Edward A. Martin's article in the magazine Casket and Sunnyside arguing against proposed funerary reform on the grounds of it being insufficient to facilitate emotional healing 

How do you deal with grief? How do moral issues become tied to economic ones? We have seen how the funeral industry has led the American public to believe that higher funeral spending implies a greater quality of love. With large corporations’ domination of the funeral industry and an overemphasis on wealth and the beautification of the deceased, there emerges a clear correlation between spending power and moral tenacity. Such bears a remarkably dissonant quality by which one may distance oneself from the grotesque reality of death. Edward A. Martin’s article, shown above, examines the funeral industry at the confluence of morality and economics, arguing that funeral reformers--such as Jessica Mitford--portend the rise of communist ideology, permeating even the funerary realm: “Just as the American way of living is being affected by the changed attitude from self-reliance to dependency, so is the thinking of funeral customs being changed by self-appointed ‘reformers.’ Instead of allowing each individual family to arrange its own funeral service with the funeral director of its choice, the new plan is for a ‘memorial society’ to arrange with a ‘contract mortuary’ to service the members of said group for a ‘special discount price’ or a set ‘minimum price.’ Or, with a plan to have immediate ‘disposal’ of the body with a ‘memorial service’ planned later, or to donate the body to an anatomical society, or perhaps the several portions and parts of the body to the various and sundry ‘banks.’ It all sounds so ‘practical’ and ‘humanitarian,’ doesn’t it?” Is it not  “practical” and “humanitarian” to offer funeral services at a reasonable price? Is it immoral to alleviate the financial burden of those already grieving? Martin erroneously conflates communist and socialist ideology with proposed funerary reform, claiming the commodification of funeral services to be a form of self-empowerment by which one may purchase their own way out of grief. It is in this way that he unites the competitive element of capitalism with morality. Jessica Mitford, on the other hand, argues just the opposite. While she does not explicitly link her critique of the avaricious practices of the funeral industry to capitalism itself, her examination of the industry’s unscrupulous business tactics, coupled with the myriad negative responses to her work, illuminates the ways in which economic issues become confused with moral ones. How should grief be managed? Through lavish funeral services designed to beautify the body and distance oneself from the grotesque reality of death? Or by eschewing the industry’s delusory practices and confronting this harsh reality head-on?