An additional change from the provision of the original act provides for the keeping of more accurate records by local registrars and for the payment of ten cents for each report forwarded to the State Board of Health.

It is believed that this method will secure more prompt and full returns and will be of great assistance in checking the spread of contagious diseases throughout the State. A similar plan for securing reports of births, marriages and deaths has been followed in this State for thirty years and has resulted in placing New Jersey highest in list of registration states in this country. lar plans have also been adopted in other states.

Simi

All work directed to the prevention and control of communicable diseases is based upon the securing of a knowledge of early cases and effective measures cannot be adopted after any given disease has reached an epidemic stage. The enactment and enforcement. of this law will doubtless lead to such immediate knowledge on the part of the State Board of Health of outbreaks of preventable diseases that advice and assistance may be rendered local boards of health in time to prevent extensive epidemics, and our State will be placed upon an equal footing with other progressive states in dealing with preventable diseases.

COMMUNICABLE DISEASES ON DAIRY PREMISES.

In bringing suits for violation of chapter 47, laws of 1909, which requires physicians to report to the State Board of Health all cases of communicable diseases occurring on dairy premises, the point was raised that as it was a supplement to the act of 1887 the title of the act was not consistent with its provisions, and that the act was therefore unconstitutional. To overcome this objection, the law passed this year (chapter 380, laws of 1911), is made a supplement to an act for the protection of the public health, passed in 1895, and will overcome the constitutional defect.

Under the act of 1909, physicians are required to make reports of cases of certain communicable diseases occurring on dairy premises, but no provision was made for reporting cases of such diseases occurring in families of persons who are employed on dairy premises.

It is obvious that the reporting of cases of contagious diseases occurring in the families of employes residing away from dairy premises is as essential as of cases occurring on the premises. As an illustration, a person employed on dairy premises might have a case of diphtheria in his family, and after caring for the sick go directly to the dairy and assist in milking. In this way the milk could become infected and cause an epidemic among the consumers of the milk. The wording of the section bearing upon this point is such that the physician is protected, as the following phraseology is used: "Every physician who shall have knowledge," etc., "that a person is employed on dairy premises.”

It was the intention of the Board to provide in the law for the payment to physicians of the sum of twenty-five cents for each report of a case of contagious disease existing on dairy premises, but this plan was not carried out, as it was decided that it was a duty the physician owed the State, and as he received from the State certain privileges such as exemption from jury duty, no remuneration for such a slight service should be demanded or allowed.

Experience has shown that since the original act was passed no epidemics have been traced to infected dairy premises where the cases were promptly reported and prompt protective measures were adopted.

MARRIAGE LICENSES BY DEPUTY REGISTRARS.

When application was made for a marriage license under the provisions of the marriage license law of 1910 it was necessary for the registrar or duly authorized official to personally issue the license. No provision was made for the issuing of licenses by any person or persons other than the registrar. In the event of the absence of the registrar, or his detention by illness, the contracting parties could not secure a license.

This defect in the original law has been remedied by an amendment giving any official authorized to issue a marriage license the power to appoint a deputy who may issue marriage licenses during the absence of the said duly authorized official.

MARRIAGES WITHOUT CONSENT OF PARENTS.

In the carrying out the provisions of the marriage license act of 1910 it was found that there were some instances where a marriage license should be granted where the consent of parents to such marriage could not be obtained. In cases of seduction the male applicant for license being a minor, although the parties involved were willing to marry, parents on account of a difference in religious beliefs of the contracting parties or for other, to them, good and sufficient reasons, would refuse to give consents.

From the standpoint of morality and public policy under such circumstances, the marriage of the parties should not be interfered with.

To overcome the defect in the original law the following amendment was passed by the Legislature of 1911:

CHAPTER 318.

AN ACT to amend an act entitled "An act concerning marriages (Revision of 1910)," approved April eleventh, one thousand nine hundred and ten.

BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

1. Section seven of the act to which this is amendatory be and the same is hereby amended so that it shall read as follows:

7. If any such male applicant for a license to marry shall be a minor under the age of twenty-one years, or any such female applicant under the age of eighteen years, such license shall not be issued unless the parents or guardians of the said minor, if there be any, shall first certify under their hands and seals in the presence of two reputable witnesses, their consent thereto; which consent shall be delivered to the assessor, registrar or clerk issuing the license. If the parents, or either of them, or guardian of any such minor shall be of unsound mind, then the consent of such parent or guardian to the proposed marriage shall not be required. If any such male applicant for a license to marry shall be a minor under the age of twenty-one years, and shall have been arrested on the charge of sexual intercourse, with a single, widowed or divorced female of good repute for chastity, and that such female has thereby become pregnant, said license to marry such female may be issued to any such applicant without the consent of the parents, or either of them, or of the guardian of either of said parties to such proposed marriage.

2. This act shall take effect immediately.

Approved May 1, 1911.

DEATHS IN HOSPITALS.

There is an increasing agitation throughout the State of the advisability of having county and municipal hospitals for the care of communicable diseases. In the county of Essex a contagious disease hospital is maintained by the Board of Freeholders to which patients may be sent from any part of the county. The State institution for the care of soldiers is located at Kearny, Hudson county, and that for sailors at Vineland, Cumberland county. When patients in the State institutions above mentioned died of a contagious or infectious disease the death certificate was filed with the proper officer of the municipality in which the institution was located. Many of the decedents were from other parts of the county or State, and not permanent residents of the sanitary district in which death occurred. In estimating the death rate of the counties or municipalities having institutions for the care of cases of contagious and infectious diseases it was found. that the death rate was slightly increased by institutional deaths which made it appear that the municipality or county in which such institutions were located had a higher death rate than other municipalities or counties of the State. The including of such deaths of non-residents in the estimate of the total death rate was illogical and misleading. A supplement to the act of 1888 requiring the reporting of vital statistics was passed during the legislative session of 1911 (see chapter 154 of the laws of 1911), which requires that no death occurring in hospitals for contagious diseases maintained by counties of the State shall be included in the deaths occurring in the municipality in which the hospital is located unless the person dying had last place of residence in the municipality in which the hospital is located. In estimating death rates provision is made for assigning the deaths of those dying in institutions to the locality from which they were sent to the hospital. Physicians employed in the hospitals named in the act shall, in the death certificates, state the institution in which the death occurred and the former or usual residence of the decedent. The penalty for violation of the act is twenty dollars. This amendment will tend to make the estimate of the death rates in municipalities in which there are contagious disease hospitals more accurate, and the necessity for the law will be more apparent as the number of such hospitals in the State is increased.

LICENSING OF PLUMBERS.

Repeated efforts have been made by the plumbers of the State to secure legislative recognition, and bills introduced for this purpose have failed to become laws because of defects which were difficult to overcome. These measures would on the one hand be favored by the master plumbers and on the other opposed by journeymen plumbers. The only bill introduced which received favorable consideration, yet failed to become a law, was one which provided for the appointment of a central board for the examining and licensing of plumbers. During the last session of the Legislature a renewed and successful effort was made to secure the enactment of a law governing the licensing of plumbers (chapter 307 of the laws of 1911). The act gives local boards of health the power to pass ordinances and make rules and regulations for the purpose of regulating the practice of plumbing; to issue licenses and to appoint an examining board to determine the qualifications of applicants for licenses. This examining board is to consist of three persons, one of whom shall be a plumbing inspector in the employment of the local board of health, one a master plumber and one a journeyman plumber. Although many objections to this method of regulating plumbers were brought to the attention of members of the Legislature when the law was under consideration, the plumbers were so insistent upon recognition and some control of the business that the law was enacted. There are approximately 470 boards of health in the State, and of this number 234 are in townships, and there are at least 161 small boroughs in which there is no regularly appointed plumbing inspector, so that in these sanitary districts no such licensing board as specified in the act could be organized unless a plumbing inspector were appointed. No plumbing inspector can be appointed to serve on a local board of health without obtaining a license from the State Board of Health. As a rule in townships and small boroughs there is no plumber qualified to take the examination. Under these conditions two-thirds of the sanitary districts of the State cannot comply with the law. If a licensing board were appointed who favored only the employment of home labor, the improper enforcement of the law would result in the exclusion of plumbers living outside a given sanitary district from competitive bidding