SIXTH SESSION.

President Wallace—The house will come to order. The secretary has a telegram to be read:

Returning from two weeks on the firing line of conservation with Secretary Fisher. I send through you the accredited representative of the American Civic Association hearty good wishes for the great movement now being considered and promoted by those who believe in a continuing and improving America.

J. Horace McFarland, President American Civic Association.

President Wallace—We are to be privileged this evening to have an address on the Community Club, by Mrs. Phillip Moore, St. Louis, president of the General Confederation of Women’s Clubs. (Applause)

Mrs. Moore—Members of the Conservation Congress: I have already said to the officers of the association that we very much prefer “Community Center” to “Community Club.” It will cover the ground much better, as you will see, from my viewpoint:

It may be a question in the minds of many present why this particular subject has been assigned to a representative of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. I am glad to present the very best of reasons: because we have studied it for years, and have worked on the findings of such study.

At the Second Conservation Congress in St. Paul our honored ex-president gave in some detail the history of the Country Life Commission in which he had become much interested. Economic and social questions engaged his attention; he had given thought to the economic strengthening and social elevation of the Irish farmer, in connection with the policies of conservation and country life in our own country.

The results of the Country Life Commission were of the widest import, but were never made public, inasmuch as Congress did not appropriate money to print the findings.

It was about this time that our interest was specially centered on the life of the women of rural communities; one of the Eastern publications supplemented the existing inquiries from the Government by sending out letters to approximately 700,000 readers. There were answers from nearly every state in the Union which would have required a large office force to read and tabulate. The majority of these letters was given to our general federation board members, representing through their own and advisory states all the community interest which we wish to bring to you today.

The result was extraordinary—answers from a thousand women, with facts, feelings, hopes, ambitions, possibilities and probabilities. The bulk of correspondence came from women, whose letters showed that they are not having for one reason or another what Mr. Roosevelt called a “square deal.”

The letters were distributed among the board members, were carefully read, and they frequently gave an opening for further correspondence—with most interesting, personal results. The letters were not illiterate; many of the women have been school teachers and nearly all have had a good education; many were eloquent in deeper modes of expression than rhetoric.

The volume of data which these letters presented is of high value industrially, from a sociological point of view, and with reference to sanitary conditions; the study of public schools and country churches would gain largely from this material.

Our board members represented, and naturally for that reason understood, the New England and Eastern states, the sandy shores, the Pennsylvania settlements, the sunny South, the mountain regions, the near West, the river states, the Northern plains, the prairie stretches, the Rockies and the Pacific shores.

Only a fraction of the answers returned could we utilize to assort and digest; we believe it is beyond the power of any but a commission to recommend, and such commission might well give its entire time to the work.

We have, however, as I said in our reports, made further inquiries, have come into closer personal relation, have assisted wherever possible, and have certainly recognized the needs of many outlying, lonely homes.

You will allow me to give from the experiences of these letters through our members some few generalizations:

Iowa and Nebraska happened to be grouped together. The eastern and southeastern part of Nebraska are geographically one with Iowa in soil, surface and products, and the two states are allied as to their inhabitants. Except in isolated colonies, the farmers of Iowa and Nebraska came from the Eastern and Central states. The foreign born settlers come almost exclusively from Ireland, the north European countries and Bohemia. The northwest portion of Nebraska, embracing the “big Sixth” congressional district with the far western part, is grouped geographically with eastern Colorado and Wyoming, and the problems of the farmer there differ materially from those of the farmer in the fertile and populous eastern division of this section.

THE DRAWBACK TO RURAL LIFE.

Everywhere the isolated and primitive character has been the greatest drawback to rural life. To those who have depended always upon companionship and society for their interests and enjoyment, this loneliness is intolerable. Physical conditions are changing this, the telephone, the rural mail delivery, the automobiles and the interurban are bringing the comforts and companionship of the town to the farm. There are farmers’ families who planned ten years ago to move to the town as soon as a competence had been accumulated, but who now, with more than the hoped for income, are content to remain on the farm, the active management having been turned over to a tenant or a son, and to enjoy the comforts of the country.

In the older settled portions of these states the farms are being divided. The high price of land is driving the farmer to more intensive cultivation and this will continue to eliminate the more disagreeable features of rural life.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota were grouped and the interesting items were as varied as they might be in more widely separated regions.

There is no “hard luck” tale to tell of poverty and squalor in this region, although the conditions differ widely from very poor to very good. Everyone is already familiar with the stories of the poor wives who have not been away from the farm for five or ten years. There are too many such in the Northern plains; these pitiful tales are all too true, but they are not the whole truth. To get at that it is necessary to know not only the worst, but the best conditions. The best are especially worthy of mention because they indicate possibilities, and are an example and inspiration to those not already arrived at prosperity.

While there are still to be found one-room sod houses sheltering whole families, there are others with all the modern conveniences of steam heat, good plumbing, electricity for light and power, telephones, and the rural postal delivery bringing each day from the outside world papers, books and magazines. And these are the fruit of industry and frugality; and between these two extremes are many homes of moderate means where conveniences and luxuries are not yet possible, but where there is wholesome, normal living.

The great factor in improving rural conditions is education in scientific farming, and in these states there are excellent educational advantages offered to the young men and women who wish to make this a business. Each state has its agricultural college, which is usually a department of the state university, a school where agriculture and its kindred subjects rank with the technical or professional courses; the tendency is to dignify the business of farming, to make it attractive from both the pleasurable and the practical standpoint. There are traveling libraries equipped not only with books for entertainment, but books in various languages for instruction on subjects of rural interest, and these libraries go to the very remotest corners of the state.

The women who have answered the questions in the rural conditions inquiry are agreed that the farm presents great possibilities for happiness, if they could only have a little more help with the farm work, and more frequent chances for change and recreation. They rarely complain that their work is too hard, but only of its dreary monotony.

Fraternal societies afford the greatest opportunities for social intercourse for our country people. Clubs—as we know them—are infrequent. The varied nationalities represented in new states present no common ground on which people of widely differing habits of mind and modes of speech can meet, and this condition and the lack of help enhance the difficulties of social gatherings.

It is very evident that each section of this great country must present its own problems. In the part of the country included in “The Rockies” we find four types of rural life—the small town, the farm, the ranch, and the mining camp. Answers came from all of these. While the last is not, strictly speaking, a rural community, it must be so considered in any effort to brighten the lives of the women who are removed from the advantages of city life.

THE BUILDERS OF THE WEST.

These people, who are in large measure the builders of the West, have come from the more thickly settled states, to try their fortunes under greatly changed conditions; and one of the great hardships that face them is the fact that their means will not permit their first experiments at farming—either dry farming or irrigated farming—ranching, or mining to be a failure. And in the very nature of things, a failure is too often made the first year. If the family finances permit the partial loss of the first year’s work, and if the family adopts the methods proved to be successful, the after years are brighter and not shadowed by poverty. Poverty in the West is a removable cause.

Loneliness is a second problem which is being rapidly met in these states by the organization of women’s clubs and the foundation of local libraries in the towns, and traveling libraries for those outside. Colorado has done especially good work with her traveling library boxes.

For the most part the people are hopeful and happy. They came into this mountain region expecting difficulties and they have no complaints to make that their problems are not all solved. They had the grit to come into a new and unsettled country, and they desire to stay. Every letter from the “farm women” of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming was a happy letter. Such rural problems are hopeful.

The North Pacific shores offer a diversity of agricultural and commercial interests, and the farmer here differs somewhat from the Eastern farmer in that he is more of a specialist. He is either a wheat, cattle, fruit or dairy farmer. He specializes on one thing, and does his work with the most improved machinery, or under the latest and most modern methods; he seldom attempts to derive revenue from the hundred and one little things that, in many districts, are made by the farmer’s wife and hauled to the corner store to exchange for groceries. In other words, his farming is more of a business than the old idea of making it a semi-domestic arrangement. This relieves the wife of much of the drudgery of the farm and puts her on the same business footing in the home, as the professional man’s wife.

With rare exceptions, the farmers have rural mail delivery, farmers’ telephones, and very often electricity for light and other purposes. The roads, as a rule, are good, and the automobile is fast displacing the farm horse.

The schools of higher education are filled with the children from the rural districts, and many farmers move into town in the winter, that their children may have better educational advantages.

In the smaller towns many farmers’ wives join the women’s clubs. While this is commendable, it is not necessary to the life or happiness of the women, for in these states the grange is a great educational factor. It is perhaps the only secret organization in existence where men and women meet on an exact equality. In it some of the best legislation originates, and the probe sinks deep into every proposed measure that affects the farmer; here the conservation of every resource is discussed, and, knowing that they must enter into these deliberations, the farmers’ wives read and keep abreast of the times. The grange meetings are all-day sessions, with a goodly proportion of the day given over to social pleasures; the young people enjoy all sorts of healthful sports, while their elders discuss the prospect of parcel post delivery, the threatened increase of postage on magazines, or the postal savings bank and many other things that bring comfort or enlightenment to the rural home.

The suggestions that came in the letters from New England will be very helpful whenever needed, and have already come into some recent government policies.

The advantages and disadvantages of farm life, in the many letters from the Pennsylvania settlements, would give thought to the most logical mind. They have been culled, however, from a more than usually large number of replies, and due somewhat to the fact that 180 sessions of farmers’ institutes were held for women in one year throughout Pennsylvania.

I think I need not enter further into the details of all parts of the country, or even give recommendations, which a special committee might better bring to a future meeting; but there are certainly two policies which are closely allied—conservation and rural life. When public opinion is thoroughly aroused, it is but a question of time for the will to find a way. There must be a voluntary effort, and such volition must be aroused by education.

One of the most vital items to those who are specially interested in the educational progress of a country is the awakened public opinion in the Middle West shown by the development of the agricultural courses in all of our great universities and colleges.

Even public schools in some parts of this region are giving practical instruction to old and young. Meetings are being held upon the farms; lectures, experiments and demonstrations are being introduced.

The church has quickly realized that there must be a combination of emotion and sanity; the practical and ideal have come into closer relationship; clubs of young men and of women, sometimes of the two together, are taking up all subjects pertaining to the farm life; and wherever these subjects are alive, and the social element is not forgotten, we find distance makes no barrier. At once means of communication are increased. The telephone is in every home; the trolley line goes by the farm—even the automobile becomes a necessity, and good roads are at once established. Distance is therefore annihilated, and the lonely life is a matter of the past.

How short a time it is since insanity was a large concomitant of the farm life for women! Recently, at a session of the Charity Conference in Boston, there seemed to be very little reference to the need for prevention of insanity among isolated farm women. I found it to be largely a sorrow of the past; but I do not agree entirely with such statements, when I recall the letters, from the immense prairie farms. Woods Hutchinson, in speaking of the change that had come into the homes of all women—the removal of much of the old-time work from the home to the factory—says that it is a convincing proof of the stability of woman’s mental powers that generations of that semi-solitary confinement at hard labor known as “home life” have not made her a candidate for the insane asylum. “Man would have gone raving crazy long ago.”

IDEAL CLUBS.

A community club, as we would call a club, must be composed of men and women, for they must, under ordinary circumstances, go together to their meetings. The Farmers’ Institute is more in the line of this particular thought, but the community center or grange covers the ground fully. The institute comes but once or twice a year, while the club might be regularly intermittent.

This must mean a central meeting point with the very best and appropriate reading matter pertaining to equipment of both home and farm; the solution of the help question (shall we ever reach this millennium?), certainly demonstrates in cooking and pure food, discussions as to education of children, and the way to obtain better lighting and heating, and good roads should be a part of these meetings.

Where shall this center be—the school or the church?

The women’s clubs of the nearby towns have attempted in an entirely friendly spirit to maintain rest rooms for farmers’ wives when on shopping bent, with a possible creche for the babies and a caretaker and amusements for young children. This is excellent, but will never take the place of the community center.

A change in the attitude of public opinion towards the old question of town and country means some practical outcome to all this discussion. The interdependence of the two is real, each having its influence on the other, the main consideration being human rather than material. The town representative can talk out his grievances, political and economic; the farmer has a full stock of grievances, but rarely gives formal expression to them; and the farmer’s wife acknowledges that her social life is barren. The two need to bring their problems to each other; and a community spirit will surely lead to forms of organization for mutual economic and social advantage. There must be in the rural community such social life as shall withstand the attractions of the city, if we wish the farms to remain in the control of their owners, instead of in the hands of renters.

What can be done to give the farmer’s wife a little leisure in which to enjoy the advantages that might be hers?

The answer to this is the answer to the question which confronts every one who is striving to improve social conditions anywhere. It is the great problem of work and the “out of works,” which city and country are trying alike to solve, working from opposite horns of the dilemma. With thousands of hands begging for employment at one end, with thousands of jobs begging to be done at the other, it is not creditable to our initiative that we have not discovered some way to equalize the supply and demand of labor. We are already educating our country youth to stay on the farm; what we need further is a campaign of education to destroy the lure of the city, to teach men and women that there is plenty of work under wholesome conditions awaiting anyone who will take it, that those who cannot go the pace of the city can find pleasant, profitable living where there is time enough, and work enough for every one, if they will but go back to the soil.

The conclusions drawn from the investigations into rural conditions, which I have been able to make, have changed my opinion very materially. Life is not so sordid and hard, poverty is not so pinching as I had thought. That it is narrow and unnecessarily colorless is evident, and that much can be done to brighten it is certain, but just what form of help to offer is a grave question.

There is always needed a plan and the machinery to carry it through. I am not sure of name or method, but a central force there must be, whether of men or women—possibly it might be well to appeal to the woman, who makes the home life, to whom it is of so much importance.

From all our letters we note that the women love the country life, both for themselves and their children. They would doubtless be ready to take up any coöperative plan that might be suggested. Certain I am that no committee should be appointed to consider ways and means that did not have in its membership some thoughtful, progressive farm women. Towards this common end should be included also representatives from all the agencies making the community life educational and religious.

It is not difficult to draft a scheme, but it is essential that the elements most needed to carry it out should feel themselves vitally interested.

Horace Plunkett suggests “an institution which shall be scientific, philosophic, research-making.” His arguments are so entirely to the point that I quote some few sentences:

Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems of the rural population have entered into the study of sociologists. At leading universities I have sought in vain for light.... The fact is the subject must be treated as a new one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country Life Movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to make good the lack of information, which has resulted from the general lack of interest.... An institute is wanted to survey the field, to collect, classify and coördinate information and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to carry exact statistical methods into his work, so that he may not have to depend on general statements, but may have at his command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while its significance can be measured.

In agreeing with his desire for absolute data, let us not forget the human side, the personal evidence, which can never be obtained through an institute.

May we hope that the Conservation Congress, which has ever shown a human interest in the conservation of vital force, will be the leader in bringing to its own the vital center of the country!

President Wallace—You will all agree with me, Ladies and Gentlemen, that we have had one choice treat tonight. There are two more coming. The Presbyterian Church of the United States has taken a very great deal of interest in the country church. Do you know that if the Presbyterians do not revive their country church there won’t be a Presbyterian church in the next generation, for this reason, that the town, while it can get all the lawyers it wants, can grow them, and all the doctors, can’t grow preachers enough to supply their own pulpits. (Applause) Now, we are to have before us here tonight Dr. Warren H. Wilson of New York City, the superintendent of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and he will give us a new phase of conservation.

[Dr. Wilson’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President Wallace—Here endeth the second lesson. (Applause) We have been told about society. We have heard about the practical everyday religion of feeding men. And now we are going to be told by Dr. Wiley how to keep healthy, so that we may enjoy our religion and feed more men. (Applause)

Dr. Wiley—Mr. President and Delegates of the third National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: My sermon is going to be short. I think a great many of these country churches were vacated by two and a quarter hour sermons. (Applause) I want to insist, however, that in this sermon I am going to preach I want to follow the steps of my illustrious predecessor. I have been preaching sermons for a number of years, and I think it is about time I was ordained. I believe in all the principles of conservation that you have taught this week and many previous weeks. I was an early and insistent and persistent conserver. I believe I have the honor of having delivered the first public address that ever took the term “conservation” as a text. In 1894 I delivered an address on the conservation of the fertility of the soil, and so, as well as my dear friends, the Presbyterians, I am a little bit conservative, too. (Applause) I am sorry that that condition has obtained which he described here, the empty country churches. But let me tell you they are no more empty than the country houses of this country. Everybody has been going to the town. They have taken the greater part of country boys who would have made good farmers and made pretty poor preachers out of them. On the whole the country boy thinks it is easier to preach once a week than it is to plow corn every day and feed the stock on Sunday. And naturally he chooses the line of least resistance to make a living. That is the reason that the country is becoming deserted, and just as long as it is easier to make a living in the city than it is in the country, the country is going to be empty, and all you preachers can’t fill it up, and the object of these meetings is to make it easier to make a living in the country than in the city, and then you will see the tide flow the other way, and not before. (Applause) One reason people ought to live in the country is because they can be healthier there. I would rather be a healthy boy in the country than a sick boy in town. If I have equal health, I think I would rather stay in town, for a boy has more fun in town. If you take fun away from the boy you deboyize the boy. Another thing, there is too much demanizing, and dehorning, in the country life. I know about this Pennsylvania Dutch people, why they are so prosperous, because their home life is in their life in the country. It follows the Pennsylvania Dutchman to the grave. It is a pleasure to go to a funeral in that community. (Applause) It has got to be a burden, every time I am invited to a funeral, I don’t want to go. When I was a boy I loved to go to a funeral. (Applause) They have a good custom up there among the Pennsylvania Dutch, too. They all go to the funeral, and nobody begins to cover up the grave until some neighbor goes up, takes off his hat and says a good word for the departed. Then they can fill up the grave. When old Jacob Shaffer died he was the meanest man in the community. He was buried on a cold, rainy day in November, when it was half rain and half sleet. They stood for ten or fifteen minutes, or half an hour, and nobody said a word. They had to stay there, and could not leave until the grave was filled up. Finally one neighbor, in despair, went up and took off his hat and said, “Well, I can say this about Jake: he wasn’t always so mean as he was sometimes.” (Applause) Now, I want to say this about the preacher. He is not always so inhuman as he is sometimes. When I heard this sermon tonight I almost concluded that a minister of the gospel was a real human being. (Applause) I want to tell you that he was not that to me when I was a boy. I did not look upon him as the friend that he ought to have been to me. And that is the reason one boy did not go to the country church oftener.

CONSERVATION AND UTILIZATION.

I believe in the conservation of the natural resources. I believe in the conservation of the coal and the forests. But conservation does not mean hoarding. It means utilization. I do not want to go through life with cold feet to save the Alaska coal and warm up somebody that is going to live a million years from now. (Applause) I want to get some of the benefit out of the coal while I am living, and out of the forest and out of the stream. My idea of conservation is to use the natural assets of this country for the benefit of the people, and not for some syndicate of rich men alone. (Applause) And I hope we won’t spend all this generation quarreling about who is going to have the coal, but that we will find some way to get it out and use it before it gets out of date. Because I want to tell you that we will not need coal much longer. The scientific men will find plenty of ways of finding heat and motive power when the coal is all gone. And if we do not use it now, it is going to become simply a specimen in the near future. (Applause) I want to say that we want to use the lumber, and use it wisely. There is no economy in allowing a tree to stand in the forest until it rots. We want to cut the old trees down just like Nature comes around and cuts down the old people and gets them out of the way. That is the way that science will provide lumber and at the same time continue to reduce the forests. Only the mineral resources are limited. There is just so much coal, just so much gold, and when they are used up, so far as I know, there is no more making, and they will be then gone. But do not have any fear. When the iron is all gone and the silver is all gone and the gold is all gone, there will be plenty of metals at the disposal of man, because we have found now how to convert clay into metal. I went into an automobile shop the other morning where they were making the frames out of pure aluminum. We have got enough clay in this country to last several years. (Applause) It will take the place of the steel and the iron and the gold and the silver and the copper. Have no fear of exhausting these supplies of humanity, but exhaust them for the benefit of the public. (Applause) If we could use one millionth part of the force of the wind we could turn every wheel of industry in the world, warm every house, cook every meal in this whole universe. And the wind and hot air shops are very abundant still. (Applause) There are no signs of it giving out in the near future, either. If the wind is going to blow and turn the wheels of commerce and industry, there are 24,000 wind mills with a dynamo attached to them and storage battery guaranteeing to the farmer all the light he wants in the barn, cooking stove, and turning the sewing machine and grindstone and engine every day of the year. Do not have any fear, ladies and gentlemen, that the natural powers of this world are going to be exhausted. They are here and here to stay, and here to be supplied by the advance of science in such a way that no matter how populous the world becomes in the future nobody is going to suffer for warmth or clothing or power in this world of ours, and we want to get so many people in this country that there won’t be any complaint of vacant country churches. And there is no doubt that this country can supply the food and clothing for untold millions of people yet unborn. We can have every foot of our country as densely populated as Belgium and still have plenty for everybody, because advancing science will supply it. The capacity of a man’s mouth is limited and constant, but the skill of his hands is unlimited. He has two hands, but only one mouth, and the advancing skill of his hand is going to fill the mouth.

President Wallace—Turn around that way and face the audience, please. (Applause)

HEALTH, THE GREATEST ASSET.

Dr. Wiley—I would just as leave say it all over again if you didn’t hear it. (Laughter) Now, there is one public asset of wealth that is rarely mentioned in these conservation congresses, and that is the public health. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen (applause), it is worth in money more than all the gold and all the forests and all the water power combined. If a man boasts of the wealth of Kansas City he speaks of the railroads and the packing houses and the great centers of distribution and the wholesale commercial houses and the value of real estate. He never says a word about how much a people are worth in health. I asked the children in the Central High School today how much each one thought he was worth in money. They did not know. I told them that in a year or two every one of them would be capable of earning $50 a month. I think there are lots of parents in this town that would not take $12,000 for a single child they have. And every single child is worth in money, if it is developed into a man or woman, $12,000. And if you take all of the people of the country and value them at $12,000 apiece, all the rest of the wealth of this country sinks into insignificance. And I am satisfied that that is the value of every man who is able to earn a dollar.

Now, some people think women are worth nothing because they don’t get paid much for their work. Housewives do not get a monthly salary usually from their husbands. She ought to, but she does not. Practically all of them ought to get a salary every month. (Applause) But that does not make any difference in the earning capacity of the housewife. She is worth more than $50—every one. So I would say that there are 40,000,000 of people in this country who are capable of earning $50 a month and do earn it. That, in my mind, will give you a good idea of the wealth of this country in health. But that wealth consists of health. If you impair the machine, the human machine, you impair the earning power of that machine, and thus you diminish its value. If you let the child die you rob the father of a great asset. And we are letting our children die every year. You may go into any graveyard in this country and count the little graves of children under five years of age, and three out of every five of them ought not to be there. The little body that is crumbling beneath that tombstone ought to be in the high school of the city or in the active walks of life. We let these children die and never think of the responsibility that rests upon us. How can we get to be healthy? Well, in the first place heredity. We have got to begin away back. That don’t do us much good, but if we pay attention to it it will do future generations some good. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes I believe who said, “You have to begin to make a man when he was a marsupial possibility.” We have got to go way back now to shape the careers of men and women unborn. Heredity, a sound body is one of the rights of every human being who is born. (Applause) I am glad to know that many of the states are already taking steps to insure that, and to forbid marriages with people who are physically incapable of producing healthy children. Marriage we regard as a sentiment, and we do not like to have anybody interfere with our sentiments. But I tell you marriage is an affair of the state. If the state has a right to demand a fee for a marriage license, and to prescribe how it shall be performed, and make laws by which it may be broken, it has the right to forbid the marriage as well as to regulate it. (Applause)

CONSERVATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

I say then that our first work for public health is to look after the unborn generations and to see that they have healthy parents. That does not help us now, but we must look to it right now. I asked a member of the school board today if they had medical inspection of the school children here. He said a partial one. I said: “Do you have a dental inspection? Do you have a registered dentist come around through the school and see what kind of teeth the children have?” That is just as important as whether they come with clean clothes or not. I have no use for a boy or girl who loses his teeth in childhood. We must begin the conservation with the children of this country, of the public health. The time is coming when there will not be a school in our broad land without competent medical supervision. We demand now that our children be vaccinated. We also should demand that they bring to school no contagious disease to spread among their fellows. And there are lots of contagious diseases that we do not think of as contagious, such as tuberculosis for instance. And so by beginning with the unborn generation we may add to the length of human existence. Heredity then, sound bodies in which sound minds are and may be developed, is one of the primal basic qualifications for the conservation of human life.

Then the next thing is, after we get healthy beings into the world, to see that they are properly nourished, and unless the child and the man and the woman have the proper food they cannot be expected to maintain their health. Unless you feed an engine, or boiler, good coal you cannot expect it to develop the maximum of power. Unless you feed a man well, nourish him well, you cannot expect him to be an effective machine, and to do his proper duty as a member of the community. The thing to do to secure the maximum efficiency of the machine—feed it well. What are we doing about that? We are making a beginning in that line. And the first thing we are doing is with the young child. We are saving the lives of the infants. I may say there has been more progress made along that line than in any other, and that is the place to begin. Here a few years ago if 125 children did not die out of every thousand that were born we thought something was wrong; we rather expected it. And in some communities a great many more than that died.

In many communities the death rate has been reduced to seventy per thousand. There is no reason why over this whole country the death rate of the children, of the infants and the child under five, may not be reduced so as to make the death rate per thousand not very much greater than that of the adult, namely, thirteen or fourteen per thousand in a healthy community. And I do not know any reason why the children of this country should die at the rate of more than thirteen or fourteen per thousand when they are properly cared for at birth, and have proper fathers and mothers to give them healthy bodies. This will be a great addition to the wealth of the country, to save the children. And we can save the grown person by a wholesome diet. I am not one of those who believe in a starvation diet, cutting down food. There are a great many preachers of that doctrine in this country. That is a false doctrine. Nature provides that we shall have enough, and intended we shall have enough and then a little more. When the engineer fills up the tender with coal, he does not take just enough to get him into the station. No. He puts in a ton or two in excess. So Nature provides that when we eat to get strength to perform the mechanical functions of life, we shall have just a little more than is necessary, the factor of safety which enables us to go over the emergency safely.

THE RIGHT TO NUTRITIOUS FOOD.

And, therefore, it is the right of every citizen of this country to have nutritious food and to have plenty of it. Again, when the animal does feel sick, it has the right to scientific attendance with good food; in other words, the sick man has a right to be attended by a competent physician, and to have remedies administered prepared by a competent pharmacist and of pronounced purity. That is another thing we are securing for the people of this country—pure drugs to help them get well when they are sick. (Applause) And we are trying to keep men from practicing medicine who have no qualifications to do so except a facile pen to write an advertisement. The day is coming when a man cannot practice medicine in Kansas City by the newspaper as he can today. I looked at your newspapers. They are full of prescriptions, written by physicians who could not begin to pass the examination of your state board of health. They are quacks and fakirs, and the advertisements are worded cunningly to separate your money from your income. And the law permits it, while the regular physician cannot come to Kansas City and practice medicine without taking out a license from the state board of health, and yet you allow a fakir in any other county to come to town and practice medicine ad libitum. We are going to stop that for you and save your money and save your lives (applause) by securing competent medical supervision of the sick of the community.

Then we are going to protect you from contagious diseases. We are building up now a cordon around this country against invasion, not from an armed enemy, but from one that has slain a thousand times more than the armed enemy would slay—the germ of contagious disease. While Europe has been suffering from Asiatic cholera for a year, we have succeeded absolutely in wiping it out of this country, except one or two sporadic cases, and we no longer fear yellow fever. We know it because we know how to handle the mosquito that spreads it, and we segregate it in the spots where it breaks out. We are beginning to control that most dread of all diseases, tuberculosis. And the day is coming when we will have full control of it. There are people in this house who will live to see tuberculosis as rare as smallpox is today, in my opinion. (Applause) Why? Because science has found out how that disease is conveyed, and having found out the cause, we can proceed to the remedy, and the day is coming when there will be camps of detention for tuberculosis patients, just as there are today for leprosy. It looks hard. It looks inhuman. But what we must care for is humanity, and not the single life. You remember what Tennyson says: “Are God and Nature then at strife, that Nature sends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she signs, so careless of the single life?”

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY.

The individual must give way to the community, and if he is afflicted with tuberculosis he must be segregated, so that the disease may be conquered and kept within bounds. And so typhoid fever will be conquered—all the diseases which are due to infection and contagion. And great progress is making along this line today, so much so that we are encouraged in the belief that other diseases yet unconquered may meet the enemy and master, like for instance pneumonia and diseases of that sort. And the result will be that by the advance of scientific medicine and by the wise control of the state, men will be spared the destruction of their usefulness and value in middle life. Why, how much does it mean to die before your time? All the years of preparation, all the money spent in your education, all that you have done to prepare yourself for the duties of life, cut off in an instant by an enemy more treacherous by far than any foreign invader could be, more to be feared than any armed foe could possibly be feared. We have no need to build sixteen-inch guns to protect our trade on the Panama Canal. What we have protected are the men who builded them. The greatest triumph of the Panama Canal is not that it is a wonderful cut, is not that it is protected by sixteen-inch guns, but that the men who build it are as healthy as you people who have stayed here in Kansas City. That is the great triumph of the Panama Canal. (Applause)

Then we want to preach sanitation in the outplaces where the church ought to be built in the country. That is one reason that the country is not attractive, because there are no sanitary conveniences there. The farmers are living today in a state of barbarism almost in that respect. What we need to do is to populate the country in order to make the country attractive, and it can be done at little expense. There are preachers today who are preaching sanitation about the country school house, and to the country farmer, how to make himself comfortable at home. The roller towels have been abolished in Kansas. The Pullman Company has taken out its public drinking cups in the State of Illinois, and failed to give any other, so you can go all through Illinois without any danger of drinking the Pullman ice water. (Applause) The day will come some time when the Pullman Company will ventilate its cars. (Applause) On the train coming out from Washington there were at least five hundred free passengers called flies that came all the way and enjoyed the trip (laughter) and never lost a moment from sleep. (Laughter) Think of it at this modern day, to start a palace car from Washington that cost $20,000 full of flies! But we are preaching sanitation in out of the way places like the country home and the Pullman car, and the people are learning. And you will be able to travel after a while without danger of contracting a disease in the car where you sleep, or in the hotel where you eat. This gospel of sanitation goes with the gospel of the country church, because cleanliness is next to godliness, and sometimes it seems to me it comes first and godliness second, because a dirty man has a great deal of trouble in feeling godly. (Applause) So the gospel of sanitation is coming to our help. Another thing will help, and that is the gospel of segregation. What are we to do to prevent the influx into the city? I will tell you one thing that the city could do. Every city wants to have more people in it. They do not care what kind they are. They want more than their neighboring city. It is the ambition of the town to pad the census. Many of them are in jail for doing it today. If I lived in Kansas City I wouldn’t care whether we had more people than Omaha or not, but I would love to have, if I were in Kansas City, cleaner streets and purer water and more segregated houses (applause) than Omaha or any other city. And you ought to have them here with all your beautiful streets. You have the principle here of keeping the houses apart. There is plenty of ground in this country to build houses and have a little spot of green by them where they can have flowers in the garden and potatoes. That is what we ought to do to prevent the influx into the city.

THE CITY NOT FOR MANUFACTURING.

I would recommend as a sanitary measure that every city forbid any manufacturing of any kind within its limits. The city is not for manufacturing. The city is for exchange only, and if you would banish the factory you would do much for the sanitation of the city and for the factory workers. You would get closer to the raw material which the factory uses. You would save in transportation, and every workman could have his little cottage with his little piece of land that would help populate the country and help the church that was built near the factory, too. I say we can put the people into the country by legislation if in no other way in that respect, and the moment the factory starts the farmer is coming to raise garden truck. You will have growing around the factory a prosperous agricultural community with its church and it will be a great deal better than having a little church with a lonely graveyard. The most awful thing in the country is the graveyard, especially at night, when the boy has to go home past it. That is the way. We will segregate the population and thus conserve the public health.

Last of all, we can crown the work of the gospel of sanitation by enacting into a law provision for a national board of health with real power and with real authority, whose director shall have a seat in the President’s cabinet and advise him in regard to the most precious of all the assets of our country, public health (applause), and he can guide and help the authorities of the state and cities, and furnish them the material with which to work, and that is coming after a while. We are going to conquer and bring together all the government authorities which have to do with the public health in the one grand organization which will conserve the health of this country and have a voice of power in the councils of the Nation. And then when we do this we will have instilled into the people the idea that there are things that are more important than dollars. Every movement of this kind is stopped by the dollars, the fear that somebody is going to lose some money, while at the same time it could be easily shown that every single movement of this kind is for the increase of our national wealth, and the day will come when the doctrine of graft and greed will have to give way to the doctrine of the sanitation of the people. (Applause) We have today our Fourth of July when we celebrate. In some parts of the country the colored citizens meet and celebrate the emancipation. So I want to live to see the day when the people of this country will meet together in one grand convocation to celebrate the emancipation from the reign of greed and graft and for the establishment of the principles of sanitation which keep them well and happy and patriotic American citizens. (Applause)

President Wallace—This Congress will now stand adjourned until tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.