RURAL HOUSING 331 



investigation, this would hold good, but in many other places, es- 

 pecially in parts of Pennsylvania known to the author, poor 

 food and lack of food are a vast contributing cause of this dis- 

 ease. A poor constitution to start with, and insufficient food, 

 soon engender a condition which quickly yields to the inroads 

 of the bacillus. As a corollary to this is the rapid improvement 

 of such incipient cases, when put on the food and under the 

 proper environment of a sanitarium. 



And now a word, a very short word, about the remedy for over- 

 crowding and bad housing in the country. This probably can 

 not be attacked as in the great cities, by legislative enactment or 

 resort to legal measures, but the solution lies, it seems to me, in 

 proper education by the various health authorities, by the schools, 

 and by the press, and the crusade must be kept up until the peo- 

 ple understand that it pays pays in real dollars and cents to 

 live in sanitary homes. Educate the rural dweller in regard to 

 the penalties for bad housing, show him how tuberculosis follows 

 in the wake of overcrowding, poor food, and dissipation: in a 

 great many instances he will mend his ways. In Pennsylvania 

 this work is carried on by the Tuberculosis Dispensaries of the 

 State Department of Health scattered all through the State, 

 where they have become the foci for spreading sanitary knowl- 

 edge of just the sort needed in rural communities. Visiting 

 nurses from these dispensaries go to the homes, and to my per- 

 sonal knowledge do much, very much, to remedy the defects of 

 bad and improper living, and do it without resort to any legal 

 means. There is no factor so potent for good as the work of 

 the visiting nurses of this great health department; and many 

 other States are taking up the work and carrying it forward 

 on the same lines. 



HOUSING CONDITIONS ON FARMS IN 

 NEW YORK STATE 



L. II . BAILEY 



HOUSING conditions in the country run all the way from very 

 cheap and poor tenant houses to well-appointed large farm res- 



i Adapted from "York State Rural Problems," Vol. 1 : 55-59, Lyon, 

 Albany, 1010. 



