We believe that every State should have wisely ordered health laws, with officers empowered to enforce them, and also that a National Department of Health should be created, comporting with the dignity and importance of the cause. This department should work effectively for the promotion of the physical and hence the moral and intellectual health of the people.
The accurate registration of births and deaths, which has been called the ‘Bookkeeping of Humanity,’ is a fundamental necessity for a study and knowledge of disease, and for all public health work. Therefore, we affirm our belief in the importance of vital statistics registration, and recommend that all States now without proper vital statistics adopt as early as possible the model bill for the registration of vital statistics indorsed by the United States Bureau of the Census, and by many prominent professional and scientific bodies.
We urge the strengthening of laws safeguarding the health and the lives of workers in industrial establishments; and we commend to the employers of labor all practicable safety devices and proved preventive measures against illness and injury and physical inefficiency; and we urge upon the other States the investigation of accidents by elevators and the enactment of laws similar to those on the statute books of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
We commend the activity of all individuals and organizations and governmental agencies to put an end to such work by children and women as impairs the health of the race. Childhood is our greatest resource, and its right to protection in growing to a normal maturity is inalienable. We deplore the ignorant use of medicines; and we call upon all humane and educational agencies to teach the waste and danger of any drug-habit.
We earnestly advocate the employment by communities and manufacturing concerns of such methods of sewage disposal as will render their waste products harmless to health and utilize them in the restoration of soil fertility; and we urge the enactment by States of laws prohibiting stream pollution and by the Federal Government of such legislation as will prevent the pollution of interstate and coastal waters.
Uniform State legislation regulating the refrigeration of perishable food stuffs is advisable, therefore this Congress recommends that its Food Committee be requested to study the questions involved in the production, collection, sanitary preparation, transportation, preservation and marketing of perishable foods and to report its findings to the succeeding Congress as a basis for uniform legislation.
In view of the enormous losses annually sustained by the agricultural interests of the United States on account of the ravages of injurious insects, which might be kept more under control by an increase of insect-eating birds, we urge the passage of Federal laws for the protection of all migratory birds; and the passage of State laws for the prohibition of spring shooting and of the sale of game.
We reaffirm the great importance of our fishery resources, which are threatened with serious diminution. We urge upon Congress and the States to provide more liberally for the propagation and preservation of food fishes.
LANDS.
We keenly recognize the need of the people of the country for more complete and accurate knowledge of their land and its conditions than is now available, in order to promote their economic, social and intellectual well-being and to conserve scattered individual energy;