16 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 836 



whole civilization. Great changes in the 

 supply or the cost will inevitably react in 

 the long run upon the opportunities for 

 employment and support, and upon the 

 very nature of our national life. While it 

 will be a long time before rearrangements 

 in the case of the most important of the 

 metals, iron, will be manifest, and while 

 they will assert themselves gradually, we 

 are quite certain to face new conditions in 

 copper, lead and zinc at an earlier date. 

 In the end, however, we can perhaps 

 justifiably forecast a future in which agri- 

 culture will figure more and more promi- 

 nently and in which the moral, intellectual 

 and spiritual life of the nation will read- 

 just itself accordingly. Great and con- 

 centrated wealth is likely to be less in 

 evidence, materialistic influences less pro- 

 nounced, and from the vantage ground af- 

 forded by the greater comforts and oppor- 

 tunities of modern life as compared with 

 that of a century or a half century past, 

 we may in the distant future look forward 

 to an evolution upon somewhat different 

 lines. Broadly viewed, the national life 

 will probably be increasingly sympathetic 

 with art and with ideals. 



James F. Kemp 

 Columbia Univeesitt 



CITY SANITATION^ 



Great cities have grown and passed out 

 of existence. The enormous increase in 

 urban population in very recent years has 

 produced even greater cities, which may 

 also in time cease to be. In fact, aside 

 from the possibility of local or cosmic 

 calamity, this is sure to occur, unless due 

 attention is given to the application of the 

 principles of chemistry in our daily, per- 

 sonal and communal life. London, Paris, 

 Bombay, Rome and New Orleans have had 



^ An address at the tenth Conference of the 

 Health Officers of the State of New York, Buffalo, 

 N. Y., November 17, 1910. 



their scourges in the past to testify to the 

 fearful penalty of ignorance and neglect. 

 Indications point to an urban growth 

 and development, the conception of which 

 taxes the imagination. When we see New 

 York as it was two hundred years ago, and 

 then one hundred years ago, and as it is 

 now, we may well wonder what it may be 

 fifty years from now. The annual increase 

 in population is about 300,000. It has 

 been calculated that in 1920 New York 

 may have 7,000,000 of people. 



It has been predicted by a close and con- 

 servative student of sociology that two gen- 

 erations may see the eastern part of our 

 country mainly composed of contiguous 

 cities. In 1790, 3.3 per cent, of the popu- 

 lation of the United States was urban. It 

 was 33.1 per cent, in 1900. The problems 

 of the state and county become closely in- 

 terwoven with those of the city. The city 

 will no longer be merely an accumulation 

 of human beings in a particular locality, 

 with its local problems and influencing the 

 state mainly in a financial way, but the city 

 will have become the state. 



The individual needs fresh air, pure 

 water, good food, safe shelter, and should 

 have a clean body and something beautiful 

 to look at. When he associates himself 

 into a city his needs are not lessened, but 

 emphasized. The growth of a city causes 

 it to assume, willingly or no, corresponding 

 obligations. The inhabitants must breathe, 

 they must be fed and watered, its wastes 

 must be got rid of, facilities for the safe 

 coming and going of its people at all times 

 must be provided, as well as protection 

 from fire or other adventitious circum- 

 stances which concern the welfare of the 

 citizens. The needs thus simply stated are 

 to be met by obligations which become 

 more and more complex with the increase 

 in population. In fact, most of the city's 

 problems are of comparatively recent date. 



