June, ’23 
mccubbin: domestic quarantines 
261 
is ever alert for any glimpse of weakness or laxity, and standards of 
efficiency that might arouse little adverse comment in other adminis¬ 
tration affairs would here be subject to the bitterest condemnation. 
A whole community will submit to fair and just restrictions with a few 
grumblings, but a falling down in enforcement so as to give the sem¬ 
blance of discrimination or favoritism rouses at once the wildest re¬ 
sentment. The public taste does not relish a quarantine diet, but when 
the dish is ordered they will eat it if it is well cooked and well served. 
The type of population to which a restrictive measure applies is a 
feature that has to be taken into consideration. An intelligent pro¬ 
gressive community which can understand the benefits to be obtained and 
in which the sense of public duty is well developed is obviously more 
likely to assume the necessary burden than an illiterate group which 
can not comprehend the beneficial aim and has but a feeble sense of 
social responsibility. Perhaps never in our quarantine efforts has there 
been a more extreme case in this respect than in the Pennsylvania 
Potato Wart Quarantine. This quarantine had to be applied to a 
population largely made, up of diverse foreign elements all of which have 
low educational standards and show so little interest in public affairs 
that newspaper publicity is of small value. Ordinary methods would 
have failed entirely. The language obstacle, the mental inertia and the 
obstinacy of the ignorant here constituted a problem that has required 
the most patient, persistent and methodical work. 
That this quarantine has been maintained with a strictness of enforce¬ 
ment rarely reached elsewhere, against the universal opposition of a 
large population and under the language and educational handicaps 
mentioned, is an accomplishment which inspires confidence in our 
.future work. For a quarantine will seldom encounter such adverse con¬ 
ditions in any population with which it may have to deal. 
Regulatory work has another phase in relation to the public. The 
success or weakness of each quarantine does not pertain to itself alone 
but has a definite effect on future efforts. A quarantine is a community 
experience; if the community memory of such an experience is that of a 
disagreeable task planned with care and carried out with thoroughness, 
fairness and tact, then the community will submit more readily to a 
second necessary restriction. But a few experiences associated with 
indefinite purpose, ill-considered plans, haphazard, irregular methods, 
and jarring personal contacts, will destroy to a large extent the valuable 
educational development which a series of quarantines should provide, 
