Mr. COLDEN. There is no doubt but that the committees prepare legislation for the floor of the House. The committee is the workshop and the floor of the House is where the showmanship appears.

Dr. McCORMACK. That expresses it perfectly. In the legislation which you are now considering there is a clear cleavage between two particular lines of thought. One is the punitive, the immediate and drastic, and the other which I feel is the more reasonable and constructive line, namely, the development of public opinion and of the educational methods that are essential to the utilization of the facilities after they have been constructed.

The CHAIRMAN. That offers the best hope of getting results.

Dr. MCCORMACK. Exactly. We have had in the other countries of the world such as Germany and in England, drastic legislation that is frequently suggested by those who are impatient. When I go fishing I would like to catch fish. If I go to California or Florida I do not do it.

Mr. GREEN. You fish in the wrong place.

Dr. MCCORMACK. I get impatient if I go into one of our streams and do not catch any fish. Therefore, I would like to punish every man who kills those fish by any means whatever. When you stop to think of it, that is the American public's way of doing the thing. We first polluted our streams and now we are considering methods of removing the pollution and purifying the water. We did the same thing as they did in England and Germany, but there they have passed very drastic legislation throughout the century against pollution. It is exactly the same in many of our States. In Kentucky the State health department had difficulties with the distillers and other factories that threw waste into the streams. Under the law we can stop them, but in all probability the State health department would be abolished the day after and would not be able to do anything. We must take into consideration the industrial necessities of an industrial nation.

Mr. GREEN. I am wondering in that connection to what extent the law goes in the old countries in controlling this pollution. If they are doing it in European countries, as you say, I am interested in learning whether it is by subdivisions, interstate, and so forth.

Dr. MCCORMACK. In England and Germany it is entirely under Federal control. In England nothing was done about it until the Ministry of Health was created just prior to the World War. Since that time, by the same educational methods, by the same patience, by the same use of all those things that have been demonstrated here as useful, they are accomplishing comparable results. In some instances, the results are obtained more rapidly than in this country, although not very much more rapidly. While we have ample authority in Kentucky, we have not made any more progress than has been shown in Wisconsin where their legislation is sounder and simpler and more direct and gets results quicker than in numerous other States.

You have here the choice of two routes: One is along the road of education, investigation, and coordination; in other States you have the drastic route by which you would abolish and punish those who fail to control pollution by these methods. We have tried both of them. Injunction does not work. After you get one you make no progress, because after you have gotten to the United States Supreme

Court and obtained a decision, none of the health officers can tell what the decision means and cannot tell which way we are going to go. Then we go back and issue another order and that gets in court. In the meantime pollution continues just the same, unless you are able to get the cooperation of the man that is going to control the condition. You have very little difficulty about it. I am reminded of the difference between the two methods by the experience of a colonel in the Army over in France, who was riding along and met a battalion of Negro soldiers marching very briskly and effectively toward the rear. The inspector-general stopped and said to one of the officers, "What are you doing, where are you going?" He said, "I am going to the rear." The inspector-general said, "You had a sector up front." "Yes; we did, but there was so much noise and confusion up there these boys could not stand it any longer." "Haven't you got any control over your men?" "Yes; I have perfect control over them but I am trying to get away from that noise myself."

That is true. The public knows we cannot do this unless we are united and have personnel with intelligence increasingly able to accomplish the results that we need in this sort of legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the motto of Kentucky?

Dr. McCORMACK. "United we stand, divided we fall." We had worked under the divided section mostly, but we are getting united again under real leadership. The first section of the motto has been silent a long time but we are now making it vocal again and we will get results if this legislation can be enacted.

Yesterday before the committee there was submitted by Mr. Hoskins a series of studies that Congress has authorized the Public Health Service to make over a period of years. Those studies give you the basic knowledge for the point of departure toward future accomplishments.

Following his remarks you heard from the great engineer of Maryland, who is a member of the National Resources Commission, the remarkable statement he made, in which he differentiated between the ideal and the practical. Then in Dr. Parran's administrative statement you heard the speech of a great administrator concentrated upon these particular problems.

That sort of thing was impossible a few years ago. We had been in the stage of study for a long time.

Naturally, those of us who are administrators got impatient with the situation as we saw epidemics of disease not caused by germs, but by concentrated chemicals during low water. This caused tremendous epidemics of dysentery, a new sort of thing, because it was a chemical poison that went through the filter beds.

Mr. CULKIN. Was that incident to the treatment of the water for pollution?

Dr. MCCORMACK. Yes. As we extract solid matters everybody knows the water is polluted and we naturally have more chemicals in solution in the water, and if they happen to be irritant chemicals which are deposited at a particular time in the river at low flows, we would get those epidemics of dysentery, that started in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and went through Ashland, Covington, and Cincinnati. There were thousands of cases in our cities.

Mr. CULKIN. I was asking you if there are any evils that arise from the use of chemicals for purification?

Dr. McCORMACK. No. The only difficulty that arises from the use of chemicals is from an occasional large dose of chlorine. The dose of chlorine may be so large that you do not digest your food, and consequently stop drinking water. If you drink bottled water that is worse than the other water with the chlorine in it, because most bottled water is a subterfuge. The public water supplies of this country are far better than many of the chemical waters that are sold, just as some salts are more effective than others.

If in completing this legislation we do it along those constructive lines that are in accord with the American principles and ideals, we preserve our status and make our studies effective, the people cannot help but respond to the responsibility. Two years ago this Congress passed the Social Security Act. Under title VI of that act it was unanimously voted by the Congress without controversy and no objection to it, and a great organization was built up. The Public Health Service had been in existence as the Marine Hospital Service since 1798 for the treatment of sick sailors. Mr. Green will realize the enormous problem in his State of the thousands of transients, also Mr. Colden of California, the thousands of transients, many diseased, coming in there with no other means of support. These people had to be cared for locally at public expense. The Marine Hospital Service ran that way for a long time, until its name was changed to the Public Health Service, when, because of the political situation on the part of the people of this country, the United States Government was the only Government in the world that did not have a public health department that was equal in dignity and standing and influence with the other great departments of the Government. We had forgotten for a long period the human elements, while we were concentrating on our commercial and industrial development.

Now, under title VI of the act a great national Federal health department was created exactly in accordance with the whole Federal line of thought. The States were stimulated to organize better health departments. Health departments are under no supervision, direction, or instruction, but are cooperating with the United States Public Health Service. We come to Washington to formulate the great principles on which we are going to operate for another year, and if we consider the thought of the work up to that time I know how gratifying it would be to you Members of Congress if you could see the results of it. The way it is done in Louisville and in the whole State of Kentucky when suddenly we were struck by the tremendous floods that almost overnight swept our homes away and destroyed the property of our citizens and made scars, sores, and sears in their lives that can never be removed. Yet on the night that the flood jumped out of its banks at Ashland and Catlettsburg in the eastern boundary of the State, the sanitary engineer connected with the health department in authority telephoned me that the water at Paducah was going to 63 feet. Of course, I am like any other man that lives on a river or the bank of the ocean; it is a personal and friendly sort of thing and it is the sort of thing we love; we love our river because to our grandfathers and great-grandfathers that was the easiest way of communication and we felt about them as a friendly sort of neighbor. However, when a river goes on a rampage we feel a great deal about it as we do about our neighbors when they go on a tear. When this

destructive flood came 10 or 15 feet higher than ever before; when I heard that on the telephone I frankly did not believe it, but I did not feel right and I telephoned that night and got my assistant and my associates and some stenographers, as I knew our building would be drowned out at any such stage as that and the State health department laboratories would be immediately out of commission. We got one of the upper floors of the Brown Hotel and I had no idea that it would ever go out because it was a mile and a half from the river. Never had the river come back that far. It came up the elevator this time. We ran the telephone line into our apartment and there we mobilized immediately the central strategic agencies, the particular strategy of the health department. From there we telephoned to the health departments in all quarters of the State, into western Kentucky, the southern part of the State, the bluegrass region in eastern Kentucky, so that there was a health department in each of the magisterial districts in the flooded area.

We had started inoculations against typhoid fever and the people received directions for boiling the water, necessary precautions, and so forth. I telephoned to Mr. Vinson and Dr. Parran, the Surgeon General, who would not believe what I said. He would not have been normal if he had. Yet at 6 o'clock the engineer from the Public Health Service, the Army engineers, and the State health departments mobilized there, and because you passed this title VI of the Social Security legislation 2 years ago, by 6 o'clock when the water had gotten over the banks the necessary precautions to protect the machinery so important to the lives of the people were in operation. Every one of them went out from one end of the river to the other, 41 of them in our State alone. We had assistance of engineers capable of taking charge, some sent by Mayor LaGuardia, former Member of the House, who sent us six engineers from the city of New York. We violated all the laws, the section of the law that prohibited more than two of those engineers leaving New York City at one time, but he sent them down in an airplane, the superintendent of the water works in New York City, acting as night superintendent in Louisville, an active man, a youngster who had been in the water department, and we had 35 feet of water there. We also had the Army engineers on the job.

At Youngstown the water flowed into the filtration plant. A boat turned over but fortunately washed up against a smokestack. They felt they were in authority and just went ahead with the work. They found they could not pump very long because the pumps would go out of commission because they were not oiled, and sometimes slime and grease in the water did keep them lubricated. They ran a line from the pumps that made it possible for them to continue the water supply in that section.

The reason I speak of those things is because it is the sort of thing that is contemplated in this legislation.

It is a further step in the protection of the people of the country from those enormous movements of water that we cannot otherwise help.

You may say, why should California be interested in the Ohio River flood. It is just the same as we are interested in the water supply of Los Angeles because I and thousands of my friends go there. Those who live with us go there for recreation, just as they go to Florida.

I am interested also in the water supply for Michigan and the Great Lakes area for the same reasons.

Mr. CULKIN. The climates are of equal merit.

Dr. McCORMACK. We are interested in what Florida has done. I know the feelings of both sections because I go to both of them. When I go there I think it is better and when I go to the Northwest I think that is better than anywhere except Kentucky.

The CHAIRMAN. The Representatives from California and Florida never fail to speak a good word for their fine fruits, and so forth, but you never hear Texans do that. Texas fruits speak for themselves.

Dr. McCORMACK. I agree with you entirely and Texans do not have to say much about this. There is a difference between them and they have to consult themselves. There is a section of the country to which I would like to pay special tribute in this connection because we all feel very deeply on that subject. In Washington and Oregon and California they were farsighted. The water that supplies the great cities of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles is almost ideal. They have been more advanced in their studies and in their practices in regard to the industrial matters and ordinary sewage waste than other States. In the Willamette, in the Multnomah, and the Columbia Rivers, they have undertaken waterworks, and in the State of Washington there are a great number of people in pulp mills and other manufacturers who have figured in this pollution work. In California they have created water supplies and protection to the streams and I was glad to hear Mr. Kleberg say this morning what he did about the subterranean streams because they are of tremendous importance in Kentucky. They are tributary streams in every place except Texas where they are to a considerable extent confined, because many of them go into the Rio Grande which is in itself an international boundary. This is a problem common to all the States and all the people have a vital interest in this proposed legislation which I believe will be a step coequal in importance and value to the citizens of the United States with the passage of title VI of the Social Security Act which, I believe, marks a great advance in human welfare and recognizes the medical profession and its allied scientific associates as the great servant of the human race. It has the ability and knowledge, with the need only of money, to make life so much happier because this bill will make a great contribution to human welfare.

If we can start early enough, if we can help people to move this pollution bill along, together with other things that count we will have made a great advance.

We have built in Kentucky under the W. P. A. and through the cooperation of its allocation to the Public Health Service in the last few years, hundreds of thousands of concrete sanitary privies. They are being built with material supplied by the home owner, built with W. P. A. labor, and we stimulate that, in just exactly the same way it is done for a private citizen at home, exactly what has been done for urban citizens in home communities.

From the fiscal standpoint in Kentucky, in 1910, typhoid fever prevention funds had to come from the $15,000,000 for the educational system. We did not have money enough for both and typhoid fever came last out of the fund for supplies.