n8 



United States, and that is the problem of inter-state health nuis- 

 ance. We have been — I say that advisedly — New Jersey and 

 New York have within the last year been at the verge of legal 

 procedure simply because of an inter-state nuisance. There has 

 been a very offensive nuisance annoying the citizens of River- 

 side Drive as the result of industrial operations at Edgewater, 

 in New Jersey. The State Department of Health of New Jersey 

 has pushed this matter vigorously and it looks as if their' orders 

 would shortly be obeyed and the situation abated, but the only 

 resource the City of New York' had under those conditions was 

 to act against the State of New Jersey by a proceeding in the 

 Supreme Court of the United States. The sovereign power of . 

 the State of New York could proceed in the Supreme Court of 

 the United States, through its attorney-general, against the sov- 

 ereign power of the State of New Jersey. Now, is there anything 

 conceivable that is more clumsy than such a proceeding? That 

 is why, whenever I have had an opportunity, I have urged and 

 argued and pleaded for a Federal Health Department, with a 

 health officer in the National cabinet. If there is one thing in 

 this country that is absolutely disregarded in this talk about pre- 

 paredness, it is the fundamental health of the individual who 

 has got to do the fighting. Until we have a health officer in 

 the Federal cabinet the citizens of the different States won't be 

 protected against each other, and a high national standard of 

 health will not be established. 



Until Pelham Bay Plark, adjoining the line between New York 

 City and Westchester County, was drained, it was useless for 

 the people along the Westchester shore of the Sound, and useless 

 for the people in Connecticut to undertake the drainage of their 

 shore- front marshes. 



Those things have got to be done together. The city owned 

 that property. The city did it promptly. The whole borough 

 of the Bronx is almost completely freed from mosquito-breeding 

 land. The last appropriation necessary <to do this was approved 

 recently for that large area in Courtland Park, that means a fill 

 costing $63,000 to fill up low-lying land to be reclaimed for park 



