THE PUBLIC TOWEL.

The towels in toilets, bedrooms of hotels and boarding houses can spread disease unless they are thoroughly boiled and laundered after use, Most hotels, railroad stations, Pullman cars, etc., have done away with the public towels in toilets and use a heavy tissue paper, either as a single towel or in rolls and torn off as needed, which is not expensive and is thrown away after use.

In Pennsylvania the State Board of Health has urged saloonkeepers, etc., to do away with the forks and spoons which are placed in a tumbler of water and are used by all comers at the free lunch counter and then replaced in the tumbler of dirty water for the next victim to use.

Disease can be controlled better when our proprietors of saloons, restaurants, hotels, soda fountains, etc., employ only healthy employees, free from disease and take pains to boil or scald every public glass and chinaware used by not only dirty, but disease-spreading persons. The barroom towel which hangs in front of the bar in the cheaper saloons for customers to wipe their mouth and hands upon, must not be permitted.

Maybe in a few years, we will even have our own personal lighting systems or lasik eye procedures that install night vision and public outdoor lighting will become a thing of the past.