The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-06-20
ITS FLY TIME E BUSY

Wealtn 8 attorney.
But While you know how many men
are running for office in your county,
while YOU may be green enough to
believe tina the United States Su-
preme Court has the Standard Oil
Company on the run instead of hav-
ing the people on the run, While you
are certain you can name the man
who will run on the Democratic tick
ct against Taft in 1912-you don't
know how many flies are running
over your food While 1t Is belns
cooked in the kitchen; o don know
how many flies lave been fished out
of the milk and butter before. o be
gan to eat; you don't know one-half
the breeding places of these flies
around your home. Do you?
And yet it is of vastly more i'm
p%ortance to you. and to your wife, and
to your children. and to your neigh
bor's family that you should know
the facts about the flies than that you
should get "het up about the candl-
dates. The chances are that you don't
give a ding how many flies are doing
these things at home, SO long as they
don't light on the end of your nose or
bother you while YOU are asleep. But
O ought to care. for it may be q
matter of life and death-especially
of death.
The fy-the little house fly that
buZzes around the house and keeps
his eyes on the dining room and helps
wife cook the meals-is the greatest
disease carrier and disease %spreader
known to man today. The very latest
$125 manure Spreader cannot spread
manure as uniformly and as thor
oughly as the fly a spread disease.
For every person killed by a wild
beast, 100, 900 are killed by the fly.
In your country he kills n thousand
people for every person even bitten
by a snake If you were to find a
moccasin snake in your dining room
While YOU and the family were eating
dinner, there would be a sensation.
Wife would probably faint, if h
wasn't too tired and not after cook
ing the dinner: little Mary would be
frightened almost into Mysteries. while
Johnny would probably break two
chairs, one big dish and our plates
trying to kill MI. Snake. And then
you-and they-after his Snakeship
had been killed and carried off and
hung on the fence to bring rain, would
sit down and complacently eat your
hard-earned meal, while dozens Of
flies walked all over the bread, and
potatoes, and peas and beans. and
okra, and meat, and butter, and pre-
serves. and wiped their filthy feet as
they walked. For the fly has six feet,
with hair and little cushions on each
foot: and he comes straight from his
breeding and feeding places-the hog
pen. the stable, the COW shed, the
little outhouses-to be sociable and
take dinner with you and the rest Of
the family.
And as he walks DEATH grins and
holds out his bony fingers towards
i, and towards wife, and with
ghoulish glee towards the little tots
that sit around the table n talk
their sweet, innocent prattle, all un-
conscious Of danger. For Death
knows hat the fly carries on those
six h~air-covered and cushioned feet
typhoid germs, and tuberculosis
germs, and cholera tnfantum, sum
mer complaint germs, and many,
many others. and knows that as the
fly wipes these germs off his feet and
on the food. the germs are straight
way taken into the children's mouths
with the food.
We SILVER when we read in the
about the terrible bubonic
plague that is sweeping over parts of
Asia, Staying tens of thousands. Yet
the everyday f1y-the little black.
busy cuss-that we pay attention to
only when he lights on a bald spot or
tickles our nose, kills hundreds where
the bubonic plague Kills one. The
name Of yellow fever frightens
us. But the mosquito that carries
yellow fever is an innocent citizen
compared to the house fly. The fly
kills more people in four years in this
country than We're killed in the four
years war from 1861 to 1865. Born
in oHal he ives as he was born. in
filth, IN the manure pile, in the spit
toon, in the cesspools, in the little out
houses-Death's greatest typhoid
manufactory-in the decayed and de-
caying vegetables and bits of meat
careless1y thrown out into the yard
or left in the open garbage can or
tub or barrel. And. little glutton that
he is, he flies straight from these hor-
rlbLe places and things and wipes
Those soft. hairy, cushioned, nasty
Ieet on your food, and on the food of
family.