CONSUMPTION 121 



What is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper housing 

 in the country ? Just exactly the same as in the great cities lack 

 of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many. We have been 

 talking much lately of our conservative policy of lumber, coal, and 

 wild animals, but in many instances fail to see the great loss due to 

 human inefficiency brought about by lack of suitable environment. 

 While the great majority of people subjected to overcrowding and 

 bad housing conditions do not prematurely die, yet they have a les- 

 sened physical and mental vigor, are less able to do properly their 

 daily work, and not only become a loss to themselves and their 

 families, but to the state; and forever stand on the threshold of that 

 dread disease tuberculosis; for tuberculosis is the one great disease 

 of the overcrowded. 



Just how much tuberculosis we have in the rural districts in pro- 

 portion to the great cities is pretty hard to say, but everyone who has 

 investigated it is positive in the opinion that there is just as much in 

 the country districts; indeed, some report more in the country than 

 in the adjoining cities. We find it in farmhouse and the mountain 

 home habits of carelessness possibly keep up the infection. We do 

 not have "lung blocks," like the large cities, but we do have "lung 

 houses" where case after case of tuberculosis has lived and perhaps 

 developed. 



The Wisconsin Antituberculosis League, a year or so ago, made a 

 very careful and exact sanitary survey of a certain rural district in 

 that state, relative to the amount of this disease, and found that in 

 some parts of this district the death-rate from tuberculosis exceeded 

 that of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest city. 



Minnesota also discovered that it had much tuberculosis in its 

 rural districts. "As serious," says Dr. Daugherty, who investigated 

 the subject, "as that in the congested areas of the cities." Following 

 a rural survey of several townships, under the auspices of the State 

 Antituberculosis Association, there were found housing conditions 

 much as I have described in the preceding pages as existed in Penn- 

 sylvania. "The average number of people sleeping in one room," 

 says the report, "was four." "In one house there were eight, in 

 another nine, and it was not at all uncommon to find five or six. 

 This was not due to the fact that there was not enough room, for in 

 many of the houses the whole family would sleep in one room, use 

 one for the kitchen, and leave two, three, and in some cases four, 

 rooms vacant." 



