New Britain herald., 1915-05-14
Iucy Huffaker in New York Tri-
 bune.)

! invite the baby's attention to the fly, as she used to-. No, indeed; In istead, she must sing 1t this way: l Baby bye. here's 8 fly,
 I Let us swat him, you and I. l Just at first it seems rather a blood I thirsty doctrine to be teaching an innocent baby, but Dr. C.. E. A. Wins- low, who is director of the educational work of the state board of health, ! is of the opinion that if choice is Ito be made between the baby's life and the fy's, it is best to sacrifice the. ny's Probably everybody will agree to that, and after one has listened to Dr. Winslow and seen some of the pictures which he is using in his edu eational work one is willing to agree that perhaps the fy's importance as a murderer has been underestimated all these years.
 If a child is of a pessimistic na- turc. one of the jingles may depress him. It tells inf the first sta11za of ten little flies and of there being only nine after one tgot swat. The stanzas go on telling of the swats given each fly, until the last one read: Four little flies,
 Colored green-blue,
 Swat! (Aint's it easy), Then there were two.
 Two little flies
 Dodged the civilian,
 Early next day
 There were a million. Now, a reasoning child might fis- ure it out that there wasn't much use in working to kill the flies if two could multiply like that. Because what little boy or girl could hope to kill a million flies? But. on the other hand, it is just that matter of the way in which flies multiply that the board of health wishes to irr.- press upon the children
 | ".One of the things which we are i trying to do this year, said pr. Wins l low. lis to organize the Boys Health l league. Of course, the league, which l will be similar to the Little Mothers league, will do other things besides fight flies, but it is so import I ant to get rid of the flies We are laying insistence on that feature Of I the work. The children grow very I much interested in this work. If 1t Is put before them in the right light. l we have little chart winch shows the way flies multiply. On April ! l ? there are 120. By May 23 there
 are 7,2o0. But that figure seems as nothing compared to the grand total | on September 5, when there are 5,-
 S,720, 900, 900. 1t isn't much Won-
 der that boy looks at that and says
 'Whew!' is it?
 Tt wasn't, you know, until the
 Spanish-American war that our peo-
 pie began to realize what a menace
 the fly is. It had always been looked upon as a necessary evil. It was not
 considered as anything worse than a
 nuisance. That it literally carried death where it went seemed q hu- imorous idea to many people at first
 But the idea isn't considered humor-
 ous any more.
 Last summer the association for Improving the condition of the poor collected some valuable data in re- gard to flies and disease. They proved I that the sickness of babies was de-
 creased one-half where there was protection from flies. Our work is
 not in the city at all, but in the coun- try, and, of course, there are many j more flies in the country than in the
 city. The city is so much cleaner
 .The city cleaner. gaspcd. It
 didn't seem that I could have heard aright. But I had.
 "Yes, of course the city is cleaner.
 In the country, especially around
 barnyards, there is filth and chance
 for the flies to breed alariningly. In
 our campaign we try to impress it
 upon people that there must be just
 as little chance for the flies to breed
 as possible. We not only try to kill
 them after they are here; we try
 to see to it that they don't get here.
 "A useful and simple contrivance is a fly trap, which any boy can make
 out of soap box. Most boys like to make things, and they might just as we'll be taught to make mething useful while they are about il" Are you going to do away with flies altogether" ?" was a question at which Dr. Winslow shook his head I'm afraid there will always be some flies i'll the world' he said We can't get rid Of them as easily as of
 mosqnitoes for instance. It is possi- ble, of course, to extern1inatc mos ! quitoes altogether. But it looks as 1T