had been able to put political differences aside and agree on a direction together. These conference meetings continued to occur on a biweekly notice, and eventually led to the creation of the Public Health Commission of California with Blue as its inaugural president in April 1903. Funding for these sanitation campaigns lasted from 1903 through 1905 at which time San Francisco was declared plague free due to a decrease in mortality rate within Chinatown and the lack of any new cases reported to officials. The success of these sanitation programs were credited to Blue for his diplomacy skills among the different levels of government. With the implementation of these programs Blue was able to stem the plague and enable Wyman to avoid imposing a federal quarantine on the bay area. In April 1905, with pressure from the municipal government of San Francisco and no new cases, Blue succeeded his position as head of the United States Public Health Service in San Francisco (after being appointed in May 1903) to Donald Currie before heading off to his next post. When he wasn't trapping rats and squirrels in California, Blue directed mosquito eradication efforts to control yellow fever in New Orleans (1905), at the Jamestown Exposition (1907), and in Honolulu (1911), to help Hawaii prepare for traffic to follow the opening of the new Panama Canal. In addition, he represented the United States on a number of sanitation projects in South America and attended the London School of Tropical Medicine (1910). Blue's successes in the field made his reputation. He was promoted to the position of Surgeon (17 May 1909), and after Wyman died unexpectedly, President William Howard Taft nominated Blue to serve as Surgeon General (13 January 1912 through 3 March 1920). Blue would go on to serve a second four-year term under President Woodrow Wilson (1916–1920). Surgeon General Blue the plague fighter became an institution builder as well. He inherited the Act of 1912, which reoriented PHS toward research and public campaigns against disease. Passage of the Act of 1912 capped 6 years of lively debate about how to strengthen Federal public health efforts more generally. It designated the U.S. Treasury Department’s Marine Hospital and Public Health Service, rather than the Department of the Interior, as the lead Federal agency (and shortened the name to PHS), responsible not only for interstate quarantine and health services delivery to Federal wards but