Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-07
THE WORLD WAR ON RATS
ZUSCHLAG'S LIFETIME CAM
PAIGN AGAINST PEST.
Danish Government Perfecting
Measures for determination Of
the Animal.
From the London Mail.

From the London Mail.
A society in Copenhagen. aided and
allotted by the Danish government and
legislature, Is perfecting the machinery
for a war which will ultimately embroil
the whole civilized world. 1t will end only
with the utter determination Of the
enemy. 1t will be fought with all the aids
that the Ingenuity of man can supply;
the enemy will be shot, trapped. poisoned
and price will be set on his head.
That, at any rate. is the avowed OBJ
jeot of the society engineering this war.
Its title is "L'Association 1nternauonale
pour la Destruction Rationale des Rats
Though 1t has only been in existence
few years, it has already exercised great
influence not only In Denmark, Dut also
in other countries.
1t is not SO very long ago that oven in
Copenhagen the seriousness of the prob
lem was far from being understood by the
man in the street. But one man did
understand the rat and all its evil ways
and worked the better part of lifetime
to make them understood by others. He
was a civil engineer. called Zuschlag,
whose hobby was the study of economic
zoology. In particular the life history of
mans enemies in the animal world: He
noted that while other pests ''specialized,'
as it were, combining their unsolicited at
tention to certain circumscribed spheres.
the rat was ubiquitous. Agriculture and
shipping, industries and trades, country
mansions and farm cottages, palaces and
sluns-all suffered from the depredations
of the rat. He began to gather statistics
and found that the rat appeared to be
everywhere, to eat everything, to destroy
everything. excepting alone stone and
iron. His Information told of whole acres
Of corn laid low, Of raids made upon
poultry farms. of nightly devastations in
grocers'. bakers and butchers shops; of
water pipes gnawed through and places
in consequence flooded, causing hundreds
Of pounds of damage. He was enabled
to state that the rats cost his country
every year at least s4OO.OOO in preventable
damage.
Dissemination Of Plague.
The last count in Zuschlags indictment
against the rat is the terrible part played
by it in the dissemination of bubonic
plague. He published his views in 1908
in book which may be regarded as the
standard work on the subject and the
official declaration of the international
war against the rat. A few weeks ago
this theory accepted in the report issued
by the plague committee appointed by the
secretary of state for India
To provide an object lesson for the peo-
pie at home and abroad in the rational
destruction of rats the committee selected
Copenhagen and the neighboring Fred
eriksborg. The total bag obtained in
eighteen weeks amounted to los, 900 rats,
at a cost of 1926 kroner (about E736)
paid for premiums and cremating, or 11sd
a rat Now" said Zuschlag and his
committee. you will all agree that each
rat eats and destroys each day at least
one farthings worth Of food and material
One hundred and three thousand rats
would have cost you about $4,000. Hav-
ing spent 9736 on killing them, we have
saved YOU EDS 600 odd.
Societies Take Up the War.
This way of reasoning appealed to the
economical Dane. Campaigns were under
taken In other places with similar salts
factory results. and SO much had Zusch-
lag's scheme impressed the public mind
with its practicability that In the follow
ing year first the Farmers Union, then
the Property Owners Society and then all
the borough councils presented petitions
to the government and riksdag asking
that Zuschlag's proposals should re en-
bodied in a law without delay. Several
bills were subsequently brought in and
dropped, but last year the home secre-
tary introduced a measure which was
passed unanimously by both houses OF
parliament and became law last March,
This rat law is now in full swing.
Under the act the state undertakes to
spend Ell, 800 annually for three years and
compels the county and borough councils
to spend IS Sd year for each 100 in
habitants. on the society having given the
guarantee that 1t will spend at least
G5O0 each year. In return for this ex-
pendit6re the society is intrusted with
the entire working of the act