No. fl. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 421 



REPORT OF SANITARIAN 



By DR. SAMUEL G. DIXON 



Two years ago I called your attention to Doctor Van Slyke's valua- 

 tion of the loss to farmers of the United States through the waste of 

 liquid manure; his estimate of this loss being seven hundred millions 

 of dollars annually. I also tried to explain to you the activities of 

 the Department of Health in purifying the waters of the State and 

 the results which were being obtained in the saving of life, suffering 

 and sorrow. During the two years which have elapsed since last I 

 had the pleasure of speaking with you, this work has been continued 

 and the death rate from water borne diseases further decreased. 

 During these two years our stream inspectors have been out upon 

 the watersheds making their inspections and securing the abatement 

 of stream pollutions, among which liquid manure from barnyards 

 plays an important part, and it is particularly along the line of 

 conservation of our natural fertilizers that I wish to make my report 

 to you today. 



We believe that the farmers of the State are beginning to under- 

 stand that when they are ordered to conserve the liquids in their 

 barnyards and not permit them to be washed into an adjacent stream, 

 they are not being persecuted or having hardships imposed upon 

 them in order to save others but that not only the inhabitants of the 

 cities and towns down stream are protected by this work but that 

 they themselves are benefitted as well. 



During the last two years over two thousand four hundred barn- 

 yard pollutions have been discovered by our inspectors and abated 

 by the farmer. Many of these abatements are made at a very slight 

 cost — in some instances by throwing up an embankment of earth 

 around the yard and turning the surface drainage of the adjacent 

 ground in another direction; in other instances by putting a down 

 spout on the barn roof and carrying the roof drainage outside the 

 barnyard, and in extreme instances by the construction of a concrete 

 retaining wall. Just lately a farmer in Porter township, Clinton 

 county, built a concrete wall around his barnyard — 120 feet in length, 

 10 inches thick and 3 feet high in compliance with an order of abate- 

 ment. When our inspector went to make his re-inspection after 

 the wall had been built the farmer told him he would not have it away 

 again for five times what it cost. 



Pennsylvania is saving ome of the seven hundred millions of 

 waste in the United States round by Doctor Van Slyke. Prof. Snyder 

 in his excellent book on "Soils and Fertilizers," published in 1911, 

 tells us that a milk cow when fed a balanced ration will make from 

 sixty to seventy pounds of manure per day of which from twenty to 

 thirty pounds are liquid, and that when a cow is fed clover, hay, 

 corn fodder and grain, about one-half of the nitrogen of her food 

 is in the urine; one-fourth in the milk and the remainder in the solid 

 excreta, hence if the solid only is collected only one-fourth of th« 

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