CHAPTER III 

 EARLY PROBLEMS 



THE problem that confronted the National Tuberculosis 

 Association at the outset was a two-fold one. There was, 

 first of all, the necessity of an extensive campaign of educa- 

 tion, and secondly, the necessity for organization that would 

 intensify the message concerning tuberculosis and make facilities 

 for the control of the disease available to every individual in 

 every community in the United States. It would be too much to 

 claim that the Association has always moved forward consciously 

 with this two-fold problem in mind. Sometimes it has gone for- 

 ward urged by the stress of immediate needs; sometimes halting 

 because of lack of funds; sometimes diverted from its aim by cer- 

 tain pressing and urgent situations; but always in the long run 

 developing toward the goal that every community in America 

 should have facilities for the control of tuberculosis. Even in 

 its earliest days the Association started out with the realization 

 that tuberculosis, if it is to be controlled, must be controlled by 

 local machinery, and that the object of the National Association 

 is to provide the local machinery. 



With this idea in mind, the first educational work of the Asso- 

 ciation was the development of a large traveling exhibit which, 

 under the leadership of Mr. E. G. Routzahn, toured the States 

 east of the Mississippi from Toronto to the city of Mexico for 

 over seven years, from the winter of 1905 until the spring of 1912. 

 Similarly in 1909 a second exhibit started out to tour the States 

 west of the Mississippi, and under the direction of Mr. W. L. 

 Cosper covered practically all of the States to the Pacific Coast. 

 These exhibits, coupled with the publicity bureau of the National 

 Association started in 1908, and with the annual meetings and 

 other sources of spreading information that the Association had 

 at its disposal in those early days, soon began to arouse such 

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