promote the health of the people. The
sewage of a city of 100,000 people is supposed to be worth, in Germany,
about $900,000 a year for fertilizer on account of the phosphorus it
contains. The city of Berlin operates large sewage farms, using as
laborers men condemned to the workhouse. The expense for land and sewer
system was $13,000,000, but it pays for the money invested, with $60,000
yearly profit over all expenses.

On the other hand the cost of impure water to the city of Pittsburg was
reckoned at $3,850,000, and in the city of Albany, New York, the annual
loss was estimated at $475,000.

In the early settlement of our country all towns were built on streams,
and the ones which grew and flourished were all on rivers large enough
to carry commerce by boat. After the invention of steamboats, daily
packet lines were run on all the principal rivers.

Albert Gallatin planned a complete system of improved waterways,
including many canals, that was intended to establish a great commercial
route. Many canals were built and put into actual operation and dozens
of others had been planned, when the building of railways began. This
new system of transportation at once became popular. Not only were no
more canals dug and no more steamboat lines built, but many of those
actually in operation were abandoned.

In order to encourage railroad building and develop new regions, the
government has given land and money to the extent of hundreds of
millions of dollars, until now the railroads form one-seventh of all our
national wealth, having 228,000 miles of tracks and earning
$2,500,000,000 each year, while the waterways owned by the government
have fallen into disuse.

Within the last four or five years another change has come about in the
general attitude toward the waterways. At the time that the crops are
moved in the fall, and when coal is needed for the winter supply, there
are not nearly enough cars in the country to handle the volume of
business, neither are there enough locomotives to move the necessary
cars, nor tracks, nor stations. In short, the railways are entirely
unable to handle the vast products of the country during the busiest
seasons. Many persons in the West have suffered for fuel, and commerce
has been greatly checked by the shortage; and the situation is growing
worse each year as production increases.

James J. Hill estimates that the cost of equipping the railroads to
carry the commerce of the countr