In our mind’s eye we have now completely made over the system. Metropolitan counties have retired from the field; the remainder have in a large measure been put in command of their own destinies through a generous extension of the home-rule principle. The county politician of the conventional type has been extinguished and single-minded service of the whole people has replaced a hyphenated allegiance that put the county chairman in the place of highest honor.
What could such a county do for its citizens?
It should be kept in mind that this county of the imagination with which we are particularly concerned will be practically confined to rural and semi-rural localities. Here, even while we dream, a very actual metamorphosis is going on which inevitably promotes a sense of community interest. Thanks to Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford, the countryside is getting together in spite of itself! The rural gentry will think in bigger units and the basis of its allegiances will be correspondingly broadened. And a more fundamental accomplishment for county betterment could not well be conceived, for, as Herbert Quick has asked: “Did you ever know a man that was proud of his county?” The answer to which he gives himself: “I knew but one such man and his relations were all in county offices.”
The county of the past has lacked opportunity to “do itself proud.” The county of the future will be equipped to do interesting things in an interesting way. But it must develop policies—real politics—as a substitute for the interest that has made place hunting and place holding a basic rural industry. The farmer of the future must be given something more wholesome to think about “during the long winter evenings” than who is to be the next coroner; and he must cease to measure his freedom by the number of offices he attempts to fill with his ballot.
But before county citizenship is raised to the point of appreciation of the new order a benevolent deed of violence must be done to a power in the community noted principally for sycophantic approval of the administration in power, an utter lack of either conscience or ideas, and “patent insides”—the county official newspaper. The cheap “boiler-plate” weekly must go the way of old Dobbin and in its place will come some means yet to be devised, for putting out official advertising that really advertises and furnishing news that is not only “fit to print,” but worth the while.
When these mechanical essentials of an efficient local democracy shall have been acquired the county will be in a position to formulate a genuine program of service. As to the ingredients for the same a few suggestions may be in order:
PUBLIC HEALTH
Contrary perhaps to general opinion, the rural sections of the country are not conspicuously free from a public health problem. All the squalor, bad housing and contagion is not in the crowded city tenements. Rural citizens have perhaps much more to learn about pure milk and water, for instance, than their city brethren. But the public health movement has struck the country districts. It seems to have come principally by way of the nation wide attack on tuberculosis. During the past six or seven years there has been a remarkable campaign for institutions for the care of persons afflicted with this malady. It is something entirely distinct from the idea of caring for the pauper sick, for it has been found difficult to persuade many people in need of proper treatment to go to an institution to which a long-standing stigma is attached. New York now has such special institutions in about half of its counties. In the South, North Carolina has made more important progress than any other state. Ninety of its hundred counties have part-time county physicians, while the other ten have county health officers devoting their entire time and energies to the preservation of public health and the prevention of disease. The standard for the selection of these officers is very high.
Wisconsin has enacted a statute authorizing the board of supervisors of any county to employ a graduate trained nurse whose duties are:
“To act as a consulting expert on hygiene for all schools not already having medical inspection either by physician or visiting nurse, to assist the superintendents of the poor in their care of the poor in the county who are in need of the services; to give instruction to tuberculosis patients and others relative to hygiene measures to be observed in preventing the spread of tuberculosis; to aid in making a report of existing cases of tuberculosis; to act as visiting nurse throughout the county and to perform such other duties as a nurse and hygienic expert as may be assigned to her by the county board.”