Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/171

 but it is doubtful if the lesson of moral obligation would be any more effective in Germany than it is in this country, unless this same foundation in education exists.

"Consider tuberculosis for a moment. We had in America a few years ago awful conditions in the slums of our cities. We had what were known as the 'lung blocks.' It was the custom to allow the poor people who had tuberculosis to die in these horrible unsanitary tenements without doing anything to eradicate the scourge. If a man was seized with tuberculosis, people said: 'Well, what can we do? He will die. We can do nothing.' Scientists had for a long time known that if patients could be segregated and fresh air and cleanliness could be provided, we would stand a good chance of winning the battle against tuberculosis. That terrible disease had its main seats in the horribly overcrowded sections in our cities, inhabited mainly by immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. What was done about it in the end? With desperate odds against us, we began a great campaign of education. We put enormous sums of money into the fight to teach people how to overcome this great plague. Now we are winning the battle and we are driving this disease out of our cities and our country—by education.

"We have eliminated other diseases as the result of this great movement, and as a by-product of our methods. By teaching cleanliness, fresh air, sanitation, we have helped to drive away typhoid fever and pneumonia, and to raise the physical and mental standards of our people. Our political disease goes hand in hand with our physical disease. It comes from the same source. It comes largely from the overcrowded, unsanitary districts in our cities. It comes largely from alien population pouring into the country at the rate of over a million a year. However good the stock from which they came, the great majority of our immi-