HOPE

The real significance of biological evolution has not been grasped by the people in general. It is that man is a part of organic nature, subject to laws of development and growth, laws which he cannot break with impunity. It is his business to study the forces of Nature and to conquer his environment by submitting to the inevitable. Only then will man gain control of the conditions which affect his own well-being.

Sickness, we know, is the result of breaking some law of universal nature. What that law may be, investigators in scores of laboratories are endeavoring to determine. In most diseases they have been successful. Those remaining are being attacked on all sides, and it may be confidently predicted that a few years will see success assured.

Why, then, does sickness continue to be the greatest drain upon individual and national resources? Because man, through ignorance or unbelief, will not avail himself of this knowledge, or is behind the times in his method. Where wisdom means effort and discomfort, many feel it folly to be wise.

The individual may be wise as to his own needs, but powerless by himself to secure the satisfaction of them. Certain concessions to others’ needs are always made in family life. The community is only a larger family group, and social consciousness must in time take into account social welfare. Moreover, a neighbor may pollute the water supply, foul the air, and adulterate the food. This is the penalty paid for living in groups. Men band together, therefore, to protect a common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property.

The development of fire protection is a good example of community effort. The isolated farmhouse may have buckets of water and blankets in an accessible place with which to put out an incipient fire. Then eight or ten families build close together. The danger of one becomes the danger of all, and a fire brigade is organized that may protect all. When hundreds of families crowd together in a small space the danger becomes so much the greater that a paid department with efficient apparatus is necessary. No one complains of the infraction of individual rights. Each one is glad to pay his share of the expense.

In securing protection from other dangers, the individual and the family unit are fast relying on community regulations. In fact, in many ways the individual, when he becomes one of a crowd, must go whither the crowd goes and at the same rate of progress.

Failure to recognize that by coming into the community he has forfeited his right to unrestrained individuality causes an irritation as unreasonable as harmful.

A certain control of sanitary conditions must be delegated to the community and its rules cheerfully followed. The legal aspects of these rules will be considered in a later chapter. Here is to be considered only the mental attitude with which the members of the community should come together to agree upon a common defense against disease and dirt. The spirit of coöperation must prevail over a tendency to antagonism when certain individual rights seem to be involved.

Numbers of families living close together are served by the same grocer or market man. These families may agree upon their requirements as to quality and cleanliness and publish their rules. If they do not take interest enough to protect themselves, the community must make rules for them. If the local officials are not vigilant enough, the State may step in and compel the observance of sanitary regulations.

The average citizen learns of the existence of a health regulation when he is warned that he has broken it, or perhaps is fined. His first attitude is rebellion at the invasion of his personal liberty. The housewife usually takes the ground that the rule is absurd or unnecessary.

When, in the interest of the community, any law is to be enforced, how are the people to be led from this rebellious state of mind? Perhaps first through authority. In America we have learned to use the phrase, “Big Stick.” Authority is exactly that; it is coercion from without. It has partial result in good; the law may be fulfilled because the individual knows he must obey when within the jurisdiction of that law; but if the result is simply obedience to authority and not to the underlying principle, it will not be a force in his life or be continued if by chance he can escape it. He will be a “tramp” in his methods of obedience. This method can never be constructive; its value lies in the possibility that by continuous usage or repetition the procedure may become a habit, and from habit will come reason and intelligence.

But the more direct and efficient way to help the individual to realize his relation to communal right living is through education. The former method—blind obedience—will foster the spirit of antagonism and call the State’s protection “interference,” thus weakening the efficiency of the State and of the individual, for the State is the multiplication of its citizens; but through the latter method the individual will carry out the law with intelligence and interest. This will be constructive and it will be permanent, for again, if the State is the sum of its citizens, the efficiency of the State is the sum of the efficiency of the citizens.

Their interests are now identical, the man has become equal master with the State; they are co-partners. His motive for right living is greater than the letter of the law, for he is the living law, the protest against wrong and the fulfillment of the right.

The next generation must be born with healthy bodies, must be nurtured in healthy physical and moral environments, and must be filled with ambition to give birth to a still healthier, still nobler generation. But, as has been said, “whatever improvements may sometime be achieved, the benefits of their influence can be enjoyed only by future, perhaps distantly future generations. We of the present have to take our heredity as we find it. We cannot follow the advice of a humorous philosopher to begin life by selecting our grandparents; but through hygiene (sanitary science) we can make the most of our endowment.”[6]

There is a force in the development of public opinion somewhere between individual action and national compulsion which may be termed “semi-public” action. It is in a measure the same sort of influence that in a later chapter is termed “stimulative education.” For instance, a hospital for the treatment of some special ailment is needed. Private enterprise furnishes the capital, proves the success of the treatment, and then the community comes forward and supports the institution. Such helps are accepted freely and are not considered undemocratic.

The less spectacular but more effective office of prevention of the need for charity, in the maintenance of cleanness in the markets, streets, and shops, yes, even in the homes of the people, has been neglected. Through lack of belief, and especially through inattention to causes so common as to escape notice, many details of great hygienic importance have been overlooked.

Some daring ones in commercial ventures are showing the possibilities of a standard in cleanness, and model establishments, dairies, bakeries, and restaurants should receive the hearty support of a community. If they do not receive this support, it is more than discouraging to the promoters, for it costs to be clean, a lesson the community must learn. The saving of money and the consequent loss of life through disease, or the spending of money and the saving of life through prevention, are the alternatives.

Undoubtedly the old view of charity as tenderly caring for the sick—because there must always be a certain amount of sickness in the world—has held men back from attempting to make a world without sickness. The charity worker of the past had no hope of really making things better permanently.

The new view, based upon scientific investigation, is that it is not charity that is needed to support invalids who once stricken must fade away, but preventive action to give the patient hope and fresh air. Most important of all, the experience already gained shows how far from the truth was the old fatalistic notion of the necessary continuance of disease.

While the support of many agencies—dispensaries, clinics, hospitals, sanatoria, etc.—must for a time depend upon private philanthropy, the expense is in the nature of an investment to bring in a high rate of interest in the future welfare of the race. As soon as the belief in the efficiency of these agents reaches the taxpayer he will willingly furnish the funds for public agencies.

Today the child in the school is examined; then, if need be, is given special consideration at the dispensary, then sent to school, where, with fresh air, pure food, and hygienic surroundings, he will so strengthen himself as to combat the ravages of disease.

The Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, New York City, not only sends bread to fill the hungry stomach, but now sends a wise and sympathetic worker to help women to understand food and money values, which means a permanent help. And it no longer simply says to the tired, worried woman who has had no education-stimulus along the line of cleanness, “Be clean,” but sends in women to make the house an example, an exhibit of clean conditions, if you will. Example is stronger than precept.

In the rapid growth of cities, so often beyond anticipation, preparation for development or plans for extension have seldom been laid. Much suffering has been wrought to the families of men in our crowded cities, for there is no greater evil than the congestion of streets and buildings.

Many students of social conditions of today believe that the most serious menace is the situation best described as housing—the site, the crowding, the bad building, poor water supply and drainage, lack of light and air and cleanliness. All believe that it is economically a loss to the city in general, however profitable to a very few. To rent such buildings is a far greater crime than cruelty to animals or even the beating of women and children.

But groups of people the wide world over are keenly awake to this state of affairs, and though the problem is tremendous they are trying in numerous ways to solve it.

In some cities there are at present organizations urging “city planning,” while in several foreign cities the municipality has already made regulations. In some cities there are municipal model tenements, but this is still a project of too small proportions to affect the community.

Perhaps no modern movement that comprehends both the city planning and the housing of the working people is more ideal than the “Garden Cities” movement in England and the other countries following it.

If there is any spot on which the hand of the law should be laid, it is the congested districts in cities and mill villages. The evil has grown to such magnitude that the first steps will mean some drastic measures.

The author has elsewhere called it the Capitalists’ Opportunity. Instead of investing in an uncertain gold mine in some distant land, let the millions, for no less sum will suffice, be invested in a plot of land, whether an open field or a slum district depends on local conditions, and thereon cause to be erected habitations decently comfortable, wholly sanitary, and place over each group an inspector as both agent and teacher who shall be a friend to the tenants, and to whose office they may come freely with their needs. This plan has been in part carried out in the Model Tenements in New York, but variations and improvements are needed. There should be more light and air, more grass and trees, even if the buildings are fifteen-story towers.

The old story has been so often reiterated, “But the tenants will not use the devices,” that the capitalist has become callous to this appeal. The missing link in the chain has been the instruction to go with the construction.

All department stores, all venders of new mechanical appliances, have come to recognize the value of demonstration, or instruction, in the use of articles as an aid to purchase. The advocate of better dwellings must take a leaf from the commercial book and show how. It is in this that philanthropy has been weak in the past. It has assumed a power to see, where there was only a fear of handling the strange objects.

There is a virgin field for the capitalist who wishes to use some millions for the prosperity of the country to build a short trolley line to a district of sanitary houses with gardens, playgrounds, entertainment halls, etc.; such a village to contain, not long blocks, but both separate houses and tenements from two rooms up, possibly several stories high, where the elders may have light and air without the confusion of the street. Dust and noise will be eliminated. There should be a central bakery and laundry, and, most important of all, an office where both men and women skilled in sanitary and economic practical affairs may be found ready to go to any home and advise on any subject. There has never yet been such an enterprise with all the elements worked out. Several, however, have shown the way, the Morris houses in Brooklyn, for example.

It is easier to take a city block and construct fireproof, high buildings than to solve transportation problems. We are losing our fear of the high buildings as we see the great value of light and air. There is chance for work in this direction, for in spite of rapid transit some must live in the center of things.

Let a philanthropist or two, instead of building hospitals, set some bright young architects and sanitarians to devising such suitable housing conditions for city and suburbs as will obviate the necessity for hospitals. Any lover of his kind, any one who longs for fame, could find both it and the blessing of the homeless by this means, and in the end get a fair return for his investment.

The Federal Department of Labor[7] has studied workingmen’s houses, but living in the house has not been worked up. The housewife has no station to which she may carry her trials, like the experiment stations which have been provided for the farmer. Here is another opportunity for the capitalist to hasten the time when the State will supply these. The way will very soon be laid out and the first steps taken.

For the immediate present some standard of healthful housing is needed, and now that a similar type of house and of apartment house is being built in all cities and towns from one ocean to the other, and from Texas to Maine, such a standard is compatible with conditions.

A score card for houses to rent would save much wrangling. The agent shows the card with this house’s rating, and the tenant learns that some of his wishes are incompatible with the standard, and some would mean a much higher rent than he is willing to pay. Professor J. R. Commons, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, has devised a score card to serve the house hunter and householder as a standard of comparison. This should serve the house builder as well, indicating what the demand will be forty or fifty years hence.

At present the rating stands somewhat as follows:

The final score card may vary somewhat.

For rent collectors there is also a score card.

A score card movement might be started as a hobby, and in the end lead public opinion to judicial choice and action. No such movement, however, is possible without leaders, and leaders of the right type.

The lesson for the community to be drawn from a study of crowd psychology is that of leadership and loyal coöperation. The common man is likely to be possessed of one idea at a time. If such an one becomes a leader, there is danger that equally vital factors will be overlooked. Safety is found in a combination of leaders to make an all-round improvement.

Each individual is too busy in his own affairs to look after his own, much less his neighbor’s, health and comfort, hence community life, with its advantages, brings its own dangers. Children in school in contact with other children; crowds in trains, in elevators, stores, in lecture halls, contract habits as well as diseases. The need for large quantities of supplies at one point brings long-distance transportation and cold storage difficulties. The man who caters to public need does not look far ahead to consequences, and if unrestrained may prove more of a menace than a convenience.

The safe and reasonable way is to delegate to certain persons the making and enforcement of regulations corresponding to the needs of the times, and then to obey them, even at some personal inconvenience.

Each community should put into the hands of its health officers the carrying out of the rules it has agreed to as an insurance against outbreaks of disease. Does a man let his fire insurance policy lapse because the year has passed without a fire? Even if the regulation seems superfluous to the particular individual or family, let it be remembered that there are inflammable spots in every community. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety in sanitary as well as in military affairs. As in the army, the community must delegate scout duty to certain chosen individuals and rely on their report for safety.