Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1863-03-27
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Waste of Cities.

Paris throws five millions year int,
the sea-and this without metaphor
How and in what manner ? Day and
night. With what object Without
any object. With what thought? With
out thinking of it. For what return
For nothing. BY means of what organ
BY means of intestine. What is its in.
tes'ine? Its sewer.
Five millions is the most moderate Of
the approximate figures which the esti-
mates Of special science give.
Science, after long experiment, and
most carful tests, SHOVE, that the most
fertilizing ard the most effective OF ma
nures is that of man. The Chinese, we
must say to our shame, knew it before
us. No Chinese peasant, Eckeberg tells
us, ever goes TO the city without carry
ing back, at the two ends of his bamboo
two buckets Of what we call filth. Thanks
TO human fertilization the earth in China
is still as young as in the days Of Abra-
ham. Chinese wheat yields a hundred
aud twenty fold. There is no guano
comparable in fertility TO the deritus Of
capital. A great city is the most pow
erful of stercorares. To employ the
city TO enrich the plain would be sure
success. flour gold is filth, on the other
hahd our filth is gold.
What is done with this fth-gold
1t is swept out into the abyss.
We fit our conveys of ships, at great
expense, to gather up at the south pole
the droppings Of petrels and penguins.
and the incalculable element Of wealth
which we have under our own hand we
send to the sea. A the human ard an.
imal manure which the world loses, re.
stored TO the land instead Of being thrown
into the water, would suffice to nourish
the world.
Those heaps of garbage at the corners
of the stone blocks, these tumbrils of
mire jolting through the street at night,
those horrid scavengers' carts, these fetid
streams of subterranean slime which the
pavement hides from you, do you know
what all this is !? 1t is the Towering
meadow, it is the green grass, it is majo- |
ram and thyme and sage, it is game, it is
cattle, it is the satisfied low of huge oxen
at evening, it is pertumed hay, it is gold
en- corn, it is bread on the table, it is the
warm blood in your veins, il is health, it
is joy, it is life. Thus wills that mystic
rious creation which IS transformation |
upon earth and TRANSPORTATION in heaven.
Put that into the great crucible your
abundance shall spring from it. The nu-
triton of the plains makes the uourish-
ment of men.
You have the power to throw away
this wealth and to think me ridiculous
into the bargain. That will cap the eli
max of your ignorance.
Statistics show that France Il lone makes
a liquidation of $l00,000,O00 every year
into the Atlantic from the mouths of her
rivers. Mark this with that sum you
might pay quarter of the expenses oil
the government. The cleverness of man
is such that he prefers to throw this hun
dred millions into the gutter. It is the
very substance of the people which is
carried away, here drop by drop, there
in floods, by the wretched vomiting Of the
sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic
collection of our rivers into the ocean,
From this two results the land is i'm
,overished and the water infected. Hun
ger arising from the furrow and disease
rom the river.-VIcToR HUGO.