That was the public drinking-cup. Here was a distinct menace that actual examples and figures showed was spreading the most loathsome diseases among innocent children. In 1908, he opened up the subject by ruthlessly publishing photographs that were unpleasantly but tremendously convincing. He had now secured the confidence of his vast public, who listened attentively to him when he spoke on an unpleasant topic; and having learned from experience that he would simply keep on until he got results, his readers decided that this time they would act quickly. So quick a result was hardly ever achieved in any campaign. Within six months legislation all over the country was introduced or enacted prohibiting the common drinking-cup in any public gathering-place, park, store, or theatre, and substituting the individual paper cup. Almost over night, the germ-laden common drinking-cup, which had so widely spread disease, disappeared; and in a number of States, the common towel, upon Bok's insistence, met the same fate. Within a year, one of the worst menaces to American life had been wiped out by public sentiment.
Bok was now done with health measures for a while, and determined to see what he could do with two or three civic questions that he felt needed attention.
XXXI.
Adventures in Civics
The electric power companies at Niagara Falls were beginning to draw so much water from above the great Horseshoe Falls as to bring into speculation the question of how soon America's greatest scenic asset would be a coal-pile with a thin trickle of water crawling down its vast cliffs. Already companies had been given legal permission to utilize one-quarter of the whole flow, and additional companies were asking for further grants. Permission for forty per cent of the whole volume of water had been granted. J. Horace McFarland, as President of the American Civic Association, called Bok's attention to the matter, and urged him to agitate it through his magazine so that restrictive legislation might be secured.
Bok went to Washington, conferred with President Roosevelt, and found him cognizant of the matter in all its aspects.
"I can do nothing," said the President, "unless there is an awakened public sentiment that compels action. Give me that, and I'll either put the subject in my next message to Congress or send a special message. I'm from Missouri on this point," continued the President. "Show me that the American people want their Falls preserved, and I'll do the rest. But I've got to be shown." Bok assured the President he could demonstrate this to him.
The next number of his magazine presented a graphic picture of the Horseshoe Falls as they were and the same Falls as they would be if more water was allowed to be taken for power: a barren coal-pile with a tiny rivulet of water trickling down its sides. The editorial asked whether the American women were going to allow this? If not, each, if an American, should write to the President, and, if a Canadian, to Earl Grey, then Governor-General of Canada. Very soon after the magazine had reached its subscribers' hands, the letters began to reach the White House; not by dozens, as the President's secretary wrote to Bok, but by the hundreds and then by the thousands. "Is there any way to turn this spigot off?" telegraphed the President's secretary. "We are really being inundated."
Bok went to Washington and was shown the huge pile of letters.
"All right," said the President. "That's all I want. You've proved it to me that there is a public sentiment."