category, for that is a still greater problem, and, even with that omission, you will have much to ponder over.

The men who use adulteratives, the sellers of "embalmed beef," and the vendors of other substances which have been treated with injurious types of preservatives, can hardly plead ignorance as an excuse for the continuance of their methods. The discussion of pure foods which has gone on in recent years, the pure-food laws which have been passed by federal and state authorities, have been sufficient to enlighten any manufacturer as to the necessities of the situation. But so long as crime is committed for the sake of gain, the public must be guarded against the deliberate attempt of unscrupulous manufacturers and dealers in foodstuffs, who work injury in the pursuit of their own profit.

Indeed, it may hardly be too general to say that the evil done to the city's food by its unnatural foes may be divided into three classes. These may be stated as follows. First, men may deliberately offer for sale food which has begun the

process of decomposition. Second, they may treat food with preservatives which, while they destroy or prevent the action of micro-organisms, are injurious to the human frame. Third, they may adulterate, or substitute cheaper, poorer foods for better, more nutritious foods.

"But," the reader will very possibly cry in surprise at this point, "I thought all that had been settled. How about the pure-food laws that have been passed? How about the work of the Boards of Health? How about the crusade of the last four years, mentioned a moment ago? We may not be able to control the natural foes of food, but surely there are laws to control the unnatural ones."

It is almost a national fallacy to believe that once a law has been placed upon the statute-books safety has been secured, even though such a law has been passed without sufficient enforcing power, or sufficient money to provide for proper en

forcement. Much has been done; no inconsiderable beginning has been made; but large bodies move slowly, and the impetus necessary to arouse general feeling to the point where the American people will require proper inspection and control of all food-supplies is still far from attainment. Without attempting to enumerate the merits or defects of all the statutes which have been passed for our protection, suppose we consider for a moment certain difficulties which surround the most general law of them all.

Whatever the local condition around him, the citizen who thinks of the matter puts his trust chiefly in the Food and Drugs Act, passed by Congress on June 30, 1906. Three analogous pieces of work accomplished by the national gov ernment; the law just cited, with its regulations, alterations, and amendments; the work done on standards of purity; and the so-called "Meat Inspection Amendment," which regulated the meat control of the Department of Agriculture, contain much that is admirable. From the very nature of the relation between the federal and state authorities there are many things that the nation cannot do. Two brief quotations from the Food and Drugs Act may serve to make this clear.

This is "An Act for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes." Section 1 provides, "That it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture within any Territory or the District of Columbia any article of food or drug which is adulterated or misbranded, within the meaning of this Act." Section 2 provides, "That the introduction into any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, or from any foreign country, or shipment to any foreign country, of any article of food or drug which is adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of this Act, is hereby prohibited."

Those brief quotations show the limit

ations of federal law. The Territories and the District of Columbia are under the direction of Congress. The shipments of foods from state to state, like export and import, can be controlled by officers of the national government; but the traffic in food-supplies which goes on within the borders of any state must be regulated by the government of the individual state. Each of these bodies politic presents a different solution of the question. Certain states have met the problem bravely, have endeavored to solve it by the aid of expert opinion and without reference to the clamors of special interests. Some few (a most essential point) have endeavored to back up their laws by boards of control, with inspectors to carry out their mandates. In other cases, the cry of selfish interests still dominates the assemblies. Laws, if passed at all, are passed without sufficient reference to expert advice, and by their verbiage are practically nullified. The thousand demands for money which the long-established departments of our commonwealths bring forward, leave little to spare for the newer sanitary inspection, necessary as such a department is for the health of the citizen.

Multiply the difficulties of the nation by fifty, more or less, and you have the difficulties which confront proper foodregulations in the states. Multiply the fifty of the states by hundreds reaching into thousands, and you have the difficulties which are before the municipalities when they desire properly to control the food of the individual citizen. Yet, as we get down to the intra-mural conditions of the municipality, some balancing conditions appear. These we shall consider in a moment.

That crowded concourse, the modern city, which has left behind the possibilities of individualistic control, has been forced, step by step, to a collective control of its prime necessities. The paving of the streets, the protection of the houses from fire and theft, the education of the children, have long been wisely placed

under the municipal government. Defective administration of these departments calls for swift correction. Is the insurance of the healthfulness of food, that vital question which so intimately touches the welfare of each individual, of less importance than these? The body in which the control of food is vested is commonly the Board of Health. Have you seen headlines in your morning paper within the last year or two, referring to the holding up of an appointment to that body, or to the rejection of a candidate because of political beliefs? How many cities have reached the point of making a man trained in scientific methods, especially a sanitarian, a member of such a board? The medical men of such bodies are doing an invaluable service. How many of the problems which confront them could be solved by men with the training of the engineer? The state can do little in regulating the affairs of all the municipalities within its lines. The adjustment of home conditions must depend upon the men whom you elect in your cities. Once more, bring the matter to the argumentum ad hominem, what do you personally know about the health-control of your own city?

Fortunately, our instinctive training of centuries past does much for us in the way of protection. The table of our earliest forbears was limited in the extreme, and its variety could be enlarged only by experiment. A tempting cluster of berries on some shrub in the neolithic forest might be a delicious dessert, or it might be a violent poison. Brave experiment alone could determine which. It was a hard predicament. If the early-research man guessed right, he had a valuable addition to his diet. If he guessed wrong, he died. Blunted as our senses are by centuries of civilization, the instinctive training which primeval man received in the choice of good and bad food has persisted to this very day. The evidence of the senses is no mean aid to assist the buyer of the household's food-supplies to ward off evil. But the senses are an insufficient

guard at best. Two factors in the city are constantly arrayed against them. First, the resources of the man who deliberately doctors his damaged goods in such a way as to disguise their real condition the seller who renders impure goods savory to the taste and pleasant to the eye; and second, the desperate need of the poor. And after all, defective conditions in the city always bear most heavily on that class, on the ones who can endure them least easily. The poor suffer most from bad air, bad water, and wretched food. In few respects are they more heavily handicapped than in their choice of food. The lesser cost of damaged goods is a fearful temptation to the slender purse of the ignorant woman of the tenements; the stores where she buys her food-supplies offer but little choice for well or ill. Few more immediate duties confront the municipality to-day than the guardianship of its poor.

We cannot better conditions by not recognizing them. While money rules the world, men will sell impure or damaged food-supplies ignorantly or wickedly; and since the national law cannot affect the sale of goods of this sort within the boundaries of the state, we must pass state and municipal laws for our own protection. To make them effective they must be entrusted for enforcement to competent men, backed by ample supplies of money. Obtaining a maximum of control with a minimum of money is a theme inseparably connected with the centres of sale of food-supplies, the markets, abattoirs, and bakeries. That brings us directly to those important considerations.

The old world shows the market in its first stage and in its last. The new world, save here and there in scattered foreign quarters or in the great marts of trade, shows stages in between. Rise early any morning in the little German town, and stroll along the cobbled streets to the square where the church so often forms the background of the market-place. There you will find the direct successor of the ȧyopá of the Greek, the forum of the

Roman. The market-woman under her broad umbrella; the picturesque peasant with his rude country-cart filled with fresh produce; the frocked butcher weighing a piece of meat in his niche in the wall: each is selling his wares under practically the same conditions that prevailed two thousand years or more ago. Such markets offer an example of the most primitive type of trade, direct barter between the producer and the consumer; a barter, carried on, in some German towns at least, under strict surveillance of the health authorities. In more than one market of that type I have seen a cleanliness and an order foreign to far better theoretical conditions in American cities.

Paris offered to the world the first great example of the modern market, built and controlled by the government. Napoleon the First, warrior, statesman, jurist, and sanitary engineer, found time among his many labors to accomplish many salient municipal and governmental reforms. The great "Halles Centrales" of Paris, those iron-pillared, zinc-roofed pavilions through which run covered streets, were planned under his direction, and begun in 1811, in his reign. These markets are said to cover not far from twenty acres, and their pavilions are subdivided into numerous tiny stalls. The early example of the Halles Centrales has been carried on since by similar markets built in other parts of Paris, and the profits which the municipality has realized from these sources have been large.

London, Berlin, Vienna, and other European cities, soon followed Paris in the work of regulating the food-supply, and

have raised markets on an almost monumental scale during the last half-century. The American markets cannot be compared with those found abroad, in size, completeness of equipment, and ease of control. To particularize, such markets as the Fulton or Washington in New York, or the Faneuil Hall Market in Boston, are not in the same class with the great modern markets of the European capitals.

While the single market in the town square sufficed temporarily for the small segregated town, the gradual spread of population soon carried with it separation of the centres of food-supply, so that grocery and butcher-shops sprang up in every little sub-centre of population. The opening of such scattered shops has greatly increased the difficulty of bringing food in its best condition to the consumer. Berlin, with its fifteen great markets, can control each one by an individual corps of attached inspectors, and do this at a minimum of expense. To secure thorough inspection of the widely-scattered food-shops of New York and Chicago is vastly more expensive and trying.

If we assume two premises, that a proper control and inspection of food-supplies makes for the good of the city, and that such control and inspection should be carried out at a minimum of expense, four questions confront the interested citizen with regard to the markets of the community. What are the advantages of centralized markets as opposed to our present separated ones? What should be the general location of such markets? what the general internal construction of the buildings? Should the ownership of the markets be vested in the public, or should they be under private control?

City reservoirs have long taken the place of the garden well; and city water, because of its distribution from a main source of supply, can be readily inspected for its purity. The furnishing of foodsupplies must always remain a problem strongly distinct from the furnishing of the first-named great necessity; yet city water, entering at a single point and radiating out through different streets to individual houses, may furnish us with a valuable analogy. By a system of centralization comparable to that already employed with water, the establishment of centralized markets will do away with a large part of the difficulty of control. Such movements have proved direct magnets to trade. Such markets have become the centre of the food-movement VOL. 103-NO. 2

of the city.

Centralization has shown other merits besides the primary one of control. In the smaller city a single market may be used for wholesale trade in the early morning hours, and for retail trade during the day. In the greater city a division into parts, with a great wholesale market as a main source of supply, and a radial series of retail markets placed at sub-centres of population and fed by the central market, would seem to be the ideal arrangement. Such a huband-spokes arrangement should prove particularly effective when we consider its possibilities with regard to building markets for the poor, a matter to be considered in some detail a moment later.

The general location of the markets should be determined chiefly by the conditions of transportation. With vegetables and fruits, as with milk, it is essential to their purity to transmit them to the consumer in the shortest possible space after their preparation. Those markets accomplish the swiftest transfer of goods to the receiver where cold-storage cars can deliver directly to the doors, where the laden wagons from the adjacent country-side can most readily bring their fresh gathered goods, or where inland waterways or ocean docks are close at hand. Every such central market should have its cold-storage warehouse, and its devices for supplying cold storage to the tenants who rent the stalls. Convergence of transportation to a single point is one of the best safeguards of food. Swiftness of delivery, and continuance of low temperature, oppose the decomposing action of the plants of the garden of the air. The location of the sub-markets in a radial system must, of course, be controlled by the position of the centres of population. In these days of motor-wagons and tube systems of delivery, the problem of transportation from a central point to the minor marts becomes a by no means difficult matter.

Not the least argument in favor of centralization may be found in the increased facilities afforded as regards garbage re

moval. The need for a satisfactory service of this kind may be readily recognized when two statements are placed side by side. The natural enemies of pure food flourish almost beyond belief in the organic wastes cleared from the foodshop. Some of our better ordered municipalities think it sufficient, even in midsummer, to collect garbage but once a day. Other less progressive cities believe their duty done when the accumulated wastes are removed twice a week.

The construction of markets is, in its detail, a matter for architect and engineer; but since laymen must use the finished work, the simple details laid down by William Paul Gerhard, in his excellent work on the Sanitation of Markets and Abattoirs, may be quoted:

"The chief constructional requirements [of markets] are the following:

"1. The halls must have ample light. "2. They must not be draughty, yet be well ventilated.

"3. They must afford plenty of floor space and storage-room.

"4. They must have plenty of exits and passage-ways, also driveways for the unloading and loading of wagons.

"5. They must be well and substantially constructed."

Those five sentences sum up the requirements well.

Now for the answer to the last of the four questions, public versus private control. If our modern theory is correct, which assumes that it is a part of the duty of the municipality to care for the health of its citizens, it is surely a legitimate function of the municipal government to undertake the building and ownership of public markets. The tradesman who rents the stall from the municipality comes, by that act, directly under the rules which may be laid down for the control of the market. The inspector who condemns goods in accordance with such rules has no mean moral support behind him. In consequence, the customer who buys his household supplies from the centralized municipal market has a better

chance of protection than in buildings where private companies, seeking the largest dividends possible, may be in conflict with the officers of health. Nor need such a venture be an altruistic one. The ownership of public markets has proved no losing venture for many cities. Yet the municipality, if the movement is to prove of its utmost value, should not look for too large dividends, for the ultimate purpose of such ownership is not the immediate pecuniary gain, but rather that more general gain that results from the better health and greater energy of a well-nourished people. Beyond all else, markets so built and so controlled should result in advantage to the class which needs them most, the city's poor.

Few luxuries are more expensive than the five cents' worth of the poor. The cost of lodging and food, the two absolute necessities of community life, is a tremendous problem to the great majority of the city dwellers. To the poor the margin by which these are secured at all is scant indeed. It is the more pitiful, therefore, that only in the luxurious shops of the rich do foods cost as much as among the tene ments. The small quantities consumed, the meagre variety, the hand-to-mouth method of buying, all combine to make the nourishment obtained far less than it should be for the money expended.

Municipal markets placed less to accommodate the rich or well-to-do than to reach the buyers of the tenement district. markets whose stalls offer the variety desired by the many races who make up our cosmopolitan whole, are a most immediate necessity. The Italian emigrant woman, bewildered for years by a new land and by strange customs, will seek the dirty Italian shop in the back street if there are no stalls in the public building where she can chaffer in her own tongue. The extortion of the small shop cannot continue where the entering buy er passes a hundred stalls offering the same quality of goods. Once more let us reiterate a salient point. The cost of stalls in such markets, the necessary run