TAPS FOR NINE

AT GETTYSBURG

Quite as significant as the preaching of peace through bringing together under both flags the veterans on each side of a bitter war between brothers was the progress in military sanitation and nursing which the Gettysburg reunion showed.

Over 50,000 men whose ages were said to run from 61 to as high as 112, their frail old lives ready to be snuffed out like a candle-a number are rumored to have died on the way-spent from one to seven days under a blazing July sun, sleeping, most of them, in tents. As high as a thousand fatalities were provided for by the authorities who undertook this daring second Gettysburg. A thousand coffins were on hand. But even in this atmosphere of expected death, added to heat and a long journey, sanitation was so perfect and such constant care was taken of the old men's every need that only nine deaths were recorded up to July 5, when the main body had left, and a thousand illnesses, many of them slight.

On the side of attendance the Boy Scouts and the four companies of regulars in whose care the camp was put vied with each other in tendering the veterans personal services that were both willing and intelligent. The four hundred Boy Scouts detailed to Gettysburg have, says the correspondent of the New York Evening Post, writing from the field, "made good with a bang" so good that even their scout masters speak of it in superlatives. Says this correspondent:

"The boys are everywhere, all over the camp, meeting every train, carrying valises of the veterans, fetching them blankets and mess kits, showing them how to get from point to point."

No veteran had to lift his hand; his wants were anticipated and the danger of illness from over exhaustion and discomfort was reduced to a minimum.

On the health side, the chief quartermaster, Major J. E. Normoyle, had his organization so minutely perfected that neither a sudden influx of guests beyond expectation, not a thousand heat prostrations in a day, were beyond his power to meet. Says the Post correspondent:

"The whole organization of this camp is a scientific achievement that is a better recommendation of the army of to-day than any marble July 12, 1913.

monument. It represents the last word in military engineering and sanitary precaution. A city big enough to house 50,000 people has been put up here almost at a moment's notice, equipped with every necessity of civilized life. Running water at high pressure is piped to every street. Telephone lines have been strung connecting up the different divisions; cook shacks are stationed at frequent intervals; drainage trenches have been dug in every direction; lights have been erected, so that there are no dark corners; regular army sentinels police the streets far more thoroughly than any municipal police; bureaus of information have been established. An entire network of organization, highly articulated, yet exceedingly simple in composition, has been built up, started running, and now apparently keeps going with the regularity of clockwork."

For the care of the sick, seven emergency hospitals were provided, some under the care of the army, some under the State Department of Health. The Red Cross supplied 100 nurses and the ambulance service was sufficient to cope with 1,000 heat prostrations on July 3, the worst day in camp. So efficiently, indeed, were these prostrations cared for that at the end of that day the army hospitals, which had the bulk of all cases, reported only 310 patients under care from all ailments, the greater number of whom had been brought to the hospital before July 3.

General sanitation was cared for by the State Department of Health whose orders were enforced by the state constabulary, which also had charge of traffic regulation and general policing.

General Hunter Liggett, in charge of the camp, gave credit for the achievement to Major Normoyle and his regulars.

One of the veterans put it even stronger. "We had no camps like this in '63," he said. "Why, not even a general could keep clean in those days." The army surgeons prepared for the worst and actually estimated that there would be ten deaths a day. The total of nine for the week was less than the average death rate for men of the old soldiers' age. Those who have survived for a semi-centennial are undoubtedly a picked lot physically, but there was testimony to their age and condition in the lost-articles tent which collected one hundred crutches, several sets of false teeth and a wooden leg.

Seven of the northern nurses were present.

491

COMMISSION ON SOCIAL INSURANCE

A bill to create a federal commission on social insurance has been introduced in the House by Representative M. Clyde Kelly of Pennsylvania as the second measure on the program of the Progressive Party. It provides, briefly, for a commission of five persons to be appointed by the President to inquire into the cost, operation and social value of voluntary, mutual, and other forms of public and private insurance against accident, sickness, invalidity, old age, death, unemployment, and other disabilities and hazards in the common life of the people, as well as the cost, operation and social value of related forms of public and private pensions. The commission is empowered to make recommendations in its final report concerning the desirability of establishing a system of social insurance, and to submit drafts of bills to carry out its recommendations.

PROGRAM ON PURE BATHS

Since H. F. J. Porter introduced the subject of purifying swimming pools at the first annual meeting of the American Association for the Promotion of Hygiene and Public Baths last year it has occupied no inconsiderable amount of space in medical and physical culture publications. At the second annual meeting of the association in Baltimore this year it appeared in many of the addresses, including Simon Baruch's presidential address.

Two speakers, William Royal Stokes, chief of the Maryland Bureau of Bacteriology, and Arthur M. Crane of New York, devoted their whole papers to a consideration of the relative value of the various means of purifying pools. Mr. Crane dwelt especially on the value of refiltration. He cited the refiltration of the public bath at Bermondsy in London in which the pool water remained bacteriologically clear after nine months' refiltration and the Belfast bathing pool in which the water is refiltered and reused for seventeen months. Among many other examples he mentioned the Twenty-third Street Y. M. C. A. pool in New York, in which 39,000 gallons of water used by 25,000 persons during the week, was, after refiltration, of crystal clearness and free from pathogenic bacteria. In the Washington Heights Y. M. C. A. pool the refiltrated water was thirty times more free from bacteria than that drawn from the main. The most striking result was reported from Amherst College, where eighty students used the pool of 75,000 gallons capacity every day and at the end of three years' refiltration this water was still bacteriologically safe, hypochlorite of lime being used also.

SOCIAL LEGISLATION

IN THE PRAIRIE STATE

Per

Social workers in Illinois view the record of the recent legislative session with mingled feelings of satisfaction and disappointment. haps the most gratifying result is the passage, after years of agitation and struggle, of a bill authorizing the purchase of not less than 1,000 acres of land and the erection of suitable buildings for an epileptic colony. $500,000 is appropriated for the first expenditure. Medical service at the colony is to be carried on in connection with the State Psychopathic Institute, thus assuring study into the causes and the methods of preventing epilepsy.

A wage loan bill was passed providing for the organization of societies with a capital of $25,000 for the purpose of loaning money on salaries in amounts not to exceed $250 and at a rate not to exceed 3 per cent a month. These societies are prohibited from paying more than 6 per cent interest on the capital and are expected to compete with the loan sharks.

Municipal tuberculosis sanatoria were given power to "furnish nurses, instruction, medicine, attendance and all other aid necessary to effect a cure." Under this provision they can now begin treatment in the home and carry their instruction into the community by means of exhibits and other forms of instruction.

The nurses registration bill, a measure which provides for a three years' course for nursing and the fixing of standards of training by the state board, was passed in the face of a great deal of opposition. The purpose of the bill is to protect the registered nurse in the right to use the initials R. N. (registered nurse) and to guarantee the public that it is getting the service it wants.

The new workman's compensation act provides for an industrial board of three members to be appointed by the governor, one employer, one employe and one representative of the general public, to act as a court for the adjustment of claims for injuries and death. Its decisions are subject to review by the courts.

A commission was created to investigate into the causes and conditions of unemployment. It will consist of three employers, three employes and three from the general public, and is to report in two years.

A new funds to parents or mothers' pension act was substituted for the law passed two years ago. It makes practically all of the conditions. upon which pensions are granted, with the present method of administration in the Juvenile Court, a part of the statute. The new act excludes unnaturalized aliens and deserted families.

Among some of the important measures that failed to pass was a bill for birth and death registration; a non-support bill drawn by Judge

July 12, 1913.

Time of 702 pupils wasted

nurses, tons of disinfectants

To Balance

Goodnow on the basis of his experience at the Court of Domestic Relations; a bill giving better control of children between the ages of 14 and 16 so that they would either have to be employed or be in school; a bill to regulate messenger service and a bill prohibiting the admission of minors to saloons.

No minimum wage legislation was enacted although five different bills were introduced. A resolution calling for an investigation into the question also failed of passage.

A bill for an eight-hour day for women was introduced and amended in the house so as to provide for a 54-hour week. The senate, however, refused to concur and the bill was lost. A bill to exempt canneries from the operation of the present ten-hour law was vetoed by the governor.

CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH

On another page of this issue will be found Dr. McKelway's account of the first effective step taken by Florida for the protection of child workers. In her recent presidential address before the Southern Conference on Child and Woman Labor, Jean M. Gordon gave a clear picture of the progress and defects of child labor

July 12, 1913.

legislation in the South. Her strictures on Florida can be omitted in the expectation that the new law, providing as it does not only a high age limit but a special child labor inspector to make its terms effective, will bring in a new

era.

Of the other southern states Miss Gordon pointed out that in the four years since the conference was organized every southern state has done something for its women and children, Georgia being the last in the South-indeed the last state in the Union-to adopt the sixty-hour week. This laggard state also illustrates a vicious practice peculiar to some southern states whose child labor laws "out-Herod Herod," in Miss Gordon's words, in allowing orphans who, of all children, should be tenderly cherished by the state, to work under the legal age.

Chief among the defects of child labor legislation in the South Miss Gordon held to be the lack of provision for proper enforcement, which makes a travesty of many of the laws. Mississippi leaves the enforcement of her law to the sheriff, the grand juries, the judges of the lower courts, to ministers, to teachers, "in fact, to any and every body, and in consequence the law is not enforced." Alabama has a special officer, but he is also responsible for all the jails, pris

493

ons and almshouse, and conditions in these have needed so much attention that they have occupied most of his time. The Missouri law applies only to cities of 10,000. Therefore most of her large factories, employing hundreds of women. and children, are on the outskirts of the cities and do not 'come under it. South Carolina has but one man to inspect its hundreds of cotton mills, to say nothing of other industries, and North Carolina and Georgia have not even gone through the form of putting inspection laws on their statute books.

Kentucky has so far proved herself the most advanced of the southern states by her recent appointment of a woman factory inspector.

"Most of us," says Miss Gordon with a pessimism that is pardonable after this showing, "seem perfectly contented to write the law into the statutes of the state, and then go home feeling that all is well. I am beginning to doubt if the men and women of the South are genuine in their demand that the children be allowed to enjoy their childhood and receive what is the inalienable right of every child, a free day-light education, and time for play."

PENNSYLVANIA SENATE
BLOCKS CHILD LABOR BILL

The various forces which have many times prevented the passage of better labor legislation in Pennsylvania combined again this year to defeat the child labor bill' establishing an eighthour day for children under sixteen. Never before, however, did these forces meet with such determined opposition.

After two great public hearings in the House the bill passed that body by an overwhelming vote in practically its original form. When it reached the Senate it was referred to a comImittee which for a full month refused even to consider it. After a public hearing to which 2,000 manufacturers went on special trains to oppose it, the bill was reported out of committee, but so badly mutilated as to cause its sponsors to doubt the advisability of its passage. The Senate amendments increased the hours for children to ten a day and fifty-four a week and several exceptions not now present in Pennsylvania's law were inserted. These included a cannery exemption; exemption for parents to employ their own children; and what was branded as a particularly objectionable exception, permitting the making up of time lost on holidays or by the "stoppage of machinery."

All efforts to bring together the conferees from the two houses finally failed and on the last night of the session, after five hours of discussion, the House reaffirmed its position and refused to agree to the bill as amended in the Senate.

1See THE SURVEY of May 31, 1913, p. 297.

In 1804 when the Philadelphia almshouse stood at Spruce and Eleventh streets, it was described in a memorial addressed to the Legislature as comprising "a poorhouse; a house for the reception of the aged and infirm whose condition incapacitates them from earning a subsistence; an orphan and foundling hospital; a ward for lying-in indigent women; apartments adapted to the treatment of the insane; workshops for those who are capable of exercising every species of industry; an extensive hospital for poor male and female patients requiring medical and surgical treatment." At the same time attention was called to the fact that "each of these departments has in most cities been separated into distinct establishments."

The almshouse was then cramped for space but it was thirty years before it moved to suburban "Blockley," across the Schuykill, where a farm of 158 acres was secured. The members of the committee which had memorialized the Legislature apparently, must have passed away, for no one developed the idea of classification. The new institution was built on the congregate plan on a little corner of the big farm. There "Blockley" stands today on a nveacre plot enclosed by high walls. The rest of the farm has either been given to the University of Pennsylvania or sold to speculators. "Blockley" today almost word by word fits the description of its early prototype, except that a

"OPEN PLUMBING" The beginning of modern methods and the adherence to old at Byberry.

memorializing committee would now have to add "blind," "epileptic," "tuberculous," "idiotic." "feeble-minded," and various other adjectives, if it attempted to classify the 5,500 inmates accurately.

At this juncture in the situation appears a new Committee on Municipal Charities with a report of 150 pages outlining methods for breaking "Blockley" into its constituent parts with appropriate institutions for each. Plans had previously been made, however, for two new independent institutions and contracts for their erection had been awarded.

These plans were the first step toward breaking up "Blockley," but the locations selected were criticised as being unsuitable. The desire to revise the plans brought about the organization of the committee and the advent of Mayor Blankenburg's administration opened the way. With some difficulty the committee secured the abrogation of one of the contracts. The Home for the Feeble Minded, to which the city was committed beyond recall, will be established on a large farm on the Byberry Tract in the northeastern extremity of the city.

The committee found a serious confusion between city, county, local poor boards and the state in the care of dependent children, the insane, the feeble-minded, and the epileptic, so that a clear differentiation of function, it states, must be made by the Legislature before the city may proceed with a wise and economical plan. By enlarging itself into the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania, the committee has set out to awaken the state and to secure a revision of the laws. A firmly entrenched system of state subsidies to private charities, with meager appropriations to public institutions, stands in the way. William B. Buck, who steered the Committee on Municipal Charities, will be executive secretary of the new state association.

In the meantime, Philadelphia has taken stock of her public charities and is planning to proceed in the development of those functions that must, in any event, be continued by the municipality.

NEWARK HEALTH WORK
NEEDS REORGANIZATION

If Newark were located anywhere but under the New Jersey eaves of New York city its size would be seen in truer perspective. It has over 350,000 people. In 1910 only St. Louis and San Francisco in all the territory west of the Mississippi River were as large as Newark.

For that reason the recent investigation of the Newark Department of Public Health is of special importance. Moreover, although so near New York, where is to be found so much leadership in modern public health work, the Newark department has, in recent years, to quote the report, "been marking time and giving little heed to the recent advances in public health science."

The investigation was made by the Department of Surveys and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Foundation, at the request of the Newark Common Council. Franz Schneider, Jr., sanitarian of the department, spent over six weeks in analyzing all phases of Newark public health activities and in drafting a detailed report. He discusses the health department's plan of organization, the size of its appropriation, the adequacy of its scope and purpose, and the efficiency of its work. Although the department spends $175,000 a year, and is relatively one of the most liberally financed departments in the country, Mr. Schneider found it a striking example of loose organization and neglected opportunities.

Mr. Schneider's statement of the conclusions to be drawn from the Newark survey throws helpful light on the condition of the city's health department and its value to the community. Its form of organization, he says, "with a board of ten members directing an executive without technical training, is inimical to efficiency and progress."

In ten branches of health department activity the survey has shown that in two, sanitary inspection and laboratory work, the present health department furnishes a service which, though open to improvement, is fundamentally adequate; in four, the dispensary, vital statistics, control of communicable diseases and tuberculosis work, there is emphatic need for reorganization; in three others, infant hygiene, health education and publicity, and housing study, an adequate program is entirely lacking; while in the last, milk inspection, a program is only just being initiated.

To remedy the situation, Mr. Schneider points out that the most serious single need is a trained