Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-21
LESSONS OF THE EPIDEMIC
A Preventsble Disaster Which Demands
Official Explanation

Official Explanation
THUS far America has been too busily
engaged fighting the influenza epi-
demic to demand explanations of the
manner in which the plague was per-
mitted to get flying start in this part
of the world.
1t is an indsputable fact that, though
we had adequate warning, we met the
epidemic hands down.
The medical authorities OF the Fed
eral Government appear to have viewed
the approaching scourge in sleepy
lethargy. Each successive Increment IN
the fight against the plague ,ods made
too late. The medical authorities, fall
ing into the habit of mind that has
always retarded the better processes of
democratic government, appeared to
shrink from the sort of encroachment
upon individual rights which would have
served to check the spread of the disease
at the outset. Such encroachments had
to be made later on and they were vastly
more sweeping than would have been
NECESSARY dJ Jut DtEll ih' AN'N'S
has been overwhelming loss, immeasur-
able suffering and the dslocation of in
dustry all through the East.
We haven't heard of any proposal for
a congressional inquiry in this instance.
Congress is accustomed to agtatc itself
into high fever over issues far less
important. Grip and party politics
apparently cannot be mixed. Mr.. Wilson
cannot he accused of responsibility for
the epidemic. Therefore the country is
not to be enlightened or helped or safe
guarded for the future by the sort of
information which a congressional in
quiry might turn up if systematic
effort were made to trace the response
bility for a disaster that should easily
have been preventable.
The epidemic as it has prevailed in
Philadelphia has served, too, to reveal
shameful flaws in the American system
of municipal administration. There has
been cumulative evidence to indicate that
some undertakers, druggists and even
the corporations which control ceme-
teries profteered heartessly at the ex-
pense Of afflicted families. Yet there
seems to have been in all our system Of
local government no authority so consti-
tuted as to be able to interfere to insure
some measure of justice and comfort to
the stricken homes where the plague
entered
After families had consented to be
plundered out of respect for their dead
there was semblance of interference
by the Health Department to check
protiteering undertakers and cemeteries.
After druggists had sold medicines
and whisky at extortionate rates for a
week or more the health authorities
began to murmur threats of prosecution.
But that was all.
The city and the State, like the coun-
try at large, is blundering through the
crisis. We knew what to expect. The
influenza had made itself felt in almost
every European city as a mysterious and
extremely virulent and highly contagious
disease long before it appeared in
America. So far as any one has been
able to learn, no proper safeguards were
set up to prevent the entry of the scourge
at any of the Atlantic ports.
The influenza first reached America
through the port of New York. A ves-
sci with 200 convalescents aboard an
peared at quarantine and the inspectors
passed her with little more than a wave
of the hand. The members of her crew
were permitted to walk from the in
fected ship out into the crowded streets
of the city. At the New England naval
bases the influenza next appeared and
spread. And it was only after it had
progressed beyond bounds that a quar-
antine was set up about the ports where
vessels had entered with convalescents
o. influenza patients.
America likes to talk of its efficiency.
But we are not efficient in matters of
this kind. The influenza must be listed
as preventabe disaster which some
one should be made to explain.