The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-03
WASTE BY DRAINAGE.

without watersheds, without rivers, without
seas, agriculture, stock culture, commerce,
manufactures would be impossible. If,
miraculously, great city should arise, only
miracle could save its population from per-
ishing in a week by the poison of the filth
and efiuvia generated upon the riverless,
drainless site. But while drainage does SO
much for the existence and the comfort of
men, it is also a fearful waster of their sub
stance and if one of the greatest of actual
blessings, it is also one of the greatest of
| potential curses, to the human race.
About one-sixth of the inhabitants of the
civilized world, it may be reasonably esti-
mated, are congregated in cities. Like the
encampments of a conquering army, these
cities Give off the country" 1t follows that
they devour annually one-sixth of all the
food produced from fields, gardens, orchards,
pastures-one-sixth, that is to say, of the
worlds annual supply, yielded by the soil, of
grain, vegetables, fruits, beef, pork, mutton
and other food products. Now none of this
consumption is returned in kind; and as yet
SO inconsiderable portion is returned or re-
tanned in the shape of elements of fertility
that it may be assumed without hazard to the
argument that the whole of it is lost.
And how is IT lost? 1t Is disciruryea
and is washed thence into the ocean
Thus each year one-sixth of the earth's nu-
tritive yield is poured into that
mighty reservoir, that cloaca marinsa of all
the cities and all the nations of the globe.
1t is clear that if such drain as this shall
continue, the ultimate exhaustion of the food
capacity of the soil will be only question of
tine, and not of an intellectually long time.
There will be no need Of another deluge to
destroy the doomed inhabitants of the earth;
the ocean, without leaving its fathomless bed,
will perform the same Office by sucking in
their substance, from year to year, until the
last man, as lean as famine and as cadaverous
as the plague, shall gaze into vacancy, with
eyes of infinite hunger, from an herbless rock,
fit type of the universal sterility.
But why is it lost? Here a sufficient an
swer is not so easy; is, indeed, beyond concep-
ton. For the loss is not unavoidable. All
those elements of food production that are
now drained into the ocean may be restored
to the soil from which they were taken.
Consumption does not destroy it only trans
mutes. Waste is never necessary. But il
will 60 on at frightful rate, nevertheless,
until in the great centers of population men
shall wildly realize the necessity of arresting
it in order to maintain the earth's fertility.
They must initiate the economy of nature
which permits nothing, not even the foulest |
and most unpromising materials, to be |
wasted, If they would permanently sustain q |
prosperous and progressive civilization by |
appropriating the bounties of nature. And |
gradually, it would seem, the civilized world |
is waking to this necessity. In Paris and in
London ingenuity and enterprise are more
and more directed to the invention of methods |
for utilizing every species of refuse; or, rather,
for putting an end to refuse altogether by |
preventing anything from going to waste.
The English are beginning to rescue from the
ocean the sewage of London and to apply it
to the fertilization of the surrounding lands,
whose productiveness it redoubles. The
papers of New York have commenced to agi-
tate the practicability of turning to like ac-
count the sewage of that city. The New York
Tribune, in this connection, says: "With
common engineering skill, our sewers could
be emptied into one main channel or second
airy reservoir, whence, by such pipes as con-
duct the Croton, transfer could be made
to the Jersey shore; thence passing
down the west side of the Kill-von- Kun
a few miles, the thirsty sands of South
Jersey viii be reached. We are apt to think
our supply of sewerage inexhaustible, but
that region would absorb il all There is not
a State in the Union but would contribute
while those States richest in
humus and vegetable mold will add to the
rich deposits and this not at ftful periods
but through every day of the year and the
stream would rival the fertile Nile which
also gathers tribute from a vast interior.
What Egypt has been and is South Jersey by
his means may become, and continue to be,
80 long as New York stands, and at no
greater investment than such as has estab-
ished a single and even inferior line of
transit. Beside South Jersey, the vast bar
en plains of Long Island can be made to
iyal the Scioto, Wabash, or Mississippi
bottoms"
But there is very large part of the So
allied waste matter of cities which does not
BASS off through sewers, or which could be
aved much more cheaply than by drawing it
'ut of those receptaeles. OF such a character
S the ofal of the butcheries, which in this
ity is emptied directly into the river. And
lere, moreover, the material commonly known
S sewage is not drained out by sewers. 1t is
emoved by costly system of carriage Now
Vhy should not this system of overground re-
noval be extended SO as to give the poor pine
lnds in the vicinity of the city along the
ackson Railroad, or the Lake and Sound
casts, the benefit of this extremely fertiliz-
ng material?
We know the answer that is ready. Freight I
J too high; there are no railroad, steamboat
T sailboat accommodations sufficient for the ,