Municipal Clean-Up Campaigns — Intensive Community Efforts to Teach Urban Residents the Need of Cleanliness and Fire Prevention
Cooperative effort to give the municipality a thorough cleaning at least once a year, and, by so doing, to teach the citizen the importance of continuous cleanliness in and about his home, has been undertaken within the last ten years by most American cities. These intensive community efforts are popularly known as clean-up campaigns.
At first the clean-up campaign, lasting a day or two, was devoted to ridding homes and yards of rubbish and waste that had accumulated during the winter months. Later the campaigns were spread over a week or a longer period, and now not only is an effort made to collect and cart away the winter’s accumulation of waste, but the city also undertakes to educate its citizens in fire prevention work, fly and mosquito extermination, the beautifying of homes and yards, and the elimination of every unsanitary condition. Cellars, garrets, back-yards, vacant lots, alleys, public streets—in fact, every spot in the city, whether on public or private property, does not escape the scrutiny of the public officials and citizens’ committees.
The movement spread rapidly until practically every city had at least a spring campaign. Some repeated the effort in the fall. After two or three annual campaigns several municipalities, particularly the larger ones, thought that instead of making a limited intensive effort to clean house, a continuous campaign should be conducted. The advocates of this plan claimed that any periodical effort had a tendency to make the average citizen clean up only during the campaign, and that during the rest of the year he lapsed into his usual indifference. Within the last few years, therefore, some cities have abandoned the clean-up campaigns and have made greater efforts during the entire year to rid the community of all unsanitary conditions.
The clean-up campaign, however, has become a permanent municipal activity in America. It has taught the citizen not only his responsibility in and about his home, but also the need for greater activity by governmental agencies to eliminate general unsanitary conditions.