In the practical working out of organization, exhaustive experiment and trial have demonstrated that the base should be competent organization of the municipality, county, or other local unit.  Most of our municipalities and some 400 rural counties out of 3,000 now have some such unit organization.  Where highly developed, a health unit comprises at least a physician, sanitary engineer, and community nurse with the addition, in some cases, of another nurse devoted to the problems of maternity and children.  Such organization gives at once a fundamental control of preventive measures and assists in community instruction.  The Federal Government, through its interest in control of contagion, acting through the United States Public Health Service and the State agencies, has in the past and should in the future concern itself with this development, particularly in the many rural sections which are unfortunately far behind in progress.  Some parts of the funds contributed under the Sheppard-Towner Act through the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor have also found their way into these channels.

I recommend to the Congress that the purpose of the Sheppard-Towner Act should be continued through the Children’s Bureau for a limited period of years; and that the Congress should consider the desirability of confining the use of Federal funds by the States to the building up of such county or other local units, and that such outlay should be positively coordinated with the funds expended through the United States Public Health Service directed to other phases of the same county or other local unit organization.  All funds appropriated should of course be applied through the States, so that the public health program of the county or local unit will be efficiently coordinated with that of the whole State.

FEDERAL PRISONS

Closely related to crime conditions is the administration of the Federal prison system.  Our Federal penal institutions are overcrowded, and this condition is daily becoming worse.  The parole and probation systems are inadequate.  These conditions make it impossible to perform the work of personal reconstruction of prisoners so as to prepare them for return to the duties of citizenship.  In order to relieve the pressing evils I have directed the temporary transfer of the Army Disciplinary Barracks at Leavenworth to the Department of Justice for use as a Federal prison.  Not only is this temporary but it is inadequate for present needs.

We need some new Federal prisons and a reorganization of our probation and parole systems; and there should be established in the Department of Justice a Bureau of Prisons with a sufficient force to deal adequately with the growing activities of our prison institutions.  Authorization for the improvements should be given speedily, with initial appropriations to allow the construction of the new institutions to be undertaken at once.  Immigration