Chapter XII: Section VIII: The Congress shall have power (2)

As I came through the country from the Pacific Coast and saw the empty acres of farm land waiting, and then entered the big eastern cities, and looked into the hopeless, pallid faces of its people, I could think that the earth, if it had a voice, would cry aloud with the cry of Him of long ago, who said: “How often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens, but ye would not.”

Chairman WALLACE—There are fifteen minutes left. If Mr. Barrett, President of the Farmers’ Union, is here we would be glad to give it to him.

Mr. BARRETT—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Speaking for approximately three million American farmers, I can say with absolute accuracy that the primary article in the creed of Conservation should be the conservation of the man on the land.

In volume and variety of resources, the United States is the mightiest nation in the world. It is true that the British Empire may, through its dependencies, have a greater territorial reach, but from the standpoint of a continuous stretch of land and the body of acres cultivated and susceptible to cultivation, America admittedly leads the world.

The effect of this handicap is indicated not only in the present breadth of our domestic and international commerce, but to a greater extent in the promise of its more wonderful commercial conquests yet to come. The Nation is barely on the threshold of its destiny. That fact should not mislead us as to the difficulties in the way of making the destiny real, and not merely a boastful prophecy.

In the process of transmuting our possibilities into assets—what is the dominant factor? The American farmer. I challenge any of my distinguished audience to mention a single phase of commerce, one feature of trade, the smallest detail of actual subsistence that does not eventually trace back to the man plodding out there on the acres.

Napoleon said an army traveled on its belly. He could have said, with equal truth, that civilization travels on its belly. And the farmer is the factor that fills the Great American Stomach, and that keeps full every dinner pail, regarding which we have heard so much during political campaigns. More than that, he also clothes the armies of development. Nor must we forget that with the South’s cotton as the lever, he keeps the international trade balance on the American side of the ledger. You tell me the manufacturer plays a large part in our current and our probable development. This is true. You tell me also, that what might be called trade-strategy, pure and simple—the proverbial “Yankee shrewdness”—is going to win for America the bulk of the world’s business.

I do not dispute these assertions. But I answer: That back of trade-strategy and of dollar-diplomacy is—the American farmer. Without him, all would be in vain; without him, all of those resources we agree ought to be conserved would melt into impalpable air.

Let us admit, then, that the farmer is the keystone in the arch not only of national advance, but of sheer national existence. His problems, then, are the Nation’s problems and his welfare, the Nation’s welfare. No nation is stronger than its farmers. If the farmer is poorly nourished, if the Government is negligent of his rights, indifferent to his mental development and moral soundness, the way will be surely blocked to our national march forward.

It is to the vital interest of America to cultivate intensively not only the farm, but—what is more important—to cultivate intensively the farmer. What use to conserve our resources, unless we conserve the man behind the resources? The stability of national progress and of government itself is dependent upon conserving the farmer.

All of you within hearing of my voice may say: “We concede these facts. Are we not, right now, trying to aid the farmer, to conserve him, to intensively cultivate his possibilities and safeguard his rights?” And I answer: “Probably you are. But you can not help—you can not conserve—you can not cultivate the farmer unless you mix and mingle with him in the first person—not for twenty-four hours, but more likely for twenty-four months or twenty-four years.” I give full credit to the splendid intentions of the men who have tried and who now are trying to aid the farmer. But you can not adequately grasp his problem by using field-glasses from the convention hall or interviewing him over a long distance telephone, so to speak.

The scientists who are searching for secrets, the missionaries who are looking for converts, use neither of these methods. They go straight to the scene of battle. And so must all persons do, my friends, if they expect intelligently to conserve, to cultivate the American element which is the pivot of all other elements in this country. Study him at first hand, then your sympathies will be practical, not theoretic; your suggestions based on conditions, not on conjecture. Fight with him, side by side, in the ranks, day by day. That is the only way you can learn of the foes—not the least of which is his own weakness—which he has to combat, and what his victory means to the weal or woe of this common country of ours.

At this point President White reassumed the Chair.

President WHITE—The ex-President of this Congress, familiarly called “Uncle Henry,” and, in dignified circles, Dr. Henry Wallace, but who doesn’t like the name and prefers “Uncle Henry,” will speak tonight, as will Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver, Colo., the children’s friend.

The morning session is now at an end. We hope you will get back here at 2 o’clock, because we have a very full program.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] These statements are based on many specific examples of fraudulent promotion.

FIFTH SESSION.

The Congress reconvened in the Murat Theater, at 2:00 o’clock p. m., and was called to order by President White.

President WHITE—On account of Professor Fairchild’s being called away, having to leave on an early train, we will listen to his address first this afternoon. Professor Fairchild is foremost in the ranks of modern education, in teaching the conservation of human life, the conservation of the soil, and everything that goes to make up thorough manhood among the boys of the land. I now introduce to you Prof. E. T. Fairchild, of Topeka, Kan., President of the National Educational Association, whose subject is “The Duty of the Teacher.”

Professor FAIRCHILD—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress: With your permission I want to change my subject as printed. It is not the subject of my remarks this afternoon. I should like to call it “A Plea for More Equal Educational Opportunities.”

In the few minutes allowed me, I can only hope to sketch briefly some of the conditions that confront us today. I shall have some things to say that represent definitely a great lack of progress, but that I may not be labeled as a pessimist, I wish at the beginning to state as my conviction that the present is the best moment educationally that the world has ever seen. Had I the time, I should like to describe to you the marvelous progress that has taken place in certain types of our educational activity.

The growth of our universities and colleges is little short of marvelous. In a single decade in these United States the increase in enrollment has been fully 98 per cent. This increase in enrollment has also been manifested in Europe, in England, where there has been a genuine increase in the number of provincial universities. The increase in enrollment in the past ten years is most marked in Germany. In Germany, where there have been no new institutions erected the increased enrollment in a single decade represents 60 per cent. Such is the history of the increased enrollment, which, with increased efficiency in the way of larger and more efficient faculties, has taken place in this country and in Europe. It is a world-wide movement, my friends, and so far as I can see, is a recognition that the best field of opportunity to the ambitious and capable youth is through the college.

Then we come to the story of the success of our high schools. Here again the growth has been phenomenal. Those schools in number and in enrollment have gone forward by leaps and by bounds. In a single State, in my own, if I may be pardoned for this allusion, let me tell you what has happened in five years. The increase in the number of high schools in five years is one hundred per cent. and the increase in the number of teachers one hundred and twenty per cent. This is simply typical of the condition all over these United States. Again we have a concrete instance of the conviction upon the part of our people that the boy or girl of today who is to have something like an equal chance tomorrow, should have the opportunities provided by our high schools. I wish I had time to expand before you this growth and its meaning to our nation, but it is not my purpose to discuss that at length. I want to say, however, that as the result of this marvelous activity and growth we have had in our high schools and our graded schools in the cities, we have reached a maximum term. We are having a constantly enriched curriculum and generous expenditures are being made everywhere. Modern buildings, the latest word in lighting and heating and ventilation are found everywhere. Thorough organization characterizes this type of our educational work.

A vital point in the development of this growth, this high organization, is the expert supervision that has charge of these schools everywhere.

It is upon these higher institutions, the universities, the colleges and the high schools that the emphasis of educational thought and interest has been bestowed. Here notable investigations are constantly in progress with a view to still greater efficiency. Here the active and moral influence of the best and wisest of our country finds expression. Every one is aware of these educational activities and all are proud of them. We are spending money most generously for the city grade schools, for the high schools, for the colleges and the universities.

But, good friends, now I come to the essential thing I wish to present to your attention. Of the twenty-five million boys and girls in the United States today of school age a majority receive their foundation training in the rural schools, or in an environment that is characteristically rural. And what of these types of schools? Do we find the same advancement? Do we find the same public concern? Do we find the same skill and organization and supervision? Do we get such results as are being secured by city schools? They do not measure up in the character of teaching, friends, in the kind of courses of study, in the length of the term, in the results obtained and this is perfectly obvious to the student of rural schools. There has been no such progress. What we have too often is the untrained teacher in the rural schools; terms ranging from three months up to six and seven; buildings that lack in every modern application of light, heat, ventilation and sanitation and all attractiveness; ground that too often is the sore spot of the community; houses that too often represent or suggest the pest house rather than a place of learning; inadequate support financially and inefficient supervision.

I want to speak briefly, then, to you in the few minutes that I have left as to four vital defects, as I view them, that it seems to me are the defects that we, as a nation, ought to undertake to remedy.

First, we have too many untrained, inexperienced teachers in these schools. In saying this, my good friends, I am not unmindful of the fact that in thousands of communities in this country of ours are to be found rural conditions that are most pleasant, that there are thousands of teachers in rural schools consecrated to their work, performing a daily service for those boys of inestimable value; but listen, in one of the largest cities of this Union the superintendent of public instruction in a report said of 10,500 rural school teachers 9,400 are themselves but eighth grade graduates. I want to avoid being too explicit in pointing to the places, but I personally know of a State, a State that stands well above the average, I think, educationally in the United States, in which of the 8,000 rural school teachers 4,400 in 1910 had only such training as is found in the country school and not beyond the eighth grade. In too many places this condition prevails. I believe I am well within the truth when I say that of the teachers of the fourteen million boys and girls in the rural districts of America today who are being taught, more than fifty per cent. of those teachers have themselves an academic training that does not extend beyond the grades.

But, to return to the subject of the high schools, that I spoke of a moment ago. See how conditions have changed as to the training and kind and character of the teachers that must be placed therein. It is rare that you see a teacher of a high school who is not a graduate of a high school and in many cases of a normal school. In the rural school, the first defect is that we have too many poorly trained teachers.

The next thing I wish to speak of as a great defect in our present system is our manner of raising and distributing tax. You are aware that the prevailing unit of school organization in America is the district. In my own State we have 13,400 teachers; to boss, guide and direct those 13,400 teachers is an army of 30,000 school officers. By the way, he is the most numerous officer in this country. Within a radius of three miles you will run across a school officer in most of the States of the Union, a condition that makes for lack of uniformity, lack of singleness of purpose, the most wasteful, the most extravagant system that could be devised. But I want to speak a word in regard to taxation. The trouble is, good friends, that our system of distribution of taxes is utterly unfair and utterly prejudicial to the best interests of the child. On the one side of the road is a district having a splendid valuation with a low tax that may maintain eight months of school with a splendid teacher, a good building, and on the other side of the road, the maximum reached by law or gone beyond it, they are only able to supply the most inferior facilities for the boys and girls. The day must come when we shall have a prevailing system at least with the county as a unit for the taxes to be raised and distributed, so that the boy or girl who lives in some poor part of that county or State shall have the same opportunity as far as money will bring it to have a good teacher. The fact is that poor communities are the ones that ought to have the best teachers in all this land (applause), and that the contrary is too often true I am sure you will all agree.

Let me say as to the courses of study now a word or two. I have, good friends, said to you that there are twenty-five million boys and girls of school age in America, fourteen million of these in rural schools. Now, listen, of these fourteen million less than twenty-five per cent. are so much as completing the work of the grades in this, the morning of the twentieth century. If this does not spell tragedy then I have no means of interpreting these facts. Less than twenty-five per cent. To assign the reasons for this is difficult, but because of the kind and character of these schools, because they are lacking, because they are not making the progress, because they have not the attractiveness that our city systems have, is a reason why these boys and girls do not stay. But there is another and further reason. The course of study too often lacks vitality; somehow and someway we have not grasped the thought that the school has a larger and wider duty than consuming all its time and energy in text book knowledge. Somehow and someway we have failed to see there, as we are coming to see in our more highly organized system, that to interest that boy and girl, to send them out capable, self-sustaining citizens, we must do more than consume our time and energies on the text book knowledge. I should like to see a reasonably but not rigidly classified course of study with adequate attention to fundamentals, to large opportunity for hand work and with every possible connection between the experience of the school and the actualities of life. We must vitalize these schools. Another important thing in connection with our rural schools is this: the great majority of these boys and girls are denied high school privileges. Here in the city of Indianapolis with the splendid system of high schools that they have small wonder is it that the boy and girl in the grades if possible persevere in the work, looking forward always to the opportunity to get this liberal education afforded in the high school. Often this is not true in the country. As I said a moment ago, the great majority of these boys and girls are denied such opportunities, denied for geographical reasons, for financial reasons. If every township there could be created a rural high school, in its course of study emphasizing the things that are most needed in the lives of the boys and girls in that township, preparing them by a well developed and organized course of study for the great and important and practical business of life—if such an institution could be put within the reach of those fourteen million boys and girls, don’t you agree with me that many more than twenty-five per cent. would finish the work of the grades in the hope that they, too, might enter these schools and enjoy their advantages. And so I say, there is another great defect that some way ought to be overcome.

Now, just a word or two further. The last defect that I will mention is the question of supervision. In my judgment the commanding reason for the development and growth of our city schools is the skilled supervision supplied by the city superintendent. If we could have like supervision in these schools in the country the development would be marvelous and it would be rapid and vital. We have county superintendents. They have them here in Indiana. We have them in our State, but in no single instance so far as I am aware, is this supervision adequate. First of all, to remedy the question of the supervision of our schools, the question of the superintendency should be taken absolutely out of politics. (Applause.) It is a crime against the children of this nation to select either a city superintendent or a county superintendent upon any other basis than educational qualifications. (Applause.) The children of Indiana, the children of every other State of this Union will never come into their own, good friends, until the supervising element is selected because of their being experts in the job they are looking for.

Now, just one other thing on that. It is perfectly preposterous to expect a superintendent in a county such as there are in my State, for illustration, to visit one hundred and fifty or more schools, going over roads in all times of year, in all conditions, to make his visits worth while. He may get there once a year. We ought to imitate Oregon in this respect. In Oregon they have subordinate superintendents, one for every twenty schools. There they can accomplish something.

My time is more than taken. You have been patient, as has your President. I thank you most sincerely. I only regret that I can only touch the edges of this problem.

In conclusion, you representatives of this National Conservation Congress, here is the problem. The great thing we need to do, first of all, is to make public everywhere the actual condition of the rural schools. Publicity is the first step; organization is the second; organization of national scope and of State scope. Give me twenty common people in any State in this Union and I will guarantee to see that the rural schools make more real genuine advance in the next five years than under ordinary circumstances they would do in ten years.

The country is the Nation’s great recruiting ground. Here we look for the best men and women of tomorrow who are to take leadership, who are to represent in their actions and in their lives the good red blood that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. Are we doing our duty when but a paltry three million five hundred thousand out of a total of fourteen million are not so much as accomplishing the work of the grades? (Applause.)

President WHITE—Louisiana has been first and foremost in several phases of Conservation. Louisiana stands first in making forestry possible by wise and beneficial laws that encourage forestry, and I think Louisiana stands among the first in its State Board of Health, doing something worth while in every parish. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. Oscar Dowling, of New Orleans, Louisiana, President of the Louisiana State Board of Health, who will speak on “Hygiene in Relation to Public Health.”

Dr. DOWLING—Mr. Chairman, Members of the National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very glad to have this opportunity to appear before this great Congress. In the beginning I want to say that we owe much of our enthusiasm to the good work of the Indiana State Board under Dr. Hurty, and to your pure food department, under Dr. Barnard; also to Dr. Evans, of Chicago, and Dr. Wiley, of Washington. We have endeavored to imitate them in some ways, but nevertheless, in some ways we have fallen short.

Hygiene, the science of preservation and promotion of health, in some form, has been recognized by every nation since the dawn of civilization.

Among the people of antiquity, conquest and domination were directly dependent on physical vigor, hence their laws regulating this feature of national life. Among the Greeks, the health idea was embodied in the cult of Hygeia which arose hundreds of years before the Christian era, consequent probably to a devastating plague. In the early period of Rome, when courage and patriotism were cardinal virtues, physical development was provided for and emphasized. Social and political fluidity in the middle ages precluded the evolution of organized thought or systems in sanitary science.

Individuals set aside conventional thought and method and strove with Nature that they might learn her secrets; their work was not in vain, but with few exceptions their discoveries were unimportant.

The experimental method popularized in Baconian philosophy gave an impetus to the study of the physical sciences, but many decades passed before notable deeds were recorded. It was the nineteenth century, scientific in spirit and achievement, that made vital the long result of time and opened a perspective before undreamed of. The awakened health conscience of today is the crystallized result.

In scientific annals, the discoveries of the bacteriologist rank among the first. Perhaps, in the evolution of knowledge no truths are more potential. Within a generation the influence is marked, not only in relation to the individual and community, but in effect on the civilized world. The sanitarian with this knowledge was enabled to demonstrate control of environment. The success of the experiment has opened a new world just as surely as did the discovery of October, 1492.

The changed viewpoint of the relative value of hygiene in its application to life is due not wholly to the discoveries in medical science. It is one phase of the general awakening to the defects of the present social order: a manifestation of the modern attitude toward “waste.” Efficiency implies economy, not alone of expenditure, but of material resource and vital force.

Conservation and preservation of the material wealth of the country is dominant in the intellectual activity of all enlightened people. But it becomes increasingly apparent that the Nation which conserves its mines, forests, soil and sources of power is poor indeed if its men lack virility and mental initiative. This thought is back of the public health movement. The impulse is in part commercial, in part scientific. It grows out of recognition of the futility of remedial and philanthropic measures and the conviction of the potentialities of science for human betterment. In import the movement is ethical and spiritual; it is beyond question the greatest of modern times.

This meeting is significant of the changed attitude toward the Nation’s greatest natural resource—its people. The Congress is national, its purpose conservation, its main topic—to quote from the invitation—the conservation of vital resources. There is significance also in the topics selected for discussion in the health section. They relate to the larger aims of sanitary science. In the popular mind health work has reference only to superficial conditions, control of epidemics, cleaning of streets and similar activities, but the hygienist knows that sanitary regeneration means an attack on many existing institutions, customs, practices and methods that lie deep in the roots of the social structure.

Housing, child labor, industrial occupations, labor insurance, vital statistics, food supply, community methods and conditions are the subjects chosen for discussion. Their primary importance is apparent.

The period of twenty minutes allotted for the opening of this division makes imperative only brief suggestive statements of the essentials in their relation to public health and individual well-being.

Mr. Lawrence Veiller, in the Annals of the American Academy, says: “We have paid dear for our slums.... No one has ever attempted to estimate the cost to the Nation of our bad housing conditions, because it is an impossible task.... Who can say of the vast army of the unemployed how large a portion of the industrially inefficient are so because of lowered physical vitality caused by disadvantageous living conditions? Of the burden which the State is called on to bear in the support of almshouses for the dependent, hospitals for the sick, asylums for the insane, prisons and reformatories for the criminal, what portion can fairly be attributed to adverse early environment?” Describing surroundings, the author continues: “The sordidness of it all, the degrading baseness of it, unfortunately is withheld from the eyes of most of us. What it can mean to the people who have to live in the midst of it we can but faintly conceive. Let us frankly admit that these conditions result in imposing upon the great mass of our working people habits of life that are more compatible with the life of animals than with that of human beings.”

Moreover, not alone in the slums do these conditions exist. In almost every city of the Union, a few blocks from the main thoroughfares, there are congested districts unspeakably bad.

With the knowledge we now have of the relation to health and sickness of air, sunlight and propagating agencies of disease incident to dirt, it is nothing short of criminal to tolerate such conditions. If physical suffering only were the result, indifference would be unpardonable, but overcrowded homes, insanitary in every respect, make for low standards of decency and morality. Vice, with its correlatives, disease and pauperism result. Often crime and insanity make the chain complete. The conditions of life in the middle ages as recorded in history seem to us barbarous in the extreme; relatively, ours really are. Then, there was no certainty as to the effect of insanitary environment; the people did not know; we do, yet with inexplicable indifference communities not only let the worst obtain, but they permit a perpetuation of the system. Authorities stand aghast at the expense involved in the tearing away of a whole section of a city, but the cost of such a measure easily, often probably, may become a mere item in comparison with the economic loss from an epidemic of a virulent type.

It is a hopeful sign that a few enlightened municipalities have set an example in remodeling districts, not only in the erection of comfortable homes, but further in the establishment of healthful and beautiful environments. The housing problem is one of the most difficult and complex of our day. It can be solved only by enlightened legislation supported by public opinion.

About a century and a quarter ago the factory system began to develop with intensity in England. Later, in this country, it grew by leaps and bounds. Child labor with its attendant evils was a logical result. For nine years there has been systematic effort to control the unhygienic features of the system. Some good has been accomplished, but because of the nature of the problem progress is slow. The injury to the child is plainly apparent. Long hours in poorly ventilated rooms, with constant use of the same set of muscles, stunts and dwarfs the body; equally, the mind. Toil of this nature uses up the young life; it leaves the State the burden of caring for an individual hopelessly inefficient if not worse. But of more importance is the consequential physical deterioration. If these youthful toilers grow to maturity their bodies are devitalized; if they marry their children are almost invariably low in vitality. Hygiene in its application does not imply the remedy of existing conditions alone for the individual or the present; it looks to the future. Therefore, protection of the child is a principle of paramount importance.

Child labor laws are now more humane than a few years ago; conditions in many factories have been vastly improved. But as yet we are far from an ideal stage in the regulation and supervision of this feature of industrial life.

Every argument concerning the employment of children in factories may be applied to women engaged in similar occupations. In the mills and shops where women stand all day, where they endure for hours not only unhygienic environment, but in addition mental anxiety, where the whip “employed by the week only” is held over them, the nervous strain as well as physical exertion saps the very foundations of vitality. Investigations made by Dr. R. Morton of New York, show the health of industrial women is proving a serious thing in the United States, and unless conditions are bettered that there will be a general breakdown of the working women of the country. Nor is this the sum total of the consequences. In the children of these women low vitality is perpetuated. Records quoted by Dr. George Reid, Health Officer of Stafford, England, give the mortality of children under one year of age as greater among those of mothers who work in factories than among home mothers. Statistics compiled by him show the death rate one hundred and forty-five per one thousand births for infants of home mothers and two hundred and nine per one thousand births for infants of mothers who work in factories. The injury to the State is apparent.

On the question of prevention of occupational diseases, I cannot do better than quote the measures suggested by Dr. H. Linenthal, of Boston. They are: collection of accurate data about working conditions; data relative to the effect of occupation on mortality; proper medical instruction; reporting to health authorities specific industrial diseases; examination of all industrial workers; exclusion of minors and women from certain industries; sanitary laws for factories; regulation of dangerous trades by health authorities, and the carrying of an educational campaign of hygiene among employers and employes. The comprehensiveness of these measures indicates the extension of the problem. No movement of recent times is more humane and economic than the one termed industrial insurance.

The purpose is the capitalization of the workingman’s energy at the time of his greatest productivity; the basic principle that every far-sighted social policy is founded more on energy reserve than money reserve. The aim is to secure for the nation the greatest possible reserve of bodily and mental force and power and physical and moral health.

The problem has been attacked in various ways by different countries. Germany has been the most successful. There the workingman’s insurance has attained the dimension of a gigantic social institution. Dr. Frederick Zahn of Munich, Director of the Bavarian Statistical Office, in a recent address, gave the following interesting figures: Out of 16,000,000 laborers in Germany, 14,000,000 are carrying sick insurance, and 15,700,000 invalid and old age policies.

In the past twenty-five years over one billion six hundred million dollars have been paid in benefits. In addition, prophylactic measures are provided for.

Only those familiar with the necessities for correct data in health work appreciate the immediate and imperative need for statistical information. Records of births and deaths and of supplementary details form a basis for advancement. Without such data, the sanitarian gropes in the dark. Yet no request from the health department is so lightly treated. Reform in this can be wrought slowly. Appropriations to pay registrars and enforcement through the courts are the means for the inauguration of a more perfect system.

One of the hygienic essentials in this country is education in the relative values of food products. The phenomenal growth of the urban population which has reduced the number of producers and the almost universal practice of adulteration make imperative the enforcement of stringent laws and instruction in the nutritive value of classes of foods and the economy of selection.

The campaign for a supply of clean, pure milk in many centers has grown out of the effort to lower the infant mortality rate. It has stimulated inquiry and supervision of other food products which is encouragingly prophetic.

Hygiene in its application to personal and community life is essentially preventive. This idea is not sufficiently understood to be taken at its real value; curative measures the people commend, but possible calamity seems remote, therefore, prevention does not appeal. It is this concept of the collective mind that lies back of the extravagant parsimony universal in health appropriations. It also explains public apathy and indifference.

The most practical means for sanitary progress are two, education of all the people in the primary truths of hygiene, and the application of the science through governmental agencies. These are so closely related that they are practically inseparable, but logically may be differentiated.

Hygiene is an organized science; its principles are rational and demonstrable; its application will bring returns economic, ethical and spiritual. This must be acceptably taught to the people by methods suited to the present state of the public mind. Conviction that will lead to action is the end to be sought. Education will create a public sentiment persistent and insistent for measures promotive of public good. Concomitant with this effort, in fact a part of it, the various units of government should be executives in the establishment of hygienic measures and the abolition of insanitary conditions. When people believe that the eradication of typhoid fever and hookworm disease is more important than high or low tariff; when they become convinced that malaria is a national disgrace and uncleanliness a relic of barbarism, there will be money and judicial decisions for the elimination of these defects.

Fortunately, these are the views of an increasingly large number of people. There is a health awakening. The principles of the science of health are every day becoming concrete in laws, and habits of thought and living. It is the conviction of the progressive minority that a Nation’s first duty is to conserve and protect its citizens, to develop a community of efficient men and to minimize natural disadvantages. Further, that collective intelligence must plan for the preservation of the people and the perpetuity of the State, and in so doing must recognize public health as fundamental, both in the simple phases and in its comprehensive aspect. (Applause.)

President WHITE—The next subject to be discussed is by one who employs labor in the State of Indiana, and who is a large employer of labor. His subject is “The Duty of the Employer.” I now take pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Edward A. Rumely, of Laporte, Indiana.

Dr. RUMELY—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Four generations ago, there were but three millions of Americans scattered along the Atlantic Seaboard. Back of them was a vast virgin continent, the richest the white man had ever found in the long migration upon which our race started ages ago. The American continent was rich in timber, in the soil fertility of its vast valleys and prairies, and rich beyond measure in the superabundant deposits of mineral wealth. The first settlers were few in number; they brought with them but few tools and little wealth that today we would call capital. It was the natural and proper thing for them to set to work to gain, with the least possible labor, the great natural wealth that the virgin continent treasured for them.

They killed the fur-bearing animals, felled the trees to export lumber, dug in the quickest way the mineral wealth of the land and started to grow such crops as would carry to market the greatest value from the fertility of the virgin prairies. Wheat was easily transported, and each bushel contained from twenty to thirty cents of soil value. Hence with wheat our prairies were taken under cultivation, and from the returns of the wheat crops cities and railroads and homes were paid for.

Only today, when the average yield per acre has gone down from forty to thirteen bushels are we beginning to see clearly that by this process we have been drawing heavily upon our soil capital.

While the population was small, labor was difficult to secure. Cities had to be built, roadways opened, railroads constructed, rivers bridged, and a continent brought under subjection. The process of the past four generations was possible only because our fathers economized their own labor and created, as fast as possible, the values they needed to barter off into the markets of the world for capital from the superabundant natural wealth that surrounded them.

Today, we are mining our iron, copper, lead and other metals more rapidly than any other country in the world. The pioneer farmers who worked the soils of the south with tobacco and of the east with wheat, can no longer move off to the west, when, having exhausted the fertility of our lands, they find farming no longer profitable. The hundred thousand vigorous Americans who went last year to Canada with energy, capital and American tools are a concrete evidence that we have reached the end of the course which we have been traveling.

The whole country has been startled by the warning of the far-sighted men, and now the demand for conservation of our natural wealth is becoming more and more insistent. We have been made to realize that every child born brings a mouth that must be fed, a body that must be sheltered and clothed, but no increase in natural wealth. We must still learn that every child does bring two hands which can work, and which, when highly trained and backed by scientific knowledge, can create untold values. Stated otherwise, we must care for our increasing population, not by increased exploitation of our natural stores, but by providing abundant work for skilled labor.

AMERICAN FARM MUST BE FACTORY—NOT A MINE.

Our agriculture has been a process of mining. The farm must now furnish a field for the profitable employment of skilled labor, for the use of capital, and the application of the principles of scientific management, becoming thereby a workshop instead of a mine.

In order to sell the labor power of our people, we must encourage the development of all secondary industries. By “secondary industries” I mean those industries which take raw materials that are largely the product of crude machinery and unskilled labor, and add to them in a large measure labor and capital values.

The agricultural implement manufacturer purchases steel and iron at approximately one cent per pound, and by further refinement creates implements worth eight cents to twenty cents per pound. The automobile maker takes lumber and iron, worth from two cents to four cents per pound, and produces a car worth from thirty cents to one dollar per pound, while the same materials, worked up into cash registers, typewriters, etc., would be worth from $3 to $10 per pound, and in watches from $50 to $5,000 per pound.

CREATE VALUES FROM LABOR.

We began by cutting the maple tree into a cord of wood, worth from three to seven dollars, and each tree furnished material for one day’s work. This same tree—if sawed into lumber—is worth twenty dollars and would furnish employment for one man for three or four days. If quarter-sawed and more carefully treated, it might be worth forty dollars and would furnish employment for more skilled and better paid workers and for a period of from ten to twelve days. And this same lumber, in a furniture factory would produce furniture worth from $100 to $500 and would furnish employment directly and indirectly equal to from six months to one year’s work for one man.

The whole range of values in this series, from the seven dollars’ worth of cord wood or $500 worth of manufactured goods, depends upon the degree of refinement extended to identically the same raw material through the quality and quantity of labor employed upon it, the capital expended and the application of greater scientific knowledge to the processes of production.

The secondary industries that we must now begin to encourage are characterized by a wide variety of work. They have different standards, are not easily susceptible to organization on a large scale, and hence politically have never acted as a concerted and effective force. The National Association of Manufacturers has been held together largely by an exaggerated emphasis upon the struggle against trades unionism. This ideal of strife with labor is no longer sufficient, and many believe that much more can be gained by co-operating with labor to build up the productive power of our people.

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES AND CONSERVATION.

Today, the interests of the secondary manufacturer coincide closely with the demands of the conservation movement, and with the best interest of the Nation. The secondary manufacturer needs a permanent supply of raw materials. It is to his interest to see that coal, lumber, iron, electric power generated from our waterfalls, and every other raw material of manufacture be permanently available at reasonable prices. Where undue monopoly of the power of such raw materials exists, the secondary manufacturer will be acting in accordance with his own enlightened interests if he helps to restrict and regulate by political action. Reckless exploitation, leading to exhaustion of any natural store, threatens the very existence of his business.

In order to produce in large quantities, the secondary manufacturer must sell into broad markets; must use freely and extensively the transportation systems of the country. He realizes that the development of railroading in the United States (which surpasses that of any other country in the world, and has knit together a population of a hundred millions with great buying and consuming power into one homogeneous market) is one of our great national assets. On the basis of this broad market, quantity manufacture can be developed as nowhere else in the world.

President WHITE—Before introducing the next speaker, I will read a letter from Dr. Charles A. Doremus, of New York, whom we expected to be here.

NEW YORK, September 30, 1912.

Mr. J. B. White, President of the Fourth National Conservation
Congress:

Dear Sir—Much to my regret I am prevented from attending the sessions of the Congress, though appointed to represent, as a member of its Committee, the American Electrochemical Society.

One of the matters detaining me is work in connection with the American Museum of Safety, which is doing progressive work to conserve human life. There are now twenty-two such museums and their beneficial influence is being felt here and abroad. The large corporations have been enlisted in the work of accident prevention and allied topics and the recent congresses, the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry and the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, have awakened great public interest in all that pertains to the preservation of health and life.

May the Congress over which you have the distinguished honor to preside still further enlist our people to safeguard not only our material wealth but the people themselves.

I have the honor to be,
Yours very respectfully,
CHARLES A. DOREMUS.

President WHITE—I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. J. N. Hurty, of Indianapolis, President of the American Public Health Association, and Indiana Health Commission, who will speak on “Conservation of the Human Race.”

Dr. HURTY—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

High authority says we are only fifty per cent. efficient; that we live out less than one-half the natural duration of life, that we consume twice as much food as is needed to maintain efficient life, that we waste as much as we use, and that one-half of all human beings born either die before reaching maturity or fall into the defective, delinquent or dependent classes. In these facts we find reasons why we waste the major portion of all our resources and call it development. In these facts we find reasons for the existence of robber taxation and predatory business. For, a people who waste themselves, will, of course, waste their natural resources. Therefore, the first, the most important, the fundamental conservation, is the conservation of human efficiency. A people who cannot be brought to a realization of the fact that they lead only half lives, and, who realizing, will not end, will show the nations-to-come what fools the present mortals were.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

Length of life is a resultant of strength. “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.” It is an honor and it is a strength, for a nation to have a low sickness and a low death rate with their consequent lengthened average duration of life. In India, the average length of life is twenty-five years, in the United States, forty, in England, forty, in Germany, forty-three and in Sweden, forty-five. The natural duration is one hundred years. Metchnikoff, after thirty years of study of disease and death says, only a very few die natural deaths, most of mankind commit suicide. That is, most people do not know how, or will not, conserve their vitality, and thus results a greater or less period of disability and inefficiency with premature death. Nature does no fooling, she has her laws and they are enforced up to the handle.

VITAL ASSETS.

Comparison of vital and physical assets as measured by earning power, show that the vital are three to five times the physical. The facts show that there is as great room for improvement in our vital resources as in our lands, water, minerals and forests; and furthermore, this improvement must come first for through human life only is natural conservation possible. The dead past may bury the dead, but living and strong men, not the weakly and sickly, must do the work of Conservation.

ILLNESS.

From our vital statistics, which constitutes the bookkeeping of humanity, we learn that fully 100,000 people in Indiana are sick at all times, 25,000 of whom are consumptives. Not less than half of this is preventable, and three-fourths may be prevented by strong effort. Eighteen experts in various diseases as well as vital statisticians, have contributed data on the ratio of preventability of the ninety different causes of death into which mortality may be classified. From this data according to Fisher, it is found that fifteen years at least could be at once added to the average lifetime by practically applying the science of preventing disease. More than half of this additional life would come from the prevention of tuberculosis, typhoid fever and five other diseases, the prevention of which could be accomplished by purer air, purer water and purer milk. Let the business men, who are in the saddle and who run our affairs, thoroughly consider this. They surely know that disease and premature death are drags to business. Fifteen more years of life to each citizen means an enormous increase in the strength and happiness of the people, with consequent betterment to business.

_Minor Ailments_ must be thoroughly considered in any steps toward the conservation of vitality. They are far more common and farther reaching than is generally realized. They are chiefly functional disorders such as of intestinal canal, heart, nerves, liver, kidneys, etc. These disorders are gateways to the more serious disorders. Those who neglect colds, or what seems to be colds, will prepare the tissues of the respiratory tract for pneumonia and consumption.

Benjamin Franklin, wise and practical, successful as merchant, scientist, and statesman, said—“The having of colds is a great drawback. I notice when I have one my efficiency is greatly decreased. Thought, judgment and understanding are clouded. Furthermore, I notice that colds follow excess in eating and drinking and the much breathing of bad air. They are quite unnecessary.” The losses due to mistakes in business and in the general conduct of life on account of minor ailments cannot be estimated except perhaps as time lost. A study of the matter shows that the time lost cannot be less than four days annually to each supposedly well man. Applying this to the wage earners of Indiana, counting one wage earner to each five people, making 500,000 in all, and we have to pocket an annual loss of 2,000,000 days or 5,470 years. In dollars, counting the average wage at $500 per annum, the loss amounts to $2,735,000 annually. This is certainly a prodigious loss to suffer in Indiana because of minor ailments, all of which can practically be avoided by proper public and private hygiene.

Neurasthenia, so common in the United States, is one of the most serious and insidious introductions to grave disorders, which may be due to depraved nutrition, to needless worry, or failure to have adequate recreation.

_Patent Medicines._ A source of drug habit, ill health, disease, inefficiency and race poisoning, militating against business is the horrible patent medicines. Medicines at their best, given under skilled medical direction are very dangerous things. (Applause.) The drug addicts, made so by a certain kind of practitioners, by self doctoring, and the taking of patent medicines, are numbered by hundreds of thousands. A large proportion of drunkards are started on their way by taking tonics. It is mostly the alcohol in tonics which produce the seeming improvement and which give temporary relief, but which invariably make the last state worse than the first. Alcohol, and all other drugs, are more dangerous than dynamite, and trade in them should be restricted more severely than trade in dynamite. (Applause.) The earth has been ransacked for drugs to cure. Everywhere we see emblazoned advertisements of medicines which the ad says will cure every disease from corns and ingrowing toenail to syphilis and gonorrhea; and yet, sickness and disease grow apace with our civilization. The world has been fine-combed from the equator to the poles for a something with which to bring health and prolong life; and lo, and behold, like the blue bird, these blessings are in every household patiently waiting to be called. At present, we are in the patent-medicine stage of ignorance, from which we must emerge before real conservation of human life and energy can be realized. (Applause.)

SCHOOL HYGIENE.