Competition for Cadavers

U.S. Protestant churches think that funerals cost too much, but they have tried only half-heartedly to get funeral prices down. The Federal Council of Churches, feeling that the time had come for action, made a survey, came up with a flat charge: many an undertaker, cemetery and tombstone maker is fattening on human grief.

The survey showed that super-salesmanship, when people's resistance is lowest, sometimes inveigles the bereaved into spending three or four times the deceased's monthly income for a decent burial. Some undertakers, said the survey, fix fees on the basis of the amount of insurance the deceased carried. During a plush year the average cost of burying a body is $410. Said the Federal Council: "Competition in the funeral business is not in terms of price and quality, but competition for the possession of bodies."

Last week there came a shocked cry from the undertakers. The idea that morticians fight for cadavers, said some dignified practitioners, was "too sordid and unwarranted for reply." Indignantly, they explained that 75% of all funerals cost less than $500, and that few caskets (undertakerese for "coffins") ever cost more than $10,000 (even these are so rare and beautiful that undertakers reverently call them "couches").

What really worried those who make their living from death was the Federal Council's report on the merits of cooperative burial associations. Their average cost of a funeral ranges from $84 to $165.

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