Page:How and Why Library 420.jpg



In the story about America’s "Front Door" you learned that United States health officers meet every ship that enters an American harbor. If there is one case of yellow fever, smallpox or bubonic plague on board, the ship must wait outside long enough to see if other people on board are affected. The sick person must be removed to a pest-house and the ship disinfected. This is called going into quarantine. If certain dreadful diseases were allowed to come into our country, they might run across it like a prairie fire and cause thousands of people suffering and death. Sometimes our seaports are closed to ships coming from foreign cities where these diseases exist. Rats are known to carry them as well as people, so warfare is waged against wharf rats. Foreign emigrant people are not allowed to come into our country at all if they have tuberculosis, or contagious diseases of the eyes and skin. There are pure food laws to stop unfit food from coming into the country, or from being shipped from one state to another.

The health officers of states take up the work of protecting the people where the government leaves off. A state may quarantine against another state or city, that is, it may refuse to allow trains and boats to come from them if certain contagious diseases become very bad. States compel doctors to report contagious diseases, and make people who have smallpox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria put cards on their houses and obey quarantine laws. Children with measles, mumps, whooping cough and chickenpox cannot go to school. States inspect factories to see that workers are not overcrowded, that guards are put on machines to prevent accidents, that good light and air is supplied, and that children under a certain age are not at work for wages. States have pure food laws, too, to punish people who make or sell unfit food in the state. In one city, not long ago, many barrels of dirty sugar were seized. The sugar was sweepings from sugar refineries. It was sold to candy makers. There