fore, to protect a
common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which
render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to
protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property.

The development of fire protection is a good example of community
effort. The isolated farmhouse may have buckets of water and blankets
in an accessible place with which to put out an incipient fire. Then
eight or ten families build close together. The danger of one becomes
the danger of all, and a fire brigade is organized that may protect
all. When hundreds of families crowd together in a small space the
danger becomes so much the greater that a paid department with
efficient apparatus is necessary. No one complains of the infraction
of individual rights. Each one is glad to pay his share of the
expense.

In securing protection from other dangers, the individual and the
family unit are fast relying on community regulations. In fact, in
many ways the individual, when he becomes one of a crowd, must go
whither the crowd goes and at the same rate of progress.

Failure to recognize that by coming into the community he has
forfeited his right to unrestrained individuality causes an irritation
as unreasonable as harmful.

A certain control of sanitary conditions must be delegated to the
community and its rules cheerfully followed. The legal aspects of
these rules will be considered in a later chapter. Here is to be
considered only the _mental attitude_ with which the members of the
community should come together to agree upon a common defense against
disease and dirt. The spirit of cooperation must prevail over a
tendency to antagonism when certain individual rights seem to be
involved.

Numbers of families living close together are served by the same
grocer or market man. These families may agree upon their requirements
as to quality and cleanliness and publish their rules. If they do not
take interest enough to protect themselves, the community must make
rules for them. If the local officials are not vigilant enough, the
State may step in and compel the observance of sanitary regulations.

The average citizen learns of the existence of a health regulation
when he is warned that he has broken it, or perhaps is fined. His
first attitude is rebellion at the invasion of his personal liberty.
The housewife usually takes the ground that the rule is absurd or
unnecessary.

When, in the interest of