[The Report on National Vitality, Its Wastes and Conservation, prepared for the National Conservation Commission in 1908, by Irving Fisher, professor in Yale University, contained a brief summary of the arguments and material of the report. The following extract contains the greater portion of the summary of parts I, II and IV. The whole report was published as Bulletin 30 of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health.]

§ 1. In different places - President Roosevelt has pointed out that the problem of conserving our natural resources is part of another and greater problem - that of national efficiency. This depends not only on physical environment, but on social environment, and most of all on human vitality. Modern hygiene is the reaction against the old fatalistic creed that deaths inevitably occur at a constant rate. The new motto is that of Pasteur: "It is within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease."

It was once believed that human mortality followed an "inexorable law." Facts, however, show that mortality varies in different places and is decreasing as hygiene comes into use. The length of life in Sweden and Denmark is over fifty years; in the United States and England about forty-five; in India less than twenty-five.

§ 2. At different times - In Europe, according to one authority, the length of life has increased in three hundred and fifty years from less than twenty to about forty years; in England, in less than half a century, it has increased about five years; in Prussia, in the last quarter of a century, over six years; in America it has also increased, although good life tables are lacking excepting for insurance experience. The tables for Massachusetts for 1893-1897 show an average duration of life in that State of forty-five years, as compared with forty in 1855, and thirty-five, an estimate of 1789, based, however, on doubtful returns.