Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1911-08-03
ow grossly inconsistent

\N@ nesses and one death, we
stood aghast, called the
physician a murderer, and
clapped him into prison for life. And
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
in scathing terms those officials whose
carelessness and ineompetency caused
the tragedy. But we 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
deaths. We pay no heed to the fact
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
GettysDurg, and three times as many -
persons needlessly die from typhoid
FEVER as met death in that tragic strug.
gle.
II is the old, old story of the mote q,
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 5000 yearly deaths
as our army officers were for the tragedies
IN our Spanish war camps. And our motive
is just as mercenary as was that of the physi-
clan who gave typhoid germs to gain a her
ltage. 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 suitable-that is, to be potable and
mt for domestic use-water must be practi,
cally free from pathogenic germs, color, sedi-
ment, odor, taste and t%urbidity. Hardness
makes laundering difficult. Iron spoils linen.
Carbonic-ac1d gas turns water pipes brown.
Algae make water taste bad. Water supplies
differ widely as human beings, Pure, whole
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 rare. So that, generally
speaking, the question Of a good water supply
is 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 we
actually get. DR.. F. w. Shumway, reporting
on water conditions in Michigan, says in part:
or the ninety-nine replies received, 70 per
cent reported the water as good, II per cent
as fair, aud 10 per cent as of bad quality.
The replies from 1874 localities indicate that
in 43 per cent of these localities the public
water supplies are in danger of contamina-
ton DR.. @. 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 Milwaukees water supply, says
that most of the city's water comes from Lake
Michigan, but that there are still 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:
THE greater part of the sewage from the
business and residential districts (of Ham
mond, lnd) empties into the Grand Calumet,
which, as 1t 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 IAN examination Of the untreated
lake water shows that unsatisfactory water Is
frequently delivered at Evanston, Lake For
est, Glencoe, North Chicago, Waukegan, VIII
mette and Winnetka. And that the wa
ter supplies of all cities which use unfltered
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. A
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 a ~cesspool
and a we'll in the same yard, and the contents
of the one seep through the earth into the
other. We place a privy vault a few feet from
our we'll hole, and the rams wash the filth
from the former into the latter. We defle the
surface of the ground SO that every rainstorm
sweeps the defilement into our streams. Did
you 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 belching 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. Lik 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 it out again to drink"
Let me give you some concrete instances
Of how our drinking water is defled. 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 a large brook, which
carried away all his stable manure. This
brook was enc Of the sources Of Ithaca's wa.
ter supply.
Along the valley Of the Susquehanna there
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