in which the topic "State Promotion of Industrial Hygiene", is put, is calculated to awaken in the minds of many people a certain presumption against the proposition. When we talk of the state I think we are very apt to have in mind the old police state. "The state, I'm the state." We sometimes forget that we are the state, that the state is all of us in a democracy. The only question is whether this matter of industrial hygiene is sufficiently important for all of us to get together to try and put something through or whether it is a matter which can be safely left to the individual.

We have in our country a very good precedent for the action of the government in these matters. In the first decade after the adoption of the Constitution the government established a sick insurance and benefit fund for seamen. It was one of the first systems of the kind in the world. Here was a case where the government singled out a single profession or occupation, known to be particularly hazardous, and took extraordinary measures to provide for sickness. The remarkable thing is that in those early and simpler days apparently no one ever thought to contest the constitutionality of that measure, and the consequence was that it went on and we have developed a great medical system, the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, out of that small beginning which was an effort by the government to provide for the health of one particular occupation.

In connection with the very valuable suggestion thrown out by Dr. Overlock with reference to the establishment of hospitals for industrial diseases, it may be well to state that Dr. Devoto of Milan is expected to be in this country in September in attendance at the International Congress on Hygiene and Demography and I am sure I voice the sentiments of the Association in saying that we second heartily Dr. Overlock's suggestion and hope that someone who has money to give away wisely will establish such a hospital.

V

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