COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SANITARY WORK. 113 
atively few and the masses sunk in abject poverty. If we are tempted to think 
that we are saved from this by steam or machinery or increased production of the 
precious metals, let us look at any pestilence-stricken city of modern times. A 
single pestilence of but a few months came near bankrupting Savannah, and laid 
a check on her progress and a burden on her resources which it will take many 
long years to overcome. Worse still is the case of Memphis, with its two pestt- 
lences; and such may be the loss to any American city if it neglects sanitary 
laws. Our modern civilization is one of intense competition. Each producing 
community is now in a struggle with all the rest of the world as it never was be- 
fore. If it have any special advantage, it may prosper; if it have any special 
disadvantage, it either lags behind in the swift race, or, by standing still, rela- 
tively declines, or else it goes under in the hard struggle of productive or com- 
mercial competition. And what heavier burden to bear than sickness! And 
yet this fact is liable to be.overlooked or forgotten. The healthy man hopes that 
sickness will never come,and may be careless of his health, and the healthy com- 
munity rarely awakens to danger until epidemic sickness sets in, and the loss is 
actually begun. 
‘‘Tt is the part of sanitary science to point out the dangers and suggest 
means of prevention, and when epidemics actually set in to suggest remedies ; it 
is the part of sanitary legislation to provide means to apply these remedies; it is 
the function of health boards to administer them. But, from the nature of the 
of the case, the better they do their work the less obvious are their labors. The 
officer who heroically stands at his post during the time of pestilence, labors to 
stay its dread work, helps the suffering, and comforts the dying is a hero, and 
the heroism is of a kind that can be seen; no praise is too high. But the other 
officer who, by his labors, prevents the pestilence and keeps it so far off that the 
danger is scarcely seen, receives no such praise—too often in its stead criticism, 
opposition and indifference. It is because of the nature of sanitary work that its 
value in increasing the prosperity of a city is so often overlooked. In the ordin- 
ary pursuits of business, the clang of machinery, the brilliancy of the applications 
of science to the arts, the bustle of business, the romantic ways in which the 
precious metals have been discovered and won, are more conspicuously in the 
eyes of the public than the quiet, persistent, unromantic, but heroic fight with 
unseen but unwholesome influences which lurk in the air of our towns. These 
malicious influences, mostly growing out of our modes of life, are ever present 
in all our cities, ever growing unless checked, always producing disease, and 
from time to time especially inviting pestilence, as persistent as sin, as tireless as 
nature, and as pitiless as death. The rapid growth of town and city popula- 
tions, as compared with the country during the last forty or fifty years has been 
made possible only by the power which modern sanitary science gives us to pre- 
vent, to check, and to combat epidemics. As matters were before, a pestilence 
of but a few weeks or months would put back the growth of a city for years. 
This city has had but one visitation of yellow fever; it lasted scarcely two months, 
