ply keep on until he got
results, his readers decided that this time they would act quickly. So
quick a result was hardly ever achieved in any campaign. Within six
months legislation all over the country was introduced or enacted
prohibiting the common drinking-cup in any public gathering-place, park,
store, or theatre, and substituting the individual paper cup. Almost
over night, the germ-laden common drinking-cup, which had so widely
spread disease, disappeared; and in a number of States, the common
towel, upon Bok's insistence, met the same fate. Within a year, one of
the worst menaces to American life had been wiped out by public
sentiment.

Bok was now done with health measures for a while, and determined to see
what he could do with two or three civic questions that he felt needed
attention.

XXXI. Adventures in Civics

The electric power companies at Niagara Falls were beginning to draw so
much water from above the great Horseshoe Falls as to bring into
speculation the question of how soon America's greatest scenic asset
would be a coal-pile with a thin trickle of water crawling down its vast
cliffs. Already companies had been given legal permission to utilize
one-quarter of the whole flow, and additional companies were asking for
further grants. Permission for forty per cent of the whole volume of
water had been granted. J. Horace McFarland, as President of the
American Civic Association, called Bok's attention to the matter, and
urged him to agitate it through his magazine so that restrictive
legislation might be secured.

Bok went to Washington, conferred with President Roosevelt, and found
him cognizant of the matter in all its aspects.

"I can do nothing," said the President, "unless there is an awakened
public sentiment that compels action. Give me that, and I'll either put
the subject in my next message to Congress or send a special message.
I'm from Missouri on this point," continued the President. "Show me that
the American people want their Falls preserved, and I'll do the rest.
But I've got to be shown." Bok assured the President he could
demonstrate this to him.

The next number of his magazine presented a graphic picture of the
Horseshoe Falls as they were and the same Falls as they would be if more
water was allowed to be taken for power: a barren coal-pile with a tiny
rivulet of water trickling down its sides. The editorial asked whether
the American women were going to allow this?