VACANT LOT GARDENING—ENTERPRISE PROMOTED BY THE BUREAU OF EDUCATION
THE STORY OF UNCLE SAM
Public Health and Education
ONE
Our country maintains an Army and a Navy to fight against human beings with whom we are occasionally at war. In the fight against two far more dangerous and insidious foes with whom we are always at war—Disease and Ignorance—our doctors have the aid and guidance of the United States Public Health Service and our schools that of the United States Bureau of Education. These Federal institutions are aided, respectively, by state and local boards of health and by state and local boards of education.
The Public Health Service, which is a branch of the Treasury Department, was formerly called the Marine Hospital Service, and was originally devoted only to caring for sick and disabled seamen of the American merchant marine. Today it is safeguarding the health of everybody in the country. It maintains quarantine stations and offices for the medical inspection of immigrants at the principal seaports; establishes domestic quarantines, when necessary, to prevent the spread of disease from state to state; investigates and suppresses epidemics; collects and publishes health statistics; makes elaborate studies of important diseases, such as hookworm disease, malaria, pellagra, trachoma, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis; investigates public water supplies and sewage; carries on research in regard to school, mental and industrial hygiene; and, last but not least, educates the people in hygiene and sanitation by distributing tons of literature, holding exhibits, giving lectures, lending lantern-slides, et cetera. During a recent outbreak of influenza the Public Health Service distributed 6,000,000 leaflets in regard to the disease. A new duty of the Service is to operate hospitals for the physical restoration and re-education of discharged soldiers disabled in the World War. The Service has established a Sanitary Reserve Corps, consisting of medical men and others who are available for active duty in time of national emergency.
The Bureau of Education, which is under the Department of the Interior, is the national clearing-house of information on educational subjects. This information is set forth in a large number of valuable publications, and the Bureau also maintains a corps of experts who travel about the country giving advice and conducting investigations in regard to various lines of education. One of the duties of this Bureau is to supervise the expenditure of the liberal funds provided by the Government toward the support of agricultural and mechanical colleges, commonly known as the “land-grant colleges.” Another is to operate schools for the education of native children in Alaska and to look after the Government reindeer industry in that territory. A comparatively recent undertaking is the promotion of home gardening under school direction in cities and towns throughout the country, and the organization of a School Garden Army, which has materially increased the national food-supply.
Another educational agency of the Government is the Federal Board for Vocational Education, which was organized in the year 1917. This Board directs a scheme of cooperation between the Federal Government and the states for the promotion of vocational education in the fields of agriculture, home economics and the industrial arts. Congress has made liberal appropriations for this work, and these are to be increased annually until they amount to $7,367,000 a year. Each state is required to spend as much for vocational education as it receives from the national Government for the same purpose. Before this plan was inaugurated, the training of young people at public expense for definite trades and industries had made little progress in the United States. Since the World War the Board has had charge of the training and education of discharged and disabled soldiers and sailors. This work is carried on in the various technical, trade and commercial schools of the country, or other institutions offering special courses, and also directly in the trades and industries. It is not limited to manual training. The Board has announced that “all careers are open to the disabled men.”
This educational work must not be confused with that carried on for discharged soldiers in the hospitals conducted by the Public Health Service, and for soldiers still in service in the Army hospitals.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 11, SERIAL No. 183
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.