1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 255 



be balm to the spirit instead of a constant source of dread. When 

 labor shall be turned from civil warfare to a winning fight with 

 public enemies and the manly duty of making the planet fit more 

 and more for the footstool of God! 



Some new articles respecting the care of land and water will 

 have to go into our revised creeds, and the sins of robbing the soil 

 and fouling the brooks, scarcely noticed now, will have to be 

 denounced as unpardonable in oiir new theories of goodness and 

 views of religious duty. 



Let us consider, for a moment, the fecal waste of our highest 

 civilization from a commercial point of view. We have long used 

 and advocated the use of commercial fertilizers. We have bought 

 honest ones, when we knew that only by denying ourselves lesser 

 luxuries could we afford to buy. The last and weightiest feeling 

 that has often determined me to buy was the thought that by 

 building up and encouraging a fertilizer business we should cer- 

 tainly keep a vast amount of good manure out of our streams. 



Saving by the cent's worth is not very popular, but great mills 

 for the manufacture and saving of waste are right in the line of 

 daily fashions. Looking at our pestilential waters, where thousands 

 — yes, tens and hundreds of thousands — of dollai^s float by us in 

 needlessly poisonous retention or exhalation every year; looking 

 at our invalid people, discouraged by the natural decay of hope 

 under punishment they may not deserve and do not understand, I 

 have often asked myself why these precious materials should be so 

 wretchedly thrown away? Why should not this most dangerous 

 waste be made salable, innocuous, and given to the poor land? 



We can well afford protection and a big bounty to manufactures 

 of that sort. 



One reason why we don't do anything about cleansing our water 

 and air is because we don't know how, or very few people do, or 

 have even considered the need of so doing. Ignorance as dense 

 as ours, in such a great matter, cannot be done away in a moment. 

 In regard to the use of sewage for producing food I do not sup- 

 pose that one in a hundred of our leading men could water a bed 

 of lettuce in a dry time without spoiling it. Not one in a thousand 

 of capitalists will risk money in farming or gardening this side of 

 the virgin wheat-soil line. Although every one who thinks the 

 matter over knows that available fertility is the next thing to 



