256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jail., 



specie, yet all hands are afraid of the social waste that our sterile 

 earth would turn to gold. 



A "Polluted Streams bill," appropriating $10,000 for a study of 

 our case, was killed in the last General Assembly — voted down by 

 dummy legislators, put there, or allowed by their masters to go 

 there for similar purposes^ — as is often done in general assemblies. 

 The ruling monkey hand delights to roast its chestnuts at State 

 fires, and rake them out with the paws of ignorant treason. It 

 was whispered around that somebody was going to make $10 per 

 day out of that bill, and that was enough to kill it. Yet we, 

 grown men. sorely need schooling in the matter covered by that 

 bill, and are taking it in distempers right and left. Ten thousand 

 dollars will not pay the loss in medicine and time alone — saying 

 nothing about life in some of our towns — caused by general pollu- 

 tion since the failure of that most wise and prudent measure. 



To get our rights in this matter, we may yet have to lug the 

 malarial germ into court. They say, by the way, that germ can- 

 not be found, because suspicious microscopic characters, when 

 arrested, can prove an ubiquitous '' alibi " — so to speak. They are 

 found everywhere — which is precisely what we might expect. 

 " Healthy " people carry the germs of disease with them as a 

 sound horse carries the "bots," till they get the best of him at last. 



Now if any listener fancies that this new " sum of all villanies " 

 on this continent — this basic "social evil," this pollution of private 

 wells, springs and public waters, of streams, ponds and reservoirs; 

 this soiling of the whole earth and this wrapping of it in a dirty 

 atmosphere — finds any special reforming impulse in our leading 

 minds at this time, then I fear such listener is mistaken. Spasms 

 of sickness here and there scare us into spasms of cleanness. We 

 clean at the spigot and let the bung-hole go. We take out more 

 and more patents and manufacture more false sanitary gods while 

 our rivers run blacker and blacker. Medical and sanitary journals 

 serve up startling facts and theories for a few medical readers, but 

 they are growing cautious of letting the people know. Farmers 

 get, once in a while, a lecture from the press about washing their 

 milk-dishes, while our putrid streams smell to heaven and make 

 every drop of milk an object of reasonable suspicion. 



You may wonder what I mean by "false sanitary gods." T 

 mean the new toggles that are continually being loaded upon the 

 sewerage system civilization already staggers under. Here's a 



