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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph from Edwin Eevick 



THE) CROTON DAM AND SPIIvIvWAY OF THE; NEW YORK WATER SUPPLY" 



The Croton water system, which was New York's main reliance before the Catskill waters 

 were tapped, is not small, even for a big city. There are probably not fifty cities on the globe 

 for which it could not furnish an adequate water supply. But for New York it became so 

 inadequate that the city was face to face with a real water famine repeatedly. 



in the East Side the population is many 

 times as dense, the wonder is that it is 

 possible to prevent the city from being a 

 pest hole, with every infectious disease 

 endemic, from anthrax and ague to 

 typhus and cholera. Furthermore, the 

 elevated, the subway, and the surface 

 lines would seem to afford unexampled 

 opportunity for the spread of disease. 

 But in spite of these conditions, New 



York is one of the healthiest cities in 

 America. Compare Manhattan's 1916 

 death rate of 13.60 per thousand with 

 Baltimore's 18.18, or Washington's 18.01, 

 and it will be realized that to offset its 

 overcrowding, its East Side ignorance, 

 and its vast daily intercourse, New York 

 has a health service second to none in the 

 world. Nowhere else is there to be found 

 a more splendid tribute to the success of 



