"Don't Swat the Fly; Swat the Man."
The "swat the fly" campaigns in the summer are a glorious success. In Baltimore, for instance, the Woman's Civic League once paid ten cents a quart for dead flies, and about one thousand quarts were presented for purchase.
Everywhere the people are learning that the "domestic" fly is a savage, murderous beast. It is proposed to rename him "the typhoid fly," in recognition of his deadly dissemination of fever germs by his filth-transportation. Whatever we can do toward the annihilation of the pest is a public benefit.
But, after all, the fly is not to blame. We must kill him, but we ought also to get at "the man higher up." Professor Hodge, of Clark University, puts it, "Don't swat the fly; swat the man who permits the fly to breed."
The time is coming when every man who allows a stagnant pool on his premises, a rain-water barrel that can become the breeding-place of mosquitoes, a refuse pile that can become the breeding-place of flies, any rubbish heap or accumulation of filth, will be punished as a public enemy. It is "the man back of the fly" that must be hit. This principle is a fertile one, applying to much besides flies.
It applies to children. It applies to the bad boys who steal fruit, and break windows, and disturb meetings, and play truant from school, and smoke on the sly, and use bad language, and are the despair of teachers, the pest of neighbors, and the grievance of the entire community.
"Don't swat" the boy; "swat the man" and the woman who allow the boy to become what he is, the father and mother whose ignorance and heedlessness are responsible for the boy's degeneracy. "Swat" them for the unwise and unlovely home life which drove the boy into the more attractive streets. Do not let them remain honored members of society while you send the boy to Coventry. Of course there are exceptions, unfortunate parents to whom these words must never be applied; but in regard to most bad children the sentence is entirely just, "Don't swat the fly; swat the man who allowed the fly to breed."
The principle applies also to servants. It applies to the impudent servants, the dishonest servants, the servants who do not do their work properly, or take any interest in their employer's welfare.
"Don't swat" the servants; "swat" the mistress or the master whose incompetence has bred incompetent servants, whose injustice has bred dishonest and tricky servants, whose harshness has bred impudent and selfish servants.
Of course, in all fairness we ought to go back and "swat" the many generations of unjust masters and mistresses for whose errors some very excellent and conscientious employers of to-day are suffering; and since that is impossible, we ought not to blame their innocent successors. None the less, "like master, like man; like mistress, like maid"; and, speaking at large, the evils in the employed will not be remedied till the employers learn to be just and kind.
The principle reaches out everywhere. Many a criminal is punished when society ought to take his place behind the bars if society could only be arrested. We point our fingers at many a pauper when they should be pointed at the saloon-keeper who made him a pauper. We blame for stupidity many a pupil when we should blame the pupil's ancestors for four generations back, who gave him a feeble brain in a flabby body. Everywhere we need to learn to bestow our "swatting," not on the fly, but on the man who permits the fly to breed.
It is not easy to go behind the fly to "the man higher up." The fly cannot hit back, and the man can and will. But if you "swat" the fly, you will have more flies, and yet more, and ever more. "Swat" the man who allows the flies to breed, and ere long "the typhoid fly" will rest with extinct animals, beside the dodo and the mastodon.