THE PROBLEM OF MUNICIPAL NUISANCES. 



595 



The meat business alone in New York runs up toward a hundred 

 millions annually, and the city can not afford to lose it, with the hun- 

 dreds of smaller allied businesses that must inevitably follow it wher- 

 ever it goes. I have brought up tliis subject because, singularly 

 enough, the same trouble and similar complaints have arisen in Paris 

 this summer, and the parallelism between the course of the journals 

 there and here is as marked in this case as in the others mentioned 

 above. 



The Paris correspondent of the London " Lancet," in the issue of 

 July 31, 1880, writes : " For some time the atmosphere of Paris has 

 been anything but agreeable. Toward the evening, an unpleasant 

 smell or rather a more unpleasant smell than usual has been notice- 

 able, so much so, indeed, that it has at last become offensive even to 

 the republican nostrils of the Municipal Council. This odor has been 

 supposed by some to emanate from the sewers, while others have at- 

 tributed it to putrefaction in the numerous Mosques which adorn (or 

 disfigure ?) the boulevards. It would appear, however, that the efl3^u- 

 vium originates outside the fortifications, in the twenty-seven depo- 

 toirs, or night-soil depots, which at some distance surround the capital, 

 and perhaps also in the sewage-boats which are anchored in the Seine, 

 near the Pont des Invalides. It depends in a great measure upon the 

 absence of the disinfectants which should be used by the contractors 

 who empty the cesspools, but who appear, from the statement of one 

 of the Municipal Councilors, to have been abetted by the police in 

 their neglect." 



A month later, August 28th, the same correspondent writes : " The 

 pestilential smells which have infected Paris for some time are awaken- 

 ing a feeling of indignation against the responsible authorities, which 

 is expressed freely in the daily papers, and that quite independent of 

 party spirit. A few days since the well-known critic, Francisque Sar- 

 cey, devoted an article to this matter in the ' Dix-Neuvi^me Siecle,' and 

 invited the inhabitants of his district to sign the petition in prepara- 

 tion against the nuisance ; and the ' Figaro ' of to-day prefaces some 

 satirical remarks by the statement that ' Paris est en ce moment inf ecte 

 par les odeurs les plus epouvantables. Tous les egouts sont a decou- 

 vert.' The odors, which in reality emanate, as was stated in a previous 

 letter, from the night-soil depotoirs which surround the city, and also 

 from the carts and boats which convey the sewage outside the walls, 

 are due to the neglect of the contractors in the use of disinfecting 

 measures, and there seems to he no doubt about the connivance of the 

 police at this abuse. . . . The 'Petite Republique Fran9aise' thinks 

 that the only remedy lies in the suppression of the bureaux which are 

 fcdlaciously called ' sanitary ' or ' hygienic,^ and which cover the re- 

 sponsibility of the prefect by a semblance of official sanction, which, 

 as a matter of fact, they can not withhold." (The italics are 

 mine.) 



