30 N. J. Mosquito Extermination Association 



The people living on the entire coastal plain to the south of you 

 are decidedly interested in the progress that you are making; and 

 they ask me time and time again when the government is going to be 

 ready to help them. I tell them it is a real estate proposition, it is 

 a pure question of the state and the county investing money and 

 getting a bigger return than they can by any other investment. We 

 have not sufficient people yet in the coastal counties to warrant ex- 

 tensive drainage measures, but that day will come. 



I might state that Gulfport, Mississippi, has probably paid out 

 the highest per capita cost of any town in the United States for mos- 

 quito control, and the results have been two-fold. It has changed 

 the town to an all-year-round resort. The large hotel, which used 

 to be operated for winter guests, is now turning away guests during 

 the summer months. The manager of the hotel has told us that our 

 work has been the biggest kind of a boon to the vicinity. More 

 recently, a Michigan firm has arranged to build a large manufactur- 

 ing plant at Gulfport covering twenty acres, which will probably 

 mean that the population of the town will be doubled. The Chamber 

 of Commerce appreciates fully that the investment that it made in 

 drainage was the very best investment that it or any other town or 

 county could make. 



We have repeated instances of this nature. We have been able 

 by mosquito control to increase the output from certain factories in 

 different locations as much as 33 per cent without increasing the 

 size of the factory or the number of machines. 



At this point I would like to recite a little unwritten history that 

 should be better known. Few of us thought up until this war what 

 a large bearing mosquito control would have on the success of our 

 trpops. Many of you know that in the Spanish-American, War we 

 had certain regiments in which probably only fifty per cent of the 

 men were ready for action. The Sanitary Corps of the Army, having 

 among it men who were trained here in New Jersey as well as men 

 trained under Dr. Howard and others, was given the mosquito^ 

 control work. The Surgeon-General was not at all afraid to put his 

 camps down in the malarial part of this country. So far as I know, 

 he did not have one single word to say about where those camps were 

 to be located. Some of them were very badly located so far as 

 malaria was concerned. Now what was the result ? Compared with 

 the Spanish-American War we had a reduction in our malaria rate 

 of men in camp of 99.3 per cent. We had an army that was fit to 

 fight. 



