Women were instrumental in establishing public baths in several cities; notably in Pittsburgh, where The Civic Club of Allegheny County led in the agitation. The Woman’s Institute of Yonkers campaigned for baths in that community and some were secured. In cases where women have been directly interested in having baths arranged for the people, better sanitary conditions seem sometimes to have prevailed than in cases where they just passively approved and the city established the baths. In Newark, New Jersey, for example, a few women made an examination of the conditions of the public baths which had been established in that city for some time. To their horror they found them in a positively infected condition and their task therefore was the purification of existing bathing places. This they had to bring about by public sentiment and its concentration on the officials responsible for the condition of affairs. A water supply in every home, therefore, interests many women far more than any public bath proposal. PUBLIC LAUNDRIES There is more foundation for the arguments in favor of public wash houses than for the arguments in favor of public baths. Whatever the equipment in individual homes for bathing, and however excellent the individual water service, there are health considerations of a very different character to be met in connection with the family laundry work. In large towns and even in small towns in congested areas there are no facilities for drying the clothes and the sanitary conditions which result from indoor home drying are deplorable and dangerous. In addition to health considerations, the mental effect of sitting in rooms filled with damp clothes is so depressing that many a man and many a boy or girl has fled from home to the saloon and dance hall as a more cheerful place to spend the evening. The poor mother who has done the washing must bear its company in solitary submission. In an effort to alter this pathetic condition of affairs, some attempt has been made to establish public laundries with drying rooms attached and every facility for rapid and sanitary disposal of the weekly laundry. There are economic features which add reasonableness to the agitation for public laundries, for the waste of fuel and energy involved in individual fires for washing and ironing is incalculable and useless, for the most part. The Civic Club of Allegheny County has laundries in connection with its bath houses, but their use is a matter of gradual education as the masses are slow to give up cherished customs, however harmful and wasteful. Where day nurseries exist side by side with the public wash house or in close proximity the situation is more easily met as then the mothers can leave their babies in safe hands while they are at work in the laundry. Philadelphia, Buffalo, Baltimore and Elmira and a very few other cities have already these public wash houses. CLEAN STREETS