Checking the Waste

M >> Mary Huston Gregory >> Checking the Waste

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The Pasteur Treatment is saving many lives each year by treating cases
of infection from "mad dogs" and other animals affected with
hydrophobia.

Among the diseases which can be remedied by slight means are enlarged
tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be
removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed
to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and
weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the
wearing of glasses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve
and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed
now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented by
proper care of the eyes in early life and by prompt attention to slight
defects of the eyes when they begin.

Doctor Walter Cornell, who has made a study of eye strain says, "Eye
strain is the chief cause of functional diseases. It is almost the sole
cause of headache, is the frequent cause of digestive diseases, of
spinal curvatures, and indirectly of neurasthenia and hysteria."

Decayed teeth in children, slight in themselves, give rise to more
serious troubles in later life,--ill-shaped mouths and jaws and crooked
teeth result from teeth that have been drawn too early in life. Decayed
teeth lead also to many stomach and digestive troubles.

Medical inspection in the schools shows a surprising number of children
suffering from these minor troubles. About 80,000 children were
examined, and the records show that out of every one hundred children
examined sixty-six needed the services of a doctor, surgeon, or dentist,
and some needed all three.

Forty out of each hundred had badly neglected teeth.

Thirty-eight had enlarged glands of the neck.

Eighteen had enlarged tonsils.

Ten had growths of the nose.

Thirty-one needed glasses.

Six needed more nourishing food.

This meant that more than 52,000 of the number needed some medical care
that they would not have received at home because their parents had
never noticed the need of it. Every one of them could by prompt
attention, a small dentist's bill, a slight operation of the throat or
nose, or the use of glasses, (almost 25,000 needed glasses) be saved
great suffering or inability to work in later life.

As we learn more of disease, and especially of germ diseases, we are
oppressed by the feeling that we are in constant danger, but we must
bear in mind that it is the weak and unfit that are attacked, and that
fitness, while partly inherited, is almost altogether a matter of proper
hygiene. Keeping our bodily defenses in good condition against disease
is as much a matter of necessity and good policy as keeping the defenses
of a city in fighting condition in time of war.

That life may be prolonged and so strengthened that the average height,
weight, and endurance will be increased, admits of no doubt. The same
rule of cultivation runs through all nature. The original or natural
apple was a small, sour, bitter crab. The difference between that and
the finest products of western orchards, is altogether a matter of
cultivation, selection, and proper treatment. In 1710 the average weight
of dressed cattle did not exceed three hundred and seventy pounds. Now
it is not far from one thousand pounds. An equal change could be made in
the human race, but because we believe so fully in personal liberty to
live our lives as we choose, little has actually been done to raise the
human standard.

The care and hygiene of children is receiving universal attention, with
the result of a wonderful reduction in the sickness and death of
children, but as yet comparatively few grown persons apply these lessons
to their own lives, and the rates for older persons remain almost
unchanged.

When individuals have done all that they can, there still remains much
that must be done by the city, the state, and the nation. Boards of
health can do much toward controlling epidemics by placing infected
households under quarantine, by compelling householders who are ignorant
or careless to clean their premises and to take other precautions for
the public health.

Hospitals, both public and private, have done excellent work, not only
in curing disease but in gaining more definite knowledge of the nature
of diseases through the study of large numbers of cases.

The cleaning of streets and the removal of garbage regularly are among
the great factors in keeping a city in a sanitary condition. New Orleans
and some of the cities of Cuba and Porto Rico show strikingly what may
be done in that direction.

Medical inspection of schools is a new and valuable aid to health.
Epidemics of childish diseases which sweep through the schools with a
fearful record of illness and a lesser one of death, may often be
checked entirely by the close watch of the medical inspector, who
removes the first patients from the schools when the disease is in its
beginning.

Public playgrounds for children in cities have an influence that it is
as good for health as it is for morals, providing, as it does, fresh air
and active exercise for children. Open air schools for tubercular
children are being operated in several cities with excellent results in
health and school work.

Many states are making an organized effort to fight tuberculosis by
establishing fresh-air colonies where, with pure air, rest and plenty of
the most nourishing food, patients are restored to health.

Care of epileptics and the insane by the state, with proper hygiene and
treatment, accomplishes many cures.

The nation is doing excellent work in a few lines, notably the Pure Food
Bureau and the Marine Hospital Corps, but perfected organization of all
the forces is lacking. The Department of Agriculture has done a
wonderful work in investigating and curbing insect pests that injure
farm crops and trees, and in stamping out disease among live stock.
Forty-six million dollars have been spent and well spent in the work in
the last few years, but it is a matter of reproach that more pains are
taken to save the lives of cattle and farm crops than human lives.

There should be a strong central Bureau of Health with power and money
scientifically to investigate disease, to distribute information as the
Department of Agriculture does to farmers, and to carry out their ideas,
as do state and city boards of health.

We have dealt with only one side of the question--the suffering and
sorrow; but in a work on conservation, we must consider also the money
question, the loss to the nation in time and money of these great wastes
of health and life.

There are no trustworthy statistics as to wages. The average yearly
earnings of all persons, from day laborers to presidents, is estimated
at seven hundred dollars; but as not more than three-fourths of the
people are actual workers, three-fourths of this amount, or five
hundred and twenty-five dollars is taken as the average wage.

From these figures the money value of a person under five years is given
at ninety-five dollars; from five to ten years, at nine hundred and
fifty dollars; from ten to twenty years at $2,000; from twenty to thirty
at $4,000; thirty to fifty years at $4,000; fifty to eighty at $2,900
and over eighty at $700 or less. The average value of life at all ages
is $2,900 and the 93,000,000 persons living in this country would be
worth in earning power the vast sum of $270,000,000,000. This is
probably a low estimate but is more than double all our other wealth
combined.

Now let us see how much of this vital wealth is wasted. As the average
death rate is at least eighteen out of each thousand, we have 1,500,000
as the number of deaths in the United States each year. Of these,
forty-two per cent., or 630,000 are classed as preventable--so that a
number equal to the entire population of the city of Boston die each
year whose deaths are as unnecessary as is the waste of our forests by
fire.

If some great plague should carry off all the people of Boston, not the
people of the United States only, but of the whole world would be roused
by the appalling calamity and every possible means would be employed to
prevent other cities from sharing such a fate; but because these
preventable deaths are not in one city, but are widely scattered, we
have long remained indifferent to this terrible and needless waste.

Then there are always 3,000,000 persons ill, 1,000,000 of whom are of
working age. If, as before, we count only three-fourths of them as
actual workers, we find a yearly direct loss from sickness of
$500,000,000 in wages. The daily cost of nursing, doctor bills, and
medicine is counted at one dollar and fifty cents, which makes for the
3,000,000 sick, a yearly cost for these items of more than
$1,500,000,000. What should we think if nearly all of the people of the
city of New York were constantly sick, and were spending for doctors,
nurses, and medicine as much money as Congress appropriates to run every
department of the government!

It is estimated that sickness and death cost the United States
$3,000,000,000 annually, of which at least a third, probably one-half,
is preventable. Is it not well worth while, then, from a money
standpoint alone, to use every effort to conserve our national health?
Conservation of health and life, going hand in hand with conservation of
national resources, will give us not only a better America, but better,
stronger, happier, more enlightened Americans. What a new world would be
opened to us if we could have a nation with no sickness or suffering!
That is the ideal, and everything that we can do toward realizing that
ideal is a great step in human progress.

REFERENCES

Report on National Vitality. Committee of One Hundred. (Fisher.)

The Nature of Man. Metchnikoff.

The Prolongation of Life. Metchnikoff.

The New Hygiene. Metchnikoff.

Vital Statistics. Farr.

The Kingdom of Man. Lankester.

Cost of Tuberculosis. Fisher.

School Hygiene. Keating.

Economic Loss Through Insects That Carry Disease. Howard.

Report of Associated Fraternities on Infectious, Contagious, and
Hereditary Diseases.

Conservation of Life and Health by Improved Water Supply. Kober.

Backward Children in the Public Schools. Davis.

Dangers to Mine Workers. (Mitchell.) Report Governor's Conference.

Tuberculosis in the U. S. Census Report 1908.

Industrial Accidents. Bureau of Labor Pamphlet, 1906.

Factory Sanitation and Labor Protection. Dept. of Labor, No. 44.

How Insects Affect Health in Rural Districts. Dept. of Agriculture.
Bulletin 155.

Public Health and Water Pollution. Bulletin 93.

CHAPTER XIII

BEAUTY

America has another resource that differs from all the others, and yet
is no less valuable to us as a nation, for it is upon natural beauty
that we must depend to attract visitors and settlers from other
countries, and also to develop love of country in our own people, and to
arouse in them all the higher sentiments and ideals.

The love of romance and poetry is awakened only by the sight of
beautiful objects, and that nation will produce the highest class of
citizens which has most within it to kindle these lofty ideas. The
savage cares only for the comfort of his body, but as civilization
advances, man devotes more and more thought to those pleasures that come
only through his mind and the cultivation of his tastes.

The United States is particularly fortunate in this respect, for here is
everything to inspire a love of beauty. There is the beauty of changing
seasons, of our wonderful autumn forest coloring, of rivers, mountains,
lakes, sea, and shore.

In addition to the beauty of our landscapes, which is everywhere to be
found, there are many special beauties which are among the world's
wonder-places, and which are visited yearly by thousands of sight-seers,
and each year they attract a greater number of visitors from other
lands. Some of the most remarkable of these are Niagara Falls, the
Yosemite Valley, with its crowning glory, the Yosemite Falls, the
Hetch-Hetchy Falls, Mammoth Cave, the Garden of the Gods, the Grand
Canon of the Colorado, the Agatized Forests of Arizona, Yellowstone
Park, The Natural Bridge of Virginia, Great Salt Lake, and dozens of
others, less wonderful, but scarcely less beautiful, and equal to the
most talked-of beauties of Europe, such as the Palisades of the Hudson,
Lake Champlain, the Shenandoah Valley, the Dalles of Oregon, Pike's
Peak, Mount Rainier, Lookout Mountain, the Adirondacks, and the entire
Rocky Mountain region.

To these must be added the relics of ancient civilization, the homes of
the Cliff Dwellers, the work of the Mound Builders, and such fragments
as still remain of the occupation in various times and places of certain
Indian tribes, and of the Norsemen and the Spaniards.

All these are to be valued for their beauty or historic interest, and
are also valuable as a source of wealth to the community.

The money spent on tourist-travel in Europe is said to be more than
half a billion dollars a year. This vast amount is spent because in
Europe there is so much to delight the eye, because the cities are made
beautiful with artistic buildings filled with art treasures, because
historic places are carefully preserved, because the villages are neat
and well-kept, and the intensive farming which is practised almost
everywhere leaves no waste places to grow up with weeds, and lie
neglected.

There are parts of Europe, of course, where this is not true, but they
are not included in the line of tourist-travel, and in general it may be
said that Europe is visited almost solely because of its beauty:--the
natural beauty that man has preserved, the beauty that he has created,
or the relics of past greatness.

Modern Greece would attract few visitors for its own sake. It is the
ruins of a mighty past,--the Acropolis at Athens and the places made
famous in mythology and literature draw thousands to its shores every
year, and add greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the country.

The same thing is true of America wherever we have preserved and made
beautiful our natural scenery. During three months in the summer, the
New York Central Railroad derives about $200,000 in fares from its
Niagara business alone. Since it became a state reservation in 1885,
more than seventeen million persons have visited Niagara, and the
amount of money that has been spent there at hotels, for carriages,
automobiles, side-trips, souvenirs, etc., is almost beyond calculation.

In the Adirondack Park there is between $10,000,000 and $15,000,000
invested in hotels and cottages. The 15,000 clerks and helpers receive
about $1,000,000 in wages, the railroads receive another $1,000,000 in
fares, and hotel guests spend between $5,000,000 and $6,000,000. All of
these advantages to the region are entirely apart from the practical
uses of the forest.

These are examples which show the great amount of wealth which can come
from preserving our natural beauties, and the same conditions exist
everywhere, not only in the state and national parks, but wherever some
beautiful spot has been set aside by a city, a railroad company, or some
private enterprise. People flock to these resorts in large numbers for
rest or recreation, and to satisfy their love for the beautiful, and the
result is a gain in health and morals, more desire on the part of those
who visit them to make their own surroundings beautiful, and at the same
time a great gain in money value to the city or company that promotes
such an enterprise.

Most of the larger cities of the United States have given particular
attention to the subject of public parks during recent years. They are
the breathing places for the dwellers in the city, often the only place
where children can have fresh air and plenty of exercise, and the parks
constitute one of the greatest attractions to draw summer visitors to
the city.

Nearly all steam and electric railway companies own some park or
pleasure resort from which they derive a large income in fares, and many
steamboat companies find their largest profit from their excursion
boats.

All these facts show clearly that if we consider only the gain in money,
it is altogether a wise policy to include natural beauty among our
national resources, and to conserve it carefully, while if we look at it
from the larger standpoint of preserving for future generations the same
beauties that we enjoy, the need of such conservation is still more
urgent.

In our future development the United States will largely be made over.
We shall no longer have the same natural conditions that we have had in
the early years of our history, and the physical appearance of the
country will grow better or worse each generation.

It is possible for us to make America the most beautiful land the world
has ever seen, for we have the natural beauty, and greater knowledge in
setting about the work of building than has ever been possessed by any
other nation during its time of greatest growth.

We shall go far toward realizing our ideal of a beautiful America if we
understand that the conservation of our resources means beauty, and that
waste means ugliness. Proper conservation of our mineral resources will
include the removal of the ugly, unsightly piles of culm, slag, and
other refuse that lie about the mouth of the mines, and disfigure some
of our most beautiful mountain scenery, for, as we have shown elsewhere,
this should be used and not wasted. The proper use of coal would solve
the smoke problem of cities, one of the worst foes of cleanliness and
beauty, and the use of water-power would serve the same purpose. The
complete utilization of our water resources that has been suggested
would make all our waterways contribute greatly to the beauty and
attractiveness of the landscape.

In conserving our forests we not only increase our timber supply, but
add one of the greatest of all beauties, the trees which give variety
and tone to every picture that our eyes rest upon. We shall have the
shady roads, the long green hill-slopes, the quiet woodlands, the glory
of autumn coloring, the delight of blossoming orchards.

Conservation of the soil, and utilization of every part of the land
mean even more. Picture the contrast between a country where the
hillsides are worn into gullies, where rocks are everywhere to be seen
cropping above the barren soil, where the crops are scanty, the
vegetation stunted; and one where every field yields a rich harvest,
where the grain hangs heavy and golden, where every wayside nook holds a
flower, where there are no neglected fence-corners, no piles of
rubbish,--what we truly call "a smiling landscape." Lastly, in
conserving health, we do more toward promoting personal beauty and
advancing the standard of the race than in any other way.

We should not be content, however, with the beauty that comes only from
the conservation of our other resources, but should have a definite plan
for the conservation of beauty as a valuable resource in itself.

The city of Washington should be made the center of this movement toward
national beauty. There is now an organized effort on the part of those
in charge of the erection of public buildings, to make Washington the
most beautiful capital in the world, and a model for other cities.

The federal government should set aside as national parks all of our
greatest natural wonders, as Yellowstone Park is now held.

The states should follow the same line and set apart in the same way
those objects of lesser interest, either natural or historic, which are
to be found in every state--those that are not of sufficient importance
to merit national recognition, but that will add interest to the state
as a place for tourists to visit.

Few states are visited in this way more than is Massachusetts, and it is
largely because not only the state, but the various communities have
preserved historical places, buildings and objects so carefully, have
erected monuments to commemorate them; and have thrown these various
objects of interest open to the public free of charge. These communities
in turn have gained the original expenditure many times over from the
money spent by the steady stream of visitors.

There has been a great movement toward the beautifying of cities and
villages in the past few years. Besides the good work done by park
boards in cities there has been a great improvement in the matter of
cleaner streets, better sidewalks, the planting of more shade trees, and
a far greater attention to the beautifying of private grounds. The
adorning of front yards and porches with vines and flowers is increasing
enormously every year.

Many causes have been at work to produce this result: the broadening
influence of travel, which brings people in touch with what is being
done in other places to promote public beauty, the work of schools,
newspaper and magazine articles, and more time and money to spend on
luxuries,--even the post-card, which makes a souvenir view of every spot
of local beauty or interest; but probably no other one agency has
produced such good results in public beauty as has the woman's club
which has taken up this line of work.

The "cleaning-up" movement, with a public house-cleaning day twice a
year when all refuse is carted away, and streets, alleys and back-yards
cleaned, had its origin in this way. The care and beautifying of
cemeteries is another branch of the work.

In many places, flower and vegetable seeds are distributed free or at a
nominal cost among the school children, prizes are offered for the best
garden, the largest vegetables, the most attractive back-yard, the best
arranged flower-bed, and other good results; the work is examined by a
committee, and the prizes awarded at the end of the season either by the
club or by merchants who have become interested in the contest.

This provides the children wholesome outdoor work and exercise
throughout the summer, and promotes a pleasant rivalry among them,
besides increasing their knowledge of plants, and the results have been
found to be far-reaching, for not only the pupils, but their parents as
well, are interested in neater, more orderly methods of living, and in
beautifying their homes.

In the movement for public beauty, as in all other progress, it is the
work of individuals that counts most. Every house that is built with a
thought for its beauty, every home, farm-building and fence kept in good
repair, every neat back-yard and flower-surrounded home has its part in
making America more beautiful, and this influence in countless homes is
certain to count in the making of better citizens.

A country where beauty meets the eye at every turn will invite the
tourist and the home-seeker, will be deeply loved by its own people, and
will be an inspiration to poetry and art. It rests largely with the
people of to-day to decide whether we shall make of our own land such an
ideal place.

CHAPTER XIV

IN CONCLUSION

No one can read the record of facts presented in this book without being
impressed by two things: (1) How these resources depend on one another
and that proper care of one results in the saving of another, and, (2)
the fact that every one of our most valued resources is decreasing so
rapidly that its end is in sight, even though far in the distance. When
the end comes we know that it will mean the end of progress for our
country in that direction.

It is also plain that the great, in fact the only, reason for this
scarcity lies not in use but in waste. And lastly we see that there is
yet time to prevent serious shortage in most directions if we set about
a general system of good management and thrift.

In the meantime we are sure to have higher prices, for the supply is
growing less and the demand greater for almost every material. In many
lines, unless something be done to check this shortage, prices will rise
so high that only the rich can afford what are now considered the
necessities of life, and the lives of the poorer classes will become
like those of the peasants of Europe:--a scanty living on the plainest
food, poor homes, hard work, less opportunity to develop mind and body.

Let us sum up how the various resources may be used to conserve one
another.

The soil is saved from erosion by the planting of forests, and by the
storing of the flood waters of rivers. Waste land is made fertile by
proper control of the rivers through drainage, storage and irrigation.
Farm crops and also the forests are increased in value by insect
control.

The insects are largely kept in check by encouraging the nesting and
increase of certain birds. Birds play a large part in the conservation
of the crops, by destroying insects, weeds, and small mammals. The birds
themselves are sheltered and thrive only where trees are abundant.

The grazing lands are conserved by proper forest control, and the supply
of animal food depends largely on the grazing lands.

Fisheries are dependent on proper care of the waters, which in turn
depend on forest control, and on proper care of the by-products of
factories.

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