594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dust-receptacles attended to oftener ly entering into a private contract with the 

 diistmen; but those whose means are straitened, or wlio can not afford this hix- 

 ury, must be content to endure their pestilence-breeding bins, with all the foul 

 odors and health-depressing influences attached to them, until such times as it 

 may please the dustmen to give them a dirty clean-out^ the visits of these 

 gentlemen being, like those of the angels, "few and far between," in the poor 

 and crowded districts of this great city. 



I have frequently been told by members of the working classes that it is no 

 unusual thing for the dust-bins in their neighhorhood to remain unattended to for 

 months at a time ; and, when they appeal to the dustmen in charge of any pass- 

 ing cart, they are eithel- laughed at or met by a volley of abuse for their pains. 



Surely such a state of things, which is easy of remedy, should not any longer 

 be permitted. Yours truly, 



G. Stanley Mueeay, M. D. 



The italics in this letter are mine. The writer shows his imperfect 

 acquaintance with the necessities and difficulties of the public service, 

 in the last paragraph, when he writes, "which is easy of remedy." 

 To be sure, the remedy seems plain enough to any one who has never 

 tried to make his own plan work practically. All that is needed is a 

 few carts, horses, and men, with system, energy, intelligence, and in- 

 dustry men with the latter qualities, as is well known, being exceed- 

 ingly plentiful in the world, and their services dirt-cheap. A writer 

 in the " Contemporary Review " for October, 1879, page 294, Henry 

 J. Miller by name, representing himself as a poor man appealing to the 

 upper classes for aid in bettering the condition of the poor, makes the 

 following suggestion in his article " Lazarus to Dives," which, as an 

 off-hand solution of a great problem, equals anything in our own daily 

 journals : " Furnish " every householder " with two boxes, varying in 

 size according to the dimensions of his domicile : one to form a recep- 

 tacle for dust, cinders, old rags, broken bottles, and what is generically 

 known as ' dry dirt ' ; and the other for decayed vegetables, the en- 

 trails of fish, and that kind of refuse that we rather uneuphoniously 

 call * muck.' Such boxes to be taken away once a week, and empty 

 ones left in their stead. As a corollary to this, forbid him, under pen- 

 alties, to continue his present practice of pitching derelicts into the 

 street, as the readiest means of being quit of them ; and make him 

 responsible for the cleanliness of his door-steps and the j)avement in 

 front of his dwelling." 



I have but one more subject to touch upon. In the spring of 1878 

 a determined effort was made by a public-spirited citizen to have the 

 Health Commissioners of this city punished because they did not drive 

 all offensive businesses out of the city. The attack upon them failed, 

 and it failed for the same reason that similar attacks have failed, and 

 will fail elsewhere, and that is, because the trades classed as offensive 

 constitute an important part of the industries of a great city, and their 

 banishment would strike a ten-ible blow at her commercial prosperity. 



