Religion: Business of Death

Parallel meetings of crematory and cemetery owners in Chicago last week revealed part of the big business which goes on behind the religious ritual of Death. Undertakers, florists and monument men do $500,000,000 worth of business a year in the U. S. Casket manufacturers do $65,000,000 gross. Crematists. a growing profession, take in $1,500,000. Priests and parsons make anywhere from $5 to $100 per funeral.

To dispose of a dead body decently costs for the undertaking $35 to $1,000; cremation, urn and a niche in a columbarium $50 to $10,000; a single grave lot, seldom more than $50; a modest headstone $50. A few crematists, to popularize their profession, are charging only $50 to perform all disposal functions from death bed to hole-in-the-wall. Cremation in a modern oil furnace takes only 90 minutes.

No. 1 U. S. crematist is Lawrence Frank (”Larry”) Moore of Oakland. Calif., whose $500,000 crematory and columbarium were designed by Julia Morgan. Founder of the Cremation Association of America and the man whom Mr. Moore salutes as “the leader of the philosophical cremation movement.” is Dr. Hugo Erichsen of Detroit, onetime neurologist, one-time medical director of Burroughs Adding Machine Co. Competition forced Dr. Erichsen to close his crematory in 1929. He still writes campaign material for the trade.

Strong objection to cremation on religious grounds comes from Orthodox Jews. The Roman Catholic Church also objects to cremation. Protestant denominations generally do not object. The Unitarian Church, however, is the only one which positively approves. Reads its new service book: “The growing practice of cremation is to be commended, especially in large cities. Not infrequently cremation takes place in advance of the funeral service. This usage helps to minimize the physical aspect of death and to centre the attention upon the spiritual message of the service.” Dr. Yon Ogden Vogt of Chicago’s First Unitarian Church, which sells niches for urns in its cellar walls, told the crematists in Chicago last week: ”Cremation . . . avoids the considerable expense of a headstone and still greater cost of a monument.”

Out of every Death dollar which they divide undertakers get 90¢, cemetery owners 10¢. Cemetery Owner J. M. Harbertson of Ogden, Utah last week showed his colleagues how to increase their share of Death’s dollar by going into the mortuary business himself. Because he saves double handling of the corpse and does not increase his overhead he has found that he can generally underbid local funeral parlors.

Another innovation is the memorial park which Hubert Eaton, a Los Angeles mining engineer, developed. Mr. Eaton’s 350-acre Forest Lawn Memorial Park, which has been copied far & wide, contains no tombstones. Graves are marked by $50 copper plates level with the ground above the body. Mr. Eaton, who operates a funeral parlor on his grounds, discourages ground burials, recommends incineration in his crematory, inurnment and safekeeping in his columbarium. Above all, he prefers interment in a crypt of his gorgeous, statue-decked mausoleum. A refined selling point: Before a casket is sealed into a Forest Lawn crypt its lid is raised and a current of conditioned air is perpetually circulated through the crypt.

Mr. Eaton, in whose property Cinema Producer Irving Thalberg was buried last week and who has a contract to put Mary Pickford away when the time comes, advertises his cemetery with neon signs. expensive advertising brochures. Last week one of his colleagues. Judge William Heston of Detroit, boasted that, with no expensive advertising expenditures, his Michigan Memorial Park ”has received more publicity week after week than any other Detroit institution with the exception of the Detroit Tigers.” Since Judge Heston built a loud organ in his cemetery, ”anyone driving within a radius of four or five miles of our Park hears this beautiful music floating through the air.”‘