Conquest of Bubonic Plague 



85 



of the spring wheat of the country and 

 we know that their capacity for pro- 

 duction may be more than doubled. 

 The Canadian northwest is boasting 

 that its younger wheat fields are yield- 

 ing twice as much grain to the acre as 

 our lands; England with less favorable 

 conditions for wheat culture than we 

 enjoy raises more than double the quan- 

 tity of grain to the acre than we pro- 

 duce. 



We may say of our entire agri- 

 cultural interest that we shall double 

 our production when we improve our 

 methods. We cannot measure yet the 

 potential benefits which our Agricult- 

 ural Department and the agricultural 

 schools will confer upon the nation by 

 their persistent teaching of scientific 

 methods of tillage. A man near the 

 east end of Long Island is demonstrat- 

 ing every year that the highest grade 

 of farming gives the best profits. He 

 spends money without stint for fertil- 



izers; all his operations are kept to the 

 highest point of efficiency and he is 

 selling his crop of vegetables, the pro- 

 duct of 80 acres, at an average figure of 

 $20,000 a year. He is making as much 

 money from the soil as he could from 

 an3 r other business with the same amount 

 of capital. 



The mistake is sometimes made of 

 attributing to one factor more than its 

 due share in bringing about the ad- 

 vanced stage of development we have 

 reached. The attention of no American 

 audience, however, needs to be called 

 to the fact that in this nation of highly 

 intelligent laborers, of inventive genius 

 and of boundless energy and ambition, 

 the geographic conditions that have 

 so wonderfully helped us and some of 

 which have been the topic of this brief 

 discourse are only one of the all-potent 

 influences which have advanced us to 

 the rank we occupy among the great 

 nations. 



THE CONQUEST OF BUBONIC PLAGUE IN 

 ^THE PHILIPPINES 



THE United States has driven the 

 bubonic plague out of the Phil- 

 ippines as completely as it has 

 swept yellow fever out of Cuba. 



The ravages of Asiatic cholera, which 

 have claimed 100,000 victims in the 

 islands, have diverted public attention 

 from a fight against the bubonic plague 

 waged by the health officers of Manila. 

 This remarkable fight has no precedent 

 in the history of the plague. If it had 

 not been for the tireless vigilance and 

 ceaseless war on rats and filth by Dr 

 Meacham and his subordinates a wave 

 of the plague would have swept over 

 Manila and the islands as destructive of 

 life as the cholera itself. 



The plague is always present at Hong- 

 kong. There is not a day in the year 



when some plague-stricken wretch is 

 not trying to hide in the densely packed 

 quarters of that city. Manila, 600 

 miles across the sea, must therefore be 

 constantly on her guard lest the plague 

 slip in on one of the many vessels ply- 

 ing between the two ports. 



The day after Christmas, 1899, a 

 man was found in the streets of Manila 

 dead from bubonic plague. The dis- 

 ease had invaded the city and began to 

 spread. 



How the plague was fought and 

 beaten is told by Hon. Dean C. Worces- 

 ter, Secretary of the Interior of the in- 

 sular government, in his report to the 

 Philippine Commission for 1902. 



Bubonic plague was discovered at 

 Manila December 26, 1899, and slowly 



