No. 6. DEPARTMENT Oi'' AGRICULTURE. 183 



life iu a locality so famed for its salubrity. And so, when one of 

 your chief me«i is stricken down by a disease which State Medicine 

 hiiH proclaimed and proven to be preventable and therefore unnec- 

 essary; when you drop the hot tear over the pallid or disfigured face 

 in the little coflin; when with bowed head you follow to the grave the 

 partner of your life and your affections, all victims of contagious dis- 

 ease, you fold your hands and say "It is the Lord's doing, we must 

 bend in meek submission to His will." And this you call being 

 religious. What kind of a religion is this that charges the Almighty, 

 the loving and tender Father in Heaven, with the result of your own 

 carelessness and negligence! Your own wilful ignorance of His 

 laws. 



The assumption that, in pro})ortio«i to population, the diseases 

 which State Medicine declares to be dangerous to the public health, 

 and which boards of health are established to combat and prevent, 

 are less prevalent in the country and country villages than in large 

 cities cannot be proven. Typhoid fever, as nuioy of you have had oc- 

 casion to know to your grief atid sorrow, is often a visitant at the 

 farm house; scarlet fever and diphtheria are only too well known in 

 the rural town and the mountain hamlet. Mining settlements and 

 lumber camps have been hot beds of small-pox during the epidemics 

 of the past three years. As a rule the large towns have become in- 

 fected from the country, and the villages, and not the country and 

 \illage from the city. And yet the first message which the State 

 lioard of Health receives from these sparsely settled districts, some- 

 times by mail, sometimes by telegram, sometimes by telephone, is 

 ''Small-pox here. No board of health. What are we to do?" Why 

 is there no board of health? The State Legislature, now some years 

 since, authorized the school directors in every township to organize 

 as a board of health, adopt regulations, enforce the State law for the 

 prevention of contagious and infectious diseases and employ agents 

 for this purpose. WHiy has this law been allowed to remain to so 

 great an extent a dead letter on the statute book? To use the idiom 

 of the day, ''it is up to you," gentlemeii of the State Board of Agri- 

 culture, you who represent the brains and intelligence of the dis- 

 tricts from which you are sent, you who are leaders in your respec- 

 tive communities, you who collectively wield a greater influence in 

 the State than any other association, craft or calling in the body 

 politic, to answer this question, and I leave it with you. 



Let me briefly detain you to listen to a few facts and figures in 

 connection with the present prevalence of small-pox in the State. 

 More than three years ago, in the month of iSeptember, 1898, two 

 soldiers, belonging to Battery C, U. S. V., returning from Poi-to Rico, 

 carae to East Vincent township, Chester county, bringing small-pox 

 wiJh them. Ten cases developed in the township, with two deaths. 



