Fiske: Civil Government in the United States, pages 34-95.
Henderson: Social Elements, pages 292-317.
Hart: Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities, pages 92-105.
Cooley: Social Organization, pages 402-410.
CHAPTER XXI[ToC]
HEALTH AND BEAUTY
151. Health and Beauty in the Community.—Rural government formerly limited its range of activity to political and economic concerns. The individualism of Americans resented the interference of government in other matters. If property was made secure and taxed judiciously for the maintenance of public institutions, the duty of government was accomplished. The individual man was prepared to assume all further responsibility for himself and family. Such matters as the health of a rural community and its æsthetic appearance were left to individual initiative and generally were neglected. On many occasions the housewife showed her sympathy and kindliness by nursing a sick neighbor, but the members of the community had little appreciation of the seriousness of contagion and infection, no knowledge of germs, and small thought of preventive measures. The appearance of their buildings and grounds was nobody's business but their own. They had no conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and grounds, and a general air of shabbiness and neglect that pervaded many communities. It was not that the people lacked the æsthetic sense, but it had not been trained, and in the struggle for the subjugation of a new continent all such minor considerations must give way to the satisfaction of elemental wants.