38 SANITARY ENTOMOLOGY 



10. State Boards of Health should follow the California plan and 

 forbid the marketing of fruit dried on farms with open sewage, or where 

 exposed to visits of flies. 



THE INSAXITARY TOWN 



In these same travels in which so many insanitary farms were seen, 

 the writer has sojourned in or passed through many towns which might 

 be described as follows: The streets are unpaved and are littered from 

 one end to the other with papers, cans, and the accumulation of months of 

 manure droppings, and are altogether filthy and unattractive. The 

 removal of trash is nobody's business. The grocery stores and meat 

 markets are unscreened and have open doors. The food is covered with 

 flies. Farmers drive up and buy a side of salt pork or other meat, 

 throw it into the pit of their wagon, uncovered, and drive down the 

 dusty road, with a swarm of flies hovering over the meat. The small 

 lunch rooms where the visiting farmer eats his noon or evening repast 

 are dirty and full of flies. The stores have privies in the rear which 

 are filthy and an offense to any decent person. Flies abound. Chickens 

 and pigs wander unrestricted through the streets and are often found 

 feeding under the privies. The hotel dining rooms and kitchens are 

 always full of flies and are usually but a short distance from filthy 

 privies, and flies are constantly passing back and forth. Cockroaches are 

 served in the food and wander unrestricted everywhere. The bedding is 

 often unclean and has been slept in by some one else. Bedbugs are not 

 uncommon. The water pitchers contain mosquito wrigglers. The cis- 

 terns behind each house are unscreened, and contain rain water, full of 

 mosquitoes. The livery stable has great piles of manure in the stable 

 yards and sometimes right out on the sidewalk. 



Sometimes the town is a little bigger and the people have become more 

 civilized and installed interior plumbing, which empties the sewage into 

 a ditch which runs down to a stream from which cattle drink, or quite 

 often this sewage empties into the gutter on the street and fills the air 

 with filthy odors. Such is not an uncommon thing in America. Only 

 a few years ago we could have pointed out quite a number of cities in the 

 100,000 class with open sewage. 



These small towns are often rat infested, and one can easily see 

 the danger should an outbreak of plague, which is transmitted by the 

 rat flea, get a start in such a town, by the advent of a plague infested 

 rat. 



HOW TO IMPROVE SANITATION 



1. Organize the community for better sanitation, and call in an 

 expert of the Public Health Service, which is giving a great deal of 



