Three-Fourths of the Nation

Some 75% of U. S. citizens, through poverty, fear or ignorance, have never felt the pang of a dentist's drill. In large cities, crowded WPA clinics work overtime, but contribute only a drop in the bucket. In spite of numerous free school clinics, over 95% of U. S. school children are seriously in need of dental care. With these facts in mind, 3,400 members of the Dental Society of the State of New York, largest dental group in the country, met with 4,500 other dentists in Manhattan last week for the prime purpose of discussing Senator Wagner's Bill and how Federal grants to States for their various health plans would affect dental practice. To their dismay, their meeting started off with two surprises not on the agenda.

Surprise No. 1 was sprung by Retiring-President Russell Wilford Tench who suggested that traditional requirements of two years of college and four years of dental school be lowered for "sub-dentists" to practice among the poorer sections of the populace. "With only three years' dental school training, and no predental college courses," said Dr. Tench, "we could attract the boy who might otherwise stay on in his town and become a mechanic at the garage. [He could perform] simple fillings. ..."

To this suggestion the New York Academy of Dentistry promptly applied the epithets "destructive," and "undemocratic." Inadequate training, they said, would lower dentists' standards and hurt their patients.

Surprise No. 2 was New York State Publisher Frank Ernest Gannett, who, although not listed on the program, spoke at lunch. Some 500 dentists, who had paid $1.50 to attend, were treated to a long, rambling speech, denouncing the Wagner Bill as wasteful and "socialistic."

Publisher Gannett, a confirmed anti-New Dealer who has also urged doctors to defeat the bill, got no enthusiastic response from the dentists. A few hours later, Dr. Arthur Hastings Merritt, president-elect of the American Dental Association, came out guardedly for the Wagner Bill, was roundly applauded by his dental audience. Although he wanted administration of dental care kept in the hands of dentists, and although he did not advocate free treatment for the well-to-do, Dr. Merritt came out for support of "some form of health insurance--compulsory, voluntary, or both--by a payroll tax to which the employe, employer and the Government contribute." Taxation, he said, ". . . should not be burdensome if properly applied and efficiently administered. . ."

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