Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-10-04
sEwAaE-PoIsoNED WATER.
Is Washington to Come to Poisoned
Drinking Water and Homes
Without Sunshinep

To the Editor of The Star.
1t is bad enough to build flats with the
apartments all on the north side and no raw
of sunshine in most of the rooms the year
round; and houses with little narrow courts
and foul air and no sunshine, when archi-
tects could avoid boxing people up In cellar
ike tombs by cutting off a corner here and
placing window or putting a little portico
to jut out into the space, or building the
house at right angles with the points of the
compass, thereby giving air and sunshine to
every room In the house. But even worse
than building houses like the Black Hole of
Calcutta is poisoning the drinking water
Long ago in war savages poisoned the
springs where the enemy drank. In modern
times that mode of warfare has been stop
ped as too barbarous for the age. But what
can we think of all the villages and cities
and towns that fiendishly poison the drink
ing water of every other city or town stu
ated on the same river or stream by delib-
erately and diabolically pouring into that
stream their filthy sewage accumulation
knowing that human beings must drink it +?
The only excuse for such deyilishness is that
sewage must go somewhere.
Why does not some multi-millionaire phiI-
anthropist like Mr.. Carnegie or Mr. Rookie
Teller offer one hundred prizes of hundred
thousand dollars each to the inventors of
the world for the best and most practical
and most inexpensive invention for odorless
incinerating and evaporating of sewage by
Its simultaneous reduction to gas and ashes
and in the process creating steam enough to
heat the houses in winter or refrigerate
them in summer through system of pipes !?
They manage the heating in the west by
building airy, sunshiny residences (not fats
along street, and have a central heating
plant that pipes hot water to each house.
or, like the Congressional Library here
sends hot air through pipes. Let the men
who consider 1t a disgrace to die rich offer
these prizes to the worlds brilliant but poor
Inventors, prizes of one hundred thousand
dollars each to go to the hundred most suc-
cessful competitors in lieu of the patent
right, and the patent to go to the United
States government for the use, free, of cities
and towns to plan reduction plants. With
such a prize before them inventors could af-
ford to use their time in such a cause
When the sewage Is disposed Of the sources
of water supply will not be polluted, the
process of reduction of the sewage will
evolve enough heat to warm peoples houses,
and contractors can be induced to build the
houses at an angle to get air and sunshine.
Go to any of the seashore resorts and see
the vile cesspools all along the beach in
front of the rich mans residence, as well
as the poor mans cottage, and in the SUBJ
urbs observe the sewer farms that smell to
heaven near every mansion as well as hut,
and the CRYING need Of sewage evaporation
and incarceration is apparent at once.
If some rich man would only generously
furnish the money the inventors would glad
~ get to work on the problem, and maybe
II we could get pure drinking water and
pure air we could hope sometime to get pure
food also, and we could hope to live out our
little span of life without typhoid and tuber-
culosis and so many other useless and pairI-
ful diseases, and maybe be q little mite
happy part of the time, instead of using all
cur energies all the time to fight or disease
q. M. 8.