The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Health Bulletin January, 1927
the great majority of people who contract
tuberculosis, eveu in later years,
do so through exposure in childhood,
and several years of undernourished
physical condition in early childhood
makes it more probable for that disease
to be contracted.
The Tenant Fai-nier
In the matter of undernourished children
in migratory occupation, the tenant
farmer here comes in for considerable
attention. The more humanitarian
and enlightened land owners today are
recognizing the fact that a good garden,
plenty of chickens, and a good family
cow are just as essential to the making
of a good cotton or tobacco crop as a
time account at the supply store.
Furthermore, all classes of land owners
are beginning to realize that such
a provision and such a requirement is
good business. The rapidly increasing
industrial expansion in this State
affords employment in mills and factories
to an increasing number of
people. The greater number of such
operatives are recruited from small
towns and through the small towns
from the country districts proper. In
other words, the tenant farmer and
his family is the ground log of mill
labor in North Carolina. Therefore it
is important for the tenant farmer to
be supplied with plenty of milk for his
children, because, first, it contributes
to their health and happiness and
prosperity and so makes him increasingly
content to stay on the farm and
save money with which to purchase a
farm of his own. It enables him to
stay in an environment that he loves
and is satisfied in, to send his children
to the consolidated schools and therefore
provide them with a good common
and high school education. And for
those who for various reasons find mill
life more attractive, the children that
go into service in such mills when they
grow up have better health, have a
foundation of good physique, and are
thus able to make more money and
to live better, and provide better facilities
in turn for their own families when
they set up homes of their own.
We have at hand no statistics to
prove it, but the impression prevails
that the consumption of milk among
tenant farmers and their families and
factory workers is below the average
of people in other avocations. Such an
impression is probably true because of
the fact that it is hard for the tenant
farmer who has no home or land of
his own and who moves from one farm
to another almost every year, to find
it possible to take care of a cow unless
the landlord insists on it and makes
some provision for the easy upkeep of
his cow. Naturally it is impossible for
the average family that works in a
factory to keep a cow. In the first
place, for most of them it would be an
economic mistake, unless they live far
beyond the mill villages where they
would have room for the cow's upkeep.
Naturally for such people a good
quality of milk at a reasonable price
is an important consideration. The providing
of this commodity affords a
market for an increasing number of
dairymen around the small mill towns
as well as providing a necessary article
of food to people who need it.
A Safe Milk Supply
One reason for the deficiency in milk
consumption in this State probably
dates back to the days when typhoid
fever existed on every block and nearly
every farm in the summer time. When
called to see such cases in the days
before the whole-time health officers
and organized health departments, the
physician naturally looked for the
cause of the contagion and generally
cha^-ged it up with considerable accuracy
to the milk or water. This is
because milk and water make admirable
vehicles for the propagation and
transmission of typhoid germs. Today
under the expert supervision of dairy
and food inspectors, the enforcement
of milk ordinances, and the rigid care
exercised in the provision of public
water and food supplies affords a more
and more safe milk and water supply
than ever before in the history of the
State. With the approved public water
supply free from contamination available
for a third of the people of North
Carolina, and with seventy-five per
cent of the cities and towns in the
State purchasing milk protected by a
standard milk ordinance promoted by
the North Carolina State Board of