ployes' health. They had all their men examined by a physician-not waiting until any were unfit for work-and those found ailing in any way were, if necessary, sent to the company's sanitarium. These firms found the experiment, as a mere matter of economy, well worth the expenditure of time and money.

There are also many trades that cause especial danger to health, if not to life itself. The fur and feather industries; the match manufacture, with its dreadful "phossy jaw," and the lead industry, are familiar examples that furnish a fruitful field for careful scientific investiga

tion.

The Dispensary Evils.

The committee has made a study also of the question of nurses in city hospitals and in some of the private hospitals, and has found that the city institutions are much behind the private hospitals in nursing facilities. Steps have been taken to remedy the situation in many important directions, with a view to raising the quality of service. The matter of changing the standard for the admission of nurses to the training schools has been found to be a subject worthy of attention, if the supply of nurses called for by the hospitals and individual patients is to be kept intact. As it is now, many applicants, with a natural aptitude for nursing, are kept out of the ranks by technical requirements not germane to nursing.

The multiplicity of free dispensaries, while intended as a convenience, and, indeed, a blessing, has led to evils that need attention. Persons requiring charitable treatment often go from one dispensary to another, take up the time of the physicians, and gather in perscrip

tions, or medicine, in abundance. The committee, on discovering this and other evils, has arranged to district the city, and patients are expected to go to the dispensaries within their own territory. This will not only obviate many abuses of the present too-generous system, but enable physicians to exercise a closer control over those who come to them, watch their progress, and arrange for attendance at their homes, if necessary.

New York's Low Death Rate.

The question of birth-rate statistics is one of great interest and the utmost importance. This country is far behind. Europe in that respect-many years behind. It is only within ten years that New York has made any serious effort to secure adequately correct record of births and deaths, and it is now time to act for an enforcement of laws recently enacted, for it is not generally known that statistics on "infant mortality" are the best index to the general condition of public health, and throw light on many problems. Every year over three million babies under one year old die in this country and in Europe. The death rate among babies in New York, however, is less than that in Berlin, but it was in Berlin, and not New York, where the illuminating investigation was made which showed "that the death rate among artifically fed babies was ten times as high as among those nursed by mothers.” It was on the basis of this investigation that so much has been accomplished to bring mothers to a realization of the importance of nursing their babies, and it has saved thousands of lives-the lives of German babies, remember, not American.

"But," said Dr. Lewinski-Corwin, most emphatically, "in spite of the great

to be, it is a serious condition of affairs. How much has it to do with backwardness in studies? Has it intimate relation with feeble-mindedness, or is that a subject by itself?

Statistics and Health.

"Statistics are to the conditions of public health," added Dr. LewinskiCorwin, "what book-keeping is to a business. The business man wants figures that will show where he has suc

ceeded, where there is extravagance, what lines should be followed vigorously, and what are more or less failures. When it comes to such a vital matter as the health of the community, there should be figures that show the same sort of thing. Our lives ought to be worth as much care as our money.

"Reducing the matter in its lowest terms and appealing only to the least admirable motives, it is evident that the public health concerns all. We know this when it comes to epidemics of smallpox, and we force people to take the necessary preventive precautions. There is plenty of public opinion on this point, because the question has been studied,

and because people have the facts and figures, which show that smallpox can be kept down.

The Penalty of Ignorance.

"It is only, however, in regard to such spectacular diseases-if I may use the expression that we have been educated. There are other troubles just as serious, but not so obvious, which could be prevented. Many kinds of diseases, which we have been accumtomed to regard as dispensations of Providence and to be met with submission, turn out to be the result of bad living conditions and ignorance of the most ordinary rules of health.

"What ails us is largely ignorance. We don't know and so we don't care. We lack social sense. To create this social sense is, in part, the aim of our bureau, or committee. All the questions which we are handling, and many others that our previous investigations are leading up to, are concerned with the relations between medicine and sociology. Our aim is to try to straighten out some of these knotty points and point the way for other bodies to apply remedies."

OCIAL distinctions and differences have been rightly compared to the hills and dales, to the streams and mountain-torrents of the material world. Men and women, rich and poor, competent and incompetent, are words that express some of the ancient landmarks of society. They are words full of the deepest significance, for they all denote landmarks-boundary lines that are based on the very nature of things, and that, therefore, may, in a sense, be called eternal. Even from the very dawn of society these landmarks have existed. Changes of dynasties, crusading movements, blood-red revolutions, have swept like waves over the face of society, yet these landmarks still remain.

Attacking the Landmarks.

arisen

But, in our times, there have certain attacks upon these landmarks which are fraught with great danger. This danger, however, is more apparent than real, and arises from the lack of a true knowledge of the nature of the aforesaid movements. There is an old legend that were a devil to appear from hell, if the unfortunate beholder could only recognize that devil and call it by its own name, half its power would vanish. And so it is with the tendencies to which we have just referred. If we could only recognize their true nature, their power for harm would be wonderfully diminished.

Among the different methods of assault, we find the agitation against the differences between the sexes. We hear the cry that the woman should abandon the spindle and distaff, the symbols of her omnipotence within the home, and that, instead of being cook, nurse, household decorator and exercising many other functions in the home, she should be competitive cook, competitive nurse outside-in a word, that she should be the creature of only one occupation, like her consort, mere man. Similarly, we hear that the student, instead of being taught in the old-fashioned way with the face submissively turned to the teacher, should sit in the obverse fashion, with the back turned independently away from him.

The Object of Attack.

But it is chiefly the demarcation between the rich and the poor, between the man who has and the man who has not, that is peculiarly the object of attack. At one end of the scale of society we behold the Socialist. He, for the first time, attacks the very principle of private property. Before now, there have been land pirates and water pirates, but these people, after all, attacked private property only from a partial point of view. All that they wanted was to make other people's private property their own, whereas the Socialist attacks the very principle of private property itself, wishing that no such thing existed. At