As already intimated, I have tried to illustrate by a few examples how boards of health may interest the public in their work, rather than to cover the entire field of possibilities.

Let us now consider what other agencies than boards of health may be expected to take a hand in interesting the public in health work. These agencies include a host of municipal, sanitary, civic, medical, educational and other organizations, not forgetting the numerous and influential women's clubs; an equal number and diversity of periodical publications; the whole public educational system, from the secondary schools to the universities, inclusive; and various professional schools, particularly those of medicine, engineering, chemistry, bacteriology and sociology. These many and powerful agencies can do a vast amount of educational work, much of it in direct co-operation with boards of health.

Health exibits are valuable means of arousing, though they perhaps have little power of maintaining, interest in healthprotective work. Permanent museums and libraries of hygiene, sanitation and public-health administration may yet become common and would doubtless be effective educational agencies.

Special investigations, like those dealing with housing conditions in New York, Washington and elsewhere, like the Pittsburgh Survey, and like the work now being carOther Agencies ried on by the Pittsburgh Typhoid Commission, and the Rockefeller Hook-Worm Disease Commission, are worthy of note and of extension into other fields.

Particular mention may be made of the recent report on National Vitality and its relation to the great conservation movement, submitted to the President on behalf of the Committee of One Hundred created under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A wide distribution and reading of that report, prepared by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale University, would do much to create and foster an interest in all phases of health conservation.

The International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, which will meet at Washington in 1910, will doubtless make a great impress on the American public, as did in a more limited yet more intensive field the International Tuberculosis Congress

held in 1908 at our national capital, with the splendid Tuberculosis Exhibit that accompanied it.

It is quite out of the question to name all the agencies designed to interest and educate the public in efficient health work. I must therefore conclude with general observations on the importance of popular health education and awakened public opinion as to health matters, and on the crying need for schools to train health officers.

Enlightened
Leaders

The need of the day is the education of every man, woman and child in personal hygiene and the fundamentals of public health. This is coming, but the progress is slow and painful. Meanwhile dependence must be placed, in this as in other lines of civic reform, on the enlightened and earnest few who are serving as leaders, and on the desire and willingness of a large and growing portion of the people to do what is for the best good of themselves and their fellowmen, if only that can be brought home to them by competent leaders. But we need many, many more such leaders, and far more training and wisdom on the part of those already in and who are daily entering the field.

Broadly speaking, we have no training school whose primary function is to fit health officers for their work, although a few schools are turning out men who soon become excellent health officers. For the most part, the highly-creditable instruction in sanitary science which a number of colleges are giving is merely a portion of the training of the engineer, the chemist, the bacteriologist or the physician, rather than a comprehensive course for municipal or state health officers, which should include something of all these lines of study.

The general public looks to the medical profession for guidance in public as well as in personal health, but the training and practice of the physician is in private rather than in public medicine, to use an old and not altogether happy term for sanitary science and administration. Even in private medicine the physician is overburdened and finds need for constantly-increasing specialization, as Mr. Dooley once brought out in his inimitable way. We must have, therefore, schools for the specific purpose of training health officers, and the public must be taught the value

of men thus trained. I hasten to add, however, that the public has not yet utilized all the material available for fairly efficient health officers; men who would rapidly grow into their work if only they were assured of reasonable salaries, freedom from political interference and continuance in office during good behavior and efficient work. And this is one reason why the public needs enlightenment on the nature and importance of healthprotective work.

As a last word, might it not be profitable to have a co-operative investigation of professional and popular health-educational facilities made jointly by the League's committees on Co-ordination of Instruction in Municipal Government in American Colleges and Universities, on Instruction in Elementary and High Schools, and on Municipal Engineering and Sanitation?

Publicity and Regulation of Campaign

Funds.*

ABSTRACT of addreSS BY PROF. ROBERT C. BROOKS, Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Cincinnati.

On the question of the “Publicity and Regulation of Campaign Funds," Professor Brooks took the position that the publicity legislation of recent years will probably be extended to cover most of the states which at present have no such laws. Municipal as well as national and state elections should be safeguarded in this way, and primary contests 1 need publicity as much as actual elections. Experience with publicity laws will point the way to other restrictions such as the laws preventing corporate contributions now on the statute books of so many states and forbidden by federal law. Thus contributions from candidates, civil service employees, and others may be limited or forbidden, while limitations as to amount may be enforced against all contributions.

Prof. Brooks also took up in detail the question so much discussed during the last presidential campaign as to publicity before or after election.

In attempting to form a judgment on this issue Professor Brooks held that it is difficult to assign it such practical importance as it received during the campaign of 1908. As for campaign gifts in general it is impossible to set up a plea for privacy in their favor. They are clearly designed to effect public policy and as such clearly subject to criticism. If this criticism should go to extremes it will hurt the party responsible for it more than the individuals assailed. If, however, such criticism is just, both the individual making, and the party receiving the suspicious contribution deserve to suffer. By deterring other contributions of a similar character, a distinct public service will be rendered by such anteelection criticism. Knowledge of the sources of the financial support of a party is certainly not the only nor the best basis which a man should employ in determining how he shall cast his vote, but under present conditions in American politics it is certainly a matter which he is entitled to take into consideration. Admitting, therefore, that here is room for honest difference of opinion on the question as to the time of pub

*The full text of Prof. Brooks' address will be incorporated in Ch. VI of his book dealing with political corruption which is to be issued by D. Appleton & Co., in March, 1910.

1 Also registration.-EDITOR.

licity, the weight of the argument would seem to fall in favor of publicity before election. While thus frankly accepting the recent Democratic position, Prof. Brooks deprecated the partisan aspect which this question acquired during the last presidential campaign. He pointed out, however, that ante-election publicity might reasonably be considered an original Republican doctrine. Earlier in 1908 every Republican in the House of Representatives voted for a bill, (H. R. 20112) involving the principle of publicity before election. The present dominance of that party in federal affairs was pointed to as an excellent tactical opportunity for a reversion to its earlier position.

More important than the time of publicity, however, is the question of the thoroughness with which such laws are enforced. It is certain that publicity pure and simple, whether before or after election, will seldom show on the face of the reports any facts seriously reflecting upon party integrity. If there is to be any difficulty in connection with laws of this character it will come in the way of getting at real, complete statements, going back of the names and figures on the returns, if necessary. Various methods of doing this, official and voluntary, were discussed. Prof. Brooks also indulged in a rather critical consideration of President Roosevelt's recomendation to Congress in 1907, that appropriations should be made from public funds for meeting national campaign expenses.