LATE SHIPPING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143473, 21 April 1911, Page 7

LATE SHIPPING.

Onehunga, April 21.—Arrived, at 12.40 p.m., Rosamond from Now Plymouth.

THE COMPULSORY BATH.

No doubt many health officers would like to be able to order tho dirty units of tho community to take a bath or go to gaol. Such drastic action is possible in America, for Ur. llcder, Chief of tho Board of Health of Aurora, Illinois, has won fame by his “order of tho bath.” Aurora, it seems, has a population of 31,000, and a large proportion of the people are poor foreigners, who aro huddled in small huts. Ur. Rcdor found that the conditions under which many of these people lived was atrocious. They were overcrowded, and there were no public or private arrangements for personal cleanliness. When an epidemic was threatened as a result of these conditions, the Board of Health promulgated an interesting set of orders, obedience to which was required under penalty of tho law. All people were to bathe at least once a week, to sweep their floors every day and scrub them every week, to keep their bedroom windows open, to air bedclothes at least once a week, and to take several other necessary precautions. Property-owners were compelled to provide water, basins, and in same cases even baths, for their poor and ignorant tenants. Tho result was most satisfactory. There was no need to invoke the power of tho law, for tho people, even those who had never used a bath-tub before, “took to tho water like ducks.” Ur. Reder says he was impelled to issue his order partly by tho care tho farmers in his neighbourhood took of their live stock. Animals were kept clean, well housed, well fed, and isolated when sick, and it seemed strange to him that tho lord of creation should at times bo loss careful of his own welfare. An American remarks that a crusade for the regular use of the bath is badly needed in American cities. In many tenements the baths are used as receptacles for wood and coal and many purposes other than that for which they aro intended. Americans, however, are making a start with tho children. Many of the new public schools aro equipped with baths for boys and girls, and when' a dirty pupil enters, he or she is made to have a bath.