1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 261 



probes the rot caused there by my own or the other fellow's blun- 

 ders, and takes his wages for ensuring my family against its own 

 waste, must enlarge his views a little. We civilized people are 

 our brothers' keepers to the extent of being already obliged by 

 common law and latent common sense to keep our filth out of his 

 waters. If our modern sanitary engineer undertakes to do that, 

 much of his present occupation will be gone. Capital enough has 

 been invested in direct illegal pollution of streams to furnish every 

 offending household with earth-closets and trained attendants. 



Students of society discover that the classes which endure and 

 thrive under filthy conditions of water and air are not such as 

 strengthen a State. 



The school of sanitary engineering, yet in its infancy, will com- 

 prise a righteous theory of about every kind of goodness. The 

 priest, doctor, lawyer, chemist, statesman, politician, and social 

 philosopher will have to be tried in the crucible of real life many 

 times and born again many times before we shall develop the 

 problems of social waste and cheap food for crowded communities 

 into a polite science and art. Yet many so-called savage races had 

 a fair working practice, and one at least of our domestic animals 

 can give lessons in this simplest of earthly duties. Is not the State 

 institution at Wethersfield the only one which furnishes its gradu- 

 ates positive daily training in this matter? 



We must not skip the " moral " or the " human element " in this 

 conflict, as insurance men say, when a touch of hard times sends 

 fire into the "business" camp. In our prisons and jails, how is it? 

 To make both ends of society meet correctively in a prison, our 

 wardens and jailers should be gods, almost, to cure the evil ten- 

 dencies of legally- selected social waste. Are they so? Do prison 

 contractors set a wholesome example for produce outside of prison 

 walls? 



Does it never happen, on the, other hand, to the shame of outside 

 society, that the too healthy lad condemned to penal service, takes 

 his first experience of strictly upright management and control in 

 jail? 



It will scarcely do to make homes for the dishonest more attract- 

 ive than honest people can afford; that would manufacture the 

 waste we already have to deplore. 



Some of us perceive a decline of independent patriotism; that 

 a government which patronizes whole classes, must neglect whole 



