SUPPLEMENTARY PROCEEDINGS (continued 4)

“10. Education in Conservation. In order that the rising generation may know of the actual basis of the prosperity of the state which makes life here possible, and of its rapid and serious depletion through senseless and unconsidered waste, we urge that an accurate statement of the remaining natural resources of the state be prepared in such form as to make it available for public school instruction. We favor all proper methods of inculcating in the youth of the state that care for its prosperity which alone can prevent the state from becoming a barren waste, resembling like areas in foreign lands in which selfishness, neglect and ignorance have accomplished their destructive work.”

It is not claimed that our “ten commandments” cover the whole of the moral law, on our subject, although the endeavor was to include in them the points that most urgently needed attention in the campaign for conservation in Pennsylvania. The principles as stated in the development of a “commandment” are often of a wider generality than as set forth in the heading; in the opening sentence, for example, to which attention will be called further on, and in the third paragraph also, where the principle of encouraging the care of forests appears in the text, while the heading alludes only to forest taxation. Care for the forests is itself but a special application of the still broader principle of saving where we are now wasting, of which this national association is the great exponent.

The civilized man, as President Roosevelt reminded us, looks beyond present needs and provides for those to come. He seeks to leave his children, who will be in a few years all that is left to represent him, as good a patrimony as he received from his forefathers. He would provide for the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. He therefore necessarily interests himself in the conservation of natural resources. For conservation does not mean, as has been too hastily inferred, locking up something valuable so that it will be of no service to anybody; it means using and safeguarding the resources of ourselves and posterity in the way that will best serve both. It means use without waste.

That there has been waste, and shameful waste, of natural resources no rational man will deny. It is an abuse of many centuries standing, as witness Persia, The Euphrates valley, Syria, and much of Asia Minor, and the once fertile valleys of China, where the sites of a teeming population are now deserts. When the forests disappear, the water no longer remains in the soil; there is alternation of dry stream-bed, and flood-torrent carrying away the soil itself. Vegetation, requiring a steady water supply, can no longer exist; and man cannot outlive vegetation. This may be the history of the destroyed woodlands of Pennsylvania. The disappearance of trout streams has been but a symptom; the real evil is the sacrifice of our woodland, of which all belonging to our state were until a generation ago sold without discrimination at twenty-seven cents an acre. The same land, denuded of timber, the state is now buying back, though at a much higher price, and endeavoring to reforest it. A million acres have already been so purchased, and it is hoped that the replanting will proceed rapidly and uninterruptedly so that our children’s heritage may yet be saved for them.

The preservation of our woodlands, it has already been admitted, is only one way of stopping waste. There is the waste of war, of recovery from war as counted in our annual pension roll, and of preparation for war for which we are now paying, in these years of profound peace, more than three hundred millions annually. The most terrible of all wastes, doubtless, is that of disease, especially when we include with it the Nation’s drink bill, of which the first cost of the liquor, huge though that is the country over, is the smaller part; the greater, all a dead waste, being the impairment of physical, mental and moral vigor and of productive capacity to which that baleful appetite leads, and the cost of the crimes of which it is the constant cause. We should no less include the costs in money and in deterioration of body, mind and soul, that are incurred by disregard or defiance of sex-hygiene. To these two points, particularly the last, the tenth of our Pennsylvania Conservation Commandments, on “Education in Conservation,” particularly applies. On nothing, not even “the remaining natural resources” of our commonwealth, is it more vitally necessary that education should lay stress than the conditions of bodily and moral health. Conservation of human life is the most important element in the conservation problem, for without man everything else would be valueless.

The public health is most evidently a public concern, and its furtherance has now become, by general consent, a recognized part of the duties of government. For a generation and more, a board of health has been one of the most important branches of our city government; county health boards are now found to be requisite for similar reasons; the services of state boards, bureaus or departments of health, are coming more and more in demand; and there is by this time an imperative call for a national bureau or department with similar functions and wider authority. That is a call that cannot long be resisted. The several agencies now under federal control, among which its care for health has heretofore been scattered—those pertaining to the army, the navy, the revenue marine service, and the “pure food” office of the Agricultural Department—have severally done some very good work, despite their limited separate responsibility; and their work could not but be more effective for good if brought all under one direction, and granted appropriations correspondingly ample. There would be the same increase in efficiency through combination, that has so often been noted in consolidations of railways, combinations of industries, forming a federal army out of promiscuous state militias, and welding a bunch of geological “surveys” into a well-disciplined, compact bureau. It is a reform demanded by the interests of sound government, and by the people’s needs: and it must come.

Testimony to the good work that can be done in a few years by the Health Department of our state, I am enabled to give by the favor of a highly capable member of that department in Harrisburg, Chief Medical Inspector Royer, as follows:

In the creation of the Department of Health of this commonwealth and in the very liberal provision of funds for its organization and maintenance, Pennsylvania took her first great step forward in the conservation of human life.

The bill which when enacted created the Department of Health of Pennsylvania was drawn by Dr. Charles B. Penrose of the University of Pennsylvania, and carried with it an appropriation of $400,000 for its organization and maintenance and $50,000 for emergency work. The governor was slow to make his selection of the commissioner, Dr. Dixon, who was appointed in June, 1904, during an epidemic of smallpox. The emergency work was carried on with the organization which was completed January 1, 1906, when the work assumed its great systematic battle against disease. This police department had to be handled with exceeding care, as the people in our representative form of government had not been used to the observation of health laws.

So rapidly did the work grow that the 1907 legislature appropriated $1,000,000 for general health work and $1,000,000 for the purpose of organizing a campaign against tuberculosis, $600,000 of which was specifically set aside for state sanatoria and $400,000 for dispensaries and additional work.

The commissioner was permitted to take over the small tuberculosis camp already organized by the Forestry Department, and he almost immediately enlarged it by the addition of tents to accommodate more than one hundred additional patients and at once planned a great sanatorium to be built on the site near Mont Alto.

The legislature of 1909 repeated the appropriation of $1,000,000 for general health work, including sanitary engineering, and gave the unprecedented sum of $2,000,000 for extending the tuberculosis campaign, both by increased facilities offered through the dispensaries already organized and by further extension of state sanatoria.

The legislature of 1911 still further increased the appropriations for the department so that a total of $3,701,360 was provided for furthering public health work, including $2,653,248 for fighting tuberculosis.

In the first organization of the Department of Health a broad and liberal educational campaign was started, on a comprehensive plan through seven important executive divisions and two auxiliary divisions, whose chiefs reported directly to the central authority, the Commissioner of Health. In a very short time the vital statistics of this commonwealth were so thoroughly gathered that the census office included the state in the “registration area.”

The division of medical inspection, in a comprehensive way, covered all the quarantinable diseases in the second-class townships of the commonwealth, the reports being gathered from the health officers in the 720 sanitary districts under the general supervision of sixty-six county medical inspectors. By these officers quarantining and disinfecting is performed.

The division of sanitary engineering, through seven subdivisions, undertook the important work of protecting the stream from pollution and the supervision of the plans for water works and sewerage works.

The sanatorium division took charge of operating the hospitals.

A dispensary division with 115 dispensaries, one in each large center of population, rendered great assistance to the indigent poor afflicted with tuberculosis, and supervised the work done by a corps of 110 nurses.

The division of distribution of biological products had the disposition of diphtheria antitoxin from 650 distributing stations and of tetanus antitoxin from sixty-seven.

The auxiliary division of accounting, auditing and purchasing looked out for important business and office details.

A division of supplies arranged for prompt distribution of everything needed for record work and field work and through each of these important divisions forwarded daily, weekly and monthly reports to the commissioner’s office, a record of its work and accomplishment. All of which was transmitted to the public by means of monthly bulletins, weekly newspaper talks, and oral addresses. Educational leaflets showing the methods of prevention of all of the different diseases were distributed in large numbers throughout the commonwealth, and a scheme of education was organized, giving to the public through some 900 newspapers all of the facts gleaned by careful study.

A traveling tuberculosis and sanitary exhibit is sent to all the large centers of population throughout the state, papers are prepared and read before scientific societies, charitable organizations, boards of trade, civic clubs, teachers’ institutes and the various bodies interested in saving human life. Lantern slides are furnished ministers and educators to promote the public health interest, and not only does the state do this important educational work, but through its dispensaries a very important sociological work is carried on, which not only protects those in their homes against tuberculosis and secures much needed charitable aid, but assists in protecting against every disease due to unsanitary conditions.

The department is preparing to comply with the new school code and make medical inspection of all school children in districts of the fourth class. This one agency must have a far-reaching influence in conserving health.

Quoting from a recent published report of the department, a few of the things that have been accomplished may thus be referred to:

From June 1, 1907, to August 1, 1911, 5,819 patients have been admitted to the State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis at Mont Alto. Many of these patients have been discharged with the disease arrested; hundreds have been benefited and have gone back to their homes disciples of fresh air and right methods of living; many more whose cases were too far advanced to hope for much aid have been made comfortable and happy and provided with a good home where they would not be a source of danger to others.

From July 22, 1907, when the first dispensary was opened, to June 30, 1911, 41,792 poor tuberculosis sufferers received skilled medical aid and the attention of trained nurses which the department’s 115 dispensaries provide.

The death rate from tuberculosis in Pennsylvania had fallen from 134 to 119.6 per one hundred thousand of population in five years, this meaning a saving of one thousand lives annually.

From October, 1905, when the state began its free distribution of diphtheria antitoxin among the poor, to the end of December, 1910, 27,318 cases of diphtheria, mostly little children, were treated for cure, with diphtheria antitoxin. We know by statistics that without antitoxin forty-two out of every 100 of these children, or 11,476 in all, would probably have died; but with the aid of antitoxin furnished by the department, only 2,324 died, and the death rate among these little sufferers was reduced to eight and five-tenths per cent. Diphtheria antitoxin was given for immunizing purposes to 20,294 cases. The computed saving of child life resulting from the free distribution of antitoxin since 1905 is 9,152.

Throughout Pennsylvania the streams are slowly becoming freed of pollution: not so slowly either, when records show that up to August 1, 1911, 34,481 private sources of stream pollution have been abated upon notice from the department, not to speak of the thousands more that have been stopped through the moral influence of this work. Eighty-nine modern sewage disposal plants either have been built or are in process of construction as approved by the department. Two hundred and eighty-four municipalities and private sewerage corporations are building comprehensive sewerage systems in accordance with plans for such work, details of which must be approved by the department. Already eighty-six modern filtration plants have been approved and begun accordingly.

And what of typhoid fever in view of all this work for pure water? In 1906, 56.5 out of every 100,000 people died from this disease; in 1907, 50.3; in 1908, 34.4; in 1909, 23.4, and in 1910, 25.7. That is, there are now living 2,448 inhabitants of Pennsylvania who, had the death rate of 1906 prevailed in 1910, would have died from typhoid fever.

In 1906 the death rate from all causes, per 1000 population, was 16.5; in 1908, it had dropped to 15.7; and in 1910 to 15.6. At first glance this saving of life may not seem a remarkable diminution, but with Pennsylvania’s 7,655,000 population, is a great gain. This appears when one figures precisely what this slight numerical drop means in the actual saving of lives. Had the rate of 1906 prevailed in 1908, some 6,000 more people would have died than actually succumbed. Had this same rate applied in 1910 instead of the decreased rate recorded by the Department of Health, just 6,889 men, women and children now living and presumably in average health and spirits would have died. In other words, these matter-or-fact statistics, when interpreted in their real relation to the welfare and happiness of the state, mean the saving to the state of 20,000 lives in three years.

And the fight is only fairly well begun.

In the semi-official summary I have just read, the subject of “a purified water supply” was treated in a single paragraph, as a subordinate part of the general work of the State Health Department for the conservation of human life. If an apology is due for what appears a straying from my main topic, the declaration of purposes of the Pennsylvania state branch, I am ready to make the apology; but I cannot believe any excuse is needed for giving to conservation of life and health an importance far ahead of all other conservation.

The curse of forest fires still hangs over us, and prohibits the planting of vast areas which should be growing timber. It is comforting that these fires are less destructive than formerly, but it is nevertheless a disgrace to our civilization, or lack of civilization, that they must occur at all. Education of our people and condign punishment of those whose carelessness or malice causes them will eventually make these annual holocausts a thing of the past. To this end liberal appropriations should be made by the state, rewards or prizes being offered to those who prove most efficient in checking fires.

Nothing is more vital to forestry than the total suppression of these fires. No attempt need be made to replant vast treeless areas, or no expense incurred in protecting the young growth upon them until the fires are prevented. In the year 1908 the cash value of timber destroyed by forest fires in New York was estimated at $780,164. For the same period in Pennsylvania the estimate was $688,980. The loss of humus and general forest litter was even more serious than the loss of timber because of wasted fertility and increase of surface wash during heavy rains. Each successive fire leaves the ground more exposed and less productive, the end of which is a desert condition. It is safe to say that at this hour our state has thousands of square miles which are unproductive because of forest fires. A radical change of policy in this matter is needed. Attention should be given to prevention rather than to suppression of the forest fires, and sufficient force and funds provided to accomplish this end, which is essential to the continued prosperity of the state.

Taxation of forest lands under our present system leads the state to impoverish itself, by premature destruction of its timber resources, and the industries depending upon them, and by increasing the areas of stripped lands, which, because of their unprotected condition, become year by year less and less fit for agriculture when an increasing population requires their occupation for home and farm sites. The law wisely requires that our engineers, physicians and lawyers shall have received proper training before entering upon duties intimately associated with the welfare and safety of others. It is to be regretted that prospective legislators and commissioners cannot be required to show some fitness for the work expected from them, before coming before the people as candidates.

It is notorious that the taxes imposed lead to the destruction of growing trees which are each year earning their right to stand by the benefit they confer upon the public. The only exclusive privilege which the owner enjoys from them is that of paying taxes for a seldom-accorded protection against fire, and depredation.

Timber should be taxed only when cut and then at a rate per thousand feet proportionate to the income received from it, but sufficient to make good, in a measure, the loss of tax during the growing period. This conclusion seems to have been reached by every disinterested person who has fairly considered the problem in all of its aspects. Bills leading to such a system of taxation have been defeated in the last three sessions of our legislature, but that is not the last of them, for the ultimate adoption of a proper system of forest taxation is beyond question. Pennsylvania has done and is doing too much in behalf of forest-growing, to hesitate at an expedient so necessary and so simple.

The state has practically a million of acres, distributed over twenty-six counties, in its forest reserve system. There are two admirable schools of forestry, one of which is intended solely to prepare men for the forest service of the state.

Three extensive nurseries produce seedling forest trees for planting on the state’s land and for distribution to our citizens at nominal cost, on assurance that they will be properly planted and cared for. In 1909 there were set out in permanent position 750,318 young trees, mostly on abandoned farms which had come, by purchase, into the possession of the commonwealth. We are rapidly increasing the output of these nurseries and expect at an early date to plant at least ten to twenty million trees annually. We are fortunate in having no laws which prevent scientific forestry. A tree, or a forest, may be cut when it is in the interest of the state to do so.

Water courses as a source of power are considered apart from water supply for domestic purposes, the latter being, in Pennsylvania, mainly controlled by the Department of Health.

Many water powers were purchased or seized, by those who anticipated their value, under our earlier lax laws, before their importance was generally recognized. They have thus passed too far out of state control to be available under existing laws as a source of public revenue. But in constituting the Water Power Commission it was provided that future letters patent “will not be issued to any water, or water-power company, nor will any such company be allowed to merge and consolidate, or to purchase the property and franchise of any other such company until the application for the charter, or the agreement of merger and consolidation, or the purchase and sale has been first submitted to and received the approval of a majority of the commission. Nor will any person, corporation or municipality be allowed to construct, erect or build any dam or other obstruction in any river or stream without the approval of the commission.” No franchise whatever in the interest of any individual or corporation, should be granted without adequate compensation to the state, nor should any obstruction be allowed place in any navigable stream unless locks of liberal size are provided for passing it. In the near future every important river in the state will probably be converted into a lake system capable of dead water navigation up to head waters, as an accompaniment of the dams erected for power purposes.

Better protection of wild life in forest and stream can readily be provided by taxing, as is the usage in most of the states, those who enjoy the privilege of hunting and fishing. A license fee of one dollar a year from each sportsman would pay for a much more efficient system of forest and stream protection than we have ever had. This would exempt those who have no interest in the sport and place the slight burden where it belongs, upon those who hunt and fish.

Conservation means use without waste, and is sound doctrine whether our mineral resources are to last for fifty, or for five thousand years. That there has been waste, not all unavoidable, is attested by the constant endeavor of our best mining engineers to discover more economical methods.

It is gratifying to be assured that their investigations have borne fruit, and that the loss of good coal in anthracite mining has within recent years been reduced so that “at present the recovery will average about sixty per cent and loss about forty per cent.” Not long ago these proportions were exactly reversed.

The numbers annually killed and crippled by serious injuries among the coal miners of this state are still appalling. The annual report of the department of Mines in Pennsylvania for 1909 says:

“In producing the output for the year 567 persons were killed in the anthracite region and 1034 were injured. In the bituminous region 506 were killed and 1126 were injured.”

From the same report we learn that these casualties, though exceeding the dead and wounded in many famous battles, are yet slightly less per million tons mined than were suffered the same year in the deep collieries of England; but the difference is hardly enough to bring us much comfort.

In mining, as in every other industry, we may look to education as a most hopeful factor in reducing the number of accidents. Christian sympathy is another factor; to that we owe it that children under fourteen years of age are by law excluded as laborers from our mines. We must love our brother even when begrimed with coal dust.

The ease with which land could at first be obtained in Pennsylvania led to neglect of conservative principles in agriculture. It was cheaper, for a time, to abandon a worn-out farm than to restore it to a productive condition. The result is seen in thousands of acres of barren, neglected hillsides. The average production per acre in Pennsylvania was, twenty years ago, so much below the possibilities as to be discreditable to the commonwealth.

This negligence is fast giving way to more modern methods, and the yield of our acres is on a rapid ascent. The struggle for existence has no doubt contributed somewhat to this, though education through the agency of improved schools, of the Grange, farmers’ clubs and institutes, and more easy access to markets have been more potent. The former isolation of the farmer was against him. His land hunger kept him from seeing that there was more money in fifty acres of well-tilled land than in one hundred acres of starved soil. Experience is bringing wisdom to him, and to the rest of us. We must have better roads, more improved machinery, more social intercourse and more fertilization of the soil, to keep the lad on the farm and to bring our yield per acre up to that of England and Belgium.

The Water Gap of the Delaware River, the Horse Shoe Curve in the Alleghanies, the Blue Ridge near the Mason and Dixon line, the environs of Mauch Chunk, are admired every year by thousands, a very large proportion of whom live outside the limits of our state. Pennsylvania values these scenic attractions as sources of revenue to railroads and resort keepers. It is a pity, but it is true, that our people have not yet awakened to the educational and uplifting influences of the beauties of our river and mountain scenery. We lack the inborn love for the landscape that characterizes the dweller on the heaths of Scotland, or under the shadow of the Alps, and in so far we fail to attach their just value to some of the noblest and most precious possessions of our state. These possessions should be zealously protected before they are hopelessly ruined, or given over to less important uses.

The gospel of fresh air, for the physical salvation of the people is sweeping the land. “It is cheaper, wiser, and more humane to prevent disease than to cure it.” Within recent years, largely by the efforts of the secretary of our state conservation branch, it has become possible for a municipality to own and care for parks, which may become not only beauty-spots, but outing-grounds, and lumber-producers as well. It is hard to limit the possibilities of such a law, for good, and it is in the direction of public desires.

Education in conservation means education in citizenship. Every child not only should know, but is entitled to know, what our national resources are and how they may be preserved. He is a partner in ownership of this stock in trade, out of which his living is to come. He should have full access to the inventory, and should know how long it will last, where it may be distributed to best advantage, and where the next supply is to come from. This is even more important to him and to the country than all involved in allegiance to any particular political party. It would be well for every family to have a copy of “The Land We Live In,” a new book by Overton W. Price, vice-president of the National Conservation Association, published by Small, Maynard & Co., of Boston. It was written especially for boys, but contains a vast fund of valuable information compiled in an attractive form which would interest everyone. The natural laws upon which our continued productive capacity depends should be taught in every school and to every pupil; for violation of those laws brings punishment which is as certain as it is bitter.

This commentary on the Pennsylvania statement of purposes, or “ten commandments,” has called for some condensation, for the amount that might be said, and well said, on each of these points could be indefinitely extended. It is largely the work of Dr. Rothrock, one of my colleagues, a veteran in the conservation cause. I think it may be an encouragement to this Congress to have a clear and full statement of the work in furtherance of its aims, now done or undertaken in our state; and, without making or suggesting a comparison with the achievements of any other state, I may add that Pennsylvania is not ashamed of the beginning it has made.

REPORT FOR SOUTH CAROLINA.

By Dr. M. W. Twitchell.

I shall carry out the advice given to the speaker of experience who has told us to say our best things first and then stop. I have only a few things to say. I represent a state quite a little distance from the state of Missouri. I came as the representative of the Governor of South Carolina, as a member of the conservation commission, and just want to say one or two of the things which South Carolina is doing to help on the cause of conservation. First, in regard to the conservation of human life, and the prevention of disease. There is one thing just being done down there which is new in this respect; that we have a pure food commission which is doing something, in that it is inspecting the food products which are coming into the State of South Carolina, particularly the corn products. We are confiscating diseased corn, taking possession of it, and insisting upon that the corn products which are brought into South Carolina shall be pure and healthful.

Another thing which we are doing is in regard to the drainage of our swamp lands. Today we heard of the importance of this movement with regard to the swamp lands of the Mississippi valley. We have swamp lands, as you know, along the Atlantic coast, thousands of acres of them, and we want them made available for cultivation. They will then be amongst the richest lands of our country, and we are actually going at it. We find that we cannot afford to wait for national aid of a direct type, so we are organizing drainage districts under a state law, which permits organization of districts, coöperating with the government, and actually draining certain portions of the swamp lands. So far we have had three drainage districts organized, and over two thousand acres of land in one district, and about three thousand acres in another have already been drained by this new method under a swamp land drainage law. We are going ahead along that line, and in the future you will hear of many thousands of acres of this swamp land that will be made garden spots, truck lands, similar to those that we already have in the vicinity of Charleston. Just a word in regard to the conservation of the soil. We have no law, there is no special state move in this respect, but the State of South Carolina produced last year 1,200,000 tons of commercial fertilizer, and the largest part of that immense product was used within the state of South Carolina itself. Now, that is conserving the soil. That is doing the thing that many of the people of the West will have to come to in view of the lost fertility by rotation of crops upon the same land year after year.

Just a final word in regard to the work in the improvement of rural life conditions. The State of South Carolina is a leader in that we have appointed a state inspector of rural schools. He is an educational engineer and travels all over the state. He visits rural school after rural school. He studies the conditions there, and he makes reports to the state board of education, and conditions are improved, and the state has made appropriations for the aid of these rural schools as the educational engineer reports along these lines. We are interested in the conservation movement. We think it is a grand movement for the benefit not only of the present day, but of the generations to come. I thank you. (Applause)