Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 3

"I doubt 'tis work, David.... I shouldn't like to be trapped into work. 'Twould scare me when I woke o' nights and thought of it."

"See ye then, Billy"--blowing the bellows gently--"is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive 'em?"

"Te-he, 'tis just a bit o' sport--I hadn't thought of it in that light." And soon he was blowing steadily.

Later, when David the smith was going to America and wished to leave his forge with the half-witted Billy, he proposed the smith's work as play.

"Te-he," laughed Billy, "am I to play wi' all your fine tools, David?"

"Ay, just that. I've taught ye the way o' them and Dan Foster's lad from Brow Farm shall come and blow the bellows for you."

"Will that be work for Dan Foster's lad, or play?"

"Hard work, Billy--grievous hard work, while you are just playing at making horseshoes, fence railings, and what not."

"And I'm to play at making horseshoes," went on Fool Billy, "while Dan Foster's lad's sweating hard at bellows-blowing."

CHAPTER III

_Community effort is needed to make better conditions for all, in streets and public places, for water and milk supply, hospitals, markets, housing problems, etc. Restraint for sake of neighbors._

Quite slowly but surely, the idea is dawning on the social horizon that the persistence of conditions prejudicial to human prosperity is discreditable to a civilized community, and that economics if not ethics calls for their control.

_Alice Ravenhill._

It is the new view that disease must be understood and overcome; that hospitals, dispensaries, surgical and medical treatment, nursing and preventive measures must be developed and dovetailed into a general social scheme for the elimination of preventable diseases and a very substantial reduction in the prevalence of such diseases as cannot as yet be cla.s.sed as preventable.

_Edward Devine, Social Forces._

Nature endows the vast majority of mankind with a birthright of normal physical efficiency. It is the duty of those who aspire to be known as social workers each to do his share in confirming his fellow beings in this possession.

_Dr. H. M. Eichholz, Inspector of Schools. Paper before Conference of Women Workers, London, 1904._

We know now that if we do the things we ought to do, we can prevent sickness. We have reached a point where it is recognized that it is the duty of the community or state to effectually protect itself against the ignorant, the selfish, the filthy, and the diseased. We believe now that we must have proper sewage disposal, pure water, decent tenements, clean streets, good-sized playgrounds, supervision of factories, protection of child labor, and pure food.

_Eugene H. Porter, Report, 1909, New York State Department of Health._

Next after himself, man owes it to his neighbor to be well, and to avoid disease in order that he may impose no burden upon that neighbor.

_Dr. William T. Sedgwick, The Call to Public Health._

CHAPTER III

HOPE

The real significance of biological evolution has not been grasped by the people in general. It is that man is a part of organic nature, subject to laws of development and growth, laws which he cannot break with impunity. It is his business to study the forces of Nature and to conquer his environment by submitting to the inevitable. Only then will man gain control of the conditions which affect his own well-being.

Sickness, we know, is the result of breaking some law of universal nature. What that law may be, investigators in scores of laboratories are endeavoring to determine. In most diseases they have been successful. Those remaining are being attacked on all sides, and it may be confidently predicted that a few years will see success a.s.sured.

Why, then, does sickness continue to be the greatest drain upon individual and national resources? Because man, through ignorance or unbelief, will not avail himself of this knowledge, or is behind the times in his method. Where wisdom means effort and discomfort, many feel it folly to be wise.

The individual may be wise as to his own needs, but powerless by himself to secure the satisfaction of them. Certain concessions to others' needs are always made in family life. The community is only a larger family group, and social consciousness must in time take into account social welfare. Moreover, a neighbor may pollute the water supply, foul the air, and adulterate the food. This is the penalty paid for living in groups. Men band together, therefore, to protect a common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property.

The development of fire protection is a good example of community effort. The isolated farmhouse may have buckets of water and blankets in an accessible place with which to put out an incipient fire. Then eight or ten families build close together. The danger of one becomes the danger of all, and a fire brigade is organized that may protect all. When hundreds of families crowd together in a small s.p.a.ce the danger becomes so much the greater that a paid department with efficient apparatus is necessary. No one complains of the infraction of individual rights. Each one is glad to pay his share of the expense.

In securing protection from other dangers, the individual and the family unit are fast relying on community regulations. In fact, in many ways the individual, when he becomes one of a crowd, must go whither the crowd goes and at the same rate of progress.

Failure to recognize that by coming into the community he has forfeited his right to unrestrained individuality causes an irritation as unreasonable as harmful.

A certain control of sanitary conditions must be delegated to the community and its rules cheerfully followed. The legal aspects of these rules will be considered in a later chapter. Here is to be considered only the _mental att.i.tude_ with which the members of the community should come together to agree upon a common defense against disease and dirt. The spirit of cooperation must prevail over a tendency to antagonism when certain individual rights seem to be involved.

Numbers of families living close together are served by the same grocer or market man. These families may agree upon their requirements as to quality and cleanliness and publish their rules. If they do not take interest enough to protect themselves, the community must make rules for them. If the local officials are not vigilant enough, the State may step in and compel the observance of sanitary regulations.

The average citizen learns of the existence of a health regulation when he is warned that he has broken it, or perhaps is fined. His first att.i.tude is rebellion at the invasion of his personal liberty.

The housewife usually takes the ground that the rule is absurd or unnecessary.

When, in the interest of the community, any law is to be enforced, how are the people to be led from this rebellious state of mind? Perhaps first through authority. In America we have learned to use the phrase, "Big Stick." Authority is exactly that; it is coercion from without.

It has partial result in good; the law may be fulfilled because the individual knows he must obey when within the jurisdiction of that law; but if the result is simply obedience to authority and not to the underlying principle, it will not be a force in his life or be continued if by chance he can escape it. He will be a "tramp" in his methods of obedience. This method can never be constructive; its value lies in the possibility that by continuous usage or repet.i.tion the procedure may become a habit, and from habit will come reason and intelligence.

But the more direct and efficient way to help the individual to realize his relation to communal right living is through education.

The former method--blind obedience--will foster the spirit of antagonism and call the State's protection "interference," thus weakening the efficiency of the State and of the individual, for the State is the multiplication of its citizens; but through the latter method the individual will carry out the law with intelligence and interest. This will be constructive and it will be permanent, for again, if the State is the sum of its citizens, the efficiency of the State is the sum of the efficiency of the citizens.

Their interests are now identical, the man has become equal master with the State; they are co-partners. His motive for right living is greater than the letter of the law, for he is the living law, the protest against wrong and the fulfillment of the right.

The next generation must be born with healthy bodies, must be nurtured in healthy physical and moral environments, and must be filled with ambition to give birth to a still healthier, still n.o.bler generation.

But, as has been said, "whatever improvements may sometime be achieved, the benefits of their influence can be enjoyed only by future, perhaps distantly future generations. We of the present have to take our heredity as we find it. We cannot follow the advice of a humorous philosopher to begin life by selecting our grandparents; but through hygiene (sanitary science) we can make the most of our endowment."[6]

[6] Report on National Vitality, p. 55.

There is a force in the development of public opinion somewhere between individual action and national compulsion which may be termed "semi-public" action. It is in a measure the same sort of influence that in a later chapter is termed "stimulative education." For instance, a hospital for the treatment of some special ailment is needed. Private enterprise furnishes the capital, proves the success of the treatment, and then the community comes forward and supports the inst.i.tution. Such helps are accepted freely and are not considered undemocratic.

The less spectacular but more effective office of prevention of the need for charity, in the maintenance of cleanness in the markets, streets, and shops, yes, even in the homes of the people, has been neglected. Through lack of belief, and especially through inattention to causes so common as to escape notice, many details of great hygienic importance have been overlooked.

Some daring ones in commercial ventures are showing the possibilities of a standard in cleanness, and model establishments, dairies, bakeries, and restaurants should receive the hearty support of a community. If they do not receive this support, it is more than discouraging to the promoters, for _it costs to be clean_, a lesson the community must learn. The saving of money and the consequent loss of life through disease, or the spending of money and the saving of life through prevention, are the alternatives.