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position to do the work at a lower cost than a private contractor,^ 

 and also doing the work in this way they have in mind the single! 

 object of the elimination of mosquito breeding. The signing 

 of the contract by the property owner and the subsequent pay- 

 ment of his share has a two-fold object of interesting the indi- 

 vidual directly in the work of mosquito extermination and also' 

 that of relieving the Commission or Association of the criticism 

 of dong work on private property entirely at public expense. 

 Contract work of this nature has not yet been generally adopted. 

 Where tried it has proved quite successful, but its possibilities 

 have not been fully determined. 



It may seem to many of you that this paper is too general, 

 that figures should be quoted to show the relative cost of work 

 as done under contract and that done by commission labor. In 

 explanation I can only say that before writing on this subject I 

 read and re-read carefully the reports of various Commissions 

 and Associations, and after digesting them came to the conclu- 

 sion that there was so much difference in the method of figuring 

 in (or out) the initial and fixed charges that the figures quoted 

 were not really on a comparative basis. Thus one association 

 doing work under contract with an acknowledged cost of 1.5 

 cents a foot might, in the final analysis, have been doing it 

 cheaper than an association which shows a cost of 1.2 cents with 

 their own labor. It did not seem, therefore, that such quota- 

 tions would prove anything. It has been attempted to show 

 how the contract first came tO' enter into mosquito control work 

 and why, despite the fact that the original conditions which 

 brought it into existence disappeared, it continued to maintain an 

 important part. I have endeavored to point out that under our 

 present method of conducting the work the letting of a contract 

 by which the contractor assumes any responsibility for the suc- 

 cessful operation of the system planned is costly and imprac- 

 tical. If the placing of work under contract means a reduced 

 cost, all things considered, it should be so' placed, but always 

 on specific terms rigidly enforced and under the direct super- 

 visidn of the Commission or Association paying for the work. 

 Thus the use of the contract resolves itself into a question of 



