Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1912-07-05

class with the dog whose jaws drip
hydrophobia He ranks with the
timber RATHER, who carries cold
death in his flat head. He is as
dangerous as a cocaine-maddened
negro with an automatic revolver.
You can crush him with tap of
the finger, if you can catch him, but
he multiplies by the million, the bill
| lion, the trillion and the quadrillion,
and everyone of these quadrilllions
carries load of germs around on his
hairy, glairy body. Catching him is
just the trouble. He Is so common
| that he is looked upon as one of the
necessary evils of summer.
Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and
Texas began fighting the house fly
months ago. Tennessee is offering
gold medals to the champion fly
murderers of the state Kansas was
the home of the first statewide cam
paign against the fly. New York
| City has started in to keep down the
summer death rate among the chill
dren by wiping out the breeding
places of the fly.
Two or three years ago l.. o. How
ard, chief entom ologist of the United
States department of agriculture,
said The insect we now call the
house fly should in the future be
termed the typhoid fly" in order
to call attention to the danger of al
lowing it to breed unchecked"
The country took him at his word
The term typhoid fly" has come into
general use, and much of the mys-
terry that once hung over the spread
of that fever has been dispelled
Filth, flies and fever became a sort
of unholy trinity
The house fly is the terror that
stalketh by MONDAY. He and his
multiple feet dripping with germs
are all over the premises. He plants
few germs in your bread. He
buries them in the butter on your
table. Out in the milk bottle he
browns a few millions of them, but
they are hale and healthy. He sows
the seeds of death in and on every
thing that he touches.
Last March if you had killed the
first fly you saw you would have in
fact killed 100000 of
these pests of the community. They
breed faster than an adding machine
can keep track of the increase
Mathematicians have spent weeks
figuring how long it would take for
the fly tribe to literally inherit the
earth if they had no natural enc
mics. They discovered that the flies
would swamp humanity in less time
that it would take the mathematician
to figure out the exact date.
We really ought to have started
the war of determination last March.
The fly is abroad in the land now,
terrible as an army with banners,
only he is very quiet with all his
deadliness. Kill one now and you
cut off few million flies from any
chance of life, but there are already
so many abroad that what the one
fly might have done will hardly be
missed.
The flyless age may come in the
future. The flies will pass out of
the world along with the horse and
the stable. About SO per cent of all
these pests are born in somebody's
manure heap, alongside or in a
stable. The other per cent com e
out of the garbage piles and the ref
use heaps. Walk down an alley any
hot day and see for yourself. If the
alley is unclean the swarms of black
and green bellied flies will nearly
choke you.
Ten days after mamma fly has de-
posted her eggs in the manure heap
the filthy babies have progressed
through the worm stage and are try
ing their fledgling wings. They are
full members of the Ancient Order of
Germ Distributors as soon as they
are able to make their wings work
Then they begin sowing death, and
it is not their fault if the seeds do
not flourish.
They will be establishing chairs in
the medical colleges for the study of
the fly next. 1t practically amounts
to that now Following up the bril-
liant work done by Gorges and 9TH
ers in the fever zones where the fly
and the mosquito vanished, taking a
lot of disease with them, local health
boards have been waking up and
tackling the fly,
Next year the fly war will begin
| a Iff1o