanitary condition of the town of Shepparton, Victoria, has so much improved iri health condition, that the death-rate has decreased to a minimum. But the decrease in the bills of mortality bids fair to reduce the sexton to the verge of starvation. That functionary had for years been enjoying the munificent wage of six shillings per day, but, under the improved sanitary arrangements of late, people have refused to die as they were wont to do, and consequently the Cemetery Trustees are left without sufficient funds to cover expense;/, and all they can now offer the "king of the dead" whose septre of rule is the spade, is one pound a week, "and find himself The melancholy part of the business is, from the sexton's point of view, that the Trustees hold out no hope of an increased revenue from burial tees to enable them to pay more than the £1 a week. The number of dsaths last year was only 28, as against the previous average of 45, so that, according to the Melbourne "Argus," a reduction of expenses "to meet the times" was imperative. The Trustees tried to console the grieved old grave-digger by promising to increase his wages "when times improved," and he eagerly asked, "How long will the new conditions last?" "Until the people commence to die," replied a trustee. The hopeless prospect for the old sexton should induce the happy, healthy people of Shepparton to provide him with a pension equal to his six shillings a day. But probably they will die rather than .io this, though not sufficiently fast to render him much service. He will never have to believe that Uvj living are anything like as profitable to him as the dead. Meanwhile the moral of sanitation is obvious.