The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-03-22

dredging crews becoming completely
overpowered by the stenches evolved
from the disturbed sludge'
1.-The Hudson is polluted from above
Troy, and the scores of growing com
Tnunities along its banks, and drained
by it, are adding to that pollution ev-
cry day. In earlier times colnmuni-
ties were punished for their unclean-
illness by plaques. If we keep on, we
cannot long escape. The drainage
area into New York's upper bay, as
Stunning that New Jersey has her way,
will be round1y 700 square miles. New
Jersey has succeeded, through her own
unclean methods, in creating pest1l-
entail condition along the Passatc- She
now proposes to relieve this condition
by discharging the whole vile mass in
to New York's upper bay Should she
be allowed to do this, it would beget
worse state of affairs than that
which shut up the houses of Parlia-
nent and the law courts in 1858. The
then population of London numbered
but three millions. The population
of what regions in New DIRK. and
New Jersey are about to set that eX-
perience at defiance count above SOW
en- million people. Upon such terms,
we will be twice as badly scourged
as London was.
A word about the great London
plague of 1853, due to polluted water,
will be of interest:
For the first time in the history of
man, the sewage of nearly three mil
lions of people had been brought to
seeth and ferment under a burning
sun in one vast c1oaca-the Thames
lying open in their very midst. Stencil
SO foul, we may well believe, had
never before assembled to pollute this
lower air. For weeks the atmosphere
of Parliamentary committee rooms
was only rendered barely toIera,ble by
of blinds saturated with chloride of
lime, and by the lavish use of this and
other disinfectants. More than once,
in spite of similar precautions, the
law courts were suddenly broken up
by an insupportabIe invasion of the
noxious Vapor. The river steamers
lost their accustomed traffic; travellers
pressed for time made a circuit of
many miles rather than cross one of
the city bridges. More significan Mt
still of the magnitude of the nuisance
was the fact that five millions of
pounds were voted, by a heavily tax
ed community, to provide means for
its abatement. DIR. Ord reported to
the Privy Council that steamboat men
on the Thames suffered severely from
Ianguor, headache, sore throat, nau-
sea, giddiness. mental confusion-in
other words. from poisoning.
There can be no question that the
population OIL COnnSCllCuF VIII OS
threatened likewise if the pollution of
our watercourses is not abolished.
The principles underlying the pro-
posed legislation blouse Bill No. 707)
has been dem onstrated and endorsed
by such eminent scientists as Prof
William r. Sedgwick of the Massachu-
sets Institute of Technology, Prof.
Frederick Gorham of Brown Univer-
sity, Rudolph Herring, the famous sax
itary engineer, T1r. Townsend of the
State Board of Health, DR.. L. o. How
ard Chief of the u. S. Bureau of En-
tomoIogy, and DR.. Harvey w. Wiley,
formerly Chief of the Pure Food Blu
reau of the U. S. Department of Ag-
rieulture.
AS the interest of the entire public
are directly affected by the proposed
Iegis1a ton, it has been suggested that
the readers of this paper write to their
State Senators and representatives,
urging them to support House Bill No.
1903