44 



Of the !I4 iiuhlic spriui^s 50 were of good quality, 18 were bad and 17 

 doubtfuL 



Or" the 147 puiid supplies. !>4 were good, 23 bad and 30 (l()iil)tful. 



One thousand, three hundred and seventj'-seven samples of i)rivate 

 water supplies were taken from deep wells. Of this number 1,091 were 

 good, 160 were unqualifiedly bad and 126 were doubtful, in other words, 

 about 20 per cent, of the deep well waters were either of bad or doubtful 

 quality. 



Of the 3.057 shallow wells examined. 1,.331 were good. 1,391 were bad 

 and 335 were doubtful or rather more than 56 per cent, of all the shallow 

 well waters examined were unfit for drinking and domestic purposes. 



Out of the mass of data collected, we are now able to determine with 

 such a degi'ee of ;ic<nrai-y th:it our statement is !i(>t a hypothesis but a 

 fact that the well suiii)ly of the cities and towns of Indiana is not only to 

 be viewed with suspicion, but in i-ather more than 50 per cent, of the cases, 

 pronounced polluted. 



If .such a statement had Ix'en made the first or sec(md year of our 

 work, it would have undoubtedly been i)ointed out that the waters anal- 

 yzed did not I'epresent average conditions and that the samples sent in 

 were from wells sns]>ected of being impure, and that while many of these 

 sanqdes did prove to l)e i)ollnted. by far the greater number of wells were 

 pure and safe. Rut as year after year we have tabulated the results of 

 our work, we have noticed the very singular fact that our results varied 

 vciy little indeed. In fact the percentage of bad and doubtful well waters 

 in the year 1912 is almost exactly the percentage reported the first year 

 of our work in 1906. It is impossible to believe that the health officers 

 after studying the well supplies in their community for many years, are 

 still sending in only the worst waters, or that the individual owner is not 

 asking for an analysis save when he suspects the purity of his supply. I 

 am convinced that of the two million wells furnishing water to the citizens 

 of Indiana, at least one million are not furnishing pure water, but a water 

 contaminated by the wastes of the home and community. Of 4,959 wells 

 examinetl in the last few years, 3,051 have been classified as shallow wells, 

 and 1.90S as deep wells. This classification is not perfect for it is fre- 

 quently impossible to get data sufficiently adequate to place a well in its 

 proper class. We classify all dug wells as shallow wells, and all 

 driven wells as shallow wells when it is e^^dent that the well 



