The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of FactsSanger, Margaret
Science
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control; Eugenics
The scavenger system is also very defective. Citizens are required to
pay for the removal of their ashes, trash, and garbage. Garbage
collections are not made by the municipality, but by private
contractors, and any sort of receptacle, covered or uncovered, can or
box, is pressed into service by householders. It is by no means uncommon
to find streets and alleys littered with ashes, garbage, bottles, tin
cans, beer cases, and small kegs. Dirty streets are by no means
exceptional in Johnstown, even though the State of Pennsylvania has a
law (act of Apr. 20, 1905) which provides for the punishment of any
person who litters paved streets. It reads, in part, as follows (sec. 7
of Pamphlet Laws, 227):
“From and after the passage of this act, it shall be unlawful, and is
hereby forbidden, for any person or persons to throw waste paper,
sweepings, ashes, household waste, nails, or rubbish of any kind into
any street in any city, borough, or township in this Commonwealth, or to
interfere with, scatter, or disturb the contents of any receptacle or
receptacles containing ashes, garbage, household waste, or rubbish which
shall be placed upon any of said paved streets or sidewalks for the
collection of the contents thereof.
“Any person or persons who shall violate any of the provisions of this
act shall, upon conviction thereof before any magistrate, be sentenced
to pay the cost of prosecution and to forfeit and pay a fine not
exceeding $10 for each offense, and in default of the payment thereof
shall be committed and imprisoned in the county jail of the proper
county for a period not exceeding ten days.”
In a report on infant mortality to the registrar general of Ontario,
1910, Dr. Helen MacMurchy says: “Improve the water supply, the sewerage
system, and the system of disposing of refuse; introduce better
pavements, such as asphalt, and at once there is a decline in infantile
mortality.” All these are sanitary features in need of great improvement
in Johnstown, and unquestionably a lowered infant mortality rate would
reward any efforts for their betterment.
HOUSING
In Johnstown the so-called “double” house predominates, usually frame.
The double house is in reality two semidetached houses built upon a
single lot. Rows of three or more houses of two, three, or four rooms
each are common, and they are known locally as three-family, or
six-family houses, as the case may be. Sometimes these are “rear
houses,” that is, they are built behind other houses that face the
street, on the same lots and in fact are approached by way of a narrow
alley running alongside the house that has its frontage directly on the
street. For this type of house water-closets or privies are often in
rows in the yard or court that is used in common by all families. (See
Plates Q and R.) In some places they are too few in number to permit
each family to have the exclusive use of one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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