higher up, including Trenton. As for the Schuylkill it is even 
worse, except that it is smaller. 
THE PLACID, PERILOUS POTOMAC 
Communities aggregating 45,000 population pollute the Po¬ 
tomac within 176 miles of where the national capital gets its 
drinking water. The experience of Washington has been unique. 
Aroused by an epidemic bequeathed to it by the victims up the 
river, the city built a huge filtration plant. Typhoid dropped, but 
only to rise again. Washington learned that it must guard milk, 
oysters, ice, and flies, as well as water. But before the campaign 
began the city stood third on the bad list. 
Coming back to Pennsylvania, Dr. Jonathan M. Wainwright, 
the head of the Moses Taylor Hospital at Scranton, addressed 
the New York Academy of Medicine on March 7, 1908, and 
strongly advocated municipal ownership of water supplies. He 
stated that the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers were now 
thoroughly tainted sources of water supply, and yet they were 
in use and producing typhoid epidemics at many points. In De¬ 
cember of 1906 and in January and February of 1907 there were 
1,150 cases of typhoid in Scranton— that is to say, one out of 
every 100 had this filth disease. 
MILLIONS SPENT FIGHTING THE SCOURGE 
In Pittsburg the epidemic of typhoid reported in the papers 
for December 29, 1907, was so great that it seriously affected the 
labor market, and Dr. Dixon, the Pennsylvania State Superinten¬ 
dent of Health, was quoted in the papers of February 12, 1908, 
as saying that typhoid alone cost that one state thirteen million 
dollars in one year alone. 
Pittsburg gets its drinking water from two rivers that con¬ 
verge on it—the Alleghany and the Monongahela. Into the 
Alleghany 53 cities of 1,000 to 25,000 population pour sewage 
for 283 miles. Oil City sewage reaches Pittsburg in fifteen 
hours. On the Monongahela 33 cities including McKeesport, 
Homestead, and Braddock, pour sewage into the river. Pittsburg 
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