THE RAT PROBLEM 177 



It lias been said that " of all highways a rat loves a drain 

 the best." Our whole scheme of sanitation depends upon the 

 principle of washing all filth and disease germs into onr sew- 

 ers. Here then we have an animal which wallows and crawls 

 and swims in this filth and nightly distributes it over exposed 

 foods, merchandise, markets, and homes. In this way rats are 

 often responsible for persistent local epidemics of any disease 

 whose germs are washed into sewers, typhoid, diphtheria, 

 scarlet fever, and many others. These facts, together with 

 common decency and intelligent cleanliness, are again suffi- 

 cient reasons for extermination of such filthy pests. 



On all three counts, therefore, general destructiveness, 

 carriers of Black death, distributers of disease and filth 

 rats deserve absolute extermination. They were formerly con- 

 sidered valuable as scavengers, but modern methods of sani- 

 tation are thwarted by them, and these have rendered their 

 further services in this line doubly undesirable. 



The simple duty of every citizen is to exterminate the rats 

 from his own premises. Modern methods traps, poisons 

 and poisonous gases, concrete and rat-proof construction 

 render this entirely possible, and at a fraction of the cost 

 which the presence of the pests yearly entails. 



All methods of driving rats away, scattering them among 

 the neighbors, accomplish no real good and are besides uncivic. 



Trapping is at once the safest and, for boys, the most edu- 

 cative method of keeping a home free from rats. It is no more 

 expensive and much more interesting to keep traps set all the 

 time than to allow them to be lying idle. If we could fire a 

 pistol that could be heard across the continent, and from that 

 day on have all the boys of the country keep all the idle rat 

 and mouse traps set and baited in the most likely places 

 about their homes all the time, the battle would be nine 

 tenths won. Stores, mills, stables, factories, depots, and 

 wharves could then deal with their own problems effectively 



