Ward. — Elimination of Stream Pollution in New York 7 



have here a summary of those questions and answers. It seems 

 to me that they are very significant. We must keep in mind 

 the fact that these are not men of technical training, either in 

 chemistry, biology or in manufacturing. They are men of the 

 woods; they are men accustomed to use their eyes, men of reason- 

 able judgment in interpreting things they see, but not trained to 

 deduce scientific conclusions from them, or to get precise and 

 accurate measures of conditions. In the hundred replies it is 

 very easy, — for there were just one hundred and one replies, — 

 to see what the percentage was from the definite answers to the 

 questions. 



On the first question, asked if the individual had personal 

 knowledge of specific instances where the discharge of wastes into 

 streams was injurious to fish life, fifty-two of them gave an 

 unqualified affirmative reply. 



With regard to the second question, one-third of them, thirty- 

 five, said that the effects varied from time to time. There were 

 forty of them who were able to cite other persons able and willing 

 to give further evidence of the existence of such specific pollution, 

 injurious to fish life. I will not go into detail, but will mention 

 only a few of the more significant cases. Twenty of them knew 

 of instances and cited them where the property holders along the 

 streams had suffered damage to live stock or property through 

 the discharge of wastes into the waters, so that the effect was not 

 confined to the effect in the water itself but extended even on 

 to the land. Then there were seventy of them who said that 

 they had not observed any change benefitting or injuring the 

 fish after handling the waste, that is, after treatment of the wastes 

 in various ways, but thirty of them had noticed specifically that 

 the treatment of wastes at certain points had resulted in benefit- 

 ing the fish life in the stream. Forty-nine of them, almost half, 

 were positively of the opinion that the wastes from industrial 

 plants in their observations affected the streams more seriously 

 than the wastes in the city sewage; and in the classification of 

 effects, thirteen of them cite milk plants in general, that is, can- 

 neries and factories and all the various plants that have to do 

 with the handling of milk and its products. Eight cited oil and 

 tar plants; thirty -five, works using acids; twenty-three, works 

 using various chemicals; twelve, dye-stuffs; ten, tanning factories; 



