Simply from the pouring of the wastes from one or two typhoid fever cases into the streams leading into the water reservoir used by a town, five hundred, a thousand, or even three or four thousand cases of typhoid have developed within a few weeks, with from one hundred to five hundred deaths.
[Illustration: TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN THE MOHAWK-HUDSON VALLEY, 1891-92 In 1891-92 typhoid fever broke out in Schenectady on the Mohawk River.
Following this, Cohoes and West Troy, which drew their water supply from the Mohawk below Schenectady, and Albany, which drew its supply from the Hudson below the mouth of the Mohawk, suffered from typhoid epidemics; while Waterford and Troy, which drew their supplies from the Hudson _above_ the mouth of the Mohawk, and the river towns that, like Lansingburgh, drew from other sources, entirely escaped the infection.] In fact, even to-day, when these dangers are better understood, and while most of our big cities are getting fairly clear of typhoid, so ignorant and careless are the smaller towns, villages, and private houses all over the United States, that over 35,000 deaths[14] from typhoid fever occur every year in a country which prides itself upon its cleanliness and its intelligence.

This means, too, that there are at least half a million people sick of the disease, and in bed or utterly prevented from working, for from five to fifteen weeks each.

All of which frightful loss of human life and human labor, to say nothing of the grief, bereavement, and anxiety of the two million or more families and relatives of these typhoid victims, is due to eating dirt and drinking filth.

Dirt is surely the most expensive thing there is, instead of the cheapest.
METHODS OF OBTAINING PURE WATER Wise Planning and Spending of Money is Necessary.

If our city wells are defiled by manure heaps and vault-privies, and our streams by sewage, where are we to turn for pure water?
All that is required is foresight and a little intelligent planning and wise spending of money.
Of course the community must take hold of the problem, through a Board of Health, or Health Officer, appointed for the purpose; and this is why questions of health are coming to play such an important part in legislation, and even in politics.