CHAPTER XXXIV 



COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES RELATED TO HEALTH 



Questions. 1. Why can we not be left to look after our health en- 

 tirely by ourselves ? 2. Why can we not look after our own food sup- 

 plies ? 3. Why do we have to pay taxes toward protecting food and 

 water supplies ? 4. How can other people influence our health ? 5. How 

 can we interfere with the health of other people ? 6. How can we help 

 other people with their health ? 



7. What dangers to health can be better guarded against by the indi- 

 vidual than by the community ? 8. What dangers to health can be better 

 guarded against by the community than by the individual ? 9. What is 

 the objection to the use of preservatives to keep milk or other food from 

 spoiHng? 10. What have prohibition laws to do with health? 11. W'hy 

 can we not leave people to suffer from the results of their own ignorance 

 or negligence ? 



264. Why cooperation is necessary. The concentration of 

 populations exposes each one of us to possible injury from the 

 negligence or even ignorance of more and more neighbors. It 

 removes us far from the original sources of our food and other 

 necessities. It makes impossible the securing of suitable sup- 

 plies of water and other necessities on a small (individual) 

 scale. Science brings out important facts that bear upon our 

 health faster than the individual can inform himself, and in 

 most cases these facts can be applied only on a large scale. 

 The cooperation of neighbors in larger and larger groups (even- 

 tually including the whole civilized world) is absolutely essen- 

 tial to protect the individual from many dangers and to secure 

 for him what he must have in order to live decently. As Ben- 

 jamin Franklin is reported to have said on a certain historic 

 occasion. ''We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all 

 hang separately." 



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