158 RIVER POLLUTION 



hundreds of leagues of splendid angling water have 

 been ruined by permitting flax to be steeped in the 

 streams. 



They tell us that the Legislature has provided a 

 remedy, but apparently it is not one easily set in 

 motion. It is not much more than a couple of years 

 since the Board of Trade sent down the Inspector of 

 Fisheries to Leeds to receive a deputation from York- 

 shire anglers on the subject of river pollution. Dele- 

 gates attended from Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, and 

 Scarborough; those from Hull, York, and Wakefield 

 were unable to be present. Heaven only knows the 

 aggregrate number of anglers represented by these 

 delegates; but those from Sheffield alone claimed to 

 be the mouthpiece of no less than seven thousand 

 ' organised anglers ' seven thousand contemplative 

 men in one city ! 



These 'organised anglers' claim to have as much 

 right to clean streams as to clean streets; perhaps 

 they might have put it more strongly, inasmuch as 

 it is the nature of a stream to be pure and that of a 

 street to be foul. If the river is polluted, it is owing 

 to the act of a manufacturer or the neglect of a 

 municipality. In either case, said the 'organised 

 anglers,' the power that insists on our streets being 

 clean should enforce ' Mundella's Act ' for the purifica- 

 tion of rivers. It is not fair to ask the contemplative 

 man, who is generally far from affluent, to interrupt 

 his contemplation in order to sue an opulent owner of 

 dyeworks or a powerful corporation. 



