THE USE AND ADUSK OF < II V STREETS 



refuse to accumulate until the city is compelled to 

 suspend all other undertakings to clean away the filth, 

 is to cariy the matter beyond proper sanitary limits. 

 As Waring well said, the aim should he to keep a clean 

 city clean and not to clean a dirty city. 



When an American city is regularly cleaned by a city 

 department, there is usually more system but less 

 efficiency about the work than when the work is done 

 by contract. Only in the rarest instances are city 

 employees animated by a spirit of industry and efficiency 

 comparable with that which is indispensible in com- 

 mercial enterprises. 



The persons assigned to labor on thd streets are, in 

 American cities, often recruited from the ranks of the 

 unemployed and are likely to be either incompetent or 

 unwilling to do a fair day's work. The wages paid are 

 sometimes large as large as those paid to bookkeepers, 

 artisans and clerks and wholly incommensurate with 

 the results accomplished. Sometimes men of advanced 

 age, inmates of poorhouses and even convicts, are put 

 upon the streets to clean them. Any kind of labor 

 seems good enough to attend to this business of street 

 cleaning. 



Small wonder is it, therefore, when one considers the 

 faulty management of the work, that the results are so- 

 unsatisfactory. 



In view of the progress accomplished in other sani- 

 tary directions, it seems curious that no improvement 

 has been made since the earliest times in the collection 

 of household wastes other than sewage. It is little short 

 of barbarous to place our garbage on our front door- 

 steps, to wait there the prey of dogs and cats and 

 food for flies, until the scavenger's cart carries it away. 



13 



