OKGANIZATION FOR COMMUNITY WORK. 83 



houses, should be noted with the greatest accuracy and care. Every 

 house having an uncovered water-tank or having rain-water barrels 

 should also be noted, and for each locality the most effective as well 

 as the most economical remedy should be recorded. If these reme- 

 dies demand any large-scale work estimates of the necessary expen- 

 ditures should be indicated. 



Such a careful report and map having been prepared and placed 

 in the hands of the committee the amount of funds necessary can 

 readily be estimated, and the expenditure of such sums as it is found 

 possible to raise can be considered and agreed upon. The work can 

 then be easily carried on through the summer under the direction of 

 this superintendent, and of course the amount of the expenditure 

 and the number of employes will depend entirely upon the local 

 mosquito-breeding possibilities. 



Some small communities will find that a full understanding of the 

 problem on the part of individual householders will bring about 

 great relief as the result of individual work, and that the only organ- 

 ization necessary will be perhaps the signing of a pledge by indi- 

 viduals to take care of their own premises. In other communities 

 the matter will be a little more serious, but there will be some where 

 the employment of a single man for two or three days a week through- 

 out the summer will result in freedom from mosquitoes. Again, 

 however, in larger communities the enforcement of municipal regu- 

 lations will be found to be necessary before a desirable result can be 

 obtained, and where the village is built upon swampy land or is sur- 

 rounded by swamps the expenditure of considerable sums of money 

 will be found to be imperative. 



In every community, however, there will pretty surely be ultra- 

 conservative, recalcitrant, and ignorant citizens — people who will 

 not take the trouble to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes on their 

 own premises — people in fact who will violently object to the en- 

 trance on their premises of an individual who will do the work for 

 them. Such cases are not numerous, but they are always difficult 

 to handle, and, in the absence of municipal action, moral suasion 

 must be tried in the most ingenious ways which the committee can 

 devise. Dr. Ronald Ross, in his excellent work '^Mosquito Brigades," 

 in writing of such persons, puts it very happily in the following words: 



The qualities chiefly necessary [in a superintendent] are energy, persistence, and 

 an entire indifference to public or private opinion. The need of the first two is 

 obvious; that of the last requires some explanation. The self-appointed superin- 

 tendent will be at once astonished, and perhaps alarmed, at finding that his philan- 

 thropic and wholly harmless efforts are met at the outset by a storm of letters to the 

 local press, demonstrating the absurdity and even immorality of his intentions; prov- 

 ing that mosquitoes cannot be destroyed, that they spring from grass and trees; that 

 they can be destroyed, but that it is wicked to make the attempt because they were 

 created to punish man; that they do not carry malaria, because malaria is a gas which 



