46 



the present time. There must be at least 500,000 wage earners in the 

 State, and statistics show that the avera.^e amount earned bv each wa<^e 

 earner is about eighty cents per day. This enormous sum of from $400- 

 OIMJ to mmiO is paid daily in wages to the workers. It is safe to say tha't 

 fully three-fourths of the wages earned per day are spent for agriru'ltur-U 

 products, that is. foods and clothing, so that the average amount spent 

 each day for these necessities of which food is the chief, is not far from 

 .'F;J50,000. Researches of chemists in all parts of the country show the 

 enormous <.xtent of food adulteration resulting in selling at the high price 

 of the genuine cheaper and inferior articles. The wage earners are the 

 principal victims of these frauds, not perhaps in actual magnitude of ex- 

 pended money, but in proportion to their income. A very conservative 

 estimate would place the magnitude of the iinancial fraud practiced upon 

 the wage earners of the State in the matter of adulterated foods alone at 

 from .?15,000 to $20,000 daily. Not only is this condition of affairs repre- 

 hensible by reason of this enorm.nis tax upon the daily wages of hard 

 working men, women and children, but it is a moral crime of a still more 

 heinous nature. Twenty thousand dollars a day for fraudulent foods, mean 

 a tax of r, per cent, on all wages of all work,>rs. When a fraud of this 

 magnitude is considered it does not seem unreasonable to ask the Legis- 

 lature for an endowment which will support the hygienic laboratory in^its 

 investigations of the nature and character of these fraudulent foods and in 

 order that the evil effects of these can be properly ascertained. Great as 

 have been the contributions of the Board of Health to the welfare of 

 tlie State in securing imnnmily from disease. fretMlom from plagues and 

 from contagious :nul epidemic diseases, we look forward to a still more 

 nseful career of this institution when it is fully equipped for the hygienic 

 ^york outlined above. An admirable hi.storical sketch of the Indiana State 

 Board of Health and a statement of the benefits it has conferred upon our 

 people is found in a paper coiitributed to the Indiana State Medical So- 

 ciety by J. N. Hurty, read at the Lafayette meeting. May 6, 1898. and pub- 

 lislied in the proceedings for that year. In that paper Dr. Hurty gives 

 an admirable summary of the progress of sanitary science in Indianl 



Tlie d.'velopnient of medical education of the State must not be for- 

 gotten when speaking of the public liealth. I attended the first lecture of 

 the Indiana Medical College, given in the Senate Chamber of the old State 

 House. Later I was one of the first students in the laboratory estab- 

 lished by Dr. Thaddeus Stevens, where students really worked at the desk. 



