13^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE FIELD OF MUNICIPAL HYGIENE. 



By Professor EDWIN O. JORDAN, 



UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



npHE modern disposition to revel in the general situation is met by 

 -■- those persons who are disinclined to take a consistently optimis- 

 tic view of life with several sobering reflections. In regard to that 

 conspicuous phenomenon of modern life, for example, the growth of 

 large cities, attention has frequently been directed to the evil possibili- 

 ties for the future of the race that are enwombed in city growth. 

 Steady deterioration of mind and body, a tendency to movements of 

 social unrest and disorder, increasingly unsanitary conditions of life 

 are some of the elements in a widely-held belief that the massing or 

 'herding' of human beings in centers of population is a deplorable and 

 distressing accompaniment of civilization. 



It is often forgotten, however, both by those who lament the exist- 

 ence of great cities and by those who count with pride their tale of 

 corn and oil and wine that in the last analysis not only the hope and 

 salvation of the large city, but its growth and very existence depend 

 upon the proper application of methods of municipal hygiene. We 

 need hardly be reminded that many of the factors that make for a con- 

 centration of population have been operative in the past with quite as 

 much force as they are to-day. The steady drift from the farm to the 

 town is by no means a modern movement. In the course of the last 

 three hundred years social philosophers have often had occasion to 

 deplore the existence of a migration cityward and the so-called depopu- 

 lation of the rural districts. In some countries, as in France in the 

 eighteenth century, the chief danger in tliis movement was thought to 

 lie in its evil effect upon the rural districts, and restrictive measures 

 were advocated for the purpose of keeping a sufficient supply of labor 

 upon the farms. In England the same current toward the cities was 

 noticed, but different forebodings were aroused; the apprehension was 

 expressed that the cities themselves might become unwieldy. Both 

 Elizabeth and James I. issued proclamations forbidding migration into 

 London because of the portentous dimensions that metropolis was 

 thought to be assuming. In spite of the influx of immigrants, how- 

 ever, the actual growth of the large cities was slow if judged by modern 

 standards. In the case of London there is reason to believe that the 

 natural migration into the city was relatively greater two hundred and 

 fifty years ago than it is to-day, and yet at that time its rate of increase 

 was sluggish compared with the swift expansion of its population in 

 the nineteenth century. 



