128 Proceedings oe Ninth Annuai, Meet^ing 



President Meyers — Mrs. Olsen, the procedure is this : The 

 mosquito extermination commissions make out budgets which 

 are submitted to the Director of the State Experiment Station 

 in New Brunswick for his approval. They are then submitted 

 to the boards of freeholders who in turn are supposed to include 

 in their budgets the amounts requested. 



Mr. Howell — The mandatory law places in the commission's 

 hands the power to require of the board of freeholders a certain 

 fixed portion of a mill of the ratables of your county, if they wish 

 to, depending on whether the counties in question are of the first 

 or second class. If our commission should ask for the maximum 

 amount in Bergen County the freeholders would have to raise 

 something in the neighborhood of $60,000 instead of $30,000 — 

 they would be helpless in the matter. 



Secretary HeadlEE — Mr. Chairman, for the benefit of the 

 ladies who perhaps are not entirely familiar with the way this 

 law operates, perhaps I ought to explain my experience in the 

 administration of this law. When I first came to the state the 

 County Commission Law of 191 2 had just been passed. I as- 

 sumed, Mrs. Olsen, that the law meant exactly what it said. It 

 provided that a mosquito commission should be appointed by 

 the Justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the courts of the 

 county. Those commissions were appointed in twenty-one coun- 

 ties of the state, and Essex and Union had commissions at work 

 at that time. They were the only counties in the state that 

 worked in the summer of 19 12. 



I got in touch with the commissions in the counties of Cam- 

 den, Mercer, Gloucester. Hudson, Bergen, Middlesex, Mon- 

 mouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May. We began to lay out 

 plans for mosquito extermination work in those counties. We 

 prepared budgets of what we thought was necessary to make a 

 decent start. Remember, that was in the fall of 191 2. Every- 

 thing seemed to be all right. I didn't consult the boards of free- 

 holders ; in fact, I didn't know the boards of freeholders cut the 

 figure in the State of New Jersey that I know they now do. The 

 legislative session came on after the first of the year of 19 13 and 

 the legislators literally fell over one another to put in repealers, 

 and the shouts against the Mandatory Mosquito Law rever- 

 berated all over the state. The various newspaper writers, edi- 

 torial and otherwise, poured forth their vials of wrath on this 

 law which would compel the people of New Jersey to spend such 

 and such sums. They figured it on the basis of the mill tax to 

 arrive at the amount. It ran up into half a million dollars or 

 thereabouts. 



