789 
Possibly some of the apparent saving of the lives of 184 infants 
yearly, and the apparent prevention of sickness, may have been due 
to a diminishing birth rate, but the records of the health depart- 
ment show no reason for believing that it was all due to that cause. 
Some of it may have been due to the improvement in the general 
sanitary condition of the city ; some to a better understanding on the 
parts 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, during the year 1906 to 97, and during 1908 and 1909 to 98? 
Or was it not the enactment of the milk law in 1895 and the continu- 
ous and increasingly efficient enforcement 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 sickness that it seems to have prevented, the 
milk-inspection service has amply justified its existence. 
SUPPLEMENTARY MEMORANDUM— GOVERNMENT OP THE DIS- 
TRICT OF COLUMBIA. 
In order that readers of this report who do not reside in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia may better comprehend the situation that exists 
there with respect to the supervision of the milk supply, the follow- 
ing statement is made. Those who are residents of the District of 
Columbia, or most of them, are probably already familiar with every- 
thing 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 popu- 
lation 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 sup- 
