That the congestion exhibit answered questions as well as asked them, and that it has a constructive program to offer not only to New York but to the whole country are amply proved by the decision just reached, and announced to-day for the first time, to hold an exhibit and conference of city planning next March. "Every American city needs a city plan now," is the conclusion of the committee, and the steps by which it has arrived at this conclusion are interestingly set forth in its announcement.
While the organization bears the name of the Committee on Congestion of Population in New York, its scope and purpose are much wider. The program approved by its executive committee is "to obtain a plan for the development of Greater New York, and other American cities, along economic, hygienic and aesthetic lines; and to promote the better distribution of population throughout city, state and nation."
To establish the need for such a program, the committee offers as "admitted facts" the following:
Many American cities with a population of over 50,000 have congestion of population, factories and offices; such congestion creates problems for which we cannot find solutions; no city should use all the land within its boundaries as intensively as is necessary in its most congested areas,—to do so perpetuates congestion; no American city yet has a legal right to prescribe the height and use of buildings in its various sections; no city can develop normally without a plan which anticipates its growth for twenty-five or fifty years.
As a means of stimulating consideration of the subject and of promoting farsighted planning for the future, the committee has adopted as its slogan the statement, "Every American city needs a city plan now." It will show, it announces, the cost of the lack of a city plan in New York, the city planning which has been done in some American and foreign cities, and the pressing need for a city plan in New York to-day. The conference on city planning in March will include an exhibit of the best developments from all over the world. Both exhibit and conference will be keyed up to two major considerations: "the concentration of one-half the population of a great state in one city makes the problem of statewide importance; the concentration of one-nineteenth of a nation's population in one city gives the problem national bearing."
There will be study of the best methods for distribution of population, for promoting feasible methods of locating factories and industrial colonies, and an educational campaign to show the advantages of migration from congested centers.
EMPLOYERS PAY FOR SANATORIUM CARE
Massachusetts, almost invariably a leader in preventive measures, is developing this year a most unique and promising kind of co-operative effort in the prevention of tuberculosis. Massachusetts was the first state to organize a board of health, dating from 1869. It was the first state to choose its factory inspectors from the medical profession, this dating from 1906, and out of these two farsighted provisions of the law has grown during the past two months a plan by which manufacturers are assuming a part of the financial burden in seeing to it that operatives in their factories, found to have tuberculosis in the incipient stage, are sent to the Rutland Sanatorium and given the best possible opportunity for cure.
The plan originated in Worcester which, with a string of neighboring towns and villages, forms one of the sixteen inspection districts into which the state is divided. As a result of the activity of Dr. M. G. Overlock, the state inspector of health in charge, seventy manufacturing plants, employing more than 20,000 hands, have followed the example of David H. Fanning, president of the Royal Worcester Corset Company, in agreeing to pay a part of the maintenance cost of any of their employes sent to Rutland. The cost in the sanatorium is nine dollars a week. Of this the state pays five dollars and the company four dollars. The term usually agreed upon is three months. At the end of that time, a large number of the cases have been so far restored that they can be taken to nearby, supervised boarding houses and farms and make room for new patients,—a plan hit upon to relieve the great pressure upon this institution which accepts only incipient cases. The employer continues his contribution. The boarding houses, conducted along approved lines, have sprung up all over the surrounding hills much as they have at Saranac Lake in New York.
The factory inspection has been keyed up to take the greatest possible advantage of the co-operation of employers. Frequent visits are made to all plants, but to those in which the work rooms are full of dust, or where there are other conditions favoring tuberculosis, Dr. Overlock makes a visit once a month. All minors on the working staff are taken before him, and required to furnish a full family history. If there has been tuberculosis in the family, even remote, a medical examination is at once made. The others are examined more superficially, but the least trace of suspicious symptoms is at once seized upon as cause for an examination. In this way, it is believed, incipient cases among minors will be caught in their earliest stages. The system will later be extended to adults. An extension of the plan to secure the interest and help of employers has begun in some other inspection districts, and will eventually be introduced throughout the state.