It is a hopeful sign that a few enlightened municipalities have set an example in remodeling districts, not only in the erection of comfortable homes, but further in the establishment of healthful and beautiful environments. The housing problem is one of the most difficult and complex of our day. It can be solved only by enlightened legislation supported by public opinion.
About a century and a quarter ago the factory system began to develop with intensity in England. Later, in this country, it grew by leaps and bounds. Child labor with its attendant evils was a logical result. For nine years there has been systematic effort to control the unhygienic features of the system. Some good has been accomplished, but because of the nature of the problem progress is slow. The injury to the child is plainly apparent. Long hours in poorly ventilated rooms, with constant use of the same set of muscles, stunts and dwarfs the body; equally, the mind. Toil of this nature uses up the young life; it leaves the State the burden of caring for an individual hopelessly inefficient if not worse. But of more importance is the consequential physical deterioration. If these youthful toilers grow to maturity their bodies are devitalized; if they marry their children are almost invariably low in vitality. Hygiene in its application does not imply the remedy of existing conditions alone for the individual or the present; it looks to the future. Therefore, protection of the child is a principle of paramount importance.
Child labor laws are now more humane than a few years ago; conditions in many factories have been vastly improved. But as yet we are far from an ideal stage in the regulation and supervision of this feature of industrial life.
Every argument concerning the employment of children in factories may be applied to women engaged in similar occupations. In the mills and shops where women stand all day, where they endure for hours not only unhygienic environment, but in addition mental anxiety, where the whip “employed by the week only” is held over them, the nervous strain as well as physical exertion saps the very foundations of vitality. Investigations made by Dr. R. Morton of New York, show the health of industrial women is proving a serious thing in the United States, and unless conditions are bettered that there will be a general breakdown of the working women of the country. Nor is this the sum total of the consequences. In the children of these women low vitality is perpetuated. Records quoted by Dr. George Reid, Health Officer of Stafford, England, give the mortality of children under one year of age as greater among those of mothers who work in factories than among home mothers. Statistics compiled by him show the death rate one hundred and forty-five per one thousand births for infants of home mothers and two hundred and nine per one thousand births for infants of mothers who work in factories. The injury to the State is apparent.
On the question of prevention of occupational diseases, I cannot do better than quote the measures suggested by Dr. H. Linenthal, of Boston. They are: collection of accurate data about working conditions; data relative to the effect of occupation on mortality; proper medical instruction; reporting to health authorities specific industrial diseases; examination of all industrial workers; exclusion of minors and women from certain industries; sanitary laws for factories; regulation of dangerous trades by health authorities, and the carrying of an educational campaign of hygiene among employers and employes. The comprehensiveness of these measures indicates the extension of the problem. No movement of recent times is more humane and economic than the one termed industrial insurance.
The purpose is the capitalization of the workingman’s energy at the time of his greatest productivity; the basic principle that every far-sighted social policy is founded more on energy reserve than money reserve. The aim is to secure for the nation the greatest possible reserve of bodily and mental force and power and physical and moral health.
The problem has been attacked in various ways by different countries. Germany has been the most successful. There the workingman’s insurance has attained the dimension of a gigantic social institution. Dr. Frederick Zahn of Munich, Director of the Bavarian Statistical Office, in a recent address, gave the following interesting figures: Out of 16,000,000 laborers in Germany, 14,000,000 are carrying sick insurance, and 15,700,000 invalid and old age policies.
In the past twenty-five years over one billion six hundred million dollars have been paid in benefits. In addition, prophylactic measures are provided for.
Only those familiar with the necessities for correct data in health work appreciate the immediate and imperative need for statistical information. Records of births and deaths and of supplementary details form a basis for advancement. Without such data, the sanitarian gropes in the dark. Yet no request from the health department is so lightly treated. Reform in this can be wrought slowly. Appropriations to pay registrars and enforcement through the courts are the means for the inauguration of a more perfect system.
One of the hygienic essentials in this country is education in the relative values of food products. The phenomenal growth of the urban population which has reduced the number of producers and the almost universal practice of adulteration make imperative the enforcement of stringent laws and instruction in the nutritive value of classes of foods and the economy of selection.