30 



Rats and Mice 



With regard to the Destruction of rats in towns : — 



Trapping should be done continuously and systematically at 

 all rat-infested places ; and wherever possible they should be 

 attacked with cats, dogs and ferrets. 



In badly infested areas public rat-catchers should be 

 appointed. The position of these men when appointed should not 

 depend upon whether rats remain to be caught or not ; if the rat- 

 catcher succeeds in cleansing a badly infested locality his pay 

 should be increased, and it should remain at the higher level for 

 so long as he succeeds in keeping the place free from rats.* 



In normal times, when many persons are unemployed, the 

 payment of small premiums for each rat caught has good results. 

 This method has, of course, been tried on many occasions in this 

 country from the eighteenth century onwards ; its failure here 

 hitherto is partly to be ascribed to the fact that the premium 

 offered was often too beggarly to attract, but chiefly to the fact 

 that such a system was only tried in certain districts and never 

 throughout the country as a whole at any one time. Zuschlag 

 was the first to put such a system upon a scientific basis ; after 

 much experiment and agitation his scheme was embodied in the 

 Danish Eat Law, and it worked with good results in Denmark 

 and in other Scandinavian countries. The premium to be paid 

 should be settled independently in each district ; its amount must 

 depend upon the state of the labour market and the scale of wages 

 for unskilled labour in each locality. If too low the premium 

 attracts children only ; if too high it tempts fraudulent persons to 

 try their cunning. In ordinary times this system is calculated to 

 enlist the services of a large amount of nondescript or casual 

 labour. In Denmark the rats were received at the fire stations ; 

 the tails of the rats brought in were cut off by the firemen,f and 

 the latter used them as their vouchers for the money they had 

 paid out as premiums. In certain German towns the system did 

 not work so well ; the premium offered was too low, and, what 

 was still worse, the rats were received at the police stations. Those 

 who might have been attracted even by such small rewards did 

 not care to run the risk of visiting the police, for as Zuschlag 



* Proper supervision of sucli men is, of course, pre-supposed. 



t In the interests of the public health it is essential that the whole rat 

 should be surrendered— not merely heads or tails. Without such a stipulation 

 the carcases may become more dangerous than the living animals. 



