Now, just one other thing on that. It is perfectly preposterous to expect a superintendent in a county such as there are in my State, for illustration, to visit one hundred and fifty or more schools, going over roads in all times of year, in all conditions, to make his visits worth while. He may get there once a year. We ought to imitate Oregon in this respect. In Oregon they have subordinate superintendents, one for every twenty schools. There they can accomplish something.
My time is more than taken. You have been patient, as has your President. I thank you most sincerely. I only regret that I can only touch the edges of this problem.
In conclusion, you representatives of this National Conservation Congress, here is the problem. The great thing we need to do, first of all, is to make public everywhere the actual condition of the rural schools. Publicity is the first step; organization is the second; organization of national scope and of State scope. Give me twenty common people in any State in this Union and I will guarantee to see that the rural schools make more real genuine advance in the next five years than under ordinary circumstances they would do in ten years.
The country is the Nation’s great recruiting ground. Here we look for the best men and women of tomorrow who are to take leadership, who are to represent in their actions and in their lives the good red blood that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. Are we doing our duty when but a paltry three million five hundred thousand out of a total of fourteen million are not so much as accomplishing the work of the grades? (Applause.)
President White—Louisiana has been first and foremost in several phases of Conservation. Louisiana stands first in making forestry possible by wise and beneficial laws that encourage forestry, and I think Louisiana stands among the first in its State Board of Health, doing something worth while in every parish. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. Oscar Dowling, of New Orleans, Louisiana, President of the Louisiana State Board of Health, who will speak on “Hygiene in Relation to Public Health.”
Address, “Hygiene in Relation to Public Health”
Dr. Dowling—Mr. Chairman, Members of the National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very glad to have this opportunity to appear before this great Congress. In the beginning I want to say that we owe much of our enthusiasm to the good work of the Indiana State Board under Dr. Hurty, and to your pure food department, under Dr. Barnard; also to Dr. Evans, of Chicago, and Dr. Wiley, of Washington. We have endeavored to imitate them in some ways, but nevertheless, in some ways we have fallen short.
Hygiene, the science of preservation and promotion of health, in some form, has been recognized by every nation since the dawn of civilization.
Among the people of antiquity, conquest and domination were directly dependent on physical vigor, hence their laws regulating this feature of national life. Among the Greeks, the health idea was embodied in the cult of Hygeia which arose hundreds of years before the Christian era, consequent probably to a devastating plague. In the early period of Rome, when courage and patriotism were cardinal virtues, physical development was provided for and emphasized. Social and political fluidity in the middle ages precluded the evolution of organized thought or systems in sanitary science.
Individuals set aside conventional thought and method and strove with Nature that they might learn her secrets; their work was not in vain, but with few exceptions their discoveries were unimportant.