The Sunday Oregonian., June 13, 1920, Magazine Section, Page 5, Image 87

THE SUNDAY OKJKGONIAN. PORTLAND, JUNE 13, IDSJO
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. Of Course, We Never Would Have Believed It, W.S S I 'V v.;,-
m j . f but Investigation Shows That City Air is Purer NMS jg&f. M
J . f P-T 5 m Than Country Air, and Here Are Reasons Why. t unSA d a'V
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BT CLIVE MARSHALL.
AS A result of an exhaustive
country-wide investigation in
augurated by the Teachers' col
lege of New York City, the interesting
discovery has been made that city
bred and city-reared children are
aturdler, healthier and less subject to
disease than children born and
brought up In tlie country.
Statistics are being presented today
to show the apparent fallacy of the
cld-fashioned notion most of us had
that country air, country water and
country food are superior to that
which lons-suffering city people have
to put up with. It has been discov
ered that there no longer exists any
necessity for city folk to go to the
country every so often to be restored
to health after months spent in the
disease-infected atmosphere of the
city. Indeed, it is suggested that
country cousins in search of good
health, purer air, better drinking
water and fresher and more whole
some food will now have to go to the
City to recuperate.
The common belief that the brawn
nd 6inew of the land comes from the
rural districts is placed in the doubt
ful class In view of the newest inves
tigation into actual conditions. And,
addest blow of all, the ambition of
o many city parents to move out into
the country that their children may
(rrow up out of doors healthy and
sturdy, seem founded upon Ignorance
f conditions as they actually are.
City Hygiene as a Kine Art.
City child.-en. statistics show, are
more healthy today than their country
cousins. Contagious diseases, physi
cal defects and unhealthy conditions
due to food, air, water and general
surroundings, are more common today
among children living in unsanitary
country settlements than among chil
dren of cities where hygiene has been
reduced to a fine art.
The investigation, which has ex
tended over several years, was begun
by Dr. Thomas D. Wood, as chairman
of the committee on health problems
of the National Council of Education,
acting Joihtly with the Council on
Health and Public Instruction of the
American Medical society.
No other- institution in the country
Is probably so well prepared to make
an investigation of this kind as the
teachers' college or to direct a reform
movement. It is not generally real
ised that for every six trained teach
ers east of the Mississippi one has
attended the teachers' college, and that
one trained teacher in every seven in
the entire country comes from that
Institution. Acting upon the infor
mation thus disclosed, a nation-wide
movement is to be set in operation to
"Improve the health surroundings of
country children.
There are today more than 20,000.
000 children attending school in the
United States. Three-fifths of this
number attend rural schools. The
poor health of country children as a
class largely is blamed upon the rural
schoolhouses. The "little red school
house" is commonly supposed to have
served a very useful service in educat
ing the population as a whole. It
has often been held up as a model of
Its kind whose work is the basis of
our national greatness. The special
ists who have studied actual condi
tions are severe In their criticism of
the country schoolhouse and call it
one of the most serious menaces of
the country.
In his arraignment of the rural
choolhouse Dr. Wood says that the
general sanitary conditions of such
buildings is unspeakable. "The rural
school." he goes on, "from the stand-
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Comparative Death Rates, Urban and Rural.
--- New York City.
New York State, Outside of New York Citjr.
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point of health and general fitness for
Its important use is the worst type
of building in the whole country.
When I say this I include not only all
types of buildings used for human
beings. but also those used for live
stock and domestic animals. Rural
schools are on the whole less adequate
for their use than prisons, asylums,
almshouses, stables, dairy barns, pig
pens, chicken houses and dog kennels
are for their uses."
In the rural schools and many farm
houses as well, it has been found that
the disposal of waste matter dan
gerous to health is frequently neg
lected or entirely ignored. Little at
tention is paid to the fly, which is an
active carrier of disease germs. In
place of proper drainage, obsolete sys
tems are often used or the matter is
wholly neglected and the cellars as
a i result are damp and the houses
above them musty and unhealthful.
The children who live under such
conditions are subject to a variety of
Ills the city child is little exposed to.
Much of the trouble is attributed to
bad drinking water. The supply of
water is often contaminated. It is
common to find that the barnyard and
cesspool are near wells or springs or
the brooks from which the drinking
water is drawn. A variety of diseases
is attributed to this condition. The
city child faces no such danger. The
effect of contaminated water should
be borne in mind in reading the health
charts.
Children reared in the country suf
fer from a variety of ills due to poor
ventilation. Less attention, it has been
found, is paid to ventilation as a rule
in the country than in the city. The
country child breathes bad air for
a great part of the day and night. To
bad air is attributed much of the tu
berculosis among children in the coun
try. The dread disease again is less
well understood in the country than
in the city and fewer precautions are
taken against its spread.
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The country child again is much
more exposed to unfavorable weather
conditions than the city child. He must
remain out of doors, perhaps, take
long walks in extremely cold or hot
weather, or' be exposed to a wetting
in rains and snow storms. The district
schools are usually far removed from
the homes of children attending school
and in bad weather the children fre
quently sit for hours in damp clothes I
with wet feet.
It was found that country children
often wear too much clothing indoors
in cold weather and on goins out of
doors are badly chilled. Such condi-
NEW YORKER CARRIES SIX
TONS OF NICKEL IN POCKETS
Huge Weight of Change Packed in Jeans Mainly for Use in Paying
Subway Fares.
TIE floo
day fi
citizen
flood of coins that pour each j of the subway and elevated lines and
rom the pockets or the
of Ureater New Tork
through the hundreds of elevated and
subway ticket offices and the thou
sands of surface cars of the several
traction companies swell to a mighty
stream of more than $300,000 in the
course of the average 24 hours.
Two-thirds of this sum Is currency
weighing in its bulk form about six
tons.' An idea of what this means
may be drawn from a picture of its
accumulation in a single spot for a
week. A barricade ten feet high and
five feet thick could be built of this
daily six tons across Broadway, at
Times square in. seven days. And it
would take 15 men with three trucks
a good day to remove it.
The nickel, dime or whatever coin
paid for a ride is counted and put
back in circulation in from 21 to 36
hours. For example, the nickel which
a passenger pays to get home at night
will be counted the next morning, ab
sorbed by some bank before-nightfall
and handed out early the following
morning to a merchant obtaining his
cash for the day's business. If it were
not for this expeditious circulation
the country's currency would have to
be inflated to an unwieldly and almost
unmanageable point.
Once a day a car makes the circuit
collects the receipts of the previous
24 hours, together with the tickets
that have passed into the chopper. The
money collected has previously been
counted by the several agents, tabu
lated and checked against the record
of tickets sold and put away in the
safe, of which there are more than
600 in the various stations. Only one
man in the collection, car knows the
combination of the safe, but should
anything go wrong with the combina
tion there is an assistant handy to
open it.
The money Is brought to a central
counting room at the company's head
quarters. This room is about 100 feet
long and half tnat in width. Long
tables are arranged down its length
with eight men at a table, four on
a side, so that they face each other.
On . a raised platform at the end of
the room sits the head counter, who
assigns the work each day and keeps
a watchful eye. on the proceedings.
No counter receives the money from
the same station two days in suc
cession. Many, of the more expert among
the counters can run through $5000
in a day. They start early in the
morning and when finished are priv
ileged to go home. Machines are used
only to check up and are but slightly
faster than hand counting
j If a discrepancy is discovered be
1 tween the total found by hand count
ing and that given by the machine
the amount is turned over to another
counter to check up on. This rarely
happens, however, except on days
when the receipts are exceptionally
heavy. The men count by spreading
the coin on the table and spinning it
into the left hand with the fingers
of the right at such a speed that the
eye is unable to see the flying coins.
It then is put by stacks into boxes
that are actual gauges as to count
Serum From Snakes Cures
Snake Bites.
Serpent!" of All Kinds Have Klne
Homes in Brazilian Uardena.
and the counter can tell at a glance
whether his total is right. After it
has been run through the machine
and checked with the ticket agent's
report, the money is wrapped and
put into bags. The bags are sealed
and weighed. It is possible to tell
at a glance from the scales whether
the bag is short or over, for despite
the difference between coins from
wear the average correct bag .will
not vary from another by so much as
an ounce.
During the day various banks in
the city will telephone orders for the
currency, and take immediate deliv
eries subject to no differences on
count, .accepting the company's fig
ures as correct.
Much World's Tonnage Idle.
WEST HARTLEPOOL, Eng. Signs
of a decline in freight rates and a con
sequent decline of the price of com
modities and the cost of living are
seen by Sydney Hogg, a large ship
owner and president of the Hartle
pool chamber of commerce. He says
that one-third of the world's tonnage
Is idle because of the indisposition of
transport workers to move goods in
i transit. '
THE serpent garden of Butantan is
a sort of "snakes' paradise." There
the most venomous snakes in the
world have palatial homes, built in
I the shape of beaver huts, of concrete:
and their surroundings and the care
taken of them leave even the most
exacting snake nothing further to de
sire. The garden is about ten miles from
Sao Paulo', Brazil, and here scientists
are studying the mysteries of snake
biology.
The original reason for the estab
lishment of the garden, which is a
huge nursery for snakes, was to ob
tain serum enough to provide a reme
dy for those bitten by snakes
throughout Brazil. In the compara
tively small state of Sao Paulo alone
the average annual death rate from
snake bites used to' be 240. Since- the
garden of Butantan was opened and
serum cultures taken, the prompt
treatment of victims has been made
possible everywhere and the death
rate reduced to nil. There are said to
be more snakes in Brazil than in any
other country in the western hemi
sphere.
The garden is 600 acres In extent
and divided into three departments,
two of which are devoted to cobras,
crotalids and bothrops, the most poi
sonous snakes, knvwn; . while the
third department is given over to the
non-poisonous snakes.
The inclosure within which the
snakes' habitations are situated is
surrounded with a low. thick stone
wall and a ditch, that while not wide
enough to be dignified with the name
of moat, is nevertheless an impassa
ble barrier to the slimy, creepy deni
zens of the garden of Butantan. In
the center of the garden is another
smaller inclosure, against which the
outside world is similarly safeguard
ed as from the larger one; and in
that smaller inclosure are kept only
specimens of the rarest species of the
reptile family.
Mammoth Cave May Be Park.
LOUISVILLE, Ky Mammoth Cave
Kentucky's contribution to the won
ders of the world, may soon be pur
chased and transformed into an ex
tensive national park. Reports from
Washington are to the effect that
the rules committee of the house of
representatives contemplates calling
ud for passage shortly a measure
which would appropriate $1,000,000
for the purchase of the great cavern
and 32,000 acres of virgin forest land
lying around it.
Immigrants Reach Canada.
TORONTO Ont. A special immi
grant train arrived here during the
week containing 19 coaches, the larg
est load to reach this point since the
outbreak of the war. Four hundred
of the party, including many women
and s-lrla, got .off here, while others
went to other provincial points. A
group of girl line workers from Ire
land were bound for Uuelph and
party of Flemish farmers for .Sarnia.
JZ??-r73- jycryajrz-
tions are likely to lower the vitality of
children and make them subject to
colds, throat troubles and finally tu
berculosis. In contrast to these condi
tions, the city child, as a rule, lives
near schools and is much less exposed
in bad weather.
The investigations have showed
that the city child is also better nour
ished than his country cousin. The
common opinion that food in the coun
try being nearer the sources of sup
ply is purer and more wholesome than
the city is entirely wrong. i ne
comparison is not made with the food
of children in rich or even moderate
ly well-to-do families, but includes
the tenement districts where there is
often great poverty. The food in the
country is much less varied than in
the city and there is greater ignorance
of food values and the importance of
balanced rations.
In the country where food is sup
posed to be so abundant the investi
gation shows that there is much more
malnutrition than in the cities. There
is., besides, much more ignorance
among country mothers regarding the
modern scientific theories of baby and
infant diet and culture. The average
country mother cares for babies al
most exactly as did her grandmother
or great-grandmother. Although the
country baby is supposed to have the
advantage of unlimited fresh air ana
pure milk, it is less well nourished
and cared for In all respects than the
citv baby and starts out with less
vitality.
Advanlacn City Children Have.
There are besides fewer physicians.
dentists and oulists in ms ra""J
than In the city in proportion tp tne
population, and country children, are
more likely to be neglected as regards
skillful medical attention. Defects
are therefore more common in the
matter of teeth, eyes, throat and nose
troubles. The country parents do not.
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as a ruip. i.--- ....
which follow from such neglect as
the city parents. Such ramiltar
. . , a
complaints as adenoids or eniaiKca
tonsils arc not likely to be seriously
considered in the country ana a enna
must go through life under a handi
cap which the average city enna w itn
better attention wouia oe entirely
relieved of.
The city conditions with which the
country observations are compared
were made in New York City where
overcrowding is supposed to menace
the health of children. It will be no
ticed in the accompanying chart that
in 14 defects the city child suffers ap
preciably less than the country child.
In many instances diseases are fully
twice as prevalent in the country as
in the city, although it is the general
opinion that the reverse is true.
As final proof Dr. Wood announces
that In the last five years the death
rate in rural New Tork has been
higher than In New Tork City, where
people live more closely crowded to
gether than anywhere else in the
world. The explanation is to be found
in the fact that for a decade or more
the health standards in cities have
bua rising above those in the country.