In the social republic, the child as a future citizen is an asset of the state, not the property of its parents. Hence its welfare is a direct concern of the state. Preventive medicine is in this sense truly State Medicine, and means protection of the people from their own ignorance. In the laws made with this end in view lies one of the greatest educative agencies known. We have referred in the last chapter to the need of drawing attention to defects and dangers in order that people may know what the results of their careless ways may be. No surer way has been found to fix attention than to attempt to enforce a law or collect a fine for disobedience of it. A marked illustration of this truth is given in the case of the ordinance against spitting in street cars. In many cities a notice was posted in each car--usually with little effect. In some a fine of five dollars was added, with little more result. Boston was one of the first cities to pass an ordinance, and it accompanied the law with a fine of one hundred dollars. This compelled attention--a sum which represented to the workman more than his yearly savings, more than any single expenditure. To the business man, even, it was a sum not to be lightly dropped on a filthy car floor. This mere statement of the value of cleanness made an almost instantaneous change in the habits of thousands. Within two days the car floors became practically free without a single fine being collected within that time, as far as the author is aware. The law imposing fines for neglect of removal of garbage or of screening stables must be occasionally enforced in order to express degree of disapproval. A petty fine is of little use. Conditions of motion, of rapid intermingling of distant populations--a thousand miles in a day is now possible--make national control a necessity. It is proved that quick results may be gained in saving lives and property by that prompt and thorough action which well-equipped Federal forces alone possess. The stamping out of yellow fever in Cuba, the redemption of Panama, the suppression of sporadic outbreaks at New Orleans, the quick response to a discovery, as in the cases of pellagra and the hookworm--all these show what a thoroughly alive government may do. It is no disgrace to an individual or a city to have the national laboratory make discoveries, to have the national power put down epidemics, as it does civil rebellion, for the good of the whole nation. It is disgraceful, however, for the citizen to remain indifferent or obstructive, to grumble over the cost. The indifference of the people themselves is today almost the only stumbling block to national prosperity. The time lost to the average worker by inefficient labor is a drain on the community largely avoidable, and is the cause of that other drain on the moral as well as physical vitality--charity.