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160     THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE

no regard for the future. "Let me get along now" is their motto. Such leadership should be rejected by the peoples as false and unprofitable. Self-interest spoils the career of many a gifted individual leader, too much self-interest spoils the leader. The people should depose such. Making the test of fitness for leadership an active and apparent exhibition of sacrifice for the Negro race. The selfish leader is jealous, envious, and will seek to kill any Negro enterprise that does not recognize him as the "whole show". Thousands of worthy Negro enterprises have been born for a premature death because of the lack of the co-operation of [[italics]]some[[/italics]] Negro leaders who were crafters and self-seekers with no interest that could be aroused in any movement or object that did not point to them as stars of the first magnitude.


Carlyle says that a people deserve the kind of government they tolerate; if this is true as to government, it is [[italics]]a priori[[/italics]] true of leadership.

So finally, there must be aroused among the people a desire for good leadership, and a determination to expose bad leadership. The race cannot rise higher than its leadership in the eyes of the world and to vindicate itself unworthy of leadership should be deposed. There may be an abundance of desire to have things better among the masses, but this desire must be expressed and acted upon, otherwise it amounts to nothing, and the stigma put upon us by bad leadership remains to curse and condemn the whole race. May there not be a higher idea along these lines that will spring up and take root in this year of grace 1909.

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CONSUMPTION – ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES

By HENRY M. MINTON, Ph. G., M. D.

PART II.

Tuberculosis is a family disease. There is no other disease where so often generation after generation is affected by it – father, son, grandson, great-grandson. Why is this? They are born with it, people sometimes say. He got tuberculosis from his father or his mother, you often hear. But we, as medical men, know that this is not so. We know that people inherit the susceptibility to tuberculosis, inherit the likelihood to have the disease. They inherit a weak nature, inherit an inability to fight off the invading tubercle bacillus.

This is vastly different from inheriting the disease, and makes it plain that if a person whose parents and grand parents had tuberculosis keeps away from any place where he is unlikely to come in contact with the tubercle bacillus, and leads such a life as to overcome that weakness of nature which was inherited, he would never have tuberculosis. For example, I knew of a man who whenever he took even the smallest amount of quinine had a most aggravating rash upon his skin. His son was the same way. The son did not inherit the rash. He inherited the likelihood to get it. If he had never taken any quinine he never would have had any rash.

Surroundings form an important secondary cause of tuberculosis. Sunshine and fresh air are arch enemies of tuberculosis. Hence any surroundings devoid of these elements are good incubators for tuberculosis. Narrow streets and courts are for that reason helpers in the spread of the disease. Blind streets or alleys are likewise on account of the inability of obtaining free passage of air. The open country and rural districts are for the same reasons more healthy than city districts. Dusty streets are more apt to be laden with germs of all kinds than clean streets. Damp climates are claimed to be more unhealthy than dry ones, a high dry one being recommended for consumptives. A clayey, or moist, or marhsy soil is unwholesome.

Overcrowding is favorable to the spread of any disease. And likewise are dirt and filth. These are usually found together. The tenement districts of our large cities offer sad and indisputable evidence of this fact. Dirt and filth may not always be due to the choice of the inhabitants, but often to the unsanitary condition of the buildings which they are forced to live in on account of poverty or race. But nevertheless the public must be taught to fear dirt as they would wild animals. Bacteria of all kinds flourish filthy and unsanitary rooms and