32 



THE UTILITY OF FORESTS. 



is not meant as a criticism of corporations and companies which 

 own municipal water works. They seem to be doing about as 

 well as they can under the circumstances, but the circumstances 

 are against them. The fault lies nearer to the door of the whole 

 people than to any particular doors that might be pointed out. 

 If rivers are allowed to become so dirty that no treatment less 

 heroic than ''destructive distillation" can purify them, it is too 

 much to expect individuals or companies to do the work. The 

 remedy must begin at the beginning and not at the ending. The 

 pollution ought to be kept out of the rivers, and then it would 

 not need to be taken out. What is needed is prevention rather 

 than cure. 



"The natural watercourses were once pure in all parts of 

 West Virginia. Their drainage basins were covered with for- 

 ests and farms, and the water which fed the streams was clean. 

 Many of these streams are sewers now. Their valleys are 

 thickly settled, their banks lined with towns and manufacturing 

 places, mines and mills, and the offal of the land goes directly 

 into the streams. Under present methods it can go no where 

 else. 



"The trouble really begins at the tops of the mountains, 

 where the cutting of timber has bared the ground, caused 

 the drying up of springs once pure and perennial, and sub- 

 stituted surface drainage over the hard and packed soil. This 

 has polluted the various sources of the rivers. Lower down are 

 the mines and their sulphur drainage, camps on the hillsides 

 with seldom an underground sewer. Further on are tanneries, 

 pulp mills, saw mills, factories, and larger towns, all emptying 

 their waste and sewerage into the watercourses with no attemp* 

 at purification. The water supply of many towns is pumped 

 from rivers which carry this burden of dangerous and offensive 

 impurities. Towns with better water supplies are fortunate. 

 Filtering plants are doing a great deal. In fact, in many in- 

 stances, they virtually stand between the people and death; but 

 science has not yet been able to devise a filter that will take out 

 all the germs. 



"Impure running streams are the highways along which 

 disease germs travel. The typhoid bacteria remain alive from 



