720 
part of parents as to how to care for their children; and some to 
increasing ability on the part of the medical profession to treat such 
diseases. These factors, however, had been operating for a long 
period before the enactment of the milk law, but without apparent 
effect. The death rate from diarrheal diseases of infants during the 
five-year period, 1880 to 1884. was 162 per 100,000; during the next 
period it was 168, and from 1890 to 1894 it was 175. Is there any 
reason to believe that in 1895, the very year the milk law was enacted, 
some circumstance, as yet undiscovered, rendered potent these there- 
tofore inert factors, so that in the period from 1895 to 1899 they made 
the death rate from infantile diarrhea and infantile enteritis fall to 
135, during the next period fall to 109, during the year 1905 fall to 
104, and during the year 1906 to 97? Or was it not the enactment of 
the milk law in 1895 and the continuous and increasingly efficient en- 
forcement of it that has wrought this result? The facts are here 
stated, and pending a further study of the matter the reader must be 
left to draw his own conclusions. This, however, can be said without 
fear of successful contradiction, that if the enactment of the milk 
law of 1895 has prevented only one iota of the deaths and the sick- 
ness that it seems to have prevented, the milk-inspection service has 
amply justified its existence. 
SUPPLEMENTARY MEMORANDUM— GOVERNMENT OF THE 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 
In order that readers of this report who do not reside in the District 
of Columbia may better comprehend the situation that exists there 
with respecf to the supervision of the milk supply, the . following 
statement is made. Those who are residents of the District of Colum- 
bia, or most of them, are probably already familiar with everything 
that it contains. 
The District of Columbia covers only 60 square miles of land, 
lying on the Potomac River between the States of Maryland and 
Virginia. According to the Federal census of 1900, it had a popula- 
tion of 278,718. The police census of 1906 showed, however, a popula- 
tion of 326,435, which is manifestly larger as compared with the 
Federal returns, but is in harmony with police censuses of other recent 
years. Approximately 30 per cent of the population is colored. In 
view of its large population and relatively small area, the greater part 
of the District is urban in character, and most of the milk supply is 
produced in neighboring States. There is in law no delimitation 
between the present city of Washington and the District of Columbia. 
The District of Columbia is not self-governing, but is under the 
control of the Government of the United States. All legislation of 
any considerable importance is enacted by the Federal Congress, and 
