East St. Louis Daily Journal

"U. S. Not More Than 30 Days From Diseases of the World's Cesspools," Says Doctor Charles Hodges.

"Public health is the physical foundation of world-wide intercourse, according to Professor Charles Hodges of New York University.

Giving a good deal of credit to the work done by the League of Nations toward bettering health conditions in the world, he recently said:

"Public health is the physical foundation of world-wide intercourse. Disease is a costly direct and indirect burden upon international trade, finance and industry.

It can close markets, blockade sources of supply and change the trade routes, with all the economic stagnation the situation implies.

The health work of the League of Nations is in line with the more scientific control of international factors bearing upon present day business.

Plague Would Hamper Commerce.

"The United States is not more than 30 days from bubonic plague, cholera, yellow fever and the other endemic diseases of the world's cesspools. Commerce itself would languish while our property—indeed our necessities in the way of raw products for our world-dependent industries—would disappear if anything like an old medieval sweep of disease ravaged our great work of nations as it shook Europe in the middle ages.

"Every ship operator fears what lies behind the yellow flag of quarantine; and merchants, bankers and manufacturers understand how important it is that we should guard our health at our gates to world intercourse. But so long as vast parts of the earth remained outside the march of progress it had to be a national affair with narrow horizons of watchfulness. The very center of disease lay outside the western world, and, seemingly, of our interest. Yet with the changes in our own sanitary outlook, we began to consider the health of our neighbors.

Disease Control is Business Proposition.

"For instance, to build the Panama Canal it was necessary for the United States to conquer the yellow fever of the equator.

But upon cleaning up Panama we faced the danger of disease along the west coast of South America that would have made the canal a focal point for the distribution of epidemics unless these neighboring republics were cleaned up in an extension of American sanitation.

Similarly, in Africa and the Far East tropical medicine began its cleansing activities in the battle to prevent breeding and diffusion of disease.

It was essentially a business proposition forced upon the world for its own protection.

"In particular there has been attempted the first steps toward grading ports from a sanitary viewpoint to permit a vessel possessing a clean bill of health from a duly certified port to touch ports in other countries without further inspection, provided no infected places had been entered en route.

The realization of this plan means that business would save time, money and uncertainty in the daily work of bringing market in touch with market."