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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003475021 
 
THE 
 
 PEST AT OUR GATES 
 
 BY 
 
 POULTNEY BIGELOW 
 
 REPRINTED BY PERMISSION FROM "THE 
 
 NEW BROADWAY MAGAZINE," BY 
 
 THE MERCHANTS' ASSOCIATION 
 
 COMMITTEE ON POLLUTION 
 
 OF STATE WATERS. 
 
 SEPTEMBER, J 908. 
 
 The MERCHANTS' ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK 
 
The Merchants' Association of New York 
 
 OFFICERS igo8 
 
 President 
 Henrv R. Towne 
 
 1st Vice-President 
 GusTAV H. Schwab 
 
 2d Vice-President jd Vice-President 
 
 Wm. a. Marble W. J. Schieffelin 
 
 Secretary 
 S. C. Mead 
 Statistician Counsel 
 
 Frederick B. De Berard John W. Griggs 
 
 DIRECTORS 
 
 Nathan Bijur 
 
 Frank R. Chambers Rogers, Peet & Co. 
 
 J. Hampden Dougherty 
 
 Harry Dowie De Winter & Co. 
 
 Thomas H. Downing R. F. Downing & Co; 
 
 Prof. Joseph F. Johnson, 
 
 Dean, School of Commerce, Finance and Accounts, New York University 
 
 Walter C. Kerr President Westinghouse, Church, Kerr & Co. 
 
 J. H. Killough J. H. Killough & Co. 
 
 Charles R. Lamb J. & R. Lamb 
 
 Wm. a. Marble Vice-President R. & G. Corset Co. 
 
 Marcus M. Marks David Marks & Sons 
 
 Daniel P. Morse President Morse & Rogers 
 
 Wm. H. McCord Post & McCord 
 
 J. Crawford McCreery The James McCreery Realty Corp. 
 
 RoBT. C. Ogden 
 
 Edwin H. Satre R. 0. Williams & Co, 
 
 Wm. J. Schieffelin Schieffelin & Co. 
 
 GusTAV H. Schwab Oelrichs & Co. 
 
 Henry R. Towne President Yale & Towne Mfg. Co. 
 
 George Fred'k Vietor i. . .' Fred'k Vietor & Achelis 
 
 GusTAv ViNTSCHGER President Markt & Co., Ltd. 
 
 Silas D. Webb President China & Japan Trading Co. 
 
 Clarence Whitman Clarence Whitman & Co. 
 
 F. W. Wool worth President Guardian Trust Co. 
 
Committee on Pollution of State Waters 
 
 Edward Hatch, Jr., Chairman 
 J. PiERPONT Morgan John Y. Culver, C. E. 
 
 Albert Vandir Veer, M. D. Daniel D. Jackson 
 
/^UR Committee on Pollution of State Waters, in 
 the Report by Dr. Daniel D. Jackson, entitled 
 Pollution of New York Harbor as a Menace to Health 
 by the Dissemination of Intestinal Diseases Through 
 the Agency of the "Common House Fly," published 
 by the Association, directed attention to the effect 
 upon the public health, particularly in the matter of 
 intestinal diseases, due to the accumulation of human 
 excreta and similar substances upon the City's water- 
 front. In the article " Typhoid Fever— The Story of 
 the Fly That Doesn't Wipe Its Feet."— Dr. Woods 
 Hutchinson, the author, shows that polluted streams, 
 poisoned oysters fattened in such waters, and the 
 common house fly cause and spread Typhoid. 
 
 In the pursuit of its campaign of education and 
 advocacy of the adoption of modern sanitary methods 
 for the disposal of sewage, the Committee on Pollu- 
 tion of State Waters reprints the following Article ; 
 "The Pest At Our Gates," by Poultney Bigelow, 
 M. A., F. R. G. S., which is a strong indictment of 
 the practice of polluting the principal rivers and har- 
 bors throughout the United States. The article gives 
 statistics as to the conditions existing in the different 
 sections of the country and the loss, in health and in 
 money, resulting from Typhoid. 
 
 Mr. Bigelow holds that modern science through 
 its improved methods of sewage disposal has ad- 
 vanced far enough to make the pollution of streams 
 entirely unnecessary. 
 
The Pest At Our Gates 
 
 BY POULTNEY BIGELOW, M.A., F.R.G.S. 
 
 Author of ^^The Gtrtnan Ejnperor and His Neighbors^^ ^^W/iite Man's AJrica^" etc^ 
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. — Typhoid detnands a human sacrir- 
 ■fice of forty-live thousand lives a year in this country alone. Of 
 those stricken thousands many Jiave been near and dear to readers 
 of this article. Annually half a million Americans are attacked 
 by this criminal, because entirely preventable , pest. Three fifths 
 of them a/re wage earners. At $1.50 a day this means an annual 
 loss of $18,000,000 in time during sickness. 
 
 Why and where does this ravaging pestilence breed? Our 
 greatest harbors and stateliest rivers to-day are Ulth-ridden beds 
 of pollution. Forty-five million persons are directly exposed. It 
 amounts to a national scandal. 
 
 Mr. Bigelow, in an impartial, painstaking investigation, has 
 found conditions even worse in rural America than in the cities. 
 But there is disgrace enough for all. His report is at once a 
 warning and an indictment that applies to every section and city 
 of the land. 
 
 OUR medical scientists are piling up tome upon tome ex- 
 plaining the nature of many newly invented diseases; 
 the colleges are turning out a stream of diplomated dis- 
 ciples of ^sculapius all professing a knowledge of healing drugs ; 
 every state and county supports a staff of officials nominally for 
 the benefit of public health — we are choking with vital statistics 
 and dying for lack of common sense. 
 
 The word pest I use because it covers roughly the several 
 forms of epidemic which spring from dirty habits, from over- 
 crowding, from municipal neglect — in short, from human, and 
 therefore preventable, causes. 
 
 7 
 
For' instance, the Commissioner of Health in Albany (Df. 
 Eugene Porter) in his report for 1907 tells us that in New York 
 state alone, 2,000 people die annually from typhoid out of 20,000 
 who are attacked by this filth disease. "Allowing," he says, "each 
 life to be worth $3,000, a low estimate — as the young and vigor- 
 ous are most often victims — and estimating that 15,000 of the 
 20,000 cases were men and were kept from labor 40 days, and 
 putting the value of a day's work at $1.50, the total pecuniary 
 loss to the state amounts to $7,000,000." 
 
 Let us look at ourselves as we really are. Let us stop brag- 
 ging of our wonderful progress 1 for in matters of public sanita- 
 tion we are a whole generation behind Germany and England. 
 Japan is many centuries more civilized than we, and yet we send 
 to her cleanly people dozens of meddlesome missionaries who are 
 sadly needed at home if only to teach us the rudiments of public 
 health ; or if missionaries must go abroad then, in the name of 
 decency, let them invade Russia, where priests still fight disease 
 with bell and book rather than with soap and scrubbing brush. 
 
 The wonder of our modern age is that with a host of doctors 
 in every city, epidemics burst forth under their very noses and we 
 search in vain for record of medical foresight in preventing these 
 costly calamities. 
 
 The larger our rivers, the greater the sewers we make of 
 them, spreading the pest from one town to another. Our lakes 
 and our harbors we make cesspools. The result? Let us inquire 
 into the penalty we pay — starting with New York, digressing into 
 New England, sweeping westward to the great Mississippi valley 
 and the Far West, and returning to the southland, observing how 
 the various parts of the country compare in this signing of whole- 
 sale death warrants. 
 
 Only a few weeks ago my neighboring city of Kingston-on- 
 the-Hudson burst forth with a first-class epidemic — a filth disease. 
 This time it was smallpox. This epidemic cost the city thousands 
 of dollars in medical fees, to say nothing of the loss through panic 
 among those who ordinarily went there for shopping. Even little 
 
 8 ■ 
 
Malden-on-Hudson felt the'iscare to such an extent that one of 
 our school teachers had to be released for two weeks because, 
 forsooth, her home was in Kingston. 
 
 THE HUDSON A PEST STREAM 
 
 Am I an alarmist? Nothing is further from my mind. 
 Glance through the papers for the past few months. Let me run 
 over a few items which I have culled at random. 
 
 Peekskill on the Hudson had a typhoid epidemic reported in 
 the New York Times of February, 1908 — cause, tainted water 
 supply. 
 
 On February 12th of this year the New York State Depart- 
 ment of Public Works protested that the Erie Canal had become 
 a sewer and source of typhoid from the habit of using it as dump- 
 ing ground for local garbage. The Erie Canal is 363 miles long. 
 
 The Oswego Times of November 20, 1907, quotes Professor 
 Ogden of Cornell University as saying before the Oswego County 
 Medical Society that typhoid from the tainted water was ab- 
 normally prevalent. He demonstrated this by noting that in 1895 
 the typhoid death rate was only 20 per 100,000, but immediately 
 afterwards the sewage of the city of Fulton was turned into the 
 Oswego River and the death rate from typhoid then rose rapidly 
 until in 1905 it was 90 in the 100,000. 
 
 Here is the water drunk by Oswego, described by the offi- 
 cial lock-tender (Oswego Times, March 9, 1908) : "Rotten fish, 
 snakes, dead dogs, cats, hens, rats, et cetera, are seen nearly every 
 day. Mornings the lock is half full of filth !" 
 
 Catskill, on the Hudson, only twelve miles from where I am 
 writing, is in chronic state of typhoid. On March 1, 1908, the 
 New York Herald reported "20 deaths within the last three days !" 
 And yet this is a noted health resort. The sewage of this little 
 town of only 5,000 people passes into the Catskill Creek, and 
 here it mingles with the water which is drawn for drinking pur- 
 poses from the already tainted Hudson. On this subject Dr. 
 Pease, of the New York State Hygienic Laboratory, explained to 
 
 9 
 
me in April of this year, that the pipe which draws Hudson River 
 water for drinking purposes at Catskill ends a little above the 
 Catskill Creek. The creek water, containing the town sewage is 
 supposed to pass off down stream, but those who built this sewer 
 apparently ignored the fact that the Hudson is a tidal fjord and 
 not a river like the Ohio or Mississippi. Consequently the sewage 
 from the creek declines to move on, but oscillates up and down 
 across the intake of the alleged clean water pipe. 
 
 Catskill is one of many Hudson River towns which are be- 
 coming centers of pest for the community. With it must be 
 bracketed Hudson, Albany, Troy, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, 
 Kingston, every town on the river which either sewers into the 
 river, drinks river water, or water from tainted streams; and 
 Professor Mason, the eminent water expert of the Troy Poly- 
 technic Institute, in a lecture given December 4, 1907, said that 
 the water supply of Niagara Falls City was merely the sewage of 
 Buffalo diluted to some extent. The State Board of Health, re- 
 ferring to Buffalo, stated that it had a higher death rate from 
 typhoid than any other city of the state, 135 per 100,000, whereas 
 the average is 20, and whereas in parts of Europe it is as low 
 as 4 per 100,000 ! 
 
 THE INDICTMENT OF A NATION 
 
 But New York is not the only nor the worst offender. If it 
 were there would be no use citing it. It is not the unusual that 
 proves anything; it is the usual, and New York City and State 
 are perhaps better than the usual run of things in America. That 
 is a terrible indictment of a nation, but let us see whether it is 
 not justified. 
 
 Some years ago in New England the United States Geologi- 
 cal Survey reported that the Blackstone River was the most pol- 
 luted river in New England; "its name has become synonymous 
 with filth." Even the headwaters were filthy from the start and 
 it was filthy to its mouth. Worcester, Massachusetts, suffered 
 for that. The Merrimac and its tributaries was polluted by many 
 
 10 
 
towns, bearing disease as gifts to Manv:hester, Lowell, and Law- 
 rence. The Charles was not above reproach and Boston and 
 Cambridge suffered accordingly. 
 
 The Connecticut and the Housatonic had unsavory reputa- 
 tions, but the first prize went to the Park River, a small stream 
 draining a part of Hartford and all of New Britain. At times 
 during the summer this was found by the Connecticut State 
 Board of Health to be four fifths sewage ! Fortunately New Eng- 
 land has begun to change all this, but the work is still far from 
 complete. 
 
 As you go on down the coast there is no river that can shake 
 at the Hudson the better-than-thou finger of scorn. Everyone 
 knows that the Passaic River, into which the New Jersey city of 
 that name and Paterson pour their sewage in huge quantities, can 
 be smelled at Newark blocks away from its banks. The Hacken- 
 sack is Httle better. 
 
 If you will look at a map and a gazetteer you will find that the 
 lordly Delaware above Trenton has thirty-seven cities with popu- 
 lations of from 1,000 to 35,000. They each send sewage into the 
 river, after drinking the sewage that comes to them, but all— 
 245 miles of them — pass it down to Trenton which drinks of it. 
 One city, the largest, is only sixty-five miles above Trenton. And 
 practically all that has been printed on this menacing condition 
 is contained in a short report by Allen Hazen which shows be- 
 yond all controversy that the water is frightfully dangerous to 
 drink. Trenton is to-day still "considering'' the question. The 
 New York Herald of December 12, 1907, published the epidemic 
 of typhoid at Trenton. There were 95 cases in December. The 
 whole valley of the Delaware was also attacked, and from the 
 same cause. Each town was pouring its sewage into the same 
 stream for the next town to drink. 
 
 Philadelphia boasts of two of the dirtiest rivers in the United 
 States — the Delaware and the Schuylkill. The Delaware reaches 
 the city with all those tokens of brotherly love given by the cities 
 
 11 
 
higher up, including Trenton. As for the Schuylkill it is even 
 worse, except that it is smaller. 
 
 THE PLACID, PERILOUS POTOMAC 
 
 Communities aggregating 45,000 population pollute the Po- 
 tomac within 176 miles of where the national capital gets its 
 drinking water. The experience of Washington has been unique.- 
 Aroused by an epidemic bequeathed to it by the victims up the 
 river, the city built a huge filtration plant. Typhoid dropped, but 
 only to rise again. Washington learned that it must guard milk, 
 oysters, ice, and flies, as well as water. But before the campaign 
 began the city stood third on the bad list. 
 
 Coming back to Pennsylvania, Dr. Jonathan M. Wainwright, 
 the head of the Moses Taylor Hospital at Scranton, addressed 
 the New York Academy of Medicine on March 7, 1908, and 
 strongly advocated municipal ownership of water supplies. He 
 stated that the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers were now 
 thoroughly tainted sources of water supply, and yet they were 
 in use and producing typhoid epidemics at many points. In De- 
 cember of 1906 and in January and February of 1907 there were 
 1,150 cases of typhoid in Scranton — that is to say, one out of 
 every 100 had this filth disease. 
 
 MILLIONS SPENT FIGHTING THE SCOURGE 
 
 In Pittsburg the epidemic of typhoid reported in the papers 
 for December 29, 1907, was so great that it seriously affected the 
 labor market, and Dr. Dixon, the Pennsylvania State Superinten- 
 dent of Health, was quoted in the papers of February 12, 1908, 
 as saying that typhoid alone cost that one state thirteen million 
 dollars in one year alone. 
 
 Pittsburg gets its drinking water from two rivers that con- 
 verge on it — ^the Alleghany and the Monongahela. Into the 
 Alleghany 53 cities of 1,000 to 25,000 population pour sewage 
 for 283 miles. Oil City sewage reaches Pittsburg in fifteen 
 hours. On the Monongahela 33 cities including McKeesport, 
 Homestead, and Braddock, pour sewage into the river. Pittsburg 
 
 12 
 
then drinks it — with the result that the Dispatch recently esti- 
 mated that the cost of typhoid and its treatment in three years in 
 Pittsburg was $3,335,000. The city has been awakened to this 
 preventable loss and now is putting in filters which will be in 
 operation for the whole city by next fall. But the sewage will 
 come down yet, even if purified from the drinking water. 
 
 On the Ohio River, popularly known as a thousand miles 
 of typhoid, Cincinnati is better off than Pittsburg because in 
 time rivers purify themselves to a certain extent. The trouble is 
 that Nature is not given this chance. The rate is high in Cincin- 
 nati because the water has been known to be so dirty that some 
 under-water plants couldn't grow in it for lack of light ! 
 
 The heritage of Pittsburg and Cincinnati is that of Louis- 
 ville — such an inheritance as puts it fourth on the list. Some four 
 and a half million people send sewage to Louisville. Frankfort, 
 on the Kentucky River that empties into the Ohio just above 
 Louisville is only a few miles from the latter city. There are 
 other cities, also, on both sides of the Ohio. And so it goes. 
 
 Next comes the Illinois River emptying into the Ohio, and 
 if we hark back on this we come to the Desplaines, then to the 
 Chicago Drainage Canal, and then to 2,000,000 people pouring 
 sewage into it. Down it goes, "purified" by being mixed with 
 water from Lake Michigan pumped in for the purpose. That 
 lake water, too, may be polluted. At any rate it performs the 
 valuable service of hastening an otherwise slow stream on its way 
 of destruction. At last the Ohio swings into the Mississippi 
 itself. The main river has brought down the pollution of Min- 
 neapohs and St. Paul, and a score of other large cities. The 
 Missouri has brought down the sewage of a million and a half 
 other people. Altogether some ten million people have combined 
 their sewage at this one point. Then St. Louis drinks it — St. 
 Louis whose death rate due to typhoid, from a fair average dur- 
 ing the five years before the drainage canal was opened, rose 
 seventy-three per cent, during the five years afterward. The 
 
 13 
 
canal was opened in 1900. In 1906 the Supreme Court dismissed 
 St. Louis's case against it. 
 
 On down the river it goes, St. Louis doing as it has been 
 done by and giving its patrimony of filth to the cities below — 
 Memphis ranking fourteenth and New Orleans fifth. Saved, 
 so far as good luck rather than good management is concerned, 
 by the self-purification of the river — that ancient, overrated sani- 
 tary doctrine — these cities go calmly on with the pest at their 
 gates unchecked. 
 
 Or suppose we take the lake cities, such as we have taken in 
 Buffalo. Cleveland pours its sewage into Lake Erie and then 
 goes out a few miles farther and brings back water to drink. 
 Recently it had to go out even farther, as Chicago has had to do 
 in Lake Michigan. 
 
 As a general proposition it may be laid down that the Far 
 Western rivers are not quite so badly polluted as the Eastern. 
 Yet in the larger cities this is not true and typhoid rages in spite 
 of the newness of the country. Thus Los Angeles ranked 
 eleventh on the bad list, San Francisco eighteenth and Denver 
 tenth — the latter city having to-day learned the need of filtration. 
 
 THE TYPHOID-RIDDEN SOUTH 
 
 The South is especially scourged with typhoid. Memphis, 
 New Orleans, Washington, and Baltimore all rank high in the 
 list. Charleston has the exceptionally high rate, according to a 
 census report covering five years, 84 in every 100,000; Atlanta 
 has 69, and Mobile 68. The palm goes to Lynchburg, Va., with 
 99 and Petersburg is next with 92. Wheeling, W. Va., has a rate 
 of 82. Other American cities with more than double the normal 
 typhoid death rate are Jacksonville, Raleigh, Richmond, San An- 
 tonio, Savannah, and Wilmington. 
 
 PERILS THAT LURK IN ICE 
 
 But the peril of drinking-water is not the only cause of this 
 great filth disease. There are other almost as great factors. 
 Take the matter of ice, for instance. On February 4, 1908, 
 
 14 
 
Health Officer Sharkey is reported in the Albany, New York, 
 Times-Union as stating that the number of typhoid cases in 
 Rensselaer, near Albany, was unprecedented — and no wonder, for 
 Albany and Troy both gather ice that is frozen sewage. 
 
 The typhoid pest approaches under any disguise which con- 
 ceals filth — water, milk, house flies, and ice being to-flay the most 
 tangible. The pious people of the Middle Ages who burned at the 
 stake and otherwise lynched men suspected of spreading pest 
 germs differed but slightly from ourselves, for we fly from com- 
 mon sense to specious drugs and medical recipes for relief, shut- 
 ting our eyes to the plain teachings of God in a world of natural 
 wonders. We Americans are the only people on the face of the 
 earth who persistently make ice an article of daily diet. So 
 rooted is this pernicious habit that even our laborers at Panama 
 are provided with it. The natives of hot countries need no ice. 
 In the various British and Dutch colonies of the tropical Indies — 
 even Borneo — I found no demand for ice, and certainly so far 
 as relative physical health is concerned it is not we ice eaters who 
 have ground for boasting. 
 
 The first thing noted by a foreigner to our shores is the bell- 
 boy with his tinkling load, running from room to room distribut- 
 ing little cargoes of indigestion under the euphemistic name of 
 ice pitcher. According to the U. S. Geological Survey report 
 of 1902 (on Sewage Pollution) the Hudson River ice crop was 
 then between four and five millions of tons, more than enough to 
 provide one ton apiece for each New Yorker and plenty to spare. 
 
 This ice comes, practically all, from the neighborhood of 
 sewers anywhere between Poughkeepsie and Troy. The report 
 just quoted regards the Hudson River ice crop as worth between 
 seven and eight millions of dollars, according to the harvest — an 
 amount of money that indicates roughly the interest in this matter 
 taken by the owners of ice houses who one day clamor against 
 the sewers and the next assure the public that their particular 
 ice is purity itself. 
 
 1 K 
 
Time was, and medical men were not wanting to support 
 this mad theory, when the public believed that freezing purified 
 water. This comfort of the filthy has been, thank God! com- 
 pletely exploded by patient laboratory experiments. At the office 
 of Mr. Edward Hatch, Jr., chairman of the New York Mer- 
 chants' Association Committee on River Pollution, you may see 
 a shelf full of massive jars, containing the product of ice blocks 
 cut by our great ice companies from the besewaged waters near 
 Catskill, Rondout, Hudson, and Albany, on the upper Hudson. 
 These jars suggest aquariums so rich are they in deadly living 
 organisms. 
 
 THE DEADLY HOUSE FLY 
 
 If you should plot out on a city map the location of the 
 deaths from typhoid and intestinal diseases you would find that 
 the great majority lie along the water fronts. Or if you should 
 express it by means of a curve you would find that the greatest 
 increase falls at the same time that the apparently harmless house 
 fly is most prevalent. There is a world of meaning in these co- 
 incidences. Latterly at the laboratory of the Aquarium in New 
 York, a series of experiments have been conducted by competent 
 independent scientists whose conclusions are of the greatest im- 
 portance to such as love New York and desire her to rank once 
 more with civilized cities. Dr. Daniel D. Jackson conducted the 
 experiments, assisted by a competent staff and backed by the 
 aforesaid River Pollution Committee composed of J. Pierpont 
 Morgan, Albert Vander Veer, John Y. Cuyler, and Edward 
 Hatch, Jr., ably supported by C. H. Townsend, Director of the 
 New York Aquarium. It is not much to say that this committee 
 of unsalaried but public-spirited men have done more for the pub- 
 lic good in their short term of activity than the successive legis- 
 latures at Albany since the building of the Erie Canal. This 
 report demonstrates that New York is ringed round with typhoid 
 — that this pest is carried by the feet of house flies on to the stalls 
 in the water-side markets; that it enters the homes near the 
 
 16 
 
water front and leaves its imprint in a disease which, if you sur- 
 vive it, means the loss of 40 days; and only one in ten does 
 survive. 
 
 What to do ? Shall we go out with nets and chase the house 
 fly! Shall we imitate Colonel Gorgas at Panama and coop our 
 people behind screens for fear of insect bites! The remedy is 
 simple. Leave the flies alone — merely change their diet. Look to 
 the source of their poison — clean up the water fronts. New York 
 with its adjoining boroughs represents some 10,000,000 of people, 
 all using this Hudson River as its cloaca maxima, or supreme 
 sewer. 
 
 There is still another peril in this river pollution. Let me 
 illustrate. One fine August day in 1896, it was but a few weeks 
 after returning from a trip through South Africa, I started from 
 the float of the New York Canoe Club at Bensonhurst, near 
 Coney Island, and paddled up the Hudson — curious to study the 
 metropolitan water-side at close range. 
 
 I paid heavily for my curiosity — the stench was heavy along 
 the pier heads, and the waters of the bay and river were speckled 
 with dead fish, to say nothing of slimy stuff which clung to the 
 sides of my little boat. At starting I was in excellent health, but 
 I reached the Ardsley Club, near Dobbs Ferry, so weak that I 
 had to be helped ashore, and for six weeks I lay a victim of the 
 fever that floated on the waters I had just traversed. 
 
 The Hudson is a stream once famous for its fisheries — noble 
 sporting fish of all kinds, and oysters, world famous. My father 
 tells me of shad so abundant near where I am writing that they 
 were sold by the hundred at five cents apiece, where now the 
 price is fifty — and mighty poor stuff at that. 
 
 THE FISH AND OYSTER MENACE 
 
 I talk to many fishermen hereabouts and their life is daily 
 losing its charm. They spread clean nets which when hauled in 
 are thick with slime and rubbish. The Government maintains 
 costly fishery bureaus and admirably equipped hatcheries; mil- 
 
 17 
 
lions of fish are annually started into life along our waterways, 
 but they are mostly poisoned by the sewage from the big towns, 
 the waste from factories, or the sawdust that chokes the Adiron- 
 dack streams, to say nothing of the pulp mill sludge. 
 
 New York has a shell fish industry worth $10,000,000 a year, 
 and now our Government has been forced by popular outcry to 
 warn the public against our home-grown oysters and clams. Dr. 
 Ernest Lederle, former President of the New York Board of 
 Health, was induced to undertake a scientific study of oysters 
 gathered around Manhattan in December, 1907, and as a result 
 It was demonstrated that fifty-five per cent, of those selected 
 (oysters and clams in the New York market) were tainted 
 
 But, you say, what is to become of the sewage if we don't 
 pour it into the rivers and harbors ? 
 
 WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? 
 
 Nature has generously answered this question by placing 
 within easy reach of New York, for example, large tracts of 
 sandy soil sadly in need of fertilizing, both in New Jersey and 
 on Long Island. We need therefore but to gather our sewage in 
 tanks at different points on the outskirts of the borough and 
 thence pump it out upon farms arranged with a view to this irri- 
 gation and owned or controlled by the city. This is done else- 
 where successfully. 
 
 Berlin had to face this problem of sewage disposal in 1871, 
 when she suddenly became capital of an empire. She permits no 
 dirt to go into the river that flows through her walls, but carefully 
 gathers it at convenient points and pumps it out upon farms in 
 the suburbs. And now, after nearly 30 years of trial, she is satis- 
 fied with the results. 
 
 When the Berlin plan of sewage disposal was first inaugurat- 
 ed there was much outcry from those who feared an epidemic, but 
 now the people living in the neighborhood have assured them- 
 selves not only that no harm arises to the general health, but on 
 
 18 
 
the contrary that the waters in the neighborhood are good to 
 drink and the vegetables there raised are of choicest quaHty. 
 
 London was plagued with a dirty Thames up to within a 
 very few years ; and the problem seemed insurmountable ; but by 
 patiently studying the subject and eliminating politics, the sewage 
 of London is now treated in a manner that permits it to be passed 
 off at Barking without offensive odor or injury to the fish. In 
 addition to this London and many other towns of England main- 
 tain farms where some, if not all, of the sewage is turned back to 
 the soil where it belongs. But London has by no means the nat- 
 ural facilities enjoyed by New York, for hers is a relatively damp 
 climate and there is but little sandy soil at convenient distance. 
 The Thames is now clean below London Bridge, and as for the 
 water up-stream it is maintained as a National Park, as should 
 be the whole watershed of the Hudson. 
 
 Paris has also latterly been compelled by considerations of 
 public health to rigidly watch all streams leading into the upper 
 Seine and other sources of drinking-water ; and as for her sewage 
 she also has farmlands which she irrigates in this economical 
 manner, and the eminent Colonel George E. Waring, the first 
 who ever cleaned New York streets, drank of the water in the 
 Paris irrigating ditches and pronounced it good. 
 
 In short, without wearying the reader with details, let us 
 take to heart the broad and mortifying fact that New York stands 
 alone of great civilized centers in the extent to which she per- 
 mits her waters to be polluted. Our law to-day forbids New 
 York from pouring raw sewage into the harbor, but that law is a 
 dead letter. The law also forbids the so-called Great Trunk 
 Sewer which to-day proposes to still further filthen our harbor by 
 pouring out under Robin's Reef Light the accumulations all the 
 way from Paterson through Newark and the Oranges ! It makes 
 the nose ache to think of it ! 
 
 THE WAY OUT 
 
 Let our engineers then condemn for public purposes the 
 sandy soil that they need around New York and proceed to lay 
 
 19 
 
out sewage farms as the Germans have done at Berlin. Then, 
 those of us now Hving will see miracles — will see the typhoid 
 death rate decrease until we shall look back upon these pestifer- 
 ous times as we at school looked back upon the Dark Ages and 
 the great London plague. We shall find that the sewage farms 
 will not only pay for themselves, but take from us the whole cost 
 of cleaning the city into the bargain. Our water fronts will 
 once more become as clean as the Spree about Berlin, the Thames 
 at Windsor, or the Seine in the lovely suburbs of Paris. And 
 finally, when the ships that are to gather together in honor of the 
 discovery of the Hudson three hundred years ago, shall churn up 
 the sewage and scatter disease among our guests as they pass 
 /hrough the Highlands, let us give them the joyful news that 
 although in 1909 they must still hold their noses on our noblest 
 river, their children will live to see a purified Hudson from the 
 Canadian border to Coney Island — a blessing to millions of babes 
 unborn and a tardy justice to a stream second to none in natural 
 beauty and commercial value. 
 
 20 
 
RA 431.B59 ""'""'""*''>"■"'"■•'' 
 III?™ ''^** ^' °"'' gates, 
 
 3 1924 003 475 021