43 



part to direct action <>n the pari of those responsible for the good 

 management of the common interests of their several populations. 

 Neither humanity nor the progress of invention and discovery, oor the 

 advancement of science has had much to do with it. It can not even, 

 in any greal degree, be ascribed to the direct action of the law of sup- 

 ply and demand. 



Shall we say, then, that it has depended <>n causes wholly hey. nid the 

 exercise of human judgment, and that we may Leave the future to take 

 care of itself, as our fathers did? We are by no means justified in 

 adopting such a conclusion, for, if we can not yet trace wholly to 

 their causes, all the advantages we possess over our predecessors, we 

 are able to reach the conviction, beyond all reasonable doubt, that 

 at least, the larger share of the immunity from the visits of the 

 plague and other forms of pestilence, and from sweeping fires, ami the 

 larger part of the improved general health and increased Length of life 

 which civilized towns have lately enjoyed is due to the abandonment 

 of tin 1 old-fashioned compact way of building towns, and the grad- 

 ual adoption of a custom of laying them out with much larger 

 spaces open to the sun-light and fresh air; a custom the introduction 

 of which was due to no intelligent anticipation of such results. 



Evidence of this is found in the fact that the differing proportions 

 between the dying and the living, the sick and the well, which are 

 found to exist between towns where most of the people still live on 

 narrow streets, and those in which the later fashions have been gene- 

 rally adopted ; and between parts of the same town which are most 

 crowded and those which are more open, are to this day nearly as great 

 as between modern and ancient towns. For instance, in Liverpool, the 

 constant influx of new-comers of a very poor and ignorant class from 

 the other side of the Irish Channel, and the consequent demand for 

 hOuse-room, and the resulting value of the poor, old buildings which 

 line the narrow streets, has, till recently, caused the progress of im- 

 provement to be much slower than in the much larger town of London, 

 so that, while the average' population of Liverpool is about 140,000 to 

 the square mill', that of London is but 50,000 ; the average age at death 

 in Liverpool is seventeen, and that in London, twenty-six. In the city 

 of Brooklyn the number of deaths for each thousand of population 

 that occurred this last year in the closer built parts, was twice as large 

 as in those where the streets are wider and there are many gardens. 



Comparisons of this kind have been made in such number, and the 

 data for them have been drawn from such a large variety of localities 

 in which the conditions of health in all other respects have been differ- 

 ent, that no man charged, however temporarily and under whatever 

 limitations, with municipal responsibilities, can be pardoned for ignoring 



