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be developed to such a high degree that they can get the people 

 in the household to feel responsible for the conditions on their 

 own properties. Inspectors can't always abate the nuisance by 

 personal effort, and if they can't, then we have to try education 

 through the pocket, by a direct order of the department to drain 

 a whole field or otherwise abate the nuisance. 



You have seen many instances of the application of this, I have 

 no doubt. Perhaps you are not so familiar with the fact that 

 one of the greatest reasons of our failure in many instances is 

 the inability to prevail upon the city to clean its own property. 

 There have been many instances where property owned by the 

 Federal Government and by the City of New York, within the 

 limits of the city, has maintained such breeding conditions that 

 until they are abated nothing' that is done by adjacent private 

 property holders will be of any avail. 



When you realize that at the Narrows, just opposite Staten 

 Island, there is property where mosquitoes are breeding on a 

 reservation of the Federal Government in connection with the 

 army post located there, when you realize that a large city park 

 adjacent to that has for years been the main source of infection 

 of the otherwise free areas on Staten Island, when you realize 

 that there are areas owned by the City of New York in certain 

 places within the city on which mosquito breeding has been 

 found, you see our first duty is to prevail upon the slowly 

 moving officials of other city departments, of the administrative 

 arms of the Federal and City Governments, to eliminate their 

 nuisances. Until we have done that the individual owners say 

 "What is the use of our draining ours until the City or Uncle 

 Sam over there has drained his?" 



It is the same way all through the administration. It has got 

 to move together uniformly in regard to all property, and that 

 is why it has become' necessary for us to move through groups 

 of citizens. If we drain the entire Jamaica Bay, as it is proved 

 we may do with prospective appropriations, and easily when 

 summer comes we are going to have just as many mosquitoes in 

 Brooklyn and all over Rockaway Peninsula as we had before, 

 because there will be adjacent to us and outside the city limits 



