Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/685

 A MODEL MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT 66 1

population has steadily declined within recent years. To pro- vide for the poor and friendless who are already stricken is now the great problem. "Would that I could take some of our philanthropic friends to our densely crowded tenement districts," says Dr. Knopf, in a recent address, "and show them there the sufferings of mind and body of the poor consumptive who must die, not because his disease was incurable, but because there was no place to cure." 1 Yes, that is the situation in a nutshell, so far as the need for a municipal sanatorium is concerned. And to meet it elaborate plans were recently submitted to the New York Board of Health by the Committee on Tuberculosis of the Charity Organization Society, which provided for a large city hospital and open-air tents to cost from $219,000 to $530,000. Finally a modified plan was adopted by the department, and a bill introduced in the state legislature authorizing the city to purchase land and establish an open-air camp for consumptives in Orange county, New York. This bill, however, met the usual strong and selfish opposition of the country members of the assembly, and the accomplishment of its worthy object was rendered practically impossible by requiring, in addition to the approval of the State Board of Health and the local board of the locality in which the new hospital might be, the sanction of both the township and county authorities. These last two addi- tional safeguards to private property rights were certainly unnec- essary. Furthermore, their general application bids fair to defeat all future plans for the establishment of a consumptive hospital or camp outside the city limits.

By the passage of the amended bill, therefore, all the efforts of those who have been laboring to solve the problem of an out- door hospital for New York's consumptive poor will be baffled. No wonder that the commissioner of charities could say:

I cannot escape the conclusion that the enactment of this bill, and the consequent inability of the city to provide properly for its consumptives, will result for years to come in more sickness, destitution, suffering, and death among the tenement-house population of this city than it is possible to cal-

1 Address delivered under the auspices of the Committee on Tuberculosis of the Charity Organization Society, February 9, 1903; cf. Charities, March 7, 1903, p. 225.