REDEEMING THE TROPICS 357 Prompt restrictive measures were taken, lions of tons of provender might be a quarantine was set up, vaccination raised where now dense jungles of unagainst the disease was resorted to, and profitable vegetation grow. Ithat the 10,000 carabao were imported from Isia United Fruit Company has done with the to take the places of the ones the small banana may be repeated with innumerfarmers had lost. All these measures able crops. Banana flour might take the promptly served to put an end to the place of wheat flour, and so on down epidemic and the Philippines were once through the caiegory: more safe from a live-stock famine. Jeanwhile, with thie restrictions imWith the mastery of the secrets of the posed by disease removed, tides of imtsete fly and its fatal bite on live stock, migration might set into the tropies, England has set out to render \frica in populating them with people who would habitable to horses and cattle wherever cease to be a drain upon the food supthe English flag Hoats over it. Inthrax plies of the temperate zones and become, fever is going the same way; as is the the contrary; contributors thereto. fever caused by the cattle tick. Perhaps Tropical deserts may be irrigated, tropas much has been done in the direction of ical swamps drained, tropical jungles rendering the tropics habitable to our tamed, and millions of acres of the richdomestic animals as has been done for est land on earth added to the productive ourselves. areas which feed and clothe the world. In the generations to come, there can These times are coming not rapidly, but be no doubt that with a sanitary science with a stride certain and inevitable as the that is broad enough to reach both man world's population is increasing, and beast, the great plains of the high Ind what benefits they must bring to lands in the tropics will be converted the race! New blood in the tropics is into vast cattle ranches, where cattle can needed. The sus of centuries have be brought to the stock cattle stage and burned out much of the initiative, the then shipped to the temperate climates easy methods of gaining a livelihood for feeding and finishing, thus adding to have taken out much of the thrift, and the world's meat supply to the extent of the lazy ways of the tropics have elimibillions of pounds. nated much of the natural love of clean liness of the people. Sen blood coming TIU ECONOMIC VILUL OF TIME CILINGI in may change these things to a very apThe discoveries that have brought preciable degree, and an even newer and about this era of control of tropical dis better era of public health may ensue. cases have a deeper significance than would appear upon the surface Not only do they bring health and at least a llhen one contemplates what the hegreater degree of happiness to the hun roes of medical science liale made posdreds of millions of human beings who sible, and retlects that they have put into live in the tropies, but also to the overcrowded temperate zones a prospective the hands of humanity powerful weaprelief from the great food shortages that ons of knowledge with which to combat have been impending: our most deadly diseases, he cannot avoid We find the price of meat growing feeling that their efforts will have been higher every year as the grazing areas of partially in vain unless all humanity is intie beef-producing countries have been duced to aid in the work of capitalizing encroached upon for farming purposes. them. Eacii generation finds the corn and the The world's death rate is probably wheat areas of the world growing smaller about thirty per thousand. Ile who clips in proportion to its population, and it has just one from that thirty saves more than become evident that if humanity is to á million and a half of lives a year. In continue to be well fed it must look to a single quarter of a century the United the tropics. States clipped five from its death rate. Hcre, indeed. lies the hope of the and if the world coulil only do as well in world's future food supply Untold mil the next quarter of a century as the I CILL TO DUTY United States has in the past 25 years, a sary diseases as tuberculosis and typhoid population equal to that of the Republic fever, it certainly would be too much to of China miglit be saved from premature expect that the ignorant masses of the grates. tropical regions would accept and live Surely such consequences challenge the up to these preachings in a few months. Support of all mankind, and call for an There is one redeeming feature about army of volunteers who will go out into the governments which lie within the the world and preach to the people that tropics. lllile in Imerica the people cleanliness is next to godliness, and if it order the government to do and it is done, lacks the power to produce life, it pos in the tropics the government orders the people to do and it is done. Whatever sesses the power to prolong it. Such a else free institutions bring in the way of campaign would be iraught with enor blessings, they do not yield the same mous cconomic, geographic, and human prompt results in protecting the public istie consequences, but it would require health that we find when tropical gorlong years of patient work. For if we ernments decide to act. And therein lies in this enlightened Imerica, with our the most hopeful note in the movement, boasted universal education and now a little more than a decade old, for splendidl free institutions, cannot success banishing epidemic disease from the fully combat such barbaric and unneces tropics. Typical Family of Tchuana Indians at Tehuantepeci levico. The sides of the hut are made of a reed and the roof is of red tile. The naked bor is very topical, as also is the pig |