Means are not wanting for similar work in rural communities. The homes may be reached by the right kind of instruction in the schools. The classes or clubs for women conducted by women county agents may be, and often are, used as means of health instruction. Public meetings at the "community center" at the schoolhouse may be devoted at times to public health problems, with lectures, moving pictures, and discussions. The local newspapers always afford a channel through which to get matters of this kind before the people. Local and state boards of health, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Public Health Service may and do use these and other agencies to reach the people.
RESPONSIBILITY OF THE HOME
No matter how much machinery for cooperation we may have in our community, like that described above, it cannot help much unless every family and every citizen cooperates intelligently.
In a large city, a small group of men, constituting the city council, may inaugurate measures which will accomplish sanitary improvements at thousands of homes; but for the accomplishment of sanitary improvements at 1000 farm homes at least 1000 persons … must be convinced that the sanitary measures are needed, become informed how to apply them, and be willing to put them into operation.
[Footnote: RURAL SANITATION, by L. L. Lumsden, Public Health
Bulletin No. 94, United States Public Health Service, p. 10.]
THE IMPORTANCE OF PURE AIR
Pure air is essential to good health. It is not always easy to get in the crowded living and working conditions of cities. There it is necessary to regulate these conditions by law, and factories and tenements are inspected to see that they are properly ventilated and not overcrowded. In rural communities there is less excuse for bad air, and the responsibility for it rests more directly upon the individual, as illustrated on page 112, Chapter X.
BAD AIR AND THE SPREAD OF DISEASE
It might seem that it is nobody's business but our own how we live in our homes or at our work. But bad air lessens vitality and nurtures disease. This reduces productive power. Moreover, colds, influenza, and tuberculosis (of which more than a million people are constantly sick in the United States), all of which are nourished in bad air, may be spread by contact, or by food handled by those who are sick. People who live in bad air at home mingle with others at church, in moving picture theaters, at school, in the courtroom, and in other public meeting places, which are themselves often poorly ventilated. It is strange that court rooms, where justice is administered, schools where children are prepared for life, and churches where people worship, are so often badly ventilated.
Report on the following: