Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/491

 A MODEL MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT 473

original complaint for future reference. But if the order of the board has not been complied with on reinspection, it will be referred, after a reasonable length of time to the assistant cor- poration counsel for prosecution. On account of the skill and efficiency of its present corps of inspectors, the department seems to enjoy the general respect of the public, so that, where the corporation counsel performs his duty by serving prompt notice of prosecution on the guilty party, nine-tenths of these orders are obeyed without the necessity of actually taking the matter into court.

Rule 47 of the department's regulations states that :

Inspectors will be held responsible for the existence of remediable public nuisances within their respective districts, and are expected to find them by original inspection [even if they have not been complained of by private citizens]. If unable to secure their prompt correction by personal efforts, they must report them to the board, taking special care to correctly name the owners. When not otherwise employed on official business, they are expected to make a house-to-house inspection of tenements, 1 factories, and all causes of nuisance in their districts. The law gives the Board of Health power to require that such conditions shall be thoroughly and properly cor- rected, and, when this is impracticable, to vacate houses. It is prepared to use this power. The object of assigning inspectors to districts is to familiarize them with local conditions. Every inspector is expected to know his district intimately, and his efficiency will be judged not so much by what he claims to have done as by the sanitary condition of his district. The exist- ence there of undiscovered and unreported nuisances which should have been found and reported will be held to indicate incompetence or unfaithful- ness.

It may be thought that the power of the board is so great that there is too much opportunity for unjustly coercing the people. This is perhaps true, for certainly in the case of dis- honest officials the chance for blackmail, especially among the lower and more ignorant classes of the city's population, would be enormous. Nor has New York been by any means free from this curse, even through its Department of Health, as many a citizen will testify who has experienced some of Tammany's methods. Yet on the whole it seems very necessary, where the general public health is in danger, that the department should possess

1 When the Tenement House Department was established in 1902 the inspection of all tenements was transferred to it from the Department of Health.