Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1905 — A CONSUMPTIVES’ CITY. [ARTICLE]

A CONSUMPTIVES’ CITY.

Movement to Found Such Community in Texas or New Mexico. Physicians, bankers, business men, fraternalists and military engineers of St, Louis and nearby cities are interested ju a plan to found in New Mexico or Texas a city of consumptives. They have organized the National Fraternal Sanatorium for Consumptives for the establishment of this odd city. Last month a committee of physicians, business men and a sanitary engineer left St. Louis for a three weeks' tour of Texas and New Mexico to look a limit for a suitable site. They traveled 4,000 miles and visited seventeen different places. The competition for the site was keen, some places offering from 4,000 'to 100,000 acres of land for the proposed settlement, and one railroad official pledged to the sanitarium SIOO,OOO in cash and lands if it should lie placed along, hjs line. , The site has not yet been chosen. The proposed sanatorium will lie a departure from the usual lines along which such institutions have heretofore been conducted. It will be a community rather than the usual camp city, in which there will be opportunities for tlie consumptives to live amid healthful surroundings the ordinary life of those iu good health, working at farming, stock raising and other outdoor vocations. The sanatorium will lie conducted on the municipal ownership plan, with absolutely no commercial features. The revenue for tlie administrating expenses will be raised by a per capita tax on fraternal and other organizations to whose members the sanatorium will be open. It will be open to ail fraternal societies, churches, clubs, cities, counties and States ill the United States which contribute a per capita tax of one cent a month a member; to all union men of every occupation, as well as to nil other labor, benevolent or other organizations contributing a tier capita tax to the support of those whom they send to the sanatorium. The patients thus sent will live there as the guests of their respective organizations, with a minimum of personal expense. The Temple of Fraternity at tlie world’s fair will he removed to tlie site as soon as it is selected, and 'will serve as tlie administration building of tile colony.