NEW YORK SKY-LINE FROM JERSEY DOCKS It has been said that there is no wave on the sea of world commerce but sends a ripple to London. Equally true is it that no land suffers without bringing a pang of pain to New York's heart, for all countries have contributed of their peoples, and all lands of their tongues, to make this the modern Rome toward which all roads of migration lead. preventive medicine in combating "catch- INCREASING POPULATION, DECREASING Since 1865 New York territorial expansion has been important, but the increased population per block has been even more noteworthy. Increasing density of population always means multiplying problems of sanitation, but the health authorities have met every such increase with a decrease of death rate. There were proportionately only half as many deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis in the decade from 1906 to 1915 inclusive as there were from 1876 to 1885. There were only one-third as many deaths from typhoid, one-fifth as many from diphtheria, one-sixth as many from scarlet fever, and only half as many deaths of babies under one year of age. Photograph by Paul Thompson LOOKING DOWN LOWER BROADWAY, ACROSS THE BATTERY, BOWLING GREEN, AND GOVERNOR'S ISLAND, TOWARD AMBROSE CHANNEL AND THE SEA The New York of the society novelist may be found if one seeks such things, as is the case with every cosmopolitan city. But the New York that makes the education of its youth its first concern, that spends millions for public recreation, that possesses one of the lowest death rates in the world for cities of more than a million people, that in normal years absorbs a hundred thousand foreigners into its body politic-that New York is too prosaic for sensational stories, and so the world's attention is focused upon the one withered petal of human frailty rather than upon the beautiful blossom of civic achievement. Was there ever more striking evidence of the immense contribution which the science of sanitation makes to the welfare of mankind than those figures? With every element of natural conditions in New York tending to promote the spread of diseases, the health officer has not only held them in check, but has reduced their harmful power to a half, a third, a fifth, and in one case to a sixth of their former potency. Such a tremendous success in the mastery of "catching" diseases-under which term I include those that are infectious with those that are contagious-forms an epic in human progress. There are enough babies born in New York City every year to populate four cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Roanoke, Virginia, Hamilton, Ohio, or Springfield, Missouri. As many people in New York die annually as live in four cities like Elkhart, Indiana, Leavenworth, Kansas, Beverly, Massachusetts, or Raleigh, North Carolina. So many births mean an unrelenting fight and eternal vigilance to keep down infant mortality. THE PRICE OF HEALTH New York has found, in the words of its Commissioner of Public Health, that it is possible to purchase public health. He maintains that the health officer of a progressive American municipality should not be limited, even to the smallest fraction, in the service or funds necessary in his work any more than the builder of a suspension bridge should be expected to provide a safe span with three cables instead of the four which conditions demand. "Within natural limitations," says this authority, "a city can determine its. own death rate. Health insurance is as reliable and profitable an investment for the municipality as it is for the individual." New York's chart shows how the general death rate has been hammered down and down under the application of modern methods. In 1874, 27.90 people out of every thousand died-a normal year for those times. In 1917, 13.76 out of every thousand died. In other words, New York is saving about 80,000 lives a year through the application of the laws of scientific sanitation. Eternal vigilance is the price of health in a congested community like New York. No man may keep a stable without a permit, and no permit is forthcoming until thorough provision against flies and filth accumulation has been made. The water supply is carefully watched and samples frequently analyzed to make sure that the city never drinks a mixture of disease germs and water, as so many municipalities do. Even the water-boats which deliver drinking water to ships in the harbor, the bottled waters that are sold, the drinking waters on railroad trains and river steamers are constantly under the scrutiny of the department. The mosquito is fought as assiduously here as it was at Panama. Rats are guarded against; the ordinance against common towels and drinking cups is rigidly enforced; and in a hundred ways the health department makes the city inhospitable to the germ army that ever seeks a foothold in hapless human systems. The activity of the health department. which has the most widespread appeal, however, is the work of the Bureau of Child Hygiene. More than 140,000 visits of the stork occur annually, and to give the little pilgrims a chance to grow up and become useful Americans is one of the city's principal concerns. Only two decades ago one out of every five of the tiny kiddies lost the hard fight against the diseases of infancy before it was a year old, and went to tenant a tomb instead of living to gladden a home. Today, however, with the health service as its ally, the baby army goes marching on, losing only one out of ten of its number. GUARDING THE CHILD'S MILK SUPPLY Knowing that the germ army attacks the child army mainly through the milk supply, some sixty infant's milk stations are maintained, and here the mothers of the children come for wholesome milk and for instruction. The first thing taught is that the breast-fed baby has a much better chance to win its battle for existence than the one fed on cow's milk, and thousands of mothers are thus induced to give up their intention of rear INTERIOR OF THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION: NEW YORK CITY Every day some three hundred thousand passengers arrive and depart through the railroad stations of New York, where nearly one-fifth of the railroad mileage of the United States finds a seaboard terminal. Such tremendous crowds call for vast stations. The Grand Central Station, covering 79 acres of ground, has public rooms where 30,000 can be accommodated at a time without crowding. During its construction the eight hundred daily trains, conveying 100,000 passengers, continued to enter the old structure on the same site. WHERE BULLS AND BEARS FIGHT IT OUT, WITH LAMBS AS INNOCENT BYSTANDERS: THE "FLOOR" OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE It is asserted that no other feature of the newspapers of the world is so widely read as the New York financial column, which deals principally with happenings that have their inception in this big room. ing their children as "bottle babies." Nearly 50,000 kiddies visit the milk stations every year and disease germs have a hard road to travel to get into their milk. The health department endeavors to get into touch with the mothers in the poor districts as early in the prenatal period as possible, and by its visiting nurse service gives the babies the boost of a proper advent into the world. After a baby is born, it is visited every other day at first, then twice a week, and finally is sent with its mother to the milk station. Under such a course only 26 babies out of each 1,000 die during their first month. on earth, as against 36 where this policy is not followed. After the milk-station stage on the battlefront of existence, the child moves up past the children's clinic to the public. |