of 1898, necessary for the immediate purpose of a very large additional revenue. The total may be more or less than the preceding year, according to the requirements of the annual budget for State and local purposes, and applied accordingly.

These utilitarian principles have the same starting point that all moral and municipal laws have, which is that all persons are equally entitled to the benefit and protection of the laws. All are entitled to food, clothing, habitation and protection in personal rights. Some that have these in a degree must be taxed for them, while others in other degrees or not using them should not be taxed for any of them. Taxation and revenue from it should be to conserve individuals in life, liberty and the pursuit of wealth and the enjoyment that arises from it, and should be applied in a system appropriate to the particular conditions for that purpose.

The foundation of political economy is taxation. Governments must be supported and maintained by taxation and exactions of service for the protection of all. Although systems of government are wide and diversified, according to the whims and caprices of individuals and the climatic differences and habits of nations, the tendency of taxation or exactions for public use and purposes has been moving on more rapidly, in close company with liberty of the individual, and accordingly in the great line of utility as applicable to the conditions as understood by those who defined what those exactions should be and to whom they should apply. This shows that there is a natural law for a system of taxation that should be ascertained and followed in each community appropriate to it, and to the different periods and changed conditions which confront it from time to time by the range and diversity of subjects that arise.

Systems and plans of taxation, therefore, may become outgrown and oppressive, or worn out and inapplicable in one State or nation, and yet may be of the greatest value and means of prosperity in other times and in other nations, and may at one time have been found harmful and discarded, when at another time and in other conditions it will be of the most benefit and just and of utility. A nation or State may grow or shrink in such manner as to need a change in the system of taxation, and this may be caused by changes in its internal condition, as well as by its externalthe condition of its neighbors, their relations and geographical and physical conditions, and how to make the most of them. Economic changes require changes in methods and systems of taxation.

The assertion of Malthus nearly a century ago, gathered from Adam Smith's observations, and Henry George a quarter of a century ago, that the rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer, and that population has a tendency to increase in a greater ratio than has the growth of production for the wants of many, may yet be true in India and China, and some other uncivilized portions of the world. It will be found to prevail greatest where the tax is confined wholly to real estate. It is not true among us or in the most civilized nations of which we know at the present day.

The Government of the United States and the State governments and some local municipalities within them are hampered by the constitutional restrictions and prejudices that were founded upon the teachings of a class of writers on political economy that emanated from Adam Smith, and were evidently without any forethought that any change in the economic conditions in modes of production would ever occur, and would sooner or later necessitate a change in the laws of supply and demand and policy of taxation, whether for revenue or for protection or benefit to any industry or foreign commerce. The sources of revenue for the British Government are now quite different from what they were when Adam Smith wrote, and the common and laboring and middle classes in England are much better off now, in comfort and the means of supplying and indulging their wants and comforts, than were the nobility and landholding classes a century and a half ago. The improved means of obtaining accurate information regarding the social and business conditions and details of a nation, and of the various communities that compose it, are now carried on under government authority and inspection, and by societies and associations and by writers on special subjects to such an extent as to furnish to hand almost all that is needed for any purpose of legislation and reform. We can now get their measure and should cut to fit accordingly. It is to this that we are greatly indebted for the progress and reforms in legislation, and attempts to supply the wants and needs and efforts to improve the social conditions in all communities. Among these notable improvements is that in regard to appropriate taxation for local and for national purposes. We must look to these conditions for future appropriate legislation.

(To be continued.)

PRACTICAL HYGIENE.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HYGIENE TO THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

Your Committee on Hygiene respectfully reports:

To those especially interested in the subject of hygiene the events of the year last past afford substantial reasons for encouragement.

At our last meeting the topic of hygiene was prominently before this society in addresses, communications and discussions. During the year important hearings were held before legislative committees. The Senate passed a bill appropriating $150,000 for the establishment of a State sanatorium for the treatment of incipient consumptives, and, although the opposition in the lower house cut this appropriation to $50,000, they were unable to prevent the passage of the bill, which went to the Governor and was signed, thus enabling the closing year of the century to witness a sociological event of the first magnitude-the State of New York making the first step in the great cause of State prevention of consumption.

Time and opportunity to hear and weigh objections to the proposition that the State should lead in the cure and prevention of this communicable disease has but confirmed your committee upon the importance of the subject-the wisdom and timeliness of the action heretofore taken by this society, and the committee with all emphasis commend the principle to your fostering care, and once more recommend the necessary legislation.

The attention of your committee has been directed to another topic in local hygiene-closely related to the great question of consumption and perhaps only second to it in order of importance— the housing of the poor, particularly the poor of our chief city, the metropolis of all the Americas. In the city of New York this question of the unhygienic housing of the poor workingman has been the nightmare of sanitarians for more than half a century. How practical and important this question is we get an idea when we recall that two-thirds of the people of the city live in tenement houses. Many of these, without adequate air or light or space or

possibility of cleanliness, live 'under conditions so unnatural, so unhygienic that disease, poverty and crime in an alarming degree are the inevitable incidents of life. Your committee commend this matter of work for the better housing of the poor as a subject. worthy of your warm and active sympathy and support-and with greater particuarity-because in this work, as in many of the instances of State medicine, prevention is so much easier, so much cheaper, so much more economical than cure. Your committee advise that restrictive ordinances as to the construction of buildings intended for the occupancy of more than three families be enacted and enforced by every municipality in the State; also that local health authorities be encouraged in more careful inspection and more fearless condemnation of those now known or believed to be a menace to our public health.

The State of New York annually expends some $25,000,000 in its various charities, and the greater part of this enormous sum is a penalty for our failing to protect the public health. Many think this is a speculative, a philosophic proposition. There was never a more intensely and exclusively practical proposition.

Your committee has also given consideration to the significance of the evil influence upon the public health of the two communicable diseases, gonorrhoea and syphilis, and advise that efficient steps be taken to protect our people from these diseases by bringing to bear upon them the principle of isolation, a principle of well proven effectiveness in the control of communicable disease from the days of Moses and the health ordinances relating to leprosy down to the placard of to-day, showing that there is diphtheria in this house.

To this end your committee invite consideration of the proposition: That, in view of the continued existence of the communicable diseases, gonorrhoea and syphilis, of the great influence of the former in the production of blindness, particularly in the newly born, and of sterility in our young men and of pelvic disease and sterility in our young women; of the importance of the latter as a many-sided and wide-reaching factor in working individual, family and racial degeneration, that it is desirable that these diseases be included in the list of communicable diseases, requiring notification and registry. That cities having boards of health take steps to secure the registry of all persons having the diseases named; and that such registration be lodged with the health authorities.

The intelligent conviction of the medical profession as to the relation of typhoid fever and impure water supply is bearing fruit. The cities of Albany and Schenectady, acting under judicious advice, have taken steps to replace an infected water supply with pure water, with the prompt and usual result of immediate and emphatic fall in the typhoid morbility and mortality. These cities need no more be classed with those of very high typhoid prevalence, like Alexandria and Cairo, but with those of very low prevalence, like Munich and Vienna.

The result in Schenectady seems most satisfactory and impressive. Previous to 1897 this city had the unenviable notoriety of the highest typhoid mortality of any city in the State, a State of many cities with discreditable typhoid records, but since stopping the use of infected water the years 1898 and 1899 have passed with the lowest typhoid mortality of any of the twenty chief cities of the State. This would seem a favorable occasion to invite your attention to the scandalously high typhoid death rate of the entire State as compared with that of many of the great cities of Europe, cities blessed with greater civic enlightenment, purer water supply and comparative immunity from typhoid fever.

The cities of Munich, Vienna, Hague, Berlin, Rotterdam, Breslau, Hamburg, Zurich, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh and Warsaw are supplied with pure water and have an average annual typhoid death rate of less than 8 per 100,000 population.

The cities of New York, Yonkers, Kingston, Utica, Auburn and Rochester are those of this State having the better water supply and the lower typhoid mortality, the average of the ten years preceding and including 1899 being 20.66 per 100,000 population.

While Oswego, Buffalo, Syracuse, Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Amsterdam, Binghamton, Troy, Elmira, Watertown, Niagara Falls, Albany, Cohoes and Schenectady use or have used an infected water supply, and during the ten years preceding and including 1899 have had an average annual typhoid mortality of 53.71 per 100,000 population, giving a total of twenty New York cities with an average typhoid mortality of 37.18 as compared with twelve cities of Europe with a typhoid mortality of 8.

Here, perhaps, we may profitably remind ourselves that this is the Medical Society of the State of New York; that this society should represent the medical profession of the State, and that in sanatory matters the medical profession is the light of the civic consciousness, the inspiration of the civic conscience.