Buller. — Work of Pennsylvania Department 117 



so neutralized by the volume of water that it would be 

 no stronger than the lime water with which a mother 

 mixes the milk for her child. On this testimony the man- 

 ufacturer was acquitted, and the Department is now 

 co-operating with the Department of Health in a cam- 

 paign in which every manufacturer, from the source to 

 the mouth of the stream, will be notified that he must 

 conform to the law within a certain date or prosecution 

 will be brought against them all. 



This is the plan that the Department intends to pursue 

 in the future. One water shed will be taken and every 

 manufacturer situated on that shed will be compelled to 

 abate the nuisance, or as a last resort, the Department 

 will sue out an injunction. This latter is a drastic 

 method and one to be adopted only when it becomes 

 absolutely necessary to force the offender to terms. The 

 Department is sure that it is backed up by public senti- 

 ment in this course, because it is plainly evident that the 

 people of the Commonwealth will no longer stand for the 

 defilement of the waters, which keeps them barren of 

 fish and renders them useless for domestic purposes. 



The Supreme Courts of New York and Indiana have 

 decided in a pollution case that the persons on a stream 

 are entitled to the water as pure as when it left the 

 source. Nature knows no such thing as waste and mod* 

 ern science has shown that any waste flowing from a 

 manufacturing establishment is a distinct economical 

 loss. As long as there was only one manufactory on 

 the stream the manufacturer did not feel any economical 

 loss himself because the water was polluted, but when 

 the man above him began to run in refuse in such quan- 

 tities that he was compelled to put in a purification plant 

 to get his water clear, he began to realize what pollution 

 means, and the Department finds more manufacturers 

 who are ready to co-operate with it than it does those 

 who are willing to make a fight. 



DISCUSSION 



Ma. Nesley, of New York: I wish to ask Commissioner Buller how 

 the cost of the bass gathered in the field would compare with that ot 



