The Green caldron - University Library

December, 1957
Win the War Against Waste and
Disease
Mark Zimmerman
Rhetoric 101, Theme 1
\W/HAT WOULD YOU DO IF FOR EVERY ANIMAL THAT
XX/ you raised on your farm you were to lose twenty dollars? Probably
you are thinking to yourself, "I could most certainly do a more effi-
cient job of farming than that!" But what if you continued to lose twenty
dollars per animal? Perhaps you now say, "I'd quit raising these animals."
Of course, this solution would be more economical than continually operating
at such a loss.
Do you know that for each rat you board on your farm you lose twenty
dollars ? And do you know that this has been going on for years ? Yet, what
have you done to stop this needless waste?
It is a generally known fact that there are 171 million people in the United
States. But, did you know that there are also 171 million rats in the United
States? In other words, there is one rat per person in this country. Annually
these 171 million rats destroy the food and produce from two hundred thou-
sand farms. This vast amount of wasted commodity would be enough to feed
ten million people, or about one-seventeenth of our entire population. It
wouldn't be so bad if the rat only ate the food that he touches, but this mis-
chievous monster insists upon destroying ten times more than he actually eats.
With their sharp incisors, rats are capable of gnawing through oak planks,
sun-dried bricks, slate shingles, and poorly constructed concrete three inches
thick. Rats also start costly fires by gnawing through the insulation on electri-
cal wires. From these preceding facts the United States Department of Agri-
culture has been able to estimate that we pay twenty dollars to board each rat
on our farms for a year.
Rats are the carriers of at least ten human diseases, including rat-bite
fever and the bubonic plague. The bubonic plague is an example of the wide-
spread disease-filth destruction carried by rats. The plague was first recorded
in history during the outbreak of 49 B.C. in Athens, Greece. In the year 1300,
one-fourth of the entire population of Europe was wiped out as a result of
the terrible bubonic plague. Contrary to the general belief that the plague is car-
ried by the rat itself, the plague is transmitted to humans by a flea which lives
on the rat. Without its host the flea soon dies ; thus, to control the bubonic
plague, the control of rats is compulsory.
In more direct connection with the farmer, the rat is the carrier of several
livestock diseases, including pseudo-rabies and trichinosis. Rats are also the
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