Any dust that blows about the streets is likely to be carrying disease
germs with it. That is why we have sprinklers driven through the
streets to wet them and to keep down the dust; and why, in large
cities, the streets are thoroughly flooded at night. If the streets
are kept damp and clean, then the air above them is cool and fresh and
pure.
How does the city get rid of all the dirt and waste? From every house
there are two kinds of waste. Some is taken away in pipes from the
sink and bathroom out into pipes that run under the street, and these
carry it away from the city to some stream or deep water that takes it
entirely away from the town.
The waste stuffs that are not watery, but solid--cabbage leaves, apple
cores, potato parings, and other scraps from the kitchen are carted
away and burned or fed to pigs. The ashes and tin cans are carted
away, also, and used in making new land or filling up hollow places.
Besides taking away the dirt, cities are careful to get clear, pure
drinking water. They are very, very careful about this; and they
usually have the water tested often, because, as you have learned,
even water that looks perfectly pure may give people typhoid fever.
That is why, when you are out in the country, on a picnic perhaps, you
must not drink from the streams. They may receive the drainage from a
farmer's barnyard, or the sewage from some house.
The more we all learn about these things, the more careful will the
city be to protect her people. To be sure, most cities now have Boards
of Health who employ men and women to go about and see that the food
in the stores is clean--no flies, no dust, and no tobacco smoke on it.
They have laws, too, about keeping milk clean; and in New York alone
these laws have saved the lives of thousands of babies. And they have
laws about the care of streets and buildings and cars and parks and a
great many other things.
In all these things we have been talking about, I want you to be
thinking how you can help. For a city is made up of people--boys and
girls and men and women. The city is what its people make it; and
everyone must help, even the smallest children, no older than little
Claude.
The first and most important thing for you to do is to keep yourself
clean and tidy. And the next thing is for you to keep your back yard
as well as your front yard and the school yard and the street free
from papers and sticks and cans and old playthings. You can put away
your things when you are through playing; or, if you are making a
railroad or a town or a playhouse, you can leave it looking nice and
tidy. You can help chiefly by putting away your own things. You know
the old saying, "A workman is known by his chips"; and a good workman
always works in an orderly way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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