The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-21
Must Pass Kennedy School

At the Kennedy school We have more than 300 little ones, and about 20 cart loads day of garbage, refuse and filth will go to the crematory, besides the ex- cretia from the dry closets to the san itary sewer on the same lot. For the most part this must pass the Kennedy school. Is 1t rational to say that all this dis ease laden filth will do no harm? Is 1t | reasonable to suppose that these wagons will not sift out on the air the germs of deadly diseases, and that these same carts as they rattle back (making 40 trips | a day past the Kennedy schooD will not make some deposit of filth in the street where the chtldren are continually play ing?
 The length and breadth of the land, where there are contagious or infectious | diseases, are placarded, saying to the world, Danger. keep away!' In many diseases strictest quarantines are en- forced, any violation of which is punish- able by law, but what will you do with a city where 1t brings to its helpless lit- tie children through stream of garbage wagons the risk of taking tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet and typnoid fevefs, smallpox and those unmentionable dis eases that make the victim oathsome and life intolerable?
 We all know that disease leaves it's mark in every household and in the homes of the ignorant and careless; dis ease finds its way into the refuse heap. The negroes. for the most part. have no sanitation, and are most susceptible to tuberculosis. and many of them are born with yenerial diseases. The people of this municipality pay taxes for their pro- lection, and the officials are sworn to serve us with equity. and yet they force now, and propose to continue to force, on us q condition that will cause us to furnish our quota of the 10 per cent of the nation that succumbs yearly to the great white plague. Already one little girl who was in school at the Kennedy has developed tuberculosis, and has been removed from school.
 Birmingham would be plunged into a frenzy over d wretch of a dying leper with the flesh sloughing from his bones, yet one mouthful of sputa, indiscrimin- ately thrown and handled, can do moro harm than that pitiable leper could do in the whole of his stricken life. The venerial diseases that have their blighting effect on little lives in blindness, deaf ness idiocy and death. can fasten upon one of these little ones and cause him to become the object of pity that the lasping voice of the leper could never excite as he cries, "unclean. unclean.'
 Danger to Children
 pr. Welch of Talladega said in his splen. did address at the Jefferson Wednesday night, "The death of one little child from diphtheria is worth thousand fold more than the cost if would take to prevent it. Prevention is economy. not only in health but in crime. Statistics have some time ago proven that i'll health and crime are
 ndissoluby linked together. The follow
 ing statement from Prof. Afford Jaehne of the German Criminology society is sig nlhcant: I have before me some figures from five great prisons of the world. Sin cere men and women have been gathering them for years. They are figures gath cred to answer SO far as figures can this heart breaking question, What intially started any particular prisoner on his