HOW TO WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES part 6

The sand, coloring matter, and cullet, when mixed in the proper
proportions, form what is called in bottle-makers' talk the "batch" or
"dope." This batch is put into a specially constructed furnace--a brick
box about thirty feet long by fifteen wide, and seven feet high at the
crown of the arched roof. This furnace is made of the best refractory
blocks to withstand the fierce heat necessary to bring the batch to a
molten state. The heat is supplied by various fuels--producer-gas is the
most common, tho oil is sometimes used. The gas is forced into the
furnace and mixed with air at its inception; when the mixture is ignited
the flame rolls down across the batch, and the burnt gases pass out of
the furnace on the other side. The gases at their exit pass thru a brick
grating or "checkerboard," which takes up much of the heat; about every
half hour, by an arrangement of valves, the inlet of the gas becomes the
outlet, and vice versa, so that the heat taken up by the checkerboard is
used instead of being dissipated, and as little of the heat of
combustion is lost as is possible. The batch is put into the furnace
from the rear; as it liquefies it flows to the front, where it is drawn
off thru small openings and blown into shape.

The temperature in the furnace averages about 2100 degrees Fahrenheit;
it is lowest at the rear, where the batch is fed in, and graduates to
its highest point just behind the openings thru which the glass is drawn
off. This temperature is measured by special instruments called thermal
couples--two metals joined and placed in the heat of the flame. The heat
sets up an electric current in the joined metals, and this current is
read on a galvanometer graduated to read degrees Fahrenheit instead of
volts, so that the temperature may be read direct.

All furnaces for the melting of sand for glass are essentially the same
in construction and principle. The radical differences in bottle
manufacturing appear in the methods used in drawing off the glass and
blowing it into shape.

Glass is blown by three methods: hand-blowing, semi-automatic blowing,
and automatic blowing. The first used was the hand method, and tho the
introduction of machines is rapidly making the old way a back number,
there are still factories where the old-time glass blower reigns
supreme.

One of the great centers of the bottle industry in the United States is
down in the southern end of New Jersey. Good sand is dug there--New
Jersey was part of the bed of the Atlantic before it literally rose to
its present state status--and naturally the factories cluster about the
source of supply of material. Within a radius of thirty miles the
investigator may see bottles turned out by all three methods.

The hand-blowing, while it is the slowest and most expensive means of
making bottles, is by far the most picturesque. Imagine a long, low,
dark building--dark as far as daylight is concerned, but weirdly lit by
orange and scarlet flashes from the great furnaces that crouch in its
shelter. At the front of each of these squatting monsters, men,
silhouetted against the fierce glow from the doors, move about like
puppets on wires--any noise they may make is drowned in the mastering
roar of the fire. A worker thrusts a long blowpipe (in glassworkers'
terminology a wand) into the molten mass in the furnace and twirls it
rapidly. The end of the wand, armed with a ball of refractory clay,
collects a ball of semi-liquid glass; the worker must estimate the
amount of glass to be withdrawn for the particular size of the bottle
that is to be made. This ball of glowing material is withdrawn from the
furnace; the worker rolls it on a sloping moldboard, shaping it to a
cylinder, and passes the wand to the blower who is standing ready to
receive it. The blower drops the cylinder of glass into a mold, which is
held open for its reception by yet another man; the mold snaps shut; the
blower applies his mouth to the end of the blowpipe; a quick puff,
accompanied by the drawing away of the wand, blows the glass to shape in
the mold and leaves a thin bubble of glass protruding above. The mold is
opened; the shaped bottle, still faintly glowing, is withdrawn with a
pair of asbestos-lined pincers, and passed to a man who chips off the
bubble on a rough strip of steel, after which he gives the bottle to one
who sits guarding a tiny furnace in which oil sprayed under pressure
roars and flares. The rough neck of the bottle goes into the flame; the
raw edges left when the bubble was chipped off are smoothed away by the
heat; the neck undergoes a final polishing and shaping twirl in the jaws
of a steel instrument, and the bottle is laid on a little shelf to be
carried away. It is shaped, but not finished.

The glass must not be cooled too quickly, lest it be brittle. It must be
annealed--cooled slowly--in order to withstand the rough usage to which
it is to be subjected. The annealing process takes place in a long,
brick tunnel, heated at one end, and gradually cooling to atmospheric
temperature at the other. The bottles are placed on a moving platform,
which slowly carries them from the heated end to the cool end. The
process takes about thirty hours. At the cool end of the annealing
furnace the bottle is met by the packers and is made ready for shipment.
These annealing furnaces are called "lehrs" or "leers"--either spelling
is correct--and the most searching inquiry failed to discover the reason
for the name. They have always been called that, and probably always
will be.

In the hand-blowing process six men are needed to make one bottle.
There must be a gatherer to draw the glass from the furnace; a blower; a
man to handle the mold; a man to chip off the bubble left by the blower;
a shaper to finish the neck of the bottle; and a carrier-off to take the
completed bottles to the lehr. Usually the gatherer is also the blower,
in which case two men are used, one blowing while the other gathers for
his turn; but on one platform I saw the somewhat unusual sight of one
man doing all the blowing while another gathered for him. The pair used
two wands, so that their production was the same as tho two men were
gathering and blowing. This particular blower was making quart bottles,
and he was well qualified for the job. He weighed, at a conservative
estimate, two hundred and fifty pounds, and when he blew something had
to happen. I arrived at his place of labor just as the shifts were being
changed--a glass-furnace is worked continuously, in three eight-hour
shifts--and as the little whistle blew to announce the end of his day's
toil the giant grabbed the last wand, dropped it into the waiting mold,
and blew a mighty blast. A bubble of glass sprang from the mouth of the
mold, swelled to two feet in diameter, and burst with a bang, filling
the air with shimmering flakes of glass, light enough to be wafted like
motes. When the shining shower had settled and I had opened my eyes--it
would not be pleasant to get an eyeful of those beautiful scraps--the
huge blower was diminishing in perspective toward his dinner, and the
furnace door was, for the moment, without its usual hustling
congregation of workers. I made bold to investigate the platform.

Close to me glared the mouth of the furnace, with masses of silver
threads depending from it like the beard of some fiery gulleted
ogre--the strings of glass left by the withdrawal of the wand. The heat
three feet away was enough to make sand melt and run like water, but I
was not unpleasantly warm. This was because I stood at the focus of
three tin pipes, thru which streams of cold air, fan-impelled, beat upon
me. Without this cooling agent it would be impossible for men to work so
close to the heat of the molten glass.

Later, in the cool offices of the company, where the roar of the
furnaces penetrated only as a dull undertone, and electric fans whizzed
away the heat of the summer afternoon, I learned more of the technique
of the bottle industry. Each shape demanded by the trade requires a
special mold, made of cast iron and cut according to the design
submitted. There are, of course, standard shapes for standard bottles;
these are alluded to (reversing the usual practise of metonymy) by using
thing contained for container, as "ginger ales," "olives," "mustards,"
"sodas" and (low be it spoken) "beers." But when a firm places an order
for bottles of a particular shape, or ones with lettering in relief on
the glass, special molds must be made; and after the lot is finished the
molds are useless till another order for that particular design comes
in. A few standard molds are made so that plates with lettering can be
inserted for customers who want trademarks or firm names on their
bottles; but the great majority of the lettered bottles have their own
molds, made especially for them and unable to be used for any other lot.

All bottles are blown in molds; it is in the handling of the molten
glass and the actual blowing that machinery has come to take the place
of men in the glass industry. The first type of machine to be developed
was for blowing the bottle and finishing it, thus doing away with three
of the six men formerly employed in making one bottle. In appearance the
bottle-blowing machine is merely two circular platforms, revolving in
the same horizontal plane, each carrying five molds. One of the
platforms revolves close to the furnace door, and as each mold comes
around it automatically opens and the gatherer draws from the furnace
enough glass for the bottle which is being made at the time, and places
it in the mold. The mold closes, and the platform turns on, bringing
around another mold to the gatherer. Meanwhile a nozzle has snapped down
over the first mold, shaping the neck of the bottle, and beginning the
blowing. As the mold comes to a point diametrically opposite the furnace
door it opens again, and a handler takes the blank, as the bottle is
called at this stage, and places it in a mold on the second revolving
platform. This mold closes and compressed air blows out the bottle as
the platform revolves. As the mold comes around to the handler again it
opens and the handler takes out the finished bottle, replacing it with a
new blank drawn from the mold on the first platform. This operation
necessitates only three men--a gatherer, a handler, and a carrier-off.
It is also much faster than the old method--an average of about forty
bottles per minute as against barely twenty.

A newer development of this machine does away with the gatherer. A long
rod of refractory clay is given a churning movement in the mouth of the
furnace, forcing the molten glass thru a tube. As enough glass for one
bottle appears at the mouth of the tube a knife cuts the mass and the
blob of glass falls into a trough which conveys it to the blank mold. By
an ingenious device the same trough is made to feed three or four
machines at one time. As many as fifty bottles a minute can be turned
out by this combination blowing machine and feeder.

But the apotheosis of bottle-making is to be seen in another factory in
the south Jersey district. Here it is the boast of the superintendents
that from the time the sand goes out of the freight cars in which it is
brought to the plant till the finished bottle is taken by the packer, no
human hand touches the product; and their statement is amply confirmed
by a trip thru the plant. The sand, coloring matter and cullet are in
separate bins; an electrical conveyor takes enough of each for a batch
to a mixing machine; from there the batch goes on a long belt to the
furnace. At the front of the furnace, instead of doors or mouths, is a
revolving pan, kept level full with the molten glass. Outside the
furnace revolves a huge machine with ten arms, each of which carries its
own mold and blowpipe. As each arm passes over the pan in the furnace
the proper amount of glass is sucked into the mold by vacuum; the bottle
is blown and shaped in the course of one revolution, and the mold,
opening, drops the finished bottle into a rack which carries it to the
lehr on a belt. It passes thru the lehr to the packers; and as each rack
is emptied of its bottles the packers place it again on the belt, which
carries it up to the machine, where it collects its cargo of hot bottles
and conducts it again thru the lehr. The entire plant--mixing, feeding,
actually making the bottles, delivery to the lehr, and packing--is
synchronized exactly. Men unload the cars of sand--men pack the bottles.
The intermediate period is entirely mechanical. The plant itself is as
well lighted and ventilated as a department store, and except in the
immediate vicinity of the furnace there is no heat felt above the daily
temperature. The machines average well over a bottle a second, and by an
exceedingly clever arrangement of electrical recording appliances an
accurate record of the output of each machine, as well as the
temperatures of the furnaces and lehrs, is kept in the offices of the
company. The entire equipment is of the most modern, from the boilers
and motors in the power-plant and producer-gas-plant to the packing
platforms. In addition, the plant boasts a complete machine shop where
all the molds are made and the machines repaired.

It is a far cry from human lung-power to the super-efficient machinery
of the new plants; but it is the logical progress of human events,
applying to every product of man's hands, from battleships to--bottles.

* * * * *


SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES


(_New York World_)

One illustration, a half-tone reproduction of a photograph of the
exterior of the theater.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYHOUSE

A GIFT TO THE EAST SIDE--HOW THE SETTLEMENT WORK OF MISSES IRENE AND
ALICE LEWISOHN HAS CULMINATED AT LAST IN A REAL THEATRE--ITS ATTRACTIONS
AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE


The piece is the Biblical "Jephthah's Daughter," adapted from the Book
of Judges. The hero, "a mighty man of valor," has conquered the enemies
of his people. There is great rejoicing over his victory, for the tribe
of Israel has been at its weakest. But now comes payment of the price of
conquest. The leader of the victorious host promised to yield to God as
a burnt sacrifice "whatsoever cometh forth from the doors of my house to
meet me when I return from battle." And his daughter came forth.

In the last act, the girl herself, young and beautiful, advances toward
the altar on which fagots have been piled high. In her hand is the
lighted torch which is to kindle her own death fire.

The chorus chants old Hebraic melodies. Even the audience joins in the
singing. The play takes on the aspect of an ancient religious
ceremonial. Old men and women are in tears, moved by the sad history of
their race, forgetful of the horror of human sacrifice in the intensity
of their religious fervor.

Such is the artistry of the piece; such the perfection of its
production.

Yet this is no professional performance, but the work of amateurs. It is
the opening night of the new community theatre of New York's densely
populated East Side.

At No. 466 Grand Street it stands, far away from Broadway's theatrical
district--a low-lying, little Georgian building. It is but three stories
high, built of light red brick, and finished with white marble. All
around garish millinery shops display their showy goods. Peddlers with
pushcarts lit by flickering flames, vie with each other in their array
of gaudy neckties and bargain shirtwaists. Blazing electric signs herald
the thrills of movie shows. And, salient by the force of extreme
contrast, a plain little white posterboard makes its influence felt. It
is lit by two iron lanterns, and reads simply, "The Neighborhood
Playhouse."

The Misses Irene and Alice Lewisohn of No. 43 Fifth Avenue have built
this theatre. It is their gift to the neighborhood, and symbolizes the
culmination of a work which they have shared with the neighborhood's
people.

Eight years ago the Henry Street Settlement started its scheme of
festivals and pantomimes, portraying through the medium of color, song,
and dance such vague ideas as "Impressions of Spring." It was the boys
and girls of the Settlement who performed in these pantomimes. It was
they who made the costumes, painted the necessary scenery, sang and
danced.

And both daughters of the late Leonard Lewisohn were always interested
and active in promoting this work.

Out of it, in due time, there developed, quite naturally, a dramatic
club. Plays were given in the Settlement gymnasium--full-grown pieces
like "The Silver Box," by John Galsworthy, and inspiring dramas like
"The Shepherd," a plea for Russian revolutionists, by an American
author, Miss Olive Tilford Dargan. Such was the emotional response of
the neighborhood to this drama that four performances had to be given at
Clinton Hall; and as a result a substantial sum of money was forwarded
to "The Friends of Russian Freedom."

Then, in 1913, came the famous Pageant, which roused the entire district
to a consciousness of itself--its history, its dignity and also its
possibilities.

That portion of the East Side which surrounds the Henry Street
Settlement has seen many an invasion since the days when the Dutch first
ousted the Indians. English, Quakers, Scotch have come and gone, leaving
traces more or less distinct. The Irish have given place to the
Italians, who have been replaced by the Russians. In the Pageant of 1913
all these settlers were represented by artistically clad groups who
paraded the streets singing and dancing. No hall could have held the
audience which thronged to see this performance; no host of matinée
worshippers could have rivalled it in fervor of appreciation.

When the Misses Lewisohn, then, built their new playhouse in Grand
Street, it was not with the intention of rousing, but rather of
satisfying, an artistic demand among the people of the neighborhood. And
in the new home are to be continued all the varied activities of which
the Henry Street Settlement festival and dramatic clubs were but the
centre. It is to be a genuine community enterprise in which each boy and
girl will have a share. Miss Alice Lewisohn herself thus expresses its
many-sided work:

"The costume designers and makers, fashioners of jewelry, painters and
composers, musicians and seamstresses, as well as actors and directors,
will contribute their share in varying degree.

"Putting aside for a moment the higher and artistic development which
such work must bring, there is the craftsman side, too, which has
practical value. The young men will become familiar with all the
handiwork of the theatre, the construction and handling of scenery, the
electrical equipment and its varied uses. It will be conceded, I think,
that in this respect the community playhouse is really a college of
instruction in the craft of the stage."

It is a college with a very efficient and well-trained staff of
professors. Mrs. Sarah Cowell Le Moyne, already well known as a teacher
of elocution and acting, will be one of its members. Miss Grace
Griswold, an experienced co-worker of the late Augustine Daly, will act
as manager.

The pupils of this novel school are to have amusement as well as work.
The third floor has been planned to meet many more requirements than are
usually considered in a theatre. Across the front runs a large rehearsal
room, large enough to make a fine dance hall when occasion demands.
Here, too, is a kitchenette which will be used to serve refreshments
when social gatherings are in progress or when an over-long rehearsal
tires out the cast. In warm weather the flat-tiled roof will be used as
a playground. It will be the scene, too, of many open air performances.

The Neighborhood Playhouse has been open only a few weeks. Already it is
in full swing. On the nights when the regular players do not appear the
programme consists of motion pictures and music. There is a charming
informality and ease about these entertainments; there is also genuine
art, and a whole-hearted appreciation on the part of the neighborhood's
people.

* * * * *

(_New York Evening Post_)

THE SINGULAR STORY OF THE MOSQUITO MAN

BY HELEN BULLITT LOWRY


"Now you just hold up a minute"--the bungalow-owner waved an indignant
hand at the man in the little car chug-chugging over the bumpy road.
"Now I just want to tell you," he protested, "that a mosquito got into
my room last night and bit me, and I want you to know that this has
happened three times this week. I want it to stop."

The man in the car had jumped out, and was turning an animated, and
aggressive, but not at all provoked, face on the complainer.

"Are you certain your drains are not stopped up?" he asked.

"Oh, those drains are all right. It's that damp hollow over in Miss K's
woods that's making the trouble."

"I'll go there immediately," said the aggressive one. "She promised me
she would fill that place this week."

"All right, then," answered the placated bungalow-owner, "I thought
you'd fix it up if you found out about it. I certainly wouldn't have
bought around Darien if you had not cleared this place of mosquitoes."

The aggressive one plunged into the Connecticut woods and began his
search for possible mosquito-breeding spots. He was the "Mosquito Man,"
the self-appointed guardian of the Connecticut coast from Stamford to
Westport.

He was not born a Mosquito Man at all--in fact, he did not become one
until he was forty years old and had retired from business because he
had made enough money to rest and "enjoy life." But he did not rest, and
did not get enjoyment, for the mosquitoes had likewise leased his place
on the Sound and were making good their title.

Came then big fat mosquitoes from the swamp. Came mosquitoes from the
salt marshes. Some lighted on the owner's nose and some looked for his
ankles, and found them. Three days of this sort of rest made him decide
to move away. Then, because he was aggressive, he became the Mosquito
Man. The idea occurred to him when he had gone over to a distant island
and was watching the building of houses.

"This place," he said to the head carpenter, "is going to be a little
heaven."

"More like a little other place," growled the head carpenter. "Here
they've dug out the centre of the island and carted it to the beach to
make hills for the houses to be built on. One good rain will fill their
little heaven with mosquitoes. Why don't the people around here drain
their country?"

That night the Mosquito Man telephoned to a drainage expert in New York
and demanded that he come out the next day.

"I don't like to work on Sunday," the expert objected.

"It is absolutely essential that you come at once," he was told. "Can
you take the first train?"

The first train and the expert arrived in Darien at 5:51. Before the day
was over a contract had been drawn up to the purport that the expert
would drain the salt marshes between Stamford and South Norwalk for
$4,000.

The Mosquito Man now began to talk mosquitoes to every one who would
listen and to many who did not want to listen. "That bug," the old
settlers called him at the time--for old settlers are very settled in
their ways. The young women at the Country Club, whenever they saw him
coming, made bets as to whether he would talk mosquitoes--and he always
did. Every property-owner in the township was asked for a subscription,
and some gave generously and some gave niggardly and some did not give
at all. The subscriptions were voluntary, for no one could be forced to
remove a mosquito-breeding nuisance from his property. This was in 1911,
and only in 1915 has a mosquito law been passed in Connecticut. The
Mosquito Man was forced to use "indirect influence," which does not
expedite matters.

A subscription of $1,000 came from the big land corporation of the
neighborhood, after the "indirect influence" had rather forcibly
expressed itself.

"I want $1,000 from you," said the Mosquito Man to the representative of
the president--the president was in South America. The representative
laughed, so the Mosquito Man spent several days explaining to him why
property is more valuable when it is not infested with pests. But every
time that the $1,000 was mentioned, the representative could not
restrain the smile.

"Well," the Mosquito Man said, at last, "I will make the drainage on
your property anyway, and it will cost me $2,000. If you want it left
you will have to pay me every cent of the $2,000, not just the $1,000
that I am asking now. Otherwise I shall fill up my ditches and let you
enjoy your mosquitoes."

The representative did not laugh at this, but cabled the president in
South America. As the president had just been at Panama, and had seen
the mosquito extermination work, the $1,000 subscription came back by
return cable.

The Darien Board of Health also was a spot against which in direct
influence was knocking, for it was a rich Board of Health with $150 at
its disposal--and the Mosquito Man wanted that appropriation to flaunt
in the faces of the old settlers.

"God sent mosquitoes," objected one member of the Board of Health, "and
it is going in the face of Providence to try to get rid of them."

All in all, the money was raised. Some whom he asked for $100 gave $25,
and some whom he asked for $25 gave $100, and some millionaires did not
give at all--but a sail-maker is still telling proudly of how he gave
$5, and "I haven't regretted a cent of it since."

The draining now commenced, and the expert and the Mosquito Man were of
the same stripe. The work was completed in six weeks. Just about this
time people stopped calling the Mosquito Man "a bug," and the members of
the Country Club even tried to make him talk mosquitoes to them, while
the sail-maker felt sure that his $5 had done the whole job. Hammocks
were swung out in the yards--and a hammock hung outside of the screens
is the barometer of the mosquito condition.

The Mosquito Man was feeling very satisfied the night he went to a dance
at the Country Club. But the east wind blew in the mosquitoes from the
Norwalk marshes.

"It was the most embarrassing experience I have ever had," said the
Mosquito Man. "I sat right behind a big fat lady whose dress was very
low and I watched the mosquitoes bite her; her whole back was covered
with red lumps. That night I telegraphed to the man who had done the
draining and he telegraphed back that all of Norwalk township must be
drained."

Norwalk proved to be a much severer task than Darien. In Darien the
Mosquito Man had found only indifference and prejudice; in Norwalk he
met active opposition. Property owners and city councils seem to be
afraid that the value of property will be brought down if any sanitation
scandal is advertised. It really appeared to be simpler and better
business to ignore the fact.

To do away with this opposition, the Mosquito Man handled his campaign
in a popular manner. The cooperation of the newspapers was gained and
every day he published articles on the mosquito question; some of the
articles were educational and others were facetious--while one came out
that brought the property owners crying "murder" about his ears. This
was the article in which he gave the statistics of Norwalk's health rate
in comparison with other Connecticut towns. The smallest subscriptions
were encouraged, for, after a man has given a dollar to a cause, that
cause is his. Many a child was received with a welcoming smile when he
brought to the campaign offices a ten-cent donation.

True, ten-cent donations were not suggested to adult contributors, and
the Mosquito Man did much to induce the well-to-do citizens to subscribe
according to their means. He still tells with relish of the club of
women which took up a collection, after his talk, and presented him with
two dollars, in small change.

"The women, though, were my greatest help," he adds; "I found that the
women are as a rule better citizens than the men and are glad to be
organized to fight the mosquito and fly menace. Of course, I found some
uneducated ones that owned a piece of property a foot square, and were
afraid that I would walk off with it in my pocket if I came to look it
over--but, as for the educated women, I could not have managed my
campaign without them."

A large contributor to the fund was the monastery at Kaiser Island. For
years this had been a summer resort for the monks, who filled the
dormitories in the old days before the mosquitoes took the island. Only
one priest was there when the Mosquito Man visited the place to ask for
a subscription.

"Very few come any more," said the priest. "It is because of the
mosquitoes."

"Will you contribute $500 to get rid of them?" asked the Mosquito Man.

Briefly, the Mosquito Man offered to repay the $500 himself if he did
not exterminate the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes went; the monks came back
to Kaiser Island.

Yet, in spite of the occasional generous giver, the $7,500 was never
quite raised, and the Mosquito Man himself had to make up the deficit.
The citizens of Norwalk, for instance, contributed only $150.

This all happened three years ago, and now not a child in the twelve
miles but can tell you all about mosquitoes and how a community can
avoid having them. The Mosquito Man is appreciated now, and the
community understands what he has done for them and what he is still
doing--for the contract merely drained the salt marshes, doing away with
the salt-water mosquitoes. There were still the fresh-water mosquitoes,
and there was still much work for some one to do. That some one has
been the Mosquito Man.

During the three years, he has made it his business to drain every
inland marsh within his territory, to turn over every tub which may
collect water, to let the plug out of every old boat which is breeding
mosquitoes, and to convince every ancestor-encumbered autocrat that his
inherited woods can breed mosquitoes just as disastrously as do the tin
cans of the Hungarian immigrant down the road. The Mosquito Man has an
assistant, paid by the towns of Darien and Norwalk--and together they
traverse the country.

"It was difficult finding a man who would go into mud to the waist when
need was," said the Mosquito Man, "but I finally found a good man with
the proper scorn of public opinion on the clothes question, and with a
properly trained wife who cleaned without scolding."

You can find traces of the two men any place you go in the woods of
Darien or Norwalk. In a ferned dell where you are quite sure that yours
is the first human presence, you come upon a ditch, as clean and smooth
as a knife--or you find new grass in a place which you remember as a
swamp. Perhaps you may even be lucky enough to come on the two workers
themselves, digging with their pick and spade--for all summer long the
Mosquito Man is working eight hours a day at his self-appointed task.

You might even find him in New York some off-day--and you will know him,
for surely he will be telling some rebellious apartment-house owner that
the tank on his roof is unscreened. For they do say that he carries his
activities into any part of the world where he may chance to be; they do
say that, when he was in Italy not so very long ago, he went out to
investigate the mosquitoes which had disturbed his rest the night
before.

"Now you must oil your swamp," said he to the innkeeper.

That night there was no salad for dinner, for the innkeeper had obeyed
the order to the best of his ability. He had poured all of his best
olive oil on the mosquito marsh.

* * * * *

_(Country Gentleman)_

Five half-tone illustrations, with the following captions:
1. "A Traction Ditcher at Work Digging Trench for Tile."
2. "Ditch Dug With Dynamite Through Woods."
3. "Apple Packing House and Cold Storage at Ransomville."
4. "Nelson R. Peet, County Agent and Manager of the Niagara
County Farm Bureau, New York."
5. "Part of the Crowd Listening to the Speakers."


A COUNTY SERVICE STATION

WHERE NEW YORK FARMERS GET HELP IN THEIR FRUIT GROWING AND MARKETING
PROBLEMS

BY D. H. WILLIAMS

You've got to look into the family closet of a county and study its
skeletons before you can decide whether that county's farming business
is mostly on paper or on concrete. You've got to know whether it
standardizes production and marketing, or just markets by as many
methods as there are producers.

As a living example of the possibility of tightening up and retiming the
gears of a county's economic machinery to the end of cutting out power
losses, Niagara County, New York, stands in a distinct class by itself.

Here is an area of 558 square miles, with Lake Ontario spraying its
northern line. A network of electric and steam railways and hundreds of
miles of splendid state highways make up a system of economic arteries
through which the industrial life-blood of the county circulates.

Forty-eight hours to Chicago's markets, the same distance to New York's;
three wealthy industrial and agricultural cities within the county
itself--Lockport, Niagara Falls and North Tonawanda--operating with a
wealth of cheap electric power generated at Niagara Falls--these are
some of the advantages within and without the county, the value of which
is self-evident.

Beginning with the southern plain section, Niagara's agriculture changes
in type from general hay and grain farming to a more intense
fruit-growing industry as the northern plain section is approached,
until within the zone of Lake Ontario's tempering influence the fruit
industry almost excludes all other types of farming.

There is hardly a more favored fruit section in the country than the
northern half of Niagara County. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes,
cherries, quinces make up the county's horticultural catalogue. The
latest available figures rank Niagara County first among the counties of
New York in the number of fruit trees; second in the total number of
bushels of fruit produced; first in the quantity of peaches, pears,
plums and prunes, quinces and cherries; third in the number of bushels
of apples.

Yet there are things about the county which no statistics will ever
show, such things, for instance, as the condition of the orchards, the
market value of the fruit, the earning capacity of the land as a
whole--in other words, the bedrock rating of the county. You have to get
at these things by a different avenue of approach.

A rather close auditing during 1914 of the accounts of some eighty-seven
typical good farms in perhaps the best section of Niagara County brought
out the fact that labor incomes from these farms, on the whole, could
not be classed as strictly giltedge. One diagnosis made by a Niagara
County investigator is recorded in these words:

"Though Niagara County has many of the best fruit farms in New York
State, there are numbers of orchards that have been abandoned to the
ravages of insects and disease. There is also a tendency toward
extensive rather than intensive fruit growing, which has resulted in
many large plantings being made.

"Niagara County does not need more orchards, but rather cultivation and
spraying of the present orchards; it does not need to produce more
fruit, but rather to insure better grading and marketing of the present
production."

This observation is dated 1914, one year after leading farmers and
business men of the county, convinced that all was not so well with them
as the lifeless census figures would have one believe, made the move to
set up and operate for the county a farm bureau. New York is the
national hotbed of farm-bureau enthusiasm and propaganda.

Almost six years to the day after the inauguration of this bureau, I
went into Niagara County. And before I left I was able to sketch a
rather vivid mental picture of what a farm bureau really can do for a
county, be the raw material with which it must work good, bad or
indifferent.

Up in the office of the Niagara County Farm Bureau at Lockport I waited
some two hours for an interview with its manager, Nelson R. Peet. That
wait was an eye-opener.

Three women clerks and stenographers and the assistant manager occupied
this room. The clerks were trying to typewrite, answer the continuous
ringing of the phone, respond to buzzer summons from Manager Peet's
private office and talk with a stream of visitors, all at the same time.

I spent two whole days and half a night in these offices and not once
save at night was there a let-up in this sort of thing. It was business
all the time; the business of service! Niagara County farmers are using
the bureau.

Nelson Peet, manager, is a spectacled human magneto. His speech and his
movements fairly crackle with energy; his enthusiasm is as communicable
as a jump spark. A young man in years, yet mature in the knowledge of
men and the psychology of service, he never wastes a minute dilating
upon the philosophy of farm management; but he has worked twenty hours a
day to see that Niagara County farmers got all the labor they needed
during rush seasons.

This man has been with the bureau three years. When he came to it the
bureau had a paid-up membership of 325. In March this year, when I was
in Niagara County, the membership stood at 2185, and was increasing
daily. It led by a good margin, I was told, the fifty-five New York
county farm bureaus. These, in 1918, had a total membership of 60,000.
More than half the farmers in Niagara County are members of the Niagara
Bureau.

When Peet first took charge there were two broad courses open to him. He
might have planned a program of paternalistic propaganda in behalf of
the farmers of the county. Such a program calls for a tremendous amount
of talking and writing about coöperation and community interests, better
economics and better social conditions, but too often results in the
propagandist doing the "coing," while the "operating" is left to
somebody else.

The other course was to find out what the farms and farmers in the
county needed most and then set to work with little ado to get those
things. Peet chose the latter course. And in so doing he has staged one
of the best demonstrations in rural America. He has shown that a farm
bureau can be made into a county service station and actually become the
hub of the county's agricultural activities.

With the aid of state-college men, one of Peet's foremost lines of
bureau work has been that of taking inventories of the farming business
of Niagara County. For four years these records have been taken on some
100 typical farms. Group meetings are regularly held at the homes of the
bureau's community committeemen. Here, with the records they have been
keeping, the farmers assemble. Here they work out their own labor
incomes and compare notes with their neighbors. The farm bureau helps
the men make these business analyses--it does not do the work for them.
Now the farmers ask for the blank forms and are themselves as
enthusiastic over farm-management records as the men who specialize in
such.

These figures serve the bureau as an index to the county's progress.
More than once Peet has referred to them and discovered where leaks
could be plugged. For example, these records showed an average labor
income of $182 a farm for the four years ending 1916.

"This fact," Mr. Peet explained, "we put to work as the reason for doing
something to benefit the fruit industry. What could be done? The answer
in other highly specialized fruit sections seems to have been central
packing houses. We held a meeting, inviting one very influential fruit
grower from each loading station in the county. We showed charts of the
farm-management records. It didn't take long for the meeting to go on
record as favoring the central-packing-house plan.

"Later meetings were held in each community, the farm-management charts
were again shown, and at every loading station the meetings went on
record as favoring central packing houses. To make a long story short,
sites and methods of financing these houses were worked out. There were
already two old central packing houses in operation. They took on new
life. Five new ones have been formed. All were incorporated and
federated into a central parent association, which owns the brand
adopted and makes the rules and regulations under which the fruit is
packed.

"From the very beginning the proposition has been pushed not as a means
of beating the selling game by selling coöperatively, but as a means of
securing the confidence of the consuming public, which must ultimately
result in a wider distribution and better prices. In fact, the matter of
selling has not been fostered from the farm-bureau office. We have
concerned ourselves solely with uniform grading and central packing. We
believed from the start that the selling of properly graded and packed
fruit will take care of itself, and this stand has been justified.

"Each association makes its own arrangements for selling, and in every
case has secured better prices than the growers who sold under the old
system. The most satisfactory feature of this work centers round the
fact that the best and most influential growers are heart and soul
behind the proposition. The personnel of coöperative movements, I
believe, is the main feature."

When I visited Niagara County the seven central packing associations
were doing a splendid business, handling about $1,000,000 worth of
apples between them. Only two of the associations were more than one
year old. Many of the associations were dickering for additional space
for packing and for extensions for their refrigerator service. Other
communities in Niagara and in other counties were writing in for details
of the plan, to the end of getting the same thing started in their
sections. And inquiries were coming in from states outside of New York.

Even with the best of selling methods, no commodity will bring a profit
to the producer unless the greater portion of it is eligible to the A-1
class. Too many seconds or culls will throw any orchard venture on the
rocks of bankruptcy. It came to Manager Peet's attention early in 1917
that the farm bureau had a golden opportunity to put on another service,
which alone, if it worked out in practice as well as it did on paper,
would justify the existence of the bureau.

He noticed that though orchardists were following spraying
schedules--the best they could find--some had splendid results in
controlling apple scab and other pests, but others got results ranging
between indifferent and poor. This seemed paradoxical, in view of the
fact that one man who followed the same spraying schedule as his
neighbor would have more scabby apples than the other.

At that time L.F. Strickland, orchard inspector for the state department
of agriculture, had paid particular attention to a limited number of
apple orchards in Niagara County with a view to controlling scab by
spraying. He discovered that, though the average spraying calendar is
all right, climatic conditions in different parts of the same county
often upset these standard calculations, so that a difference of one day
or even a few hours in time of spraying often meant the difference
between success and failure. In other words, it was necessary to study
all contributing factors, watch the orchards unremittingly and then
decide on the exact day or even hour when conditions were right for a
successful spray treatment. He found that one must strike the _times
between times_ to get the optimum of results.

So Mr. Strickland, in conjunction with his regular work, kept an eagle
eye on a few orchards and would notify the owners when it seemed the
moment for spraying had come. It worked out that those favored
orchardists had magnificent yields of A-1 fruit; others in the same
sections, following the rather flexible spraying calendars, didn't do
nearly so well.

All this set Manager Peet to thinking. "Strickland hasn't got an
automobile and has lots of other work to do," he reasoned; "but why, if
he had a car and could give all the time necessary to such work,
couldn't the same results be had in orchards all over the county? Why
can't this farm bureau put on a spraying service?"

He put the idea up to the executive committee of the bureau. The idea
was good, they agreed, but it would cost at least $500 to try it out the
first year. The bureau didn't have the available funds.

"Tell you what," they finally said: "If you want to get out and rustle
up 500 new members at one dollar each to pay for this thing, we'll
authorize it."

Peet was telling me about it. "Here the bureau had been working for four
years with a paid-up membership of about 375," he said, "and if I
believed in my idea I had to get 500 more by spring. It was February
eighth when the committee gave me this decision. Well, I did it in time
to start the ball that spring!"

He got the new members because he had a service to sell them.
Arrangements were made whereby the county was divided into six zones,
varying in soil and topographic conditions. Criterion orchards were
selected in each zone. The inspector, with the aid of daily telegraphic
weather reports and through constant inspection of the criterion
orchards, decided when the hour struck for the most effective spraying
of these orchards.

In the meantime Manager Peet and the inspector had worked out a code
system for spraying instructions and put this into the hands of the
growers in the six zones. When it came time to spray, the telephones
from headquarters in Lockport were put to work and the code message sent
to certain orchardists; these in turn repeated the instructions to a
number of other orchardists agreed upon, until every member had received
the message.

The scheme has worked. The first year there were 800 members who took
this service; the second year--1918--there were 900; this year there are
1500. It is paying for itself many times over. One central packing
house with nine grower members reports that eight of the members used
the spraying service and that none of these had more than five per cent
of their fruit to cull out. The ninth member sprayed, but not through
the service. He culled forty-five per cent of his crop. There are scores
of similar instances.

Seeing how quickly he could get the support of the Niagara farmers for
any move which had practice and not theory to recommend it, Manager Peet
next began to agitate for an improvement in city-marketing conditions in
Lockport. Up to August, 1915, the system--if system it might be
called--of distributing farm produce for Lockport's consumption
consisted of sporadic visits by producers to the city with produce to be
sold at prices largely controlled by the local grocerymen. Likewise
retail prices to consumers were chiefly regulated by the same standard.

A grower might drive into Lockport with 100 quarts of strawberries. He
would stop at a grocery and offer them.

"No," the grocer would say, "I don't want any. Say, how much do you want
for them anyhow?"

"Ten cents a quart."

"Too high; I'll give you six."

Whereupon the man would drive on to see the next grocer. But the man who
offered six cents might go straight to his phone, call up the rest of
the trade and inform it that there were 100 quarts of strawberries on
the streets for which he had offered six cents against ten asked. The
result would be that the farmer would get no better offer than six
cents.

So Manager Peet joined hands with the Lockport Board of Commerce and
went at the job of righting this condition. He proposed a city market
for farmers. The nearest approach to a market was a shelter for teams
which the local food dealers had rented.

To 700 farmers in the vicinity of Lockport Manager Peet wrote letters,
calling their attention to these conditions and offering the city-market
idea as a remedy. And he used publicity among Lockport's population of
consumers, showing them the economy of such a move. The farmers held a
get-together meeting, decided on a location for a market in Lockport,
decided on market days and market hours. After this the farm bureau got
the city's common council to pass an ordinance prohibiting the
huckstering of farm produce on the streets during market hours; also an
ordinance setting the market hours, marking off a street section which
should be used as a market stand, and putting the superintendent of
streets in charge.

That was all. Not a cent of appropriation asked for. The market opened
August 10, 1917, with fifty farm wagons in place. Before the summer was
over it was common to find more than 100 at their stands. The local
war-garden supervisor acted as inspector. He looked over the produce,
advised the farmers how to pack and display it, and used every energy in
the direction of popularizing the market among producers and consumers
alike.

Between Manager Peet and the inspector a scheme was worked out whereby
every Thursday was bargain day in market. They would get a certain
number of farmers to agree to pack and offer for sale on those days a
limited number of baskets of their finest tomatoes, say. Or it might be
corn. In the case of tomatoes the bargain price would be ten cents for
baskets which that day were selling regularly for eighteen to
twenty-five cents. To each of these baskets--no farmer was asked to
sacrifice more than ten--was attached a green tag noting that it was a
bargain.

Each bargain day was advertised in advance among Lockport consumers.
Thursday mornings would see an early rush to the market. The bargains
would be cleaned out and then business at normal prices would continue
at a brisker rate than usual.

The first year of its operation this market was held on fifty-one days.
During this period 1300 rigs sold out their produce for a total of
$13,000. This simple move has resulted in stabilizing prices in Lockport
and has encouraged the bringing in of farm produce. Prices automatically
regulate themselves. If they begin to get too low in Lockport, the
supply in sight is immediately reduced through action by the producers
in shipping the stuff to Niagara Falls or Buffalo by motor trucks.

The distribution of Lockport's milk supply, as happens in hundreds of
cities, has been attended by considerable waste and expense as a result
of duplication of delivery routes, breakage of bottles and uneconomic
schedules.

The first night I was in Lockport, Manager Peet was holding a meeting of
the milk producers supplying the city for the purpose of settling this
inequity once and for all. A little agitation had been carried on ahead
of this meeting, but only a little. Peet had a plan.

"It's all wrong to plan for a municipally owned central distributing
system," he was explaining to me the next morning; "these are too likely
to get mixed up in politics. So last night we just about clinched our
arrangement for having our city distributing system owned by the
producers themselves. In the past we have had eight distributors with
fifteen wagons handling the milk supplied from fifty dairy farms. There
has been a big loss in time and money as a result of this competition.

"The farm bureau got the producers together on the plan of securing
options on these distributors' interests, and last night we just about
wound up all the preliminaries. We already have our limited liability
corporation papers. We're incorporating under the Membership Corporation
Law. Our organization comes under the amendment to the Sherman Antitrust
Law, you know, following closely the California law under which the
California fruit growers' associations operate.

"We figure that we will need between $20,000 and $30,000 for the
purchase of buildings, wagons, equipment and good-will now in the hands
of the distributors. At first we thought it would be a good plan to have
every member of the association subscribe to the amount proportioned by
the number of cows he keeps or the amount of milk he has for sale. But
for several reasons this wouldn't work. So we hit on the scheme of
having each man subscribe to the amount he personally is able to
finance.

"We already have $24,000 subscribed in sums between set limits of $100
and $1000. We're issuing five-year certificates of indebtedness bearing
six per cent interest. Our producers will have about $9000 worth of milk
a month to distribute. We plan to deduct five per cent every month from
these milk checks to pay off the certificates. Then later we'll create a
new set of certificates and redistribute these in proportion to the
amounts of milk produced on the members' farms."

Manager Peet and the producers are making it perfectly plain to Lockport
consumers that this is no move contemplating price control. In fact,
they expect to sell milk for a cent a quart under the old price.

The farm-labor shortage which antedated our entrance into the war became
a national menace about the time our selective draft began to operate.
New York farmers were as hard hit as any other farmers, particularly in
the fruit sections, where a tremendous labor supply falls suddenly due
at harvest time. Niagara County came in for its full share of this
trouble and the Niagara County Farm Bureau went its length to meet the
emergency.

In 1917 Western New York produced the biggest crop of peaches in its
history, and in the face of the greatest labor famine. There were nearly
8000 cars of the fruit in danger of spoiling on the trees and on the
ground. Peet anticipated the crisis by converting the farm bureau into a
veritable county labor department. He was promised a good number of
high-school boys who were to help in the peach harvest and who were to
be cleared through a central office in Buffalo.

Manager Peet worked out arrangements for the care of these boys in
forty-two camps strategically located. The camps were to accommodate
thirty boys each. The farmers had asked Peet for 4500 hands. He applied
for 1500 boys and had every reason to expect these. But at the critical
moment something went wrong in Buffalo headquarters and of the 1500
asked for he got only 200!

"I was in Buffalo at the time the news was broken," Manager Peet was
saying to me, "and my first impulse was to jump off one of the docks!"

Here was a nice kettle of fish! The fruit was ripening on the trees, and
the phones in the bureau offices were ringing their plating off with
calls from frantic farmers. Peet didn't jump off a Buffalo dock; he
jumped out of his coat and into the fray. He got a Federal Department of
Labor man to help him. They plastered appeals for help all over Western
New York--on the walls of post offices, railroad stations, on boarding
houses. They worked on long-distance phones, the telegraph, the mails.
They hired trucks and brought city men and boys and women and girls from
cities to work in the orchards over week-ends. Labor, attracted by the
flaring posters, drifted into the bureau's offices in Lockport and
immediately was assigned to farms; and hundreds of laborers whom Peet
never saw also came.

By working seven days a week and often without meals and with cat naps
for sleep the bureau cleared 1200 laborers through its office, to say
nothing of the loads brought overland by motor truck and which never
came near the office. Business houses in the towns closed down and sent
their help to the orchards. Lockport's organization of "live
wires"--lawyers, doctors, bankers--went out and worked in the orchards.

"Well," was Peet's comment, "we saved the crop, that's all!"

Last year the bureau placed 1095 men and four women on farms in Niagara
County. In addition, 1527 soldiers were secured on two-day furloughs
from Fort Niagara to help harvest the fruit crops. "We did this," said
Manager Peet, "mainly by starting early and keeping persistently at it
with the War Department, in order to cut the red tape."

This fall there will go into effect in New York State an amendment to
its drainage law which is going to do more properly to drain the state
than all the steam diggers that could have been crowded on its acres
under former conditions. This action came out of Niagara County, through
the farm bureau.

To realize the importance of drainage in this county one must remember
that it lies in two levels broken by the ridge which forms the locks at
Lockport, the falls at Niagara Falls, and which extends across the
county from east to west. In each plateau the land is very level, there
being but few places in the county having a difference in elevation of
twenty feet within a radius of a mile. Good drainage is very necessary
and in the past has been very hard to secure.

"Practically no man can secure adequate drainage without being concerned
in the drainage of his neighbor's land," said Mr. Peet. "If the neighbor
objects the situation is complicated. And our drainage laws have been
woefully inadequate to handle these problems."

But recently the farm bureau put it up to a conference of county agents
of New York to get the "state leader" to appoint a state committee to
work this thing out and persuade the state legislature to make the
necessary amendments to the drainage law. The plan went through, and one
of the laws passed compels an objecting property owner to open drains
which are necessary for the relief of his neighbors. This law goes into
effect next fall.

Farmers are looking to the farm bureau for help in the cleaning and
repairing of some sixty drainage ditches constructed in the past under
the county-commissioner plan. But the records on file in the county
clerk's office are in bad shape. The farm bureau has taken it upon
itself to arrange all this material so that it is available on a
minute's notice, and as a result has drawn up petitions to the
supervisors for the cleaning out of three of these ditches.

Cooperating with the New York State Food Commission, the farm bureau had
a power-tractor ditcher placed in the county last summer. Peet placed
his assistant in full charge, and the machine never lost a single day as
a result of lack of supervision. It has dug over 4000 rods of ditch for
tile on twenty-eight farms.

For four years Niagara County farmers had not made expenses in growing
tomatoes for the canneries. The farm bureau called a meeting of some
fourteen growers and together they figured the cost of production. The
average cost for 1917 was found to be $85 an acre; the estimated cost
for 1918 was $108 an acre. The average crop was set at six tons to the
acre. A joint committee went out of the conference and laid these facts
before the canners. The result was that the growers got $20 a ton for
their crops in 1918.

These are some outstanding features of the service rendered its farmers
by the Niagara bureau. Here are some of its "lesser" activities:

Taking an agricultural census by school districts of each farm in the
county and completing the job in one week.

Effecting an interchange of livestock and seed.

Distributing 1000 bushels of seed corn among 383 farmers, twenty-two
tons of nitrate of soda at cost among sixty-two farmers, and securing
and distributing six tons of sugar to fifty beekeepers for wintering
bees.

Indorsing 200 applications for military furloughs.

Assisting in organizing Liberty Loan campaigns, especially the third.

Assisting in the delivery of twenty carloads of feed, fertilizer, farm
machinery and barrels, which had been delayed.

Holding twelve demonstration meetings, attended by 602 farmers.

Conducting two tractor schools, attended by 125 farmers.

Arranging eight farmers' institutes, attended by 900 farmers.

Organizing a Federal Farm Loan Association which has loaned $125,000 to
nineteen farmers.

The bureau keeps its members posted on what is going on in the county
and what the bureau is doing through the medium of a well-edited monthly
"News" of eight pages. The best feature of the handling of this
publication is that it costs neither bureau nor members a cent. The
advertisements from local supply dealers pay for it, and two pages of
ads in each issue settles the bill.

The bureau's books show that last year it spent five dollars in serving
each member. The membership fee is only one dollar. The difference comes
from Federal, state and county appropriations.

The success of this bureau comes from having at the head of it the right
man with the right view of what a farm bureau should do. Manager Peet
sees to it that the organization works with the local chamber of
commerce--the one in Lockport has 700 members--which antedates the farm
bureau and which always has supported the bureau. Peet's policy has been
to keep the bureau not only before the farmers but before the city
people as well.

The "live-wire" committee of the Lockport chamber, composed of lawyers,
doctors, bankers, merchants, and the like, has made Manager Peet an
_ex-officio_ member. The Niagara Falls and Tonawanda Chambers of
Commerce get together with the Lockport chamber and the farm bureau and
talk over problems of inter-county importance. These conferences have
worked out a unified plan for road development, for instance. The
Niagara Farm Bureau helped the Niagara Falls city administration to
secure the services of a Federal market inspector. In this way all
rivalry between different sections and towns in Niagara County is freed
of friction.

About the only criticism I heard against the farm bureau of Niagara
County was that Peet was the wrong man. The farmers want a man who will
_stay_ manager. But some of the best members hinted that Peet will not
stay because he's just a bit too efficient. They seem to fear that some
business corporation is going to get him away. And when you look over
the record of his work as organizer and executive, you must admit
there's something in this.

* * * * *

_(Detroit News)_

Four half-tone illustrations:
1. The Settling Basin at the Water Works.
2. Interior of the Tunnel Through which the Water is Pumped.
3. Where Detroit's Water Comes From.
4. Water Rushing into the Settling Basin.

GUARDING A CITY'S WATER SUPPLY

HOW THE CITY CHEMIST WATCHES FOR THE APPEARANCE OF DEADLY BACILLI; WATER
MADE PURE BY CHEMICALS

BY HENRY J. RICHMOND

"COLON." The city chemist spoke the one significant word as he set down
the test tube into which he had been gazing intently. The next morning
the front page of all the city papers displayed the warning, "Citizens
should boil the drinking water."

Every morning, as the first task of the day, the city chemist uncorks a
curious little crooked tube containing a few spoonsful of very ordinary
bouillon, akin to that which you might grab at the quick lunch, but
which has been treated by the admixture of a chemical. This tube begins
in a bulb which holds the fluid and terminates in an upturned crook
sealed at the end. Into this interesting little piece of apparatus, the
chemist pours a small quantity of the city drinking water, and he then
puts the whole into an incubator where it is kept at a temperature
favorable to the reactions which are expected if the water is
contaminated.

After a sufficient time the tube is inspected. To the untrained eye
nothing appears. The bouillon still remains in the little bulb
apparently unchanged. Its color and clearness have not been affected.
But the chemist notices that it does not stand so high in the closed end
of the tube as it did when placed in the incubator. The observation
seems trivial, but to the man of science it is significant.

What has happened? The water contained some minute organisms which when
acted upon by the chemical in the tube have set up a fermentation.
Gradually, one by one in the little bulb, bubbles of gas have formed and
risen to the surface of the liquid in the closed upper end of the tube.
As this gas was liberated, it took the place of the liquid in the tube,
and the liquid was forced downward until there was quite a large space,
apparently vacant but really filled with gas.

It was this phenomenon that had attracted the attention of the chemist.
What did it mean? It was the evidence that the water which was being
furnished to the city for half a million people to drink contained some
living organism.

Now that, in itself, was enough to make an official of the health
department begin to take an interest. It was not, however, in itself a
danger signal.

Not all bacterial life is a menace to health, the chemist will tell you.
Indeed, humanity has come to live on very peaceable terms with several
thousand varieties of bacteria and to be really at enmity with but a
score or more. Without the beneficent work of a certain class of
bacteria the world would not be habitable. This comes about through a
very interesting, though rather repulsive condition--the necessity of
getting rid of the dead to make room for the living.

What would be the result if no provision had been made for the
disintegration of the bodies of all the men and animals that have
inhabited the earth since the beginning? Such a situation is
inconceivable. But very wisely providence has provided that myriads and
myriads of tiny creatures are ever at work breaking up worn-out and dead
animal matter and reducing it to its original elements. These elements
are taken up by plant life, elaborated into living vegetable growth and
made fit again for the nourishment of animal life, thus completing the
marvelous cycle. And so we must not get the notion that all bacteria are
our mortal foes. We could not live without them, and our earth, without
their humble services, would no longer be habitable.

Neither need we fear the presence of bacterial life in our drinking
water. Drinking water always contains bacteria. We, ourselves, even when
in the best of health, are the hosts of millions upon millions of them,
and it is fair to suppose that they serve some useful purpose. At any
rate, it has never been demonstrated that they do us any harm under
normal conditions.

And so, the chemist was not alarmed when he discovered that the
formation of gas in his crooked tube gave indication of bacteria in the
drinking water. He must ascertain what type of bacteria he had
entrapped. To this end, he analyzed the gas, and when he determined that
the fermentation was due to the presence of colon bacilli in the water,
he sent out his warning. Not that the colon bacilli are a menace to
health. The body of every human being in the world is infested with
millions of them. But the presence of colon bacilli in drinking water is
an indication of the presence of a really dangerous thing--sewage.

Thus, when the city chemist turned from his test tube with the
exclamation, "Colon!" he did not fear the thing that he saw, but the
thing that he knew might accompany it.

There has been much discussion of late of the possibility that the great
lakes cities may suffer a water famine. The rapid increase of population
along the borders of these great seas, it has been said, might render
the water unfit for use. This fear is based upon the assumption that we
shall always continue the present very foolish practice of dumping our
sewage into the source of our water supply. The time may come when we
shall know better how to protect the public health and at the same time
husband the public resources. But even at that, the city chemist says
that he hardly expects to see the time when the present intake for
water near the head of Belle Isle will not be both safe and adequate.

No doubt he makes this statement because he has confidence that the
purification of water is both simple and safe. There are two principal
methods. The first, and most expensive, is nature's own--the filter. The
application of this method is comparatively simple though it involves
considerable expense. The trick was learned from the hillside spring
which, welling up through strata of sand and gravel, comes out pure and
clear and sparkling. To make spring water out of lake water, therefore,
it is merely necessary to excavate a considerable area to the desired
depth and lead into it the pipes connected with the wells from which
water is to be pumped. Then the pit is filled with successive layers of
crushed stone graduated in fineness to the size of gravel and then
covered with a deep layer of fine sand. This area is then flooded with
the water to be filtered, which slowly percolates and comes out clear
and pure. The best results in purification of contaminated water
supplies have probably been attained in this way; that is, as measured
by the improvement of health and the general reduction of the death rate
from those diseases caused by the use of contaminated water.

But when the alarm was given this spring by the city chemist there was
no time to excavate and build an extensive filtering plant. The dreaded
typhoid was already making its appearance and babies were dying.
Something had to be done at once.

If some afternoon you take a stroll through Gladwin park your attention
may be attracted to a little white building at the lower end of the
settling basin. It is merely a temporary structure yet it is serving a
very important purpose. Approach the open door and your nostrils will be
greeted by a pungent odor that may make you catch your breath. The
workmen, too, you will notice, do not stay long within doors, but take
refuge in a little shelter booth outside. Strewn about here and there
are traces of a white, powdery substance which seems to have been
tracked down from a platform erected on the roof. This is hypochlorite
of lime, the substance used for sterilizing the city drinking water.

This is so powerful a disinfectant that it destroys all bacteria in
water even in an extremely dilute solution. The method of applying it is
interesting. The city water comes in from the river through a great
tunnel about 10 feet in diameter. The little chlorinating plant is
situated on the line of this tunnel so that the solution is readily
introduced into the water before it reaches the pool called a settling
basin.

The hypochlorite reaches the plant in iron cylinders containing 100
pounds. These are carried up to the roof and poured into the first
mixing tank through a hopper fixed for the purpose. There are within the
building four of these mixing tanks. In the first, up near the roof, a
very strong solution is first made. This is drawn off into a second tank
with a greater admixture of water and thence passes into the third and
fourth. From the last it is forced out into the main tunnel by a pipe
and mingles with the great flood that is pouring constantly into the
wells beneath pumping engines. And this is the strength of the chemical:
five pounds of it mingled with one million gallons of water is
sufficient to render the water fit for drinking purposes. Nearly 98 per
cent of the bacteria in the water is destroyed by this weak solution.
The water is tasteless and odorless. Indeed, probably very few of the
citizens of Detroit who are using the city water all the time, know that
the treatment is being applied.

But the chemist continues his tests every morning. Every morning the
little crooked tubes are brought out and filled and carefully watched to
ascertain if the telltale gas develops which is an index of "death in
the cup." Thus is the city's water supply guarded.

No more important work can devolve on the board of health. Before
science had learned to recognize the tiny enemies which infest drinking
water, typhoid and kindred diseases were regarded as a visitation of
divine providence for the sins of a people. We now know that a rise in
the death rate from these diseases is to be laid rather to the sins of
omission on the part of the board of health and the public works
department.

* * * * *

_(The Outlook)_

THE OCCUPATION AND EXERCISE CURE

BY FRANK MARSHALL WHITE

The nerve specialist leaned back in his chair behind the great mahogany
desk in his consulting-room and studied the features of the capitalist
as that important factor in commerce and industry explained the symptoms
that had become alarming enough to drive him, against his will, to seek
medical assistance. The patient was under fifty years of age, though
the deep lines in his face, with his whitening hair--consequences of the
assiduity with which he had devoted himself to the accumulation of his
millions and his position in the Directory of Directors--made him appear
ten years older. An examination had shown that he had no organic disease
of any kind, but he told the physician that he was suffering from what
he called "inward trembling," with palpitation of the heart, poor sleep,
occasional dizziness, pain in the back of the neck, difficulty in
concentrating his attention, and, most of all, from various
apprehensions, such as that of being about to fall, of losing his mind,
of sudden death--he was afraid to be alone, and was continually tired,
worried, and harassed.

"You present merely the ordinary signs of neurasthenia," said the
specialist. "These symptoms are distressing, but not at all serious or
dangerous. You have been thinking a great deal too much about yourself
and your feelings. You watch with morbid interest the perverted
sensations that arise in various parts of your body. You grow
apprehensive about the palpitation of your heart, which is not at all
diseased, but which flutters a little from time to time because the
great nerve of the heart is tired, like the other great nerves and
nerve-centers of your body. You grow apprehensive over the analogous
tremor which you describe as 'inward trembling,' and which you often
feel all through your trunk and sometimes in your knees, hands, and
face, particularly about the eyes and mouth and in the fingers."

The capitalist had started at the mention of the word neurasthenia, and
had seemed much relieved when the physician had declared that the
symptoms were not dangerous. "I had been under the impression that
neurasthenia was practically an incurable disease," he said. "However,
you have described my sensations exactly."

"One hundred per centum of cases of neurasthenia are curable," responded
the specialist. "Neurasthenia is not, as is usually supposed, an equally
diffused general exhaustion of the nervous system. In my opinion, it is
rather an unequally distributed multiple fatigue. Certain more
vulnerable portions of the nervous system are affected, while the
remainder is normal. In the brain we have an overworked area which,
irritated, gives rise to an apprehension or imperative idea. By
concentration of energy in some other region of the brain, by using the
normal portions, we give this affected part an opportunity to rest and
recuperate. New occupations are therefore substituted for the old
habitual one. A change of interests gives the tired centers rest."

"I have heard the 'rest cure' advocated in cases like mine," suggested
the capitalist.

"In the treatment of neurasthenia we must take the whole man into
consideration," said the physician. "We must stimulate nutrition, feed
well the tired and exhausted organism, and, above all, provide some sort
of rest and distraction for the mind. The mind needs feeding as well as
the body. The rest cure is a kind of passive, relaxing, sedative
treatment. The field is allowed to lie fallow, and often to grow up with
weeds, trusting to time to rest and enrich it. The 'exercise and
occupation cure,' on the other hand, is an active, stimulating, and
tonic prescription. You place yourself in the hands of a physician who
must direct the treatment. He will lay out a scheme with a judicious
admixture of exercise which will improve your general health, soothe
your nervous system, induce good appetite and sleep, and of occupation
which will keep your mind from morbid self-contemplation. One of the
best means to this end is manual occupation--drawing, designing,
carpentry, metal-work, leather-work, weaving, basket-making,
bookbinding, clay-modeling, and the like--for in all these things the
hands are kept busy, requiring concentration of attention, while new
interests of an artistic and æsthetic nature are aroused. The outdoor
exercise, taken for a part of each day, if of the right sort, also
distracts by taking the attention and creating interest."

The capitalist had called upon the specialist braced for a possible
sentence of death, prepared at the least to be informed that he was
suffering from a progressive mental malady. Now, while a tremendous
weight was lifted from his mind with the information that he might
anticipate a complete return to health, the idea of devoting his trained
intelligence, accustomed to cope with great problems of trade and
finance, to such trivialities as basket-making or modeling in clay
appeared preposterous. Nevertheless, when the physician told him of a
resort near at hand, established for the treatment of cases just such as
his, where he might be under continuous medical supervision, without
confinement indoors or being deprived of any of the comforts or luxuries
of life, he decided to put himself in the other's hands unreservedly.
The specialist informed him that the length of time required for his
cure would depend largely upon himself. He might, for instance, even
keep in touch with his office and have matters of import referred to
him while he was recuperating his mental and physical strength, but such
a course would inevitably retard his recovery, and possibly prevent it.
To get the best results from the treatment he ought to leave every
business interest behind him, he was told.

The fee that the capitalist paid the specialist made his advice so
valuable that the other followed it absolutely. The next evening saw the
patient in the home of the "occupation and exercise cure." He arrived
just in time to sit down to dinner with a score of other patients, not
one of whom showed any outward sign of illness, though all were taking
the cure for some form of nervous trouble. There were no cases of
insanity among them, however, none being admitted to the institution
under any circumstances. The dinner was simple and abundant, and the
conversation at the tables of a lively and cheerful nature. As everybody
went to bed by ten o'clock--almost every one considerably before that
hour, in fact--the newcomer did likewise, he having secured a suite with
a bath in the main building. Somewhat to the surprise of the capitalist,
who was accustomed to be made much of wherever he happened to be, no
more attention was paid to him than to any other guest of the
establishment, a condition of affairs that happened to please him. He
was told on retiring that breakfast would be served in the dining-room
from 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning, but that, if he preferred to remain in
his room, it would be brought to him there at nine o'clock.

The capitalist had a bad night, and was up to breakfast early. After he
had concluded that repast the medical superintendent showed him about
the place, but did not encourage him to talk about his symptoms. The
grounds of the "occupation and exercise cure" comprised a farm of forty
acres located among the hills of northern Westchester County in the
Croton watershed, with large shade trees, lawns, flower gardens, and an
inexhaustible supply of pure spring water from a well three hundred feet
deep in solid rock. The main building, situated on a knoll adjacent to a
grove of evergreen trees, contained a great solarium, which was the
favorite sitting-room of the patients, and the dining-room was also
finished with two sides of glass, both apartments capable of being
thrown open in warm weather, and having the advantage of all the sun
there was in winter. In this building were also the medical offices,
with a clinical laboratory and hydro- and electro-therapeutic equipment,
and accommodations for from twelve to fifteen guests. Two bungalows
under the trees of the apple orchard close at hand, one containing two
separate suites with baths, and the other two living-rooms with hall and
bath-room, were ideal places for quiet and repose. Situated at the
entrance to the grounds was a club-house, with a big sitting-room and an
open fireplace; it also contained a solarium, billiard-room, bowling
alleys, a squash court, a greenhouse for winter floriculture, and the
arts and crafts shops, with seven living-rooms. Every living-room in the
main building, the club-house, and the bungalows was connected with the
medical office by telephone, so that in case of need patients might
immediately secure the services of a physician at any hour of the day or
night.

The arts and crafts shops being the basic principle of the "occupation
and exercise cure," the capitalist was introduced to an efficient and
businesslike young woman, the instructress, who explained to him the
nature of the avocations in which he might choose to interest himself.
Here he found his fellow-patients busily and apparently congenially
employed. In one of the shops a recent alumnus of one of the leading
universities, who had undergone a nervous breakdown after graduation,
was patiently hammering a sheet of brass with a view to converting it
into a lampshade; a matron of nearly sixty, who had previously spent
eight years in sanatoriums, practically bedridden, was setting type in
the printing office with greater activity than she had known before for
two decades; two girls, one sixteen and the other twelve, the latter
inclined to hysteria and the former once subject to acute nervous
attacks, taking the cure in charge of trained nurses, were chattering
gayly over a loom in the construction of a silk rug; a prominent
business man from a Western city, like the New York capitalist broken
down from overwork, was earnestly modeling in clay what he hoped might
eventually become a jardiniere; one of last season's debutantes among
the fashionables, who had been leading a life of too strenuous gayety
that had told on her nerves, was constructing a stamped leather
portfolio with entire absorption; and half a dozen others, mostly young
women, were engaged at wood-carving, bookbinding, block-printing,
tapestry weaving, or basket-making, each one of them under treatment for
some nervous derangement.

The new patient decided to try his hand at basket-making; and, although
he figured out that it would take him about four days to turn out a
product that might sell for ten cents, he was soon so much interested in
mastering the manual details of the craft that he was disinclined to put
the work aside when the medical superintendent suggested a horseback
ride. When, at the advice of the specialist, the capitalist had decided
to try the occupation and exercise cure, he did so with little faith
that it would restore him to health, though he felt that there was
perhaps a slight chance that it might help him. The remedy seemed to him
too simple to overcome a disease that was paralyzing his energies. To
his great surprise, he began to improve at once; and though for the
first week he got little sleep, and his dizziness, with the pain in the
back of his neck and his apprehensions, continued to recur for weeks,
they did so at always increasing intervals.

He learned bookbinding, and sent to his library for some favorite
volumes, and put them into new dress; he made elaborate waste-paper
baskets, and beat brass into ornamental desk-trays, which he proudly
presented to his friends in the city as specimens of his skill. Work
with him, as with the others of the patients, was continually varied by
recreation. In the summer months there were lawn-tennis, golf, croquet,
canoeing, rowing, fishing, riding, and driving. In winter, such outdoor
sports as skating, tobogganing, coasting, skeeing, snowshoeing, and
lacrosse were varied by billiards, bowling, squash, the medicine ball,
and basket and tether ball. The capitalist was astonished to discover
that he could take an interest in games. The specialist, who called upon
his patient at intervals, told him that a point of great importance in
the cure was that exercise that is _enjoyed_ is almost twice as
effective in the good accomplished as exercise which is a mere
mechanical routine of movements made as a matter of duty.

The net result was that, after four months of the "occupation and
exercise cure," the capitalist returned to New York sound in mind and
body, and feeling younger than he had before in years. Complete cures
were effected in the cases of the other patients also, which is the less
remarkable when the circumstance is taken into consideration that only
patients capable of entire recovery are recommended to take the
treatment.

Of course the institution that has been described is only for the
well-to-do, and physicians are endeavoring to bring the "occupation and
exercise cure" within the reach of the poor, and to interest
philanthropists in the establishment of "colony sanatoriums," such as
already exist in different parts of Europe, for those suffering from
functional nervous disorders who are without means. Contrary to the
general opinion, neurasthenia, particularly among women, is not confined
to the moneyed and leisure class; but, owing to the fact that women have
taken up the work of men in offices and trades as well as in many of
the professions, working-women are continually breaking down under
nervous strain, and many, under present conditions, have little chance
for recovery, because they cannot afford the proper treatment. As a
speaker at the last annual meeting of the American Medical Association
declared, "Idiots and epileptics and lunatics are many; but all together
they are less numerous than the victims of nervousness--the people
afflicted with lesser grades of psychasthenic and neurasthenic
inadequacy, who become devoted epicures of their own emotions, and who
claim a large share of the attention of every general practitioner and
of every specialist."

Scientists declare that this premature collapse of nerve force is
increasing to such an extent as to become a positive menace to the
general welfare. The struggle for existence among the conditions of
modern life, especially among those found in the large centers of
industrial and scientific activity, and the steady, persistent work,
with its attendant sorrows, deprivations, and over-anxiety for success,
are among the most prolific causes--causes which are the results of
conditions from which, for the large mass of people, according to a
leading New York alienist, there has been no possibility of escape.

"Especially here in America are people forced into surroundings for
which they have never been fitted," the alienist asserts, "and
especially here are premature demands made upon their nervous systems
before they are mature and properly qualified. The lack of proper
training deprives many of the workers, in all branches, of the best
protection against functional nervous diseases which any person can
have, namely, a well-trained nervous system. This struggle for existence
by the congenital neuropath or the educationally unfit forces many to
the use, and then to the abuse, of stimulants and excitants, and herein
we have another important exciting cause. This early and excessive use
of coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco is especially deleterious in its
action upon the nervous system of those very ones who are most prone to
go to excess in their use.

"Therefore, predisposition, aided by the storm and stress of active
competition and abetted by the use of stimulants, must be looked upon as
the main cause for the premature collapse of nerve force which we call
neurasthenia; so it will be found that the majority of neurasthenics are
between twenty-five and fifty years of age, and that their occupations
are those which are attended by worry, undue excitement, uncertainty,
excessive wear and tear, and thus we find mentally active persons more
easily affected than those whose occupation is solely physical. Authors,
actors, school-teachers, governesses, telegraph and telephone operators,
are among those most frequently affected, and the increase of
neurasthenia among women dates from the modern era which has opened to
them new channels of work and has admitted them more generally into the
so-called learned professions. But whatever may be the occupation in
which persons have broken down, it is never the occupation alone which
has been the cause.

"This cannot be too often repeated. The emotional fitness or unfitness
of an individual for his occupation is of the utmost importance as a
causative factor, and overwork alone, without any emotional cause and
without any errors in mode of life, will never act to produce such a
collapse. It is therefore not astonishing that this class of functional
nervous diseases is not confined to the wealthy, and that the rich and
the poor are indiscriminately affected. But certain causes are of
greater influence in the one class, while different ones obtain in the
other. Poverty in itself, with its limitations of proper rest and
recuperation, is a very positive cause. Years of neurological dispensary
work among the poor have convinced me that nervousness, neurasthenia,
hysteria, etc., are quite as prevalent among the indigent as among the
well-to-do."

Physicians agree that the prime requisite in the treatment of these
disorders is the removal of the patient from his or her habitual
surroundings, where recognition of the existence of actual disease is
generally wanting, where the constant admonitions of well-meaning
friends to "brace up" and to "exert your will power" force the sick man
or woman to bodily and mental over-exertion, and where the worries about
a livelihood are always dominant. Such a change alone, however, the
experts say, will help but few, for it is being recognized more and more
that these functional diseases of the nervous system can receive
satisfactory treatment only in institutions, where constant attention
may be had, with expert supervision and trained attendants.

The "occupation and exercise cure" is applicable also to epilepsy, and
is the therapeutic principle of the Craig Colony for Epileptics at
Sonyea, in Livingston County, supported by the State, and that
institution furnishes a general model for the "colony sanatoriums"
suggested for indigent patients suffering from functional nervous
disorders. The Craig Colony was the idea of Dr. Frederick Peterson,
Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, and former President of
the New York State Commission of Lunacy and of the New York Neurological
Society, which he based upon the epileptic colony at Beilefeld, Germany,
that was founded in 1867. The Craig Colony was founded in 1894, and
there are now being cared for within its confines more than thirteen
hundred patients, who have turned out this year agricultural products,
with bricks, soap, and brooms, to the value of $60,000. The colony is
named after the late Oscar Craig, of Rochester, who, with William P.
Letchworth, of Buffalo, purchased the two-thousand-acre tract of land on
which it is situated from the Shaker colony at Sonyea and presented it
to the State, Dr. Peterson devoting several months of each year for nine
years to getting the institution into working order. The first patients
were housed in the old Shaker buildings, which were well constructed and
fairly well arranged for the purpose, but as additional applications for
admission have been made new buildings have been erected. To-day there
are eighty buildings in the colony, but a thousand patients are waiting
for admission, eight hundred of whom are in New York City.

Epilepsy, the "falling sickness," is a most difficult malady to treat
even in an institution for that purpose, and it is impossible to treat
it anywhere else. An epileptic in a family is an almost intolerable
burden to its other members, as well as to himself. The temperamental
effect of the disease takes the form in the patient of making frequent
and unjust complaints, and epileptics invariably charge some one with
having injured them while they have been unconscious during an attack.
Then, too, living at home, they are often dangerous to younger members
of a family, and they are fault-finding, exacting, and irritable
generally. The seizures frequently come on without warning, and the
patient drops where he stands, often injuring himself severely. The last
annual report of the Craig Colony records more than four hundred
injuries within the year to patients during seizures which required a
surgeon's attention, the injuries varying from severe bruises to
fractures of the skull.

The object of the Craig Colony is to remove the burden of the epileptic
in the family from the home without subjecting the patient to the
hardship of confinement with the insane. "Very few epileptics suffer
permanent insanity in any form except dementia," says the medical
superintendent of the Colony. "Acute mania and maniac depressive
insanity not infrequently appear as a 'post-convulsive' condition, that
generally subsides within a few hours, or at most a few days. Rarely
the state may persist a month. Melancholia is extremely infrequent.
Delusions of persecution, hallucinations of sight or hearing,
systematized in character, are almost never encountered in epilepsy."

Only from six to fifteen per cent of epileptics are curable, and hence
the work of the Craig Colony is largely palliative of the sufferings of
the patients. Each individual case is studied with the utmost care,
however, and patients are given their choice of available occupations.
The Colony is not a custodial institution. There are no bars on the
windows, no walls or high fences about the farm. The patients are housed
in cottages, men and women in separate buildings some distance apart,
about thirty to each cottage. In charge of each of these families are a
man and his wife, who utilize the services of some of the patients in
the performance of household work, while the others have their duties
outside. Kindness to the unfortunates under their care is impressed upon
every employee of the Colony, and an iron-bound rule forbids them to
strike a patient even in case of assault.

Besides the agricultural work in the Craig Colony, and that in the soap
and broom factories and the brick-yard, the patients are taught
blacksmithing, carpentry, dressmaking, tailoring, painting, plumbing,
shoemaking, laundrying, and sloyd work. It is insisted on that all
patients physically capable shall find employment as a therapeutic
measure. The records show that on Sundays and holidays and on rainy
days, when there is a minimum of physical activity among the patients,
their seizures double and sometimes treble in number. Few of the
patients know how to perform any kind of labor when they enter the
Colony, but many of them learn rapidly. It has been repeatedly
demonstrated that boys from eighteen to twenty years of age can spend
two years in the sloyd shop and leave it fully qualified as
cabinet-makers, and capable of earning a journeyman's wages.

There are about two hundred children in the colony of epileptics at
Sonyea, more than half of whom are girls. As children subject to
epileptic seizures are not received in the public schools of the State,
the only opportunity for any education among these afflicted little ones
whose parents are unable to teach them themselves or provide private
tutors for them is in the schools of the Colony. Some of the children
are comparatively bright scholars, while the attempt to teach others
seems a hopeless task. For instance, it took one girl ninety days to
learn to lay three sticks in the form of a letter A.

Every effort is made to encourage recreation among the patients in the
Craig Colony, both children and adults. The men have a club of 250
members, with billiards, chess, checkers, cards, and magazines and
newspapers. The boys have their baseball and football, and play match
games among themselves or with visiting teams. The women and girls play
croquet, tennis, and other outdoor games. There is a band composed of
patients that gives a concert once a week, and there are theatricals and
dancing, with occasional lectures by visiting celebrities. As the
Colony, with the medical staff, nurses, and other employees, has a
population of 2,000, there is always an audience for any visiting
attraction. The maintenance of the Colony is costing the State $225,000
the present year.

Since the founding of the Craig Colony similar institutions have been
established in Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kansas, and other States are preparing to
follow their example. There are other private sanatoriums throughout the
country similar to the one in Westchester County, where the nervous or
neurasthenic patient who is well-to-do may obtain relaxation and
supervision, but there is no place at all to-day where the man or woman
suffering from curable nervous disorders who is without means can go for
treatment.