Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/456

452 the spread of diseases; to stop the publication of indecent literature; to close all factories producing injurious foodstuffs; to divorce politics from the public schools, to deal vigorously with the tenement-house problem, the liquor habit and like evils which impair individual, and consequently national, health and productivity. In the event of pestilence, famine, flood, drought, war, or any similar calamity in any part of the land, it should be the function of this bureau to render immediate assistance as required. This bureau should have power to appoint from time to time as needed competent tribunals to adjust and prevent strikes and the like, selecting for service men especially fitted to deal with special conditions as they may arise.

The Bureau of Publicity of the Department of Public Betterment should organize a corps of lecturers, the men composing which should be recognized authorities in the departments of knowledge which they severally represent. They should be selected with the greatest care. The highest authority on a given subject would not necessarily be the most useful lecturer for the department. The best man for the purpose of this plan would be one who has the gift of conveying in comparatively simple and concise English scientific facts, and who, withal, is an attractive and entertaining speaker. Excessively technical treatment of any subject would soon result in empty lecture rooms. To understand the need for, and the appreciation by the public of, such free lectures as here contemplated, one has but to familiarize himself with the history and operation of free lecture courses as given in some of our large cities. It is idle to address people on subjects which do not interest them, and matters in which the population of one district, affected by a certain combination of conditions, are greatly interested, would not attract the slightest attention in another section of the country where other conditions obtain. There are certain subjects relative to personal health, municipal administration, trusts, patent medicines and the like, which should prove popular as material foi lectures throughout the country.

The elaboration of a schedule for the suitable distribution of lectures and their varied subjects is but an administrative detail. Some plan incidentally determining the relative popularity of the several lectures upon given subjects would serve as a valuable guide in the matter of their selection. It would also tend to stimulate in each lecturer a desire to improve his matter and his style. At times there would be a greater demand for lectures upon certain subjects than at others. When a city was considering the reorganization of its school system, or the improvement of its water supply, there would naturally, in response to the popular interest in these matters, be a greater desire to secure authoritative information upon these subjects than at other times. In the event of the invasion of the Pacific coast by the bubonic plague,