MODERN METHODS OF STREET CLEANING 



It should not be forgotten that sanitary progress in 

 fact, the very beginnings of municipal sanitation are 

 due to European initiative. It is true that public 

 water-supplies are an ancient institution and cannot 

 be claimed as the invention of any modern civilization, 

 but water-supplies, as we know them now, and sewers 

 to carry away the most offensive and dangerous part 

 of a city's filth, are a very recent European contrivance. 

 Street lighting, good pavements, adequate transporta- 

 tion services, tenement-house reforms, the construction 

 of parks and playgrounds, the regulation of vehicular 

 travel and street paving and cleaning have been de- 

 veloped in Europe still more recently. The American 

 city which ignores foreign practice in these directions 

 fails to take account of experience which is of the 

 utmost value. 



The sanitary regeneration which European cities have 

 experienced within the last half century has had no 

 counterpart in America. There has been with us no 

 necessity for such revolutionary changes. American 

 cities were all small when the world began to learn that 

 efficient sanitation was an indispensible feature of every 

 municipality. There was never such overcrowding, or 

 such slums to clean, no such foci of filth to eliminate 

 in the United States as existed abroad fifty years ago. 

 In 1860 there were only sixteen cities in the United 

 States with a population of 50,000 or more, as against 

 one hundred and forty-eight in Europe. 



The significant feature of municipal growth in America 

 as compared with municipal growth in Europe has been 

 less the expansion of cities already large than the great 

 number of small cities which have sprung into extis- 

 ence. Hundreds of these cities have passed, and are 



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