In 1960, Americans spent, according to the only available government estimate, $1.6 billion on funerals, setting thereby a new national and world record. The $1.6 billion is, as we shall see, only a portion of what was actually spent on what the death industry calls “the care and memorialization of the dead.” Even this partial figure, if averaged out among the number of deaths, would amount to the astonishing sum of $942 for the funeral of every man, woman, child and stillborn babe who died in the United States in 1960.

The $1.6 billion figure that is given for our national burial bill is furnished by the U. S. Department of Commerce census of business under the heading “personal expenditure for death expense.” Since it includes personal expenditures only, it does not include burial expenditures by cities and counties and by private and public institutions for the burial of indigents, welfare recipients and persons confined in public ingtitutions, nor does it include burial expenditures by the armed forces for military personnel. How much do these public expenditures amount to annually? Nobody knows, for there is no centrally maintained source of information. The burial of indigents, for example, is a matter of city or county concern. There are some 3,000 counties in the United States, and among them there is a wildly disparate variation in costs and procedures. Some counties contract with funeral directors for casket, service and burial for as little as $70, some pay as much as $300 for casket and service alone. Other local authorities manufacture their own coffins and bury their indigent dead without the intervention of a private funeral director.

Another substantial item of funeral expense which is not included in the Department of Commerce figure of $1.6 billion is the cost of shipping the dead by train or plane. These charges must be considerable; one in ten of all the dead are shipped elsewhere for burial. Train fare for a corpse is double the cost of a single first-class ticket for a live passenger. Air transport is, as one might expect, becoming the preferred means of carriage for the modishly attired corpse, and on any day of the year not less than one hundred and fifty of these may be counted jetting their way to their various destinations. The standard rate for air shipment of human remains is two and one-half times the rate for other air freight; the average transcontinental fare for a dead body is $255.78. How much is spent annually for the transportation of the dead? The airlines won’t tell you, the railroads don’t seem to know, nor does any agency of thegovemment.

Another item not included in the Department of Commerce figures is funeral flowers. These account for a good bit more than half of the dollar volume of all sales by retail florists in the United States.

Lastly, the Department of Commerce statistics leave out of account entirely the very considerable amounts spent each year by Americans who in increasing numbers buy graves and mausoleum crypts for future occupancy. This mushrooming business is known in cemetery parlance as “pre-need” selling. “Pre-need” sales, although they now run into hundreds of millions of dollars annually, are nowhere reflected in the available national data on funeral expenditures.

It would be a conservative guess that these extras, if added to the Commerce Department’s base figure of $1.6 billion, would bring the nation’s burial bill to well over $2 billion. A little over three-fourths of all funerals are what the industry calls “regular adult funerals.” The remainder are limited service funerals for infants and limited fee funerals for indigents and servicemen, handled by contract with government agencies. The Department of Commerce figure of $1.6 billion averages out to $1,160 for each regular adult funeral. The more realistic figure of $2 billion yields a nationwide average of $1,450 for the disposition of the mortal remains of an adult American.

Figures in the millions tend to startle, in the billions to numb the brain. Is $2 billion a lot or a little for a nation as rich and populous as the United States to pay for the disposal of its dead? The funeral men think on the whole it is rather a small sum. They like to compare it with the nationalliquor bill, or the national tobacco bill.

Less biased observers might think that $z billion is rather a lot, even if it is less than we spend on whiskey or cigarettes. It might be more instructive to compare what we spend to bury the dead with what we spend for the health and welfare of the living.

Personal expenditures for all higher education-tuition, books, and living expenses for 3.6 million students enrolled in colleges and graduate schools in 196o-came to $1.9 billion, which is a little less than Americans spent to bury 1.7 million dead in the same year. We pay doctors more ($4.6 billion) but dentists less ($ 1.9 billion) than we spend on funerals. The cost of providing medical care for the aged, the 17 million Americans who are 65 or older, under a medical-hospital insurance program, would be less than the annual cost of dying in the United States. The Federal government spends less each year for conservation and development of natural resources than we spend on funerals. Americans spend more on funerals than they spend on police protection ($1.8 billion) or on fire protection ($1 billion).

Funeral people, confronted with the charge that they are responsible for the staggering cost of dying, loudly protest their innocence; how can it be their fault, if fault it be? they say. It is up to the individual family to decide how much to spend on a funeral, and if Americans spend more on death than they spend on higher education or conservation, that’s only because funeral buyers are exercising their inalienable right to spend their money as they choose.

“How much should a funeral cost?” says Mr. Wilber Krieger, managing director of the National Selected Morticians. “That’s like asking how much should I pay for a house or how much for a car. You can buy at all prices.” Most funeral advertising stresses the same thought: “The decision of how much to spend for a funeral always rests with the family.” “A funeral should cost exactly what you desire, for the cost and selection is entirely in your hands.”

Very occasionally, somebody within the industry will spill the beans. Such a one was W. W. Chambers, self-styled “slab-happy” mortician of Washington, D. C., a self-made man who built a million-dollar mortuary empire. “It’s the most highly specialized racket in the world,” he declared, testifying before a Congressional committee in 1947. “It has no standard prices; whatever can be charged and gotten away with is the guiding rule. My competitors don’t like my habit of advertising prices in black and white, because they’d rather keep the right to charge six different prices for the same funeral to six different people, according to what they can pay. Why, some of these bums charge a family $90 to bury a poor little baby in a casket that costs only $4-50.” Scoffing at the suggestion that an undertaker is a “professional man,” Chambers said any good plumber could learn how to embalm in sixty days. He added that he could embalm a human body for 40 cents and an elephant for $1.50.

Mr. Chambers’s views are frequently echoed by the man on the other side of the Arrangements Conference table, the funeral customer. A railroad worker writes, “They really do not use a gun to hold you up, but they sure do everything else. This thing happened to a friend of ours; now I am only talking about people in very ordinary circumstances. To make a long story short, the whole thing cost $1,200.” A lawyer in Akron, Ohio: “It has long been my belief that American funeral directors exploit the grief of a bereaved family, as well as empty their pockets.” A retired carpenter, in the quavering hand of the very old: “I have just buried a sister and it cost $900 just for the undertaker. I cannot see why it would cost so much. I cannot for the life of me see why we feel that we must spend anywhere from $400 up for a casket with silver handles, box springs, etc., which we put in the ground and cover with dirt. What we pay for a socalled decent burial, a man could buy a good lathe with its intricate parts. Where a metal casket is just stamped and welded metal. To dig a grave here in Philadelphia cost my niece $90 and it was done with a steam shovel. Also here in Penna you must have a concrete box in which to place the casket. They told us, ‘It’s a law: It looks as though the morticians are out to get you at all turns. You say to yourself, I won’t buy a lot and I will save the cost of a lot and the concrete box and the digging of the grave. But some of them say you must be embalmed and placed in a casket before they will cremate you.”

I have read hundreds of letters like these. More than five thousand have poured into the San Francisco Bay Area Funeral Society from all parts of the country since the appearance of an article in a national magazine describing the Society’s program for simple and dignified funerals at low cost. A wide gulf seems to separate these indignant customers from the funeral men who assure us that “the decision of how much to spend always rests with the family.”

Thirty-five years ago a detailed study of funeral costs was undertaken under the sponsorship of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which appropriated $25,000 for the work.

The director of the survey, Mr. John C. Gebhart, made this observation: “The business practices of the funeral director have always been shrouded in mystery. There is probably no form of commercial enterprise about which the public is in such complete ignorance:’

The Gebhart study was an attempt, the first and only one of broad scope, to unravel the mystery and to present a comprehensive view of the burial business in all its aspects.

The question was posed: “Do present funeral charges fall with undue severity upon those least able to incur them?” The answer, contained in some 300 pages of statistical tables and interpretation, is a resounding “Yes.”

The study was commissioned after a quarter of a century of frustrated attempts by the company to protect its policyholders from victimization by undertakers. \lo As early as 1903, social workers were complaining that the undertakers invariably managed to find out the amount of industrial insurance carried by the deceased, and then made sure that their bills were sufficiently large to absorb all of the insurance money available.

Two years later, in 1905, Mr. Haley Fiske, vice-president of Metropolitan, sent a letter to all the company’s superintendents and assistant superintendents, ordering them to refuse information to undertakers, to discourage their attendance at the office, and to make it easy for claimants to get their own papers and money without the “help” of a solicitous undertaker: “You can often drop a word of advice against extravagance in funerals. Above all make it plain that a claimant needs no help or influence in order to collect insurance; that he or she is welcome to come alone and will receive all the more attention for doing so; and that there is no reason ever why they should give their policies to undertakers as security or tell undertakers what the amount of the insurance is; and you can make sure that none of our men furnish such information. You can give them a written certificate that a policy is in force on the life at the date of death without stating the amount. In short we ought to do everything possible to protect our policyholders and to help them make the money go as far as it will. . . .” He adds testily, “This letter is intended to be mandatory as well as advisory.”

In spite of this directive to its employees, Metropolitan found that undertakers continued to skim off all that could be skimmed from the insurance money accruing to survivors.

Another approach was attempted. Metropolitan now sought to work directly with the Undertakers Association for the purpose of establishing standard rates and services. “It was pointed out that if any considerable number of undertakers were willing to offer standard rates, the company would be prepared to duly notify its policyholders of the names and addresses of such undertakers and of the conditions under which they would furnish funerals.” The Undertakers replied characteristically with one of their matchless flights into semantic obscurantism, mutilating beyond recognition words like “ethics” and “professional”: “The Association deems it inexpedient to meet with your plans, owing to the fact that to do so would be in direct opposition to the most important factor in our Code of Ethics, which relates to advertising goods and prices. The Association has always aimed to improve and place our calling on a professional basis, and to start in and advocate the advertising of goods and prices, we consider would be derogatory to our profession.”

Finding itself blocked at every turn in its attempts to protect policyholders from extortionate funeral charges, Metropolitan in 1926 initiated its study. An independent Advisory Committee on Burial Survey was established, drawn from religious groups, the professions, and the burial industry itself. The committee must have been sorely tried from time to time in the course of its work; a detailed questionnaire seeking information about prices, directed to some 23,000 undertaking establishments, drew only a 2 per cent response. “It-was found impossible to make any statistical use of the material submitted.”

Luckily, the Advisory Committee had access to an alternate source of information-Metropolitan’s 20 million industrial policyholders. A painstaking examination of thousands of their funeral bills revealed the key to funeral pricing, summed up in a phrase that occurs again and again in the Gebhart study: “They charge what the traffic will bear.” It was found, moreover, that the burden of burial costs fell most heavily on the poorest families.

Mr. Gebhart had high hopes for the effect his disclosures would have. Never was crystal ball more clouded than the one in which he saw the funeral industry taking steps to cut prices as a result of his work: “The cost finding study is already culminating in a movement (by the undertakers) which will lead to a marked reduction in funeral costs.” The cost of dying has instead risen in a straight line, at a 45degree angle, outstripping by a considerable margin the cost of living (see chart). Burial costs have more than tripled since his optimistic words were committed to print.

About once every decade in the last fifty years the complacency of the undertaking business has been shattered by magazine and newspaper exposes of the high cost of dying and the exploitation of bereavement. There is no evidence that these -have had the slightest effect on funeral costs, which have continued serenely to rise in the wake of each outcry. One reason for this has been the lack of a vehicle for organized protest and action by the consumer (one wishes there were some other word to describe the buyer of funerals). Another is the lack of solid statistical and economic data to work with.

There has been no serious attempt at a general study of funeral costs in the United States since Gebhart. The Federal government agencies-Social Security Administration, Railroad Retirement Board, Civil Service Commission and Veterans Administration-which payout hundreds of millions of dollars annually in burial allowances, have not the slightest idea of what the consumer actually pays for burial services, and, except for the Veterans Administration through its contract burial program, ‘I> make no effort to protect the beneficiaries from exploitation by funeral directors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has not in the past included burial costs in its cost of living index (there are, however, indications that it may be preparing to do so in the future). Universities and foundations have likewise neglected the funeral cost problem. The field, then, has been left by default to the funeral directors, who from time to time publish cost studies which leave something to be desired from the standpoint of accuracy and objectivity.

The few investigations that have been conducted-sporadic, inadequately financed, usually confined to a single community or a single group-indicate that funerals continue to bankrupt the families of workers and that undertakers continue to appropriate insurance money intended for the survivors, the only difference being that there is today a great deal more insurance money around for them to grab.

The 1947 Centralia, Illinois, mine disaster, in which 111 men were killed, proved a bonanza for the undertakers of that community. The United Mineworkers Journal angrily reported, “The Centralia undertakers moved in like ghouls,” and spoke of the “unconscionable greed that literally followed the victims to their graves and mulcted the surviving dependents of sizable sums from the Welfare Fund death gratuity and state compensation they received.” An investigation by the U. S. Coal Mines Administration revealed that funeral charges levied against the widows of the miners averaged $732.78. All but six of the funerals (94-6 per cent) cost more than $500; 24 ranged in price from $900 to $1,178.50. The undertakers’ total take was around $80,000. Examination of the individual bills showed a wild disparity between amounts charged for substantially identical services. A “bronze metallic casket” cost one family $645, while a “gray metal casket” of cheaper construction was billed at $835. The “standard service” charge, exclusive of casket, ranged from $690 for a $976.30 funeral to $395 for a $545.15 funeral.

The community rallied to the aid of the miners’ families.

AFL hod carriers dug and filled the graves without charge -and the undertakers showed this fraternal contribution on their bills as a “credit” of $10, deducted from their own charge for the standard service. To add insult to injury, when the undertakers were approached by other businessmen in the town for a contribution to the Centralia Miners Relief Fund, they made their donations in the form of discounts on the funeral bills-from $11.85 on a $567 funeral to $22.50 on a $937.50 funeral.

The attitude of funeral industry leaders to the behavior of their colleagues in Centralia sheds some light on the “ethical standards of the profession.” I asked Mr. Wilber Krieger whether any steps had been taken within the industry to discipline the Centralia undertakers. He answered most indignantly that in his opinion they had committed no transgression, they had in no way violated any code of ethics. On the contrary, they had risen nobly to the emergency, had worked long and hard to provide funeral service for the dead miners. “They served those families as they wished to be served.” The prices charged did not seem out of line to Mr. Krieger; in any event, he said, this was a private matter between the widows and the funeral directors, and would never have become the subject of Government investigation had it not been for a few troublemakers in the mine workers’ union.

Not only the victims of sweeping community disasters feel the financial blows inflicted by the cost of modern funerals. Surveys by labor unions of funeral expenses incurred by their members reveal an uncanny correlation between available insurance or death benefit and funeral bill. For example, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Local 65, of New York reports that where the member had been earning an average of $70 a week, and left a death benefit of $1,000, the funeral bill frequently amounted to $900 to $1,000. For those earning $85 a week, and receiving a death benefit of $1,500, the funeral bill was more commonly at the level of $1,200 to $1,500.

Labor union officials with responsibility for administering pension funds are becoming increasingly aware of the problem, and some are beginning to wonder who–the undertaker or the union member’s family-is the principal beneficiary of their efforts to bargain for increased death payments. The AFL-CIO Industrial Union Digest says:

Certainly organized labor can ill afford to sit on its hands-and for reasons quite apart from the purely ethical. The New York State Insurance Department, for example, reports that in 1958 the 1,020 welfare and pension funds in the state jointly administered by labor and management and whose benefits were covered by insurance carriers paid out $11,914,349 to the beneficiaries of deceased workers. Seventy-five percent, or some eight million dollars, of that amount was siphoned off by undertakers. The picture is probably about the same for the rest of the country. Without perhaps realizing it, organized labor, through its many welfare and pension plans, is thus helping to subsidize the burial industry.

It must not be inferred, from what has been said, that undertakers are by nature a special, evil breed, more greedy or more grasping than practitioners of other trades. As individuals I found them to be a rather jolly lot, no better and no worse than the run of people you would find at a Kiwanis or Rotary meeting. All of them, however, are in thrall to the peculiar economic situation that has developed within the industry.

There is in the undertaking business, as presently organized, a fantastic amount of waste, disorganization and inefficiency, for which the customer is expected to pay. Gebhart noted this peculiarity in his 1927 report:

Most of the waste in the burial industry is attributable to the multiplicity of funeral directors and manufacturers of burial goods. During the past 25 years the “demand” for funeral service, as limited by the death rate, has remained stationary, while the industry has expanded rapidly. Expansion in total volume of business has only been possible by selling more goods and more expensive goods to the same number of customers. . . . Even the extravagant charges on the part of certain undertakers are largely due to an effort to make a living out of a very small volume of business.

The situation within the industry has not changed appreciably in the intervening years. In contrast to the general trend of business in the direction of ever-greater concentration and size, the trend in the funeral industry has been in the opposite direction. A proliferation of funeral establishments in the last eighty years, in the face of a steadily declining death rate, has brought about a most unfavorable situation for the trade.

Thus in 1880 there were 993,000 deaths and 5,100 funeral establishments, giving each a potential clientele of 194 cases per year. By 1960 the number of funeral establishments had grown almost fivefold, to 25,000, each new one bigger and more lavishly appointed than the last, and they had to share a mere 1,700,000 deaths, for an average of fewer than 70 cases each per year. It is easy to see how, with the business so thinly distributed, there is an ever-present compulsion to make each sale a big one, to regard each opportunity as a golden one. The field is, without question, absurdly overcrowded.

What seems to have happened is that the undertaking population, while increasing roughly in proportion to the increase in the general population, neglected to take into account that the death rate, which was 19 per thousand in 1880, would by 1960 be exactly halved. By now, of course, the funeral directors have learned that while other businessmen eagerly scan the booming population figures and project them in planning for the future, they must gloomily confine themselves to the column headed “deaths per annum.” They can comfort themselves, however, with the thought that in this department 1960’s total of 1.7 million was the best since 1918, when the influenza epidemic helped make a record number of 1.8 million cadavers available to the trade. Mr. Wilber Krieger reports a hopeful trend: “We are coming to the end of a line, we cannot continue to expand the span of life for people indefinitely. It has to turn down. . . . Funeral directors that I’m meeting are telling me that there is a slight increase in mortality rate. So perhaps this trend that was forecast by a market analyst is becoming evident even a little ahead of his schedule.” by insurance carriers paid out $11,914,349 to the beneficiaries of deceased workers. Seventy-five percent, or some eight million dollars, of that amount was siphoned off by undertakers. The picture is probably about the same for the rest of the country. Without perhaps realizing it, organized labor, through its many welfare and pension plans, is thus helping to subsidize the burial industry.

It must not be inferred, from what has been said, that undertakers are by nature a special, evil breed, more greedy or more grasping than practitioners of other trades. As individuals I found them to be a rather jolly lot, no better and no worse than the run of people you would find at a Kiwanis or Rotary meeting. All of them, however, are in thrall to the peculiar economic situation that has developed within the industry.

There is in the undertaking business, as presently organized, a fantastic amount of waste, disorganization and inefficiency, for which the customer is expected to pay. Gebhart noted this peculiarity in his 1927 report:

Most of the waste in the burial industry is attributable to the multiplicity of funeral directors and manufacturers of burial goods. During the past 25 years the “demand” for funeral service, as limited by the death rate, has remained stationary, while the industry has expanded rapidly. Expansion in total volume of business has only been possible by selling more goods and more expensive goods to the same number of customers . . . Even the extravagant charges on the part of certain undertakers are largely due to an effort to make a living out of a very small volume of business.

The situation within the industry has not changed ape preciably in the intervening years. In contrast to the general trend of business in the direction of ever-greater concentration and size, the trend in the funeral industry has been in the opposite direction. A proliferation of funeral establishments in the last eighty years, in the face of a steadily declining death rate, has brought about a most unfavorable situation for the trade.

Thus in 1880 there were 993,000 deaths and 5,100 funeral establishments, giving each a potential clientele of 194 cases per year. By 1960 the number of funeral establishments had grown almost fivefold, to 25,000, each new one bigger and more lavishly appointed than the last, and they had to share a mere 1,700,000 deaths, for an average of fewer than 70 cases each per year. It is easy to see how, with the business so thinly distributed, there is an ever-present compulsion to make each sale a big one, to regard each opportunity as a go!den one. The field is, without question, absurdly overcrowded.

What seems to have happened is that the undertaking population, while increasing roughly in proportion to the increase in the general population, neglected to take into account that the death rate, which was 19 per thousand in 1880, would by 1960 be exactly halved. By now, of course, the funeral directors have learned that while other businessmen eagerly scan the booming population figures and project them in planning for the future, they must gloomily connne themselves to the column headed “deaths per annum.” They can comfort themselves, however, with the thought that in this department 1960’s total of 1.7 million was the best since 1918, when the influenza epidemic helped make a record number of 1.8 million cadavers available to the trade. Mr. Wilber Krieger reports a hopeful trend: “We are coming to the end of a line, we cannot continue to expand the span of life for people indefinitely. It has to turn down. . . . Funeral directors that I’m meeting are telling me that there is a slight increase in mortality rate. So perhaps this trend that was forecast by a market analyst is becoming evident even a little ahead of his schedule.”

So many undertakers competing for so few funerals should create, one would expect, a buyer’s market, leading to lower prices. The opposite, we know, has occurred, and funeral prices have increased sinfully in the last fifty years. This paradoxical state of affairs can be explained in part, but not entirely, by the special features of the funeral transaction, discussed in the previous chapter, which strip the customer of the bargaining advantages he would normally enjoy in a competitive market.

The truth of the matter is that price competition in the funeral business has in many parts of the country been stifled virtually to extinction by price-fixing agreements. Since price-fixing agreements are illegal under the antitrust laws, there can be no question of the undertakers in a given area getting together and publishing a minimum price schedule.

How, then, is it done? It is no secret that members of local associations of funeral directors, usually at the city or county level, arrive at an understanding that «the lowest price at which the funeral director will be fairly compensated” in the given area is «X’ dollars. This figure is arrived at by estimating the «average overhead per case” in the area.

Average overhead per case,” as used in undertaking circles, is a fictitious figure compounded of guesswork and hope. Each undertaker estimates his own average per case by totaling expenses for the previous year (labor costs, rent, equipment, depreciation, etc.), adding to it his estimate of the value of his own time, plus in some cases his hoped-for profit, and dividing the total by the number of adult funerals he handled in the previous year. These estimates are pooled and from them is produced the average.

In one area (where the matter is, as of this writing, under investigation by antitrust lawyers), the average overhead is estimated to be $475. The wholesale cost of the cheapest coffin sold in this area is $40. Add this to the overhead, and $515 becomes the “lowest price at which the funeral director will be fully compensated” for his cheapest funeral. This becomes the established minimum price at which a funeral is offered by the conforming funeral directors. Once the line is set for the minimum casket and service, there is no attempt to fix prices for the higher-priced caskets. In fact above the area minimum there is no uniformity, and a casket selling for $895 in one establishment may be found in another priced at $1,195.

The participating undertakers attempt to hold the line by publicizing the overhead cost figures, by reminding their brethren that he who sells for less than $515 (except of course in cases deserving of charity) is hurting not only himself but all other funeral directors in the area as well.

Generally speaking, these arrangements are of greatest benefit to the smaller operators, the 60 per cent who average about one funeral a week, the 95 per cent who conduct fewer than 300 in the course of a year, whose very existence depends upon an effective shield from competition. The larger establishments, having lower operating expenses per case, benefit also; but they, and the chain operators who are beginning to emerge in this once highly individualized business, are the ones who first become restive under the restraints upon competition and who have in some areas already upset the applecart by advertising low-cost funerals.

When this happens, the little men who control the state associations of funeral directors can be counted on to move into action with the biggest guns they can find, which is like trying to plug a leak by blasting it with heavy artillery. In 1961 Mr. Nicholas Daphne, one of San Francisco’s largest operators, was expelled from the California Funeral Directors Association, charged with a breach of ethics. The transgression which drew the penalty was advertising $150 funerals, at a time when other San Francisco undertakers were trying to hold the line at $500 for a minimum funeral service. Related to this charge was another: Daphne had contracts with two funeral societies to furnish low-cost funerals for their members.

Daphne’s expulsion from the Association became frontpage news in San Francisco. He was featured in national magazines as a friend of the consumer, doing battle against the price fixers and the monopolists. His already prosperous business prospered even more mightily. Then Forest Lawn of Los Angeles, whose mortuary handles over 6,000 funerals a year (one hundred times the volume of the average undertaker), took Daphne’s ouster as its cue to blast the Association for its ban on price advertising. It resigned from the state association in a burst of publicity and followed up by blanketing Los Angeles with hundreds of billboards bearing the simple legend “Undertaking: $145.” Utter-McKinley, a competitor with a chain of 16 mortuaries in the Los Angeles area, was not slow to respond, and soon hundreds of new billboards were uttering: “Undertaking: $100.” Surveying the wreckage left in the wake of Daphne’s expulsion, Mortuary Management was moved to comment gloomily, “Like the Cuban invasion-ill-timed, improperly planned, mishandled. The intentions were honorable but the results disastrous.”

No matter what the eventual development of the funeral industry-whether it remains overcrowded and inefficient or moves, as seems inevitable, in the direction of the large supermarket type of operation-there is cold comfort for the consumer. Once having driven out their small competitors, there is no reason to believe the big-volume concerns will demonstrate a more tender regard for the pocketbooks of their customers than has traditionally been the case in the Dismal Trade.

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