Dakota Datebook- Swat the fly!

May 24, 2018 — Springtime brings warm, sunny days and apple blossoms – and poets proclaim that love is in the air. Unfortunately, spring also heralds the arrival of houseflies, the pesky pests that imperil the health and well-being of young and old alike.

On this date in 1912, a Grand Forks newspaper announced the arrival of the annual campaign to “SWAT THE FLY.” The month of May, according to a Grand Forks Herald article, brought “the war against the fly” – which was a “war to the death on both sides. Either the man kills the fly or the fly kills the man.”

“The hand of man” had to be raised against the fly and the hand had to come down on the insect with a “fatal whack” in order to protect families from the deadly diseases it brought. A new-found scientific awareness of germs and the flies that carried them led the Grand Forks Woman’s Civic League to declare war against houseflies in 1910 and annually thereafter.

“Flies are filthy!” declared the women of Grand Forks, “for they carry all kinds of diseases – typhoid fever, diarrhea, dysentery and tuberculosis. Kill them off! Join the fly crusade.” In 1910, the Woman’s Civic League sponsored a movie “illustrating the life history of the house-fly” for local citizens to view at a Grand Forks theater.

Because some local residents still used horses and carriages for transport, city laws required that all horse manure be “kept only in covered boxes” under a rainproof roof and all of that animal waste had to be had to be hauled out before “eight weeks” time had passed.

The anti-fly campaign stressed the virtues of cleanliness in the household and the efficient disposal of garbage. All citizens of Grand Forks were to “deprive the flies of breeding places.” All grocery stores and butcher shops were to cover their food stocks so that flies could not “infect the food” and pass pathologies on to customers. The goal was to exterminate the flies to bring on a “flyless millennium.” The battle plan included the use of “sticky fly paper,” traps and a newly-developed poison to kill the pests with their “sticky fly-feet . . . loaded with . . . microbes deadlier than bullets.” But the main weapon in the “anti-fly crusade” was the humble fly swatter. All North Dakotans were to swat flies at every opportunity.

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org.