River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-08-03

clapped him into prison for life. And 81
when, during the Spanish-American war,
some twenty-five hundred of the boys
in khaki were needlessIy slaughtered,
many of them by typhoid, we denounced 81
In scathing terms those officials whose
carelessness and incompetency caused
the tragedy. But we hear with abso-
Lutte Indifference the statement that
yearly the pollution of our water q
sources needlessIy causes more than
$4,000 typhoid illnesses and $1,000
deaths. We pay no heed to the fact 81
that year after year in the United
States seven times as many people are
needlessly i'll of typhoid fever as there
were soldiers wounded In the battle of &
Gettysburg, and three times as many
persons needlessly die from typhoid
fever as met death in that tragic strug-
gle.
i is the old, old story Of the mote -
and the beam. We do not see the enor-
nifty Of this terrible wrong because we
ars ourselves the authors of it. We are just
as responsible for those 5000 yearly deaths
as our army officers were for the tragedies
In Sur Spanish war camps. And our motive
IS lust as mercenary was that of the physi-
clan who gave typhoid germs to gain a her
itage. For we, too are actuated by financial
reasons we are unwilling to pay the price
of water publication. So we continue to smite
the rock of a polluted water supply and there
gushes forth sewage. And when our children
ask for water we give them poison.
To be sutable-that is to be potable and
fit for domestic use-Water mus$ be practi-
cally free from pathogenc germs, color, sedi-
ment, odor, taste and turbidity. Hardness
makes laundering difficult. Iron spoils linen.
Carbonic-acid gas turns water pipes brown.
Algae make water taste bad Water supplies
wild who
some water" the term set forth in so many
water contracts, is then, wholly a relative
term. Really pure water is a rare thing be-
cause there hardly exists in nature water that
does not contain some foreign ingredients.
Not all of these are harmful however, so that
water that is fit to drink is as common as
really pure water is So that, generally
speaking, the question of good water supply
is merely question Of being willing to spend
the money necessary to obtain it. Hence
there ought to be no community in the United
States that does not have plentiful supply
of perfectly wholesome water
Anything but wholesome, however, is the
quality of the water that all too often we
actually get. DR.. F. w. Shumway, reporting
on water conditions in Michigan, says in part:
"Of the ninety-nine replies received, 70 per
cent reported the water as good, II per cent
as fair, and 10 per cent as of bad quality. .
in 40 per cent of these localities the public
water supplies are in danger of contamina-
ton" DR.. Q. o. Sutherland, discussing water
conditions in Wisconsin, says that in his state
nearly every stream used for any kind Of
supply is contaminated to some extent by
sewage" Health Commissioner G. A. Bading,
speaking of Milwaukee's water supply, says
that most of the citys water comes from Lake
Michigan but that there are still 5000 wells
n Of which
shown to be contaminated. Lake Michigan
is the source of water for many other towns
near it. One of the tributaries of Lake Michi-
gan is the Grand Calumet river. And here is
what Health Commissioners w. A. Evans, of
Chicago, has to say of the Grand Calumet:
1.-THE greater part of the sewage from the
business and residential districts (of Ham
mond Ind empties into the Grand Calumet,
which, as It flows through Hammond, is al
most unspeaxaby vile and putrescent. And
this stream empties into the lake only 5000
feet from the waterworks intake" DR.. Ed
ward Barlow. Analysing conditions in Illinois,
says that IAN examination of the untreated
lake water shows that unsatisfactory water is
frequently delivered az Evanston, Lake For
est, Glencoe, North Chicago Waukegan, Will
mette and Winnetka. And that the wa
ter supplies of all cities which use unfiltered
lake water are shown to be impure at times"
be taken as typical of the entire country
very considerable proportion of our drinking
water is absolutely unfit for human consump-
ton
Criminal negligence is the sole and only
cause of such a condition We dig cesspool
and a well in the same yard, and the contents
of the one seep through the earth into the
other. We place privy vault few feet from
our we'll hole and the rams wash the filth
from the former into the latter. We defile the
surface of the ground so that every rainstorm
sweeps the defilement into streams. Did
Won ever stand at the edge of a barnyard and
watch the rain falling from the roof of the
barn and pig pen to the manure piles below,
slowly accommodating in pools OF reddish black,
and draining away into a nearby stream, and
SO on into some ones drinking water? Or
have YOU ever stood by a river bank and
watched a sewer beching forth its infinitely
more harmful human corruption? The idea
OF drinking such nauseating stuff is not pleas
ant: but that is exactly what millions of US
are doing. Like the dog, we have turned to
our own vomit For, to quote Theodore Hor-
ton Chief Engineer of the New York State
Health Department I'VE pump filth into a
stream by one pipe and by another pipe we
pump 1t out again to drink"
Let me give you some concrete instances
of how our drinking water is def1led. In rural
New York inspectors from Ithaca found a
farmer who patterning after Hercules meth
cd of cleaning the Augean stables had built
his barn directly over large brook, which
carried away all his stable manure. This
brook was one of the sources of Ithacas wa
ter supply.
Along the valley of the susquehanna there