Euthenics, the science of controllable environment / A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency

by Ellen H. Richards

CHAPTER III

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.