Could anything be clearer proof that virtue was made of necessity?
What we need to study now is the chief necessity of modern life. When we have found that out we shall be able to rearrange our scale of virtues.
ANIMALS IN CITIES
A city is a group residence for human beings. There is no room in it for any animal but one—Genus Homo. At present we make a sort of menagerie of it.
Genus Homo is the major factor, bus he shares his common home with many other beasts, genus equus, genus canis, genus felis, and members of others whose Latin names are not so familiar.
The horse is most numerous. He is a clean animal, a good friend and strong servant where animals belong—in the country. In the city he is an enemy. His stable is a Depot for the Wholesale Distribution of Diseases.
The services of the horse, and the tons upon tons of fertilizing material produced by him, are financially valuable; but the injury from many deaths, the yearly drain from long sickness, and all the doctors and druggists bills, amounts to a far greater loss.
There is no horse work in a city that cannot be done by machine. The carriage, wagon, truck and dray, can take his place as workers; and they breed no flies.
We are learning, learning fast, how large a proportion of diseases spring from minute living things which get inside of us and play havoc with our organism. And very lately we are learning further, that of all the benevolent distributors of disease none are more swift and sure than certain insects; insects which are born and bred in and upon the bodies and excreta of animals.
It is true that our kitchen garbage furnishes another popular nursery for flies, but the unclean stable is the other breeding place.