In connection with this battle for pure food and drugs, it is interesting to see open credit given, in a conservative and anti-feminist paper in New York like _The Times_, to a woman for securing the new drug law in 1914. Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt led the fight for this new legislation which goes further than any other in stopping the sale of habit-forming drugs in that it provides a simple and effective way of discovering and punishing the sellers of such drugs as cocaine and opium. Chloral, morphine and opium and any compounds and preparations derived therefrom can no longer be sold except on the prescription of a regularly licensed medical practitioner or dentist or veterinarian. Prosecutions have already taken place under the new law. While the new drug law was due to Mrs. Vanderbilt, according to the newspaper headlines and the discussion of its passage in the above mentioned paper, influential men and women were her active aiders and abettors. Among these were judges of the New York courts, men and women probation officers, representatives of both sexes from reformatory institutions, the prison associations, and others. Dr. Katharine B. Davis, the city commissioner of corrections, worked for the success of the measure. PURE WATER Pure water as well as pure food and drugs has been the starting-point of many a woman’s organization formed for civic purposes or for a combination of cultural and civic endeavor. National recognition was won by the women of New Orleans, members of the Era Club, in their successful efforts for a municipal sewerage, water and drainage system. The yellow fever epidemic that raged in that city a few years ago and its attendant sacrifice of life aroused the women even more than the men to the imperative need of a pure water supply and a scientific drainage system adapted to the peculiar conditions of that city. The women seem to have felt the need; the men to have appreciated the difficulties in the way of securing the system. The Era Club believed that, where there is a need, there is a way and the men finally agreed. Practically every house in the city at the time of the epidemic had a cesspool. “The drainage system was incomplete and inadequate, dependent upon a few drainage machines which paddled the water through troughs into the canals and eventually into Lake Ponchartrain. After a heavy rainfall the streets were flooded; in some sections the water would stand for days.” Still the men hesitated to undertake the kind of an enterprise that local conditions demanded. For the first and only time the women of New Orleans, who were qualified, voted, instigated and led by that splendid Southern woman, Kate Gordon. _The Survey_ thus describes the attitude taken by the women: