towns, bearing disease as gifts to Manchester, Lowell, and Law¬ 
rence. The Charles was not above reproach and Boston and 
Cambridge suffered accordingly. 
The Connecticut and the Housatonic had unsavory reputa¬ 
tions, but the first prize went to the Park River, a small stream 
draining a part of Hartford and all of New Britain. At times 
during the summer this was found by the Connecticut State 
Board of Health to be four fifths sewage! Fortunately New Eng¬ 
land has begun to change all this, but the work is still far from 
complete. 
As you go on down the coast there is no river that can shake 
at the Hudson the better-than-thou finger of scorn. Everyone 
knows that the Passaic River, into which the New Jersey city of 
that name and Paterson pour their sewage in huge quantities, can 
be smelled at Newark blocks away from its banks. The Hacken¬ 
sack is little better. 
If you will look at a map and a gazetteer you will find that the 
lordly Delaware above Trenton has thirty-seven cities with popu¬ 
lations of from 1,000 to 35,000. They each send sewage into the 
river, after drinking the sewage that comes to them, but all —■ 
245 miles of them—pass it down to Trenton which drinks of it. 
One city, the largest, is only sixty-five miles above Trenton. .\nd 
practically all that has been printed on this menacing condition 
is contained in a short report by Allen Hazcn which shows be¬ 
yond all controversy that the water is frightfully dangerous to 
drink. Trenton is to-day still “considering” the question. The 
New York Herald of December 12, 1907, publislied the epidemic 
of typhoid at Trenton. There were 95 cases in December. The 
whole valley of the Delaware was also attacked, and from the 
same cause. Each town was pouring its sewage into the same 
stream for the next town to drink. 
Philadelphia boasts of two of the dirtiest rivers in the United 
States—the Delaware and the Schuylkill. The Delaware reaches 
the city with all those tokens of brotherly love given by the cities 
11 
