Proceedings of Sixth Annual Meeting 13 



The railroad corporations gave strong support and willingly did 

 such drainage work as was requested. The local communities paid 

 over one-third of the total cost of the work in addition to large 

 sums for other sanitary measures. The cost of drainage, oiling 

 supervision, equipment and transportation averaged about one 

 dollar and eighty cents per acre of territory controlled. 



The support given by the public of the South and the officials who 

 represent them, even in relatively poor districts, sparsely settled, 

 and results accomplished there, stand out in strong contrast with 

 conditions yet existing in the environment of some of the New 

 York camps, where, beyond the military cantonment lines no mos- 

 quito control measures were inaugurated. Many of the sentries on 

 night duty at our Southern camps have told me they very seldom 

 noticed mosquitoes there. The real estate values close to the south 

 shore town, near Camp Upton can be doubled by an expenditure 

 of about $12 per acre on the brackish marshes nearby, but the 

 fact is apparently not yet appreciated by the property owners and 

 real estate interests. 



Year after year the people pay for screen installation and repair, 

 which cost is not insignificant in these days of high prices, live be- 

 hind screens and fail to get the large summer hotel business and 

 pleasure of living that will immediately follow the eradication of the 

 mosquito now flourishing in the brackish water inlets of the south 

 shore of Long Island. If for no other reason than for the com- 

 fort of the military forces at Camp Upton and the Aviation forces 

 nearby, this work should be started at once and concluded before 

 July. 



When the question of protecting the aviators in the Tennessee 

 Camps was brought up, the Sanitation Committee of the Chamber 

 of Commerce of Memphis immediately got busy and forty thousand 

 dollars was made available for mosquito control near the camp, 

 22 miles away from the city. Not only that, but an area of one 

 hundred square miles in and near the town of Memphis was drain- 

 ed and freed of mosquitoes, and a commission appointed by that 

 active Chamber of Commerce to see that it is kept free of mos- 

 quitoes hereafter. 



Along the Mississippi Gulf coast from Biloxi to Pass Christian, 

 there is a strip of land 22 miles long and a mile wide. In this area 

 the mosquito drainage project, which was started to protect naval 



