66 George C. Whipple 



that in any community the amount of money expended for bottled 

 water and house filters will vary in a general way according to the 

 attractiveness of the water, although there is no doubt that the presence 

 of typhoid fever in the community, or the fear that the water is con- 

 taminated, will greatly increase the use of auxiliary supplies for drink- 

 ing. For purposes of calculation it may be assumed that the diagram 

 just described represents this tendency to use vended waters, and that 

 each "objecting consumer" would go to the expense of buying spring 

 water or putting in a house filter, if he could afford it. It may be 

 argued, also, that the poor consumer who may be unable to do this 

 is as much entitled to satisfactory water as is the well-to-do consumer. 



From a study of price-lists of spring waters sold in New York and 

 other cities it has been found that the ordinary wholesale price of 

 spring water is seldom more than lo cents a gallon. In some places it 

 is as low as i cent. The average is about 5 cents. To filter water 

 through house filters costs less, but generally it is less satisfactory. 



As a convenient figure for calculation, and as a most conservative 

 one for general use, a cost of i cent per gallon to the ordinary con- 

 sumer for an auxiliary supply of drinking-water (either spring water 

 or well-filtered water) has been taken. In cities where the cost of 

 procuring and distributing bottled water exceeds i cent per gallon, 

 as it does in such a city as New York for example, this should be taken 

 into account in making local use of the data. For the illustrative pur- 

 poses of the present paper, and for general comparisons, the figure 

 mentioned will serve as a satisfactory basis. The average person 

 drinks about i . 5 quarts of water per day, and therefore one-fifth cent 

 per capita daily may be taken as a reasonable figure for the cost of an 

 auxiliary supply. If the entire population used such a supply, and if 

 the daily consumption of the public water supply were 100 gallons per 

 capita, then one-fifth cent per hundred gallons, or $20 per million 

 gallons, would represent the loss to the consumers due to an imperfect 

 water supply which had an esthetic deficiency of 100. If the esthetic 

 deficiency were less than 100, say 37, then the loss to the consumer 

 would be yVt of $20, or $7 . 40 per million gallons. In other words, 

 the figure for the esthetic deficiency divided by 5 gives the financial 

 depreciation value of the water supply in dollars per million gallons, 



or// = 20 . 



100 



