2 REASONS FOR METERS 



who do not realize their significance. Yet a leaky water closet 

 may waste without attracting attention as much water as would 

 supply twenty families. 



As time goes on people become accustomed to the waste of 

 water in their houses and indifferent to it; and it is the experi- 

 ence of American cities where the meter system has not been 

 used that the consumption always increases more rapidly than 

 the population. It may be a long time before the output be- 

 comes double the legitimate use; but after that point is reached 

 the rate goes on with greater acceleration until three-quarters 

 of all the water that is furnished is wasted,. 



The only limit to the increase is that a time comes when the 

 new works required to supply the ever-increasing waste become 

 so large and cost so much to build, that the burden cannot be 

 further borne, and a better method is adopted. 



The problem is a very old one. Frontinus, Water Commis- 

 sioner of Rome, under the Emperors Nerva and Trajan, A.D. 

 97-100, wrote an account of the water works of Rome, which 

 has been made available to American readers. 



Frontinus found that each taker of water in Rome was 

 supplied through a little instrument which served the purpose of 

 a water meter. In the years that preceded his administration 

 abuses had grown up ; the sizes of some of the orifices in the meters 

 had been increased; taps had been made for new takers and old 

 taps had been surreptitiously kept in service by the water men 

 or inspectors after the right to their use had terminated. Fron- 

 tinus took up the matter of correcting these abuses, and he 

 states: * 



Whatever had been unlawfully drawn by the water men, or had been 

 wasted as the result of official negligence, has been recovered; this is prac- 

 tically equivalent to the finding of new sources of supply. And in fact 

 the supply was almost doubled. 



The experience of Rome, so concisely stated by her Water 

 Commissioner, has been repeated over and over in American 

 cities in the last decades. 



* Translation by Clemens Herschel; " The Water Supply of Rome," 

 Dana Estes & Company, Boston, 1899, p. 61. 



