The copper era., 1909-11-11
The Great White Plaque.
By Geo. H Maxwell

For ages the human race has been taught to recoil with horror from the lepers cry of "unclean."
 If the people could learn to have the same fear of tuberculosis, they would shun congested cities with a dread equal to that now felt for leper colony. Molokai is a safer place to live than in a New York tenement.
 "There are forty thousand children in New York suffering from pulmon- ary consumption" This startling declaration is made by Dr. Herman M. Biggs, one of the greatest author ities in the world on consumption.
 Ia 1900 there were 13,397 reported cases of consumption in New York. In 1908, g, ,325.
 In 1906 there were S,335 deaths in New York from tuberculosis, and 9,O26 in 1908.
 "The greater the density of popu- lation the higher the death rate from tuberculosis.
 In New York there are 543 acres having an average population of over 800 to the acre, and many single blocks have populations ranging from 2,O0O to 5000 and even up to 3,S66 to the block.
 As other cities grow the curse of congestion will fall on them with the same heavy hand. It is the penalty humanity is paying for shutting out the sunshine and fresh air from the lives and homes of the tenement dwellers, and burdening the poor with rents so high that not enough is lett from their earnings to maintain the safeguard against disease of a properly nourished body.
 Danger from the white plague turks in the darkness of every sunless room in every city flat and tenement. In New York alone 300. .OOO dark rooms are breeding places for the disease, and as an eminent physician recently told the New York board of estimate a single tuberculosis patient can spread seven billion tuberculosis germs in twenty-four hours. They infect the wall paper, the woodwork, the floors, the ceilings, and lie in wait for the next victim.
 Whenever the people become fully aroused to these facts multitudes will flee rom the death that hangs over them in the disease, abreeding tenements where they now live. Nothing can ever make it safe or healthful to live in such places. Wherever the sunshine is shut out death turks in the darkness.
 The most dreadful aspect of tuber- culosis in the tenements is not the death of adults so much as the in lection of innocent and helpless children. Grown men and women who commit the crime against their offspring of rearing them in tene- ments deserve to die, but the children are powerless to avoid the poison that saturates the environment in which they are forced to live.
 This last month, in Boston, at meeting of the Massachusetts Asso- citation of Boards of Health, the fact | was brought out that it is estimated by the special committee appointed by the Boston school board that there are 5000 cases of consumption, more or less serious, auong the children attending the public schools of that city. It was also stated that in the open air school maintained at Frank lin Park, ffty-two cases had been treated and the disease has been ar rested in twenty-five. And the children in whom the disease has been arrested are sent back to the tene- ments where they contracted it, to get it again.
 Some day the fact will be recog- nized that the way to safeguard against tuberculosis and the ravages ot the great white plague is to re- move the cause by getting the peo- pie out of the congested cities. The greatest philanthropist today, he who does the most good for humanity, is the man who transfers an industry employing labor from a big city to some lcountry town or small city where ever worker in that industry can have a garden home and per petual fresh air and sunshine for his children.
 And before many years the nation will wake up to a realization of the fact that it's greatest menace is the congested city.