The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-05-21
Rats a Real National Menace

For years the United States government
through the Bureau of Biological Survey has been
compiling and distributing information about the
most common, the most loathsome and most des-
tructive of all animals. When the subject of rat
destruction reaches the point of Importance that
the United States government details experts to
study the subject, it becomes apparent that each
reader of this publication should do his or her
part to rid the world of the absolutely useless
rodents.
According to government experts, rats are ac-
countable for more deaths than all the of
history. There never was an epidemic of con-
tagious disease where rats did not play prom
inent part in transmitting infection or infectious
germs. The great plague of London, which killed
more than half the inhabitants that did not flee
the city, was by no means the worst outbreak re-
corded. The plague called "black death devas-
tated Europe for so years of the fourteenth cen
fury, destroying two-thrds to three-fourths of
the population of large territories and one-fourth
CT all the people, or about 25,000,000.
Governor Goodrich has designated May 81 as
rat day in the following proclamation:
THE menace to health and the great loss of
property by the unrestrained activities of the
common rat and other rodents, have become SO
serious that the subject should receive attention
at the hands Of all the citizens of the state. /
have been requested by the health department
and the food production and conservation COM
nittee of the state to point out the necessity of
and fix date for the entire citizenship of the
state to give at least day to well directed eff
fort in killing the rodents, destroying their
haunts, and otherwise attempting to remove the
menace from our state.
s'Fhe rat is known to be the instrument for
spreading many infectious diseases of both man
and beast, spreading diseases that developed into
plaques, destroying hundreds of thousands of
people in various parts of the world.
''The financial losses incident to the rats act
ivities are of such vast proportions, according to
reliable authority, that from that standpoint
alone, the people should be unceasing in their eff
forts to destroy them. According to bulletins
from the u. S. Biological Survey, it takes the con-
slant services of 100000 men with equipment in
United States to provide for the rats supplying
them with food and repairing the damage they dc
to property. The same authority says in Great
Britain the rat population equals the human
population and the damage done amounts to $1.8O
per rat, with an equal amount in other countries
while in the United States, with present high
prices of food and other property destroyed, the
damage will amount to much more than $780,
100000 per annun In Indiana alone, on that
basis, over $5,O00,000 property loss per year is
sustained.
1.-THE anti-rat law, passed by the general as
semby of this state and approved March Il
1913, takes cognizance of these facts and directs
the procedure for their determination by author
izing the governor to issue his proclamation pro
viding for organized effort throughout the state
on the part of all the people, to give at least one
days time to the work of destruction.
Therefore, desire to designate Tuesday
May 81, 1919 as Rat Day in Indiana and cal
upon and urge all the people of the state to free
their premises and their communities of rats ane
other rodents and forther recommend and urge
the mayors Of cities, boards of county commits
Hioher Salaries F