ned to the
terrified city, and though he has not been able to wipe out the
pestilence, the fact that the smoldering danger has not broken into
devastating flame is due largely to his unremitting watchfulness and his
unhampered authority. "Business Interests" have had their trial in San
Francisco. And San Francisco has had enough of "suppression." To-day the
truth is being told about bubonic plague in the public health reports,
and, I believe, in the newspapers.

Rochester, New York, one of the most progressive cities in the country
in hygienic matters, has established an excellent system of school
inspection and free treatment. But the children who most need attention
lack it through the carelessness or negligence of their parents. Now, it
is this very "submerged tenth" who are set to work early in life. Under
the law, the health officer cannot say, "Unless you are sound, you shall
not attend school." But there is an ordinance providing that, without a
certificate of good physical condition, no child shall be permitted to
work in a store or factory. So Dr. Goler refuses these certificates, not
only in cases of low vitality and under-nutrition, but for any defect in
the applicant's teeth, sense-apparatus, or tonsils, a fertile source of
future debility. What is the result? There is a rush of these neglected
youngsters to the clinics, and the Rochester schools graduate every year
into the world of labor a class of young citizens in splendid physical
condition, unhandicapped by the taints which make, not for death alone,
but for vice and crime. For the great moral lesson of modern hygiene is
that debility and immorality run in a vicious parallel.

As I have said, the most thoroughly organized city department is that of
New York City, and this is so because public opinion in New York, taught
by long experience that its trust will not be betrayed, is, in so far as
it turns upon sanitary matters at all, solidly behind its health
department. Hence its guardians work with a free hand.

_Fighting Prejudice and the Death Rate in Charleston_

But what is the guardian to do when the guarded refuse to bear their
share of the burden; refuse, indeed, to manifest any calculable
interest, except in the way of occasional opposition? Such is the case
in Charleston, South Carolina, where every man aspires to do just as his
remotest recognizable ancestor did, and the best citizens would all live
in trees and eat nuts if they were fully