Six Sick Passengers Don't Justify Barring Six Hundred, Editor Tells the Times

Anent the repeated occurrence of spinal meningitis epidemic among Filipino steerage passengers in boats that call on Seattle during the last few weeks, the Seattle Daily Times has offered a solution which, in our way of looking at it, is nonsensical. The Times editorial is published elsewhere in this issue.

The Times urges that the ocean liners stop carrying Filipino passengers from the Philippines into Seattle. That would affect to a great extent the business of the ship-owners. And anybody knows that the shipping companies would not agree to that.

The Times arrived at a conclusion presumably without going into the trouble of weeding out contributing factors. It should be remembered that when the Filipino passengers boarded the ship at Manila they were first examined by competent health officials. Their health was vouched for. On the way from Manila to Seattle the disease was contracted. When they arrive in Seattle they are quarantined and observed. This is but proper.

But when the Times urges that the problem should be solved at its source, by stopping the ships from carrying Filipinos from the Philippines, nobody can see in it an ounce of sense. Those Filipino passengers were not taken at Manila as spinal meningitis patients.

Spinal meningitis is not a disease that picks Filipinos as its victims. The Times editorial staff themselves would contract the same if they were put in the same situation as the Filipinos taking steerage accommodation in the liners. It just so happened that the steerage passengers of the ships coming from the Philippines are mostly Filipinos.

Six patients do not justify the exclusion of the other six hundred.