702 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



medical inspection of school children and the comprehensive sani- 

 tary regulations, the enforcement of which does so much to secure 

 and maintain hygienic conditions in the urban community with a well 

 organized health department. Physicians also are less accessible in 

 the country, are liable to be called at a more advanced stage of 

 sickness, and in some regions medical attendance is relatively more 

 expensive. The necessity is, therefore, the more emphatic for dis- 

 ease prevention. 



Another important consideration is the relation of the farm to the 

 city as that of producer to consumer. Not only does a diminished 

 efficiency on the part of the farmers through disease represent an 

 eventual economic loss to the whole nation, but actual infection may 

 spread from country to city through the streams, the milk, the meat, 

 vegetables, and other farm products. Entirely apart from the 

 humanitarian point of view, there are incuiTed by the nation enor- 

 mous aggregate losses from insanitary conditions on the farms, and 

 the improvement of these conditions is a nation-wide obligation. 



Undoubtedly, one important reason for the apparent apathy has 

 been the lack of an intelligent realization of the inadequacy and 

 menace of the prevailing practices. This is indicated by the experi- 

 ence of the Commission on Country Life. It will be recalled that 

 the questionnaire which the Commission sent out included an inquiry 

 as to whether the sanitary conditions of the farms of the neighbor- 

 hood were satisfactory. Some correspondents replied in the negative, 

 but the usual response of the more than 100,000 replies was to the 

 effect that they were as good as could be expected, or as conditions 

 would warrant. The hearings of the Commission in the field, how- 

 ever, developed a very different state of affairs. Through leading 

 questions, intelligent farmers and their wives, country physicians, 

 board of health representatives, and others, developed the fact that 

 conditions were far from satisfactory, that little attention was paid 

 to such matters beyond the bare necessities, that there was a quite 

 widespread indifference to the teachings of modern sanitation, and 

 that the barns and dairies were often more adequately provided for 

 than the farm homes. 



Fortunately, with the general advance in rural standards of liv- 

 ing in recent years there has come about a considerable awakening of 

 interest among farmers and representatives of rural communities 

 along these lines, as well as among the public as a whole. Modem 

 methods of communication and travel have to a great extent brought 

 the rural districts into closer relationship with the towns and cities. 

 The farmer learns of the improved general health and reduction in 

 the death rate resulting from the decrease of the ravages of con- 

 tagious disease, which has been brought about through the intro- 



