Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1911-08-04

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stood aghast, called the
physician a murderer, and
cIapped him into prison for life And
when, during the Spanish-American war,
some twenty five hundred of the boys
In khaki were needlessry slaughtered,
many of them by typhoid, we denounced
In scathing terms those officials whose n
careiessness and incompetency caused d
the tragedy. But hear with abso-
lutte indifference the statement that
yearly the pollution of our water
sources needlessly causes more than
$4,000 typhoid illnesses and $1,000 n
deaths. We pay no heed to the fact y
tnat year after year In the United n
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
TeVer as met death in that tragic strug-
gle
1t Is the old, old story of the mote ~
and the beam. We do not see the enor- :"
nifty of this terrible wrong because we
are ourselves the authors of it. We are lust
as responsible for those $1,000 yearly deaths
as our army officers were for the tragedies
In our Spanish war camps. And motive
is just as mercenary was that of the physi-
clan who gave typhoid germs to gain a her
1tage For we too, are actuated by financial
reasons: we are unwilling to pay the price
of water publication. So continue to smite
the rock of polluted water supply and there
gushes forth sewage. And when children
ask for water give them poison.
To be suitable-that is, to be potable and
DIT for domestic use-water must be practi-
cally free from pathogenic 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
differ widely human beings, Pure, whole
some water" the term set forth in so many
water contracts, is, then, wholly 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 rare. So that generally
speaking, the question of good water supply
fs merely a 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 a plentiful supply
of perfectly wholesome water
Anything but wholesome, however, is the
quality of the water that all too often
actually get. DR.. f. w. Shumway, reporting
on water conditions in Michigan, says in part:
'tOf the ninety-nine replies received 70 per
cent reported the water as good, II per cent
as fair, and 10 per cent Of bad quality.
The replies from 124 localities indicate that
I'm 43 per cent of these localities the public
water supplies in danger Of contamina-
tfon." 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 Mlwaukee's water supply, says
that most of the city's water comes from Lake
Michigan but that there are sttTl 5000 wells
IN existence. 81 per cent of which have been
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 Commissioner 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 unspeakably 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 AN examination of the untreated
lake water shows that unsatisfactory water is
frequently delivered at Evanston, Lake For
est, Glencoe North Chicago, Waukegan, Will
mette and Winnetka. And that the wa
ter supplies Of all cities which unf1ltered
lake water are shown to be impure at times.
And this condition of the water supply may
be taken as typical of the entire country.
very considerable proportion of our drinking
water is absolutely unfit for human consump-
ZION.
Criminal negligence is the sole and only
cause of such a condition. We dig cesspool
and a we'll in the same yard and the contents
0F the one seep through the earth into the
other We place privy vault few feet from
our well hole and the rams wash the NTH
from the former into the latter. We defile the
surface of the ground so that every transform
Sweeps the defilement into our streams. Dnd
Won ever stand at the edge of barnyard and
watch the rain falling from the roof or the
harm and pig pen to the manure piles below
slowly accommodating in pools OF reddish olack,
and draining away into nearby stream ana
so IN into some ones drinking water? Or
have YOU ever stood by a river bank and
watched q sewer belching forth its Infinitely
more harmful human corruption? The idea
nj 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
Wealth Department I'VE pump filth into a
stream by one pipe. and by another pipe we
puu,n If out again to drink"
Let me give you some concrete instances
of how our drinking water is dehled. In rurai