Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 12

Here, again, the monogamic family is the social interest at stake. It is a conflict for altars and fires. We are told that all these results are the effect of a natural, uniform tendency in the progress of the business world, and that it is useless to combat it. Professor Henderson reminds us that tendency to uniformity revealed by statistics may be reversed when resolute men and women, possessed of higher ideals, unite to resist it. Jacob A. Riis holds that these evils are not by a decree of fate, but are the result of positive wrong, and he dedicates his "Ten Years' War" as follows--"to the faint-hearted and those of little faith."

In like manner we call today for more faith in a way out of the slough of despond, more resolute endeavor to improve social and economic conditions. We beg the leaders of public opinion to pause before they condemn the efforts making to teach those means of social control which may build yet again a home life that will prove the nursery of good citizens and of efficient men and women with a sense of responsibility to G.o.d and man for the use they make of their lives.

INSTRUCTIVE INSPECTION

Mrs. Richards intended to embody the following material in Chapter VIII of the second edition. Because of her death it has seemed best to add it as an appendix.

WHITCOMB AND BARROWS.

CHAPTER X

INSTRUCTIVE INSPECTION[19]

[19] Read before the American Public Health a.s.sociation at Richmond, Va., October, 1909.

The checking of wastes of all description is much in the air, but there is less discussion about WASTE OF EFFORT than might be expected.

Yet effort means time, and saving of time saves lives as well as money.

Nearly every investigation of sanitary evils leads back to the family home (or the lack of one), and a great deal of the health authorities'

work is saving at the spigot while there is a hundred times the waste at the bunghole. The medical inspection of the schools was found to have little effect without the visiting school nurse, for the parents did not know how to better conditions and in the majority of cases did not believe in the need.

Such experience should give the health authorities a cue. Rules and Regulations should be enforced, but enforced with instruction as to the means of doing. The WHY is not so easily understood as the student of sanitary science seems to think. Germs and microbes are empty air to the street urchins until they have been shown on a screen in a lecture hall or until cultures have been made in the sight of the children in a schoolroom. One whole school district of intelligent parents was converted, many years ago, by giving the children in one cla.s.s two Petri dishes each with sterile prepared gelatine, with directions to open one in the sitting room while it was being swept, and two hours after the room had been thoroughly dusted to open the other in the same place for the same time. These "dust gardens," as the children called them, "took the place of the family alb.u.m" for callers, and spread knowledge.

Hundreds of similar experiences should convince any intelligent, earnest Board of Health that a teacher by nature or training should be in their employ, to be sent WITH POWER, like any other inspector, wherever ignorance--usually diagnosed as stubbornness--is found.

The health officer whose mother was a good housekeeper, not afraid of work, has no idea of the att.i.tude of half the housewives of his district. Having been made as a boy "to get the dustpan and brush and sweep up his whittlings," he does not realize that these houses in the tenement district have no dustpans, and that no one would bend his back to sweep up litter if there were. It is all swept into the alley or the street. Cheap, long-handled dustpans would be valuable sanitary implements. As has been elsewhere suggested, the garbage question in the tenement house needs study and must be solved by a practical housewife. There are such, and Boards of Health are wasting effort and the town's money until they avail themselves of this help in the enforcement of their rules.

All Health Boards use the strong arm of the law, _i. e._, a police inspector's club, to drive the ignorant and careless householder to keep his premises from becoming a nuisance. The newly-arrived, prospective citizen, or more often citizeness, fails to understand what it is all about--neither the words nor the pantomime convey an idea, except that this country is topsy-turvy anyway, for everything is different in this new land.

In the process of learning what not to do, the dwellers in the alleys flee when the health officer appears, and oppose a stubborn indifference to his threats. When his back is turned, matters go on as before and nothing is gained, but an opportunity is lost. Law is a potent educator when rightly applied, but it may work more harm than good.

Rules of action clearly explained are soon accepted--like traffic rules, notification of contagious diseases, disinfection, etc.

The placing on the force of each town of at least one specially trained "Explainer" would result in cleaner back yards and less illness and, better than all else, a more friendly feeling between the officials and those they honestly wish to help; for I do not think there is often justification for such remarks as were made to me by a shrewd California countryman when I was showing him about in the traveling exhibit, the sanitation car: "Oh, this is all to get a job.

It's another form of graft--to get some money to spend."

It is true that the value of many health measures does not appear on the surface. Sometimes it is necessary to wait for vital statistics to prove a gain.

It is beginning to be thrown in the faces of sanitary authorities that the laboratory wisdom does not reach the street; that there is not enough, or rapid enough, improvement in general conditions. Newspapers are ready, for the most part, to disseminate information and benevolent societies write tracts, but we must remember how little WORDS mean--especially printed words--to those unaccustomed to acquiring information that way.

The actual showing in an alley of the process of cleaning up; the going into a house and opening the windows at the top and tacking on a wire netting to keep out the flies; the actual cleaning of the garbage pail, perhaps, or at least the standing by and seeing that it is properly done--all such actual doing, even if it is done only in one house on a street, will spread the information all over the neighborhood.

One of the most helpful offices is to tell the woman where she can get the special article needed, and what it will cost, and to show her the thing itself, in a friendly spirit. Such visits would soon revolutionize the sanitary condition of any community.

Villages need this help even more than cities, for there they have fewer chances to know about inventions and perhaps are less resourceful in making them.

There may be races, as there are individuals, whom persecution drives to progress--who do find means to execute unjust commands--but the people a health officer has to deal with can be better led by kindness and will learn from teachers, if the teaching is in the form of example or demonstration.

It is an incontrovertible fact that to hasten sanitary reform it is only necessary to hold out the helping hand; to encourage the ignorant citizen to ask for instruction and direction, instead of placing upon him the task of making bricks without either clay or straw. There are times and seasons and individuals at which and on whom the bludgeon must be used--the greater good covering the lesser evil; but such cases are less common than present practice would seem to indicate.

The tenement house mother who has only one pan for all her needs and one broken pitcher for all fluids does not readily understand why she must keep her milk bottle for milk only. Who is to tell her so that she will understand?

The men may be shamed into cleaning up the back yards and alleys by pictures of such conditions in contrast to what might result with a little effort. [The famous Cash Register yards were started in this way.] Neglected spots have been cleaned up all over the country by similar influences. Why does not the health officer take a leaf from this book of recorded good work and show conditions known to him? Is he afraid of hard words from the owner? He will have the approval and support of all good citizens.

Health Board regulations may be left at a house AFTER they have been explained, and a firm insistence on obedience may then have an effect.

Why should there not be a constant exhibit of the conditions found within the boundaries of a district, with the changes for the better indicated as soon as they occur?

The Health Board office is now in some out-of-the-way place, where few people ever go and where those who do go are frequently not welcomed.

Has the Board ever asked itself why it is often so misunderstood, so hampered in its work? What Board will be the first to take an office on a busy street and put pictures and samples with clearly printed legends in the windows--examples of the evasion of the plumbing laws on a T-joint pipe; photographs of a dairy barn; photographs of a street at daybreak, showing the few open windows, and the one or two, if any, open at the top--these would serve as texts for the newspapers' sermons, sure to be preached, and back-alley conversations thereon.

Why not? Rival water companies are allowed to show filters to prove their claims.

The basis of all successful sanitary progress is an intelligent and responsive public.

The problem is to visualize cause and effect to the ordinary individual, too absorbed in his own affairs to study out the principle for himself.

The success of the street cleaning brigade, tried for one season in Boston; the improvement in the condition of parks wherever receptacles for wastes have been placed; the tidy condition of corner lots where civic improvement leagues have taken the matter up with the children, all point to a means neglected by the officials, and hence to wasted opportunity and delayed obedience to regulations.

For the position of instructive inspector, it goes without saying that a trained woman will be worth more than a man, since most of the regulations affect or would be controlled by women.

A gain in the speed of adoption of sanitary reforms would be comparatively rapid under a thoroughly qualified woman as instructive inspector, and that there will not be any great gain until such a measure is adopted is the firm belief of the writer.

Mrs. von Wagner's work in Yonkers, begun in 1897 under the Civic League, is well known. After three years' trial the Board of Health established her in the position of Sanitary Inspector. Her work in the tenement districts has been most successful. Several other cities have followed the example of Yonkers, but the practice is by no means general. Yet there is no doubt that it would add efficiency to any Board of Health.

The most recent experiment was the employment, the past summer, of an inspector provided by the Women's Munic.i.p.al League of Boston, to inspect and devise means for bettering conditions in a district of small shops where food is sold. The district had been found by the Market Committee of this organization to be in need of such help. A graduate of the School for Social Workers was chosen, who carried on her campaign with the spirit of helpfulness fostered by her training.

She was given a badge by the Board of Health, who have been most sympathetic and cordial in their support. The experiment has been justified by the results and especially by the reception accorded the inspector by the people of the district. It has proved that there is a responsive desire to fulfill the law wherever its provisions are understood.

Inspection cannot fulfill its purpose until it is instructive. Man and the law will be in accord when the benefits of the law to man are appreciated.

It is inc.u.mbent upon the sanitary authorities to see to it that their efforts are not wasted on an inert, partially hostile clientele.