Initiating a Campaign
In order to initiate a clean-up campaign, an agitation for it must first be started. The press, civic organizations and industrial life insurance companies have been the principal agitators.
The industrial life insurance companies reach the individual citizen and endeavor to get his cooperation in the movement for more sanitary laws and conditions. Unlike the press they reach the foreigner and the class of people who do not read the newspapers, or at most only the Sunday editions.
Some idea of the possibility for individual and community good which these agencies hold in their power may be gained when one considers that one company alone has millions of policy holders in the United States and Canada. The collectors making their weekly or monthly calls distribute leaflets and circulars disseminating sound ideas in regard to public and private health.
It is not possible to over-rate the press as a factor in the clean-up movement. The work of the newspaper does not stop with the spreading of information both before and during the campaign—in some instances it takes part in the activities. The columns of the newspapers are open to everything of a news nature that will materially assist—news stories, special articles, editorials, daily programs, cartoons and advertisements.
While the removal of rubbish is essentially a municipal affair, in many instances it was not until civic organizations, such as chambers of commerce, women’s clubs and school clubs, started an agitation for community effort that cities realized their responsibility and inaugurated campaigns.