ems are not individual ones in the main, but rather questions of
the best management and use of the public utilities concerned. Does
the average city householder know what becomes of the waste removed
from his door by the convenient arrival of the ash man, the garbage
man, the rubbish man? Does he know whether this waste is disposed of
in the most sanitary way? Does he consider whether it is removed in
such a way as to be inoffensive and without danger to the people
through whose streets it is carried? Does he know anything of the cost
to the city of waste disposal? Is it merely an expense, and a heavy
one, for him in common with other taxpayers to bear? Or is the
business made to pay for itself? If not, is it possible to make it
pay? Does any community make the waste account balance itself at the
end of the year?

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
An objectionable garbage wagon. Disposal of waste is a subject too
often neglected both in urban and in rural communities]

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
This new covered garbage wagon subjects the public to no danger]

In the country, once more we face the individual problem rather than
that of the community. Here proper provision for the disposal of waste
often necessitates more knowledge of the subject than is possessed by
the homemaker, or sometimes it requires the installation of apparatus
whose cost seems prohibitive. A careful consideration of these matters
will possibly disclose the fact that a smaller expenditure may
accomplish the desired purpose. Or, if this is not true, it may be
found that the end accomplished is worth the expenditure of what
seemed a prohibitive sum. A water closet, for instance, has not only a
sanitary but a moral value. We must somehow educate people to
understand and to believe that the basis of family health and
usefulness is proper living conditions, and that some system of sewage
and garbage disposal is a necessary step toward proper living
conditions. With the urban population these matters are removed from
personal and immediate consideration, but every rural homemaker must
face his own problems, with the knowledge that since his conditions
are individual his solution must be equally his own.

In the matters pertaining to decoration within the house as well as
beautifying its surroundings, the country-and the city-dweller meet on
equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles
to be studied are