290 State Papers and Addresses

Because of the staggering cost involved, our plan was to make the im-
provements in separate stages. The 1939 Legislature appropriated $85, 000 for
new construction and equipment. This amount has been used as follows:

$40, 000 for power house and equipment

$20, 000 for laundry building and equipment

$25, 000 for gymnasium building and equipment
These additions represent a definite step forward.

Feeling that, even with the limited facilities available, more improvement
could be effected by different and wider representation on the Board of
Managers, I exercised painstaking care in the appointments to the Board. The
selection of the new members met with general approval and it is significant
to observe that greater recognition was given to the colored race than had here-
tofore been the case.

Additional progress can be reported in the educational department of the
school. A Director of Education was appointed and soon thereafter a Super-
visor of Physical Education and a Secretary to the Educational Department.
This is the nucleus of the personnel for the educational program which is being
built up. In general, the plans for the future of the school are that the opera-
tion will be placed more and more on an educational and vocational basis,
thereby decreasing the emphasis which has been placed on the custodial work
of the institution in the past.

We must face the fact that further improvement is needed at this institu-
tion and the next Budget will include additional sums both for construction and
for the operation of the institution. As said before, the plan calls for advance-
ment in stages, but it is believed that with additional facilities to be provided
the institution will be in a prosition to train these colored boys in the voca-
tions for which they are fitted, with the object of adjusting them to the com-
munity in which they will live and make of them useful citizens.

STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

The State Department of Health is regarded by competent observers to
be one of the best-organized agencies of its kind in the entire Country. Over
a long period of years it has pioneered in many outstanding and useful develop-
ments in public health administration. Maryland was the first State in the
Country to establish full-time health departments in every county of the State
under the joint auspices of State and county administration.

Every effort has been made to secure members of the State Board of
Health who are outstanding in their respective professional fields of endeavor.
The professional staff, both in the central offices and in the counties, is well
trained and competent and the efforts of the Department have been effective
in a constant reduction in deaths and in the incidence of communicable diseases.

The communicable disease record of the State continues to occupy an
enviable position in the United States. For the eleven months prior to De-
cember 1, 1940, there has been reported from the twenty-three counties of Mary-
land a total of only 12, 614 cases of communicable diseases. During the same
period, there were reported 9, 913 deaths, from all sources.

Typhoid Fever—The typhoid fever rate may be said to have declined to
almost the irreducible minimum. For last year, up to December 1, 94 cases
of typhoid fever were reported with 8 deaths. The great improvement in public
water supplies and the constant vigilance over milk supplies have prevented