Proceedings of Sixth Annual Meeting 131 



fectly clear and plain before us. You cannot get away from the 

 advantages that lie directly in plain sight. 



We talk a whole lot about the difficulties of securing the money 

 that is necessary to carry out this project, and it does indeed re- 

 solve itself into a question of money. Isn't it curious that we 

 should have to work so hard to accomplish something that is so 

 self-evident? I have wished many a time that this situation lay in 

 the determination of the Board of Directors of a business concern. 

 How long do you think it would take them to decide that it is 

 pretty good business to spend $750,000 over a period of five years 

 to return $500,000,000? There is the whole thing in a nutshell. 

 I need not dwell upon the assurance that resides in this whole 

 problem. That has been manifested by every speaker that has ap- 

 peared during the course of this mjeeting — evidence piled upon 

 evidence that the thing is practicable, that the cost is reasonable, 

 that the return is certain as anything that can be forecast. 



Now I want to present just one situation to you gentlemen that 

 occurred to me during the course, or at the end of the symposium 

 that we had this morning. You heard from the representatives of 

 twelve Mosquito Commissions. Every one of them was accom- 

 plishing things or getting results; and with one — I think it was 

 just one exception, and the condition there was admittedly tem- 

 porary — there was a pretty universal satisfaction with what was 

 going on. 



Now the point I want to mlake is this : the twelve counties which 

 reported that very satisfactory state of affairs represent, as nearly 

 as I can work it out off-hand, three-quarters of the population of 

 New Jersey. Now what is the reason we should have all this 

 trouble to induce the representatives of that three-quarters of the 

 population to do the thing that we are so sure ought to be done? 

 When you think of it from that standpoint, it looks as if all there 

 was for us to do was to go right straight ahead and get it. 



I do not say much about the means by which the work has to 

 be done. As I said, we all recognize that it is merely a question 

 of dollars. But there is one feature in connection with it which 

 miay be discussed later by a man that is more competent than T. 

 but upon which I just want to touch, and that is the employment 

 of the state's prisoners and reformatory inmates to do the work 

 that is involved in this cleanup. Of course, it does not matter 



