the conservation of the coal and the forests. But conservation does not
mean hoarding. It means utilization. I do not want to go through life
with cold feet to save the Alaska coal and warm up somebody that is
going to live a million years from now. (Applause) I want to get some
of the benefit out of the coal while I am living, and out of the forest
and out of the stream. My idea of conservation is to use the natural
assets of this country for the benefit of the people, and not for some
syndicate of rich men alone. (Applause) And I hope we won’t spend all
this generation quarreling about who is going to have the coal, but that
we will find some way to get it out and use it before it gets out of
date. Because I want to tell you that we will not need coal much longer.
The scientific men will find plenty of ways of finding heat and motive
power when the coal is all gone. And if we do not use it now, it is going
to become simply a specimen in the near future. (Applause) I want to say
that we want to use the lumber, and use it wisely. There is no economy
in allowing a tree to stand in the forest until it rots. We want to cut
the old trees down just like Nature comes around and cuts down the old
people and gets them out of the way. That is the way that science will
provide lumber and at the same time continue to reduce the forests. Only
the mineral resources are limited. There is just so much coal, just so
much gold, and when they are used up, so far as I know, there is no more
making, and they will be then gone. But do not have any fear. When the
iron is all gone and the silver is all gone and the gold is all gone,
there will be plenty of metals at the disposal of man, because we have
found now how to convert clay into metal. I went into an automobile shop
the other morning where they were making the frames out of pure aluminum.
We have got enough clay in this country to last several years. (Applause)
It will take the place of the steel and the iron and the gold and the
silver and the copper. Have no fear of exhausting these supplies of
humanity, but exhaust them for the benefit of the public. (Applause) If
we could use one millionth part of the force of the wind we could turn
every wheel of industry in the world, warm every house, cook every meal
in this whole universe. And the wind and hot air shops are very abundant
still. (Applause) There are no signs of it giving out in the near future,
either. If the wind is going to blow and turn the wheels of commerce and
industry, there are 24,000 wind mills with a dynamo attached to them and
storage battery guaranteeing to the farmer all the light he wants in the
barn, cooking stove, and turning the sewing machine and grindstone and
engine every day of the year. Do not have any fear, ladies and gentlemen,
that the natural powers of this world are going to be exhausted. They
are here and here to stay, and here to be supplied by the advance of
science in such a way that no matter how populous the world becomes in
the future nobody is going to suffer for warmth or clothing or power in
this world of ours, and we want to get so many people in this country
that there won’t be any complaint of vacant country churches. And there
is no doubt that this country can supply the food and clothing for untold
millions of people yet unborn. We can have every foot of our country as
densely populated as Belgium and still have plenty for everybody, because
advancing science will supply it. The capacity of a man’s mouth is
limited and constant, but the skill of his hands is unlimited. He has two
hands, but only one mouth, and the advancing skill of his hand is going
to fill the mouth.
President WALLACE—Turn around that way and face the audience, please.
(Applause)
HEALTH, THE GREATEST ASSET.
Dr. WILEY—I would just as leave say it all over again if you didn’t hear
it. (Laughter) Now, there is one public asset of wealth that is rarely
mentioned in these conservation congresses, and that is the public
health. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen (applause), it is worth in
money more than all the gold and all the forests and all the water power
combined. If a man boasts of the wealth of Kansas City he speaks of the
railroads and the packing houses and the great centers of distribution
and the wholesale commercial houses and the value of real estate. He
never says a word about how much a people are worth in health. I asked
the children in the Central High School today how much each one thought
he was worth in money. They did not know. I told them that in a year or
two every one of them would be capable of earning $50 a month. I think
there are lots of parents in this town that would not take $12,000 for
a single child they have. And every single child is worth in money, if
it is developed into a man or woman, $12,000. And if you take all of the
people of the country and value them at $12,000 apiece, all the rest of
the wealth of this country sinks into insignificance. And I am satisfied
that that is the value of every man who is able to earn a dollar.
Now, some people think women are worth nothing because they don’t get
paid much for their work. Housewives do not get a monthly salary usually
from their husbands. She ought to, but she does not. Practically all of
them ought to get a salary every month. (Applause) But that does not
make any difference in the earning capacity of the housewife. She is
worth more than $50—every one. So I would say that there are 40,000,000
of people in this country who are capable of earning $50 a month and
do earn it. That, in my mind, will give you a good idea of the wealth
of this country in health. But that wealth consists of health. If you
impair the machine, the human machine, you impair the earning power of
that machine, and thus you diminish its value. If you let the child die
you rob the father of a great asset. And we are letting our children die
every year. You may go into any graveyard in this country and count the
little graves of children under five years of age, and three out of every
five of them ought not to be there. The little body that is crumbling
beneath that tombstone ought to be in the high school of the city or in
the active walks of life. We let these children die and never think of
the responsibility that rests upon us. How can we get to be healthy?
Well, in the first place heredity. We have got to begin away back. That
don’t do us much good, but if we pay attention to it it will do future
generations some good. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes I believe who said,
“You have to begin to make a man when he was a marsupial possibility.”
We have got to go way back now to shape the careers of men and women
unborn. Heredity, a sound body is one of the rights of every human being
who is born. (Applause) I am glad to know that many of the states are
already taking steps to insure that, and to forbid marriages with people
who are physically incapable of producing healthy children. Marriage
we regard as a sentiment, and we do not like to have anybody interfere
with our sentiments. But I tell you marriage is an affair of the state.
If the state has a right to demand a fee for a marriage license, and to
prescribe how it shall be performed, and make laws by which it may be
broken, it has the right to forbid the marriage as well as to regulate
it. (Applause)
CONSERVATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.
I say then that our first work for public health is to look after the
unborn generations and to see that they have healthy parents. That does
not help us now, but we must look to it right now. I asked a member of
the school board today if they had medical inspection of the school
children here. He said a partial one. I said: “Do you have a dental
inspection? Do you have a registered dentist come around through the
school and see what kind of teeth the children have?” That is just as
important as whether they come with clean clothes or not. I have no use
for a boy or girl who loses his teeth in childhood. We must begin the
conservation with the children of this country, of the public health.
The time is coming when there will not be a school in our broad land
without competent medical supervision. We demand now that our children be
vaccinated. We also should demand that they bring to school no contagious
disease to spread among their fellows. And there are lots of contagious
diseases that we do not think of as contagious, such as tuberculosis for
instance. And so by beginning with the unborn generation we may add to
the length of human existence. Heredity then, sound bodies in which sound
minds are and may be developed, is one of the primal basic qualifications
for the conservation of human life.
Then the next thing is, after we get healthy beings into the world, to
see that they are properly nourished, and unless the child and the man
and the woman have the proper food they cannot be expected to maintain
their health. Unless you feed an engine, or boiler, good coal you cannot
expect it to develop the maximum of power. Unless you feed a man well,
nourish him well, you cannot expect him to be an effective machine,
and to do his proper duty as a member of the community. The thing to
do to secure the maximum efficiency of the machine—feed it well. What
are we doing about that? We are making a beginning in that line. And
the first thing we are doing is with the young child. We are saving the
lives of the infants. I may say there has been more progress made along
that line than in any other, and that is the place to begin. Here a few
years ago if 125 children did not die out of every thousand that were
born we thought something was wrong; we rather expected it. And in some
communities a great many more than that died.
In many communities the death rate has been reduced to seventy per
thousand. There is no reason why over this whole country the death rate
of the children, of the infants and the child under five, may not be
reduced so as to make the death rate per thousand not very much greater
than that of the adult, namely, thirteen or fourteen per thousand in
a healthy community. And I do not know any reason why the children of
this country should die at the rate of more than thirteen or fourteen
per thousand when they are properly cared for at birth, and have proper
fathers and mothers to give them healthy bodies. This will be a great
addition to the wealth of the country, to save the children. And we can
save the grown person by a wholesome diet. I am not one of those who
believe in a starvation diet, cutting down food. There are a great many
preachers of that doctrine in this country. That is a false doctrine.
Nature provides that we shall have enough, and intended we shall have
enough and then a little more. When the engineer fills up the tender with
coal, he does not take just enough to get him into the station. No. He
puts in a ton or two in excess. So Nature provides that when we eat to
get strength to perform the mechanical functions of life, we shall have
just a little more than is necessary, the factor of safety which enables
us to go over the emergency safely.
THE RIGHT TO NUTRITIOUS FOOD.
And, therefore, it is the right of every citizen of this country to
have nutritious food and to have plenty of it. Again, when the animal
does feel sick, it has the right to scientific attendance with good
food; in other words, the sick man has a right to be attended by a
competent physician, and to have remedies administered prepared by a
competent pharmacist and of pronounced purity. That is another thing
we are securing for the people of this country—pure drugs to help them
get well when they are sick. (Applause) And we are trying to keep men
from practicing medicine who have no qualifications to do so except a
facile pen to write an advertisement. The day is coming when a man cannot
practice medicine in Kansas City by the newspaper as he can today. I
looked at your newspapers. They are full of prescriptions, written by
physicians who could not begin to pass the examination of your state
board of health. They are quacks and fakirs, and the advertisements are
worded cunningly to separate your money from your income. And the law
permits it, while the regular physician cannot come to Kansas City and
practice medicine without taking out a license from the state board of
health, and yet you allow a fakir in any other county to come to town
and practice medicine _ad libitum_. We are going to stop that for you
and save your money and save your lives (applause) by securing competent
medical supervision of the sick of the community.
Then we are going to protect you from contagious diseases. We are
building up now a cordon around this country against invasion, not from
an armed enemy, but from one that has slain a thousand times more than
the armed enemy would slay—the germ of contagious disease. While Europe
has been suffering from Asiatic cholera for a year, we have succeeded
absolutely in wiping it out of this country, except one or two sporadic
cases, and we no longer fear yellow fever. We know it because we know
how to handle the mosquito that spreads it, and we segregate it in the
spots where it breaks out. We are beginning to control that most dread
of all diseases, tuberculosis. And the day is coming when we will have
full control of it. There are people in this house who will live to see
tuberculosis as rare as smallpox is today, in my opinion. (Applause) Why?
Because science has found out how that disease is conveyed, and having
found out the cause, we can proceed to the remedy, and the day is coming
when there will be camps of detention for tuberculosis patients, just as
there are today for leprosy. It looks hard. It looks inhuman. But what
we must care for is humanity, and not the single life. You remember what
Tennyson says: “Are God and Nature then at strife, that Nature sends such
evil dreams? So careful of the type she signs, so careless of the single
life?”
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY.
The individual must give way to the community, and if he is afflicted
with tuberculosis he must be segregated, so that the disease may
be conquered and kept within bounds. And so typhoid fever will be
conquered—all the diseases which are due to infection and contagion. And
great progress is making along this line today, so much so that we are
encouraged in the belief that other diseases yet unconquered may meet the
enemy and master, like for instance pneumonia and diseases of that sort.
And the result will be that by the advance of scientific medicine and
by the wise control of the state, men will be spared the destruction of
their usefulness and value in middle life. Why, how much does it mean to
die before your time? All the years of preparation, all the money spent
in your education, all that you have done to prepare yourself for the
duties of life, cut off in an instant by an enemy more treacherous by far
than any foreign invader could be, more to be feared than any armed foe
could possibly be feared. We have no need to build sixteen-inch guns to
protect our trade on the Panama Canal. What we have protected are the men
who builded them. The greatest triumph of the Panama Canal is not that it
is a wonderful cut, is not that it is protected by sixteen-inch guns, but
that the men who build it are as healthy as you people who have stayed
here in Kansas City. That is the great triumph of the Panama Canal.
(Applause)
Then we want to preach sanitation in the outplaces where the church ought
to be built in the country. That is one reason that the country is not
attractive, because there are no sanitary conveniences there. The farmers
are living today in a state of barbarism almost in that respect. What
we need to do is to populate the country in order to make the country
attractive, and it can be done at little expense. There are preachers
today who are preaching sanitation about the country school house, and to
the country farmer, how to make himself comfortable at home. The roller
towels have been abolished in Kansas. The Pullman Company has taken out
its public drinking cups in the State of Illinois, and failed to give any
other, so you can go all through Illinois without any danger of drinking
the Pullman ice water. (Applause) The day will come some time when the
Pullman Company will ventilate its cars. (Applause) On the train coming
out from Washington there were at least five hundred free passengers
called flies that came all the way and enjoyed the trip (laughter) and
never lost a moment from sleep. (Laughter) Think of it at this modern
day, to start a palace car from Washington that cost $20,000 full of
flies! But we are preaching sanitation in out of the way places like
the country home and the Pullman car, and the people are learning. And
you will be able to travel after a while without danger of contracting
a disease in the car where you sleep, or in the hotel where you eat.
This gospel of sanitation goes with the gospel of the country church,
because cleanliness is next to godliness, and sometimes it seems to me it
comes first and godliness second, because a dirty man has a great deal
of trouble in feeling godly. (Applause) So the gospel of sanitation is
coming to our help. Another thing will help, and that is the gospel of
segregation. What are we to do to prevent the influx into the city? I
will tell you one thing that the city could do. Every city wants to have
more people in it. They do not care what kind they are. They want more
than their neighboring city. It is the ambition of the town to pad the
census. Many of them are in jail for doing it today. If I lived in Kansas
City I wouldn’t care whether we had more people than Omaha or not, but I
would love to have, if I were in Kansas City, cleaner streets and purer
water and more segregated houses (applause) than Omaha or any other city.
And you ought to have them here with all your beautiful streets. You have
the principle here of keeping the houses apart. There is plenty of ground
in this country to build houses and have a little spot of green by them
where they can have flowers in the garden and potatoes. That is what we
ought to do to prevent the influx into the city.
THE CITY NOT FOR MANUFACTURING.
I would recommend as a sanitary measure that every city forbid any
manufacturing of any kind within its limits. The city is not for
manufacturing. The city is for exchange only, and if you would banish
the factory you would do much for the sanitation of the city and for
the factory workers. You would get closer to the raw material which
the factory uses. You would save in transportation, and every workman
could have his little cottage with his little piece of land that would
help populate the country and help the church that was built near
the factory, too. I say we can put the people into the country by
legislation if in no other way in that respect, and the moment the
factory starts the farmer is coming to raise garden truck. You will have
growing around the factory a prosperous agricultural community with its
church and it will be a great deal better than having a little church
with a lonely graveyard. The most awful thing in the country is the
graveyard, especially at night, when the boy has to go home past it. That
is the way. We will segregate the population and thus conserve the public
health.
Last of all, we can crown the work of the gospel of sanitation by
enacting into a law provision for a national board of health with real
power and with real authority, whose director shall have a seat in the
President’s cabinet and advise him in regard to the most precious of all
the assets of our country, public health (applause), and he can guide
and help the authorities of the state and cities, and furnish them the
material with which to work, and that is coming after a while. We are
going to conquer and bring together all the government authorities which
have to do with the public health in the one grand organization which
will conserve the health of this country and have a voice of power in the
councils of the Nation. And then when we do this we will have instilled
into the people the idea that there are things that are more important
than dollars. Every movement of this kind is stopped by the dollars,
the fear that somebody is going to lose some money, while at the same
time it could be easily shown that every single movement of this kind is
for the increase of our national wealth, and the day will come when the
doctrine of graft and greed will have to give way to the doctrine of the
sanitation of the people. (Applause) We have today our Fourth of July
when we celebrate. In some parts of the country the colored citizens meet
and celebrate the emancipation. So I want to live to see the day when the
people of this country will meet together in one grand convocation to
celebrate the emancipation from the reign of greed and graft and for the
establishment of the principles of sanitation which keep them well and
happy and patriotic American citizens. (Applause)
President WALLACE—This Congress will now stand adjourned until tomorrow
morning at 9 o’clock.
_SEVENTH SESSION._
Dr. Cyrus Northrop, President Emeritus Minnesota University, presided.
Chairman NORTHROP—The Congress will be led in prayer by the Rev. Dr. S.
M. Neel, pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church of Kansas City.
INVOCATION.
Our Father, Who art in heaven, we recognize Thy hand in every
good. We are dependent upon the bounties of Thy providence, and
we invoke Thy blessing upon these Thy servants, as they have
met together to consider the best interests that manifest Thy
love and Thy goodness to the children of men. Thou hast taught
us if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth
liberally unto all men and upbraideth not. We pray Thee that
Thou wilt give us wisdom to guide us in this Congress, that
we advise those ways and means that shall be productive of
the interests of our fellow men in their various avocations,
especially to those who are called to labor and till the soil,
and may Thy blessing rest upon them and Thy providence be about
us, sending the rain and the sunshine in season, and that men
may look up to Thee with thankful, grateful hearts, and serve
Thee honestly and sincerely, and finally meet Thee in richest
reward in the world to come, and the glory shall be Thine
forever, Amen.
Chairman NORTHROP—My instructions were to start the Congress at 9
o’clock, but it did not seem possible to do that. So I have compromised
by starting it half way between 9 and 9:30. The regular order of business
probably cannot be pursued at this moment. Is Mr. George W. Bailey of
Missouri in the room?
If Mr. Bailey will come to the platform he may have the ear of the
Congress for five minutes. Mr. Bailey, Deputy State Game and Fish
Commissioner of Missouri.
Mr. BAILEY—I was highly pleased with the remarks of the gentleman Monday
evening from New York on the conservation of wild life in that state, and
again yesterday we enjoyed another treat from a gentleman representing
the Audubon Society of the Empire State.
The protection of song and insectivorous birds in this rich agricultural
land of the Middle West deserves more than a passing notice from this
great Congress.
That the destruction of song and insectivorous birds means the increase
of pests, so destructive to fruit and grain crops, is acknowledged by the
best informed farmers of the day. And what a great pleasure it was to
hear reports like those from the gentlemen representing the State of New
York.
Here in Missouri we have had some trouble in getting the attention of
farmers to this important subject, but they are beginning to realize that
the insect-destroying bird is one of the best assets to the farmer.
The present Game Department of Missouri has never cost the tax payers
of the state one penny, but the revenue for the protection of game is
obtained from hunters’ licenses, paid into the State Treasurer’s office.
In North Central Missouri I have organized districts in several counties
for the protection of prairie chicken and quail, and in these localities
the farmers refuse to permit the destruction of these birds out of
season, and we have now more than fifteen hundred prairie chickens
absolutely protected, and the farmers will remember that in many
neighborhoods of the state during the past season the grasshoppers were
very destructive to late corn, and, as a proof of the usefulness of
the wild birds, there was no complaint of the grasshoppers from the
farmers in the localities where the prairie chicken, quail and other
insectivorous and song birds are so well protected.
Through the efforts of our efficient Game and Fish Commissioner, Hon.
Jesse A. Tolerton, the Chinese pheasant has been introduced in many
counties of Missouri, and has proven a very great destroyer of insects,
and especially so to the hated potato bug.
Some time ago I read an article in the Dallas News saying that the boll
weevil had cost the State of Texas $20,000,000 in the last few years,
and the editor called attention to the fact that the boll weevil never
appeared until after the target gun in the hands of the vicious and
ignorant had so wantonly destroyed wild bird life in that state.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a startling statement, but true, and what
an object lesson for the great subject of bird conservation.