Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting 121 



there is additional evidence of slowness in our failure to grasp the 

 opportunity. 



But I do not mean to go over ground that is already familiar to 

 you, nor to repeat here the figures indicative of the prospective 

 gain which have been presented for several years, and which to the 

 best of my knowledge never have been disputed. Let it merely be 

 recalled that the effective control of the salt-marsh mosquito pest 

 promises to add to the assessed value of property within the state 

 at least 500 million dollars within 20 years. 



There is, however, a point bearing upon the proposition that the 

 State shall carry a larger share of the work which should be con- 

 sidered. It is the assertion that the cost will fall principally upon 

 the people of North Jersey, while the benefit is largely to the people 

 of South Jersey. This argument is scarcely valid in the face of what 

 you have been listening to relative to the results of the work done by 

 the extermination commissions of the North Jersey counties; and 

 again I venture to assert that such differentiation between the in- 

 terest of North Jersey and the interest of South Jersey presents the 

 limited view. 



But granting for the moment that there may be some dispropor- 

 tion in the effort of, and the benefits to, various sections, it has oc- 

 curred to me to see just what the counties which are working actively 

 in mosquito control actually are doing. The statement that eleven 

 counties have an aggregate of $258,445 for the current year is 

 significant of the magnitude of their effort. And the variation in 

 the sums provided by the counties is also of interest ; yet it is only 

 when the appropriations are reduced to a per capita basis, and to a 

 proportion of the ratables assessed in the various counties, are 

 figures arrived at that are comparable. 



Taking the county appropriations for 1920, the population as 

 reported by the census of 1915, and the net valuation taxable as re- 

 turned for 1919 by the State Board of Taxes and Assessments, it is 

 found that the per capita expenditure ranges from 3.7 cents in Morris 

 County to 61.5 cents in Cape May.; the average for the eleven coun- 

 ties being 11. 8 cents. Using the same statistics it is found that the 

 appropriation for mosquito work per thousand dollars of taxables 

 ranges from 4.9 cents in Morris County to 41.6 cents in Ocean 

 County, with an average for the eleven counties of 10.3 cents. 



Gentlemen, do not these figures dispose of every contention that 

 the burden of cost is entirely out of proportion to the immediate 



