The times., 1898-04-17

There has been more or less talk
since the beginning of the war rumors
about the possibility of yellow fever
should our troops be engaged in Cuba
during the rainy season. This is good
time for people TO remember that an
epidemic feeds on filth and unsanitary
conditions. The great plaques of the
Middle Ages were largely due TO the
fact that people did not have much use
for water. Nowadays the public is
more alive to the necessity of personal
and household cleanliness than it was
then, but there is still room for i'm
provement. And one of the things which
some Of the most enlightened nations of
today have not yet learned is that
whatever affects the individual is liable
TO affect the community.
1t is not enough for the rich and the
well-to-do to secure good sanitary con-
ditions for their own dwellings, and to
insist on personal cleanliness in their
attendants. 1t is not enough to keep
the streets of a great city clean for the
feet of the more prosperous classes.
There are many diseases which depend
on what may be called 'neighborhood
filth'-dirt which cannot be escaped
by the tenant so long as the owner is
careless and mercenary. 1t is quite
within the bounds of possibility that
large bath house and laundry estab-
lished in any one of the poorer sections
of any large town, a place which. at
small expense. or without expense. wo-
men could obtain plenty of hot water
for washing, a place which should con-
tain plenty Of bath tubs and might also
have adiuncts in the form of bake
house in which food could be scientitl-
cally cooked as ii is in like establish
ments in England-it is quite within the
bounds of possibility that such an es-
tablishment might pay for itself in
very short time, simply by saving the
city the hospital expenses and funeral
expenses of the victims of typhoid and
other epidemics due to lack of rleanli-
ness. In a time when there is any
chance of a more serious epidemic, the
lack of sanitary precautions in the al
leys and slums of a city like Washing
ton may be still more serious in its
dangers. 1t is absurd for any rich man
to suppose that by the mere eXpendi-
ture of money on his own house and be-
longings he can keep himself and his
family free from disease. So long as
the poor inhabit squalid dwellings
where water is scarce and microbes
are plentiful so long will the sickness
generated in those trenches where the
reconcentrados of the great commercial
war are huddled be communicated to
people in more prosperous circum-
stances In our complex civilization
the man who handles the ice, who dis
| tributes the milk, who works about the
! bakery who acts as messenger, as SER
want, as waiter, as laborer, cannot live
in unhealthy conditions without being
a menace TO the community. There are
hundreds of ways in which the germs
| of an epidemic may be spread, and the
only remedy for such a condition of
things is with the capitalist. The ten
ant must take what he can find. His
wages may not permit him to live in the
! comfort attainable by a more prosper
| Gus man. But for the sake of the COM
munty his dwelling must be one in
which cleanliness is possible. In gem
erations to come the ignorance and self
! ishness which permit such districts as
| the slums Of our large cities to exist
will probably be looked upon with the
same horror with which we now view
| the conditions of life in the Middle
Ages. The sooner this is understood,
and the sooner the capitalist recognizes
the necessity of housing his tenants
properly, the less danger there will be
of an immense sacrifice of lives in some
season of pestilence.