(B) By Communities.-The problem becomes a very different one when garbage and refuse must be collected from many buildings as in cities, and a common disposal provided. The quantities to be dealt with become large, and the control over the character of the material is lost. Other methods of disposal must, therefore, be resorted to, if sanitary as well as economical results are to be obtained

In this case it becomes practicable either to combine all the various rejected materials, or to keep them separated. A choice between the two methods will depend upon the local conditions and customs. In many cities, in nearly every European city, the garbage and dry refuse, including ashes, are all mixed, removed and disposed of together. In American cities they are combined in some cases and in others a separation of some of the material is made. Your committee is not able to state that either one or the other method is to be preferred in all cases. There may be instances where a separation is better, and there may be others where the combined removal offers less difficulties and is less expensive.

(a) Separate Removal.-The fact that domestic garbage contains a fair percentage of grease, and that the remaining material may be converted into a fertilizer, has caused the development of processes in this country for converting garbage into these two materials, to be sold at a profit. Such a method of disposal is applicable only in large cities. The works, which must be erected for this treatment of garbage, can only be profitable if large quantities are handled. Such works have been erected in a number of cities in the United States. Companies were formed, and the work was undertaken with the expectation of conducting a very profitable business. Experience has demonstrated, however, that in many instances there was no profit, and in others that it was small. has heretofore been found impracticable to conduct the works so that a nuisance would be wholly prevented, and it was, therefore, found best to locate them at points where an occasional nuisance would not be objectionable. After several years' operation a number of these works have been abandoned because, under the necessary sanitary restrictions they were not found to be remunerative.

It

From a sanitary point of view or as regards the creation of a nuisance, this process of disposing of garbage should be viewed with some suspicion. It should be allowed, and, in the opinion of your committee, is only justifiable when the works are so located that

a nuisance cannot possibly be created, and when it is also found to be cheaper to the community than cremation.

Experience has shown that in many cases this reduction process does not dispose of all the offensive material, and that it must be operated in conjunction with the cremation process, because some of the material collected with the garbage will neither yield grease nor make a good fertilizer, and is best disposed of by burning.

The latest and largest works for disposing of garbage by the reduction process have been built on Barren Island, where the garbage of New York and Brooklyn is being treated. Contracts for this treatment were made within the last year or two, and it appears at the present time that the history of these works may possibly not differ much from the history of others. In this case, however, the distance from inhabited sections and the great quantities of material to be handled, offer more favorable conditions for success than in most other cities. As the selling price of both the grease and the fertilizing residue has been steadily declining, it may probably be safely inferred that the profit of the reduction business does not meet the early expectations.

When the garbage is collected separately from the other refuse, then there remains another method for its disposal, which receives the commendation of your committee, namely, cremation. When garbage is separately collected it contains from 50 to 80 per cent. of moisture. This fact has made its burning difficult. There is insufficient combustible material contained in the same to evaporate the large quantity of moisture contained in fresh garbage while burning up itself. For this reason it has been necessary to add coal to supply the heat in most of the American furnaces. They are nearly all so constructed that the wet material is thrown directly upon the grate-bars. In the English furnaces the garbage and refuse are first thrown into an ante-chamber, where the material is dried before it reaches the grate-bars. Your committee is not aware of the existence of a furnace constructed after the English pattern where garbage alone, without the addition of rubbish, ashes and cinders has been consumed. It is, therefore, not in a position to state the actual results that would be found if garbage alone were burned in an English furnace. It seems, however, in view of the evidence before the committee, that it might possibly be found economical to subject garbage to a drying process before it is thrown upon the grate-bars. With moderately wet garbage and suitably arranged apparatus it seems possible that the com

bustion might be effected with less coal than is now generally used. No intelligent experiments in this direction have, however, come to the attention of your committee, and no definite statement as to the economy of such a process can be given.

Besides the reduction of the kitchen garbage to grease and fertilizer, or its cremation, your committee is not able to designate any process by which the garbage of communities can be finally disposed of either economically or in a sanitary manner. If the garbage is disposed of separately there results the necessity of a separate disposal of the remaining material, consisting of ashes, cinders, rubbish and dry combustible matter. Ashes and incombustible refuse can be safely wasted or dumped for filling in low ground. Dry combustible matter, of which large cities usually furnish a considerable amount, is best disposed of by being burned in a crematory.

Your committee feels compelled to state, with reference to the disposal of these materials, that a separation does not seem to be economical or advisable, unless the conversion of garbage into saleable products is an assured profitable business. It has not so been found in the larger cities of Europe, and separation is not there practiced.

(b) Combined Removal.-When no separation is made of the various waste materials and all are collected together, there is, in the opinion of your committee, but one way in which the final disposal should be accomplished; namely, by cremation. This is the system successfully adopted under these circumstances in many cities of Europe, and is growing in favor every year. (See statistics in appendix.) In England the burning of city garbage and refuse has been practiced in some cities for half a century. Considerable experience has, therefore, been gained regarding the most suitable construction of the furnaces and the manipulation of the material.

Within the last two years extensive experiments have been made in the cities of Hamburg and Berlin on the subject of garbage and refuse cremation, as already stated. The results there obtained with garbage that contains less combustible matter than the English and still less than the American garbage and refuse, indicates without any doubt, that a destruction of this material by fire can be an economical process, besides offering a thoroughly sanitary solution of the garbage question.

The European furnaces have not yet been introduced in America. Within a few years, however, a furnace, resembling the English pattern, but apparently less efficient, has been erected in Montreal. The experience gained with it has been fairly satisfactory. The garbage and ashes are mixed, and they burn without the addition of fuel. It is found necessary, however, as was also found necessary in some cities of Europe, to sift the material and thus to free it from the fine ashes, which choke the fires.

Garbage in America contains more moisture than that in Europe, and this fact has made it appear as though cremating would not be as successful in this country; but your committee has reason to believe that the additional quantity of combustible material usually contained in the average American garbage more than compensates for this additional moisture, when the dry refuse and garbage are mixed. Without having a proper analysis at our disposal, we may say that to the eye there is no apparent difference in this respect between the mixed garbage and refuse of Europe and that of America.

In view of the results obtained during many years in England and lately obtained also in Germany, as fully given in the appendix to this report, there appears to be no reason why the same method of disposal, under the above-mentioned limitations and conditions should not be applicable to this country by using properly constructed furnaces and having efficient workmen, thereby effecting a destruction of the material in a more sanitary way and probably also more economically than by other methods that have been tried.

Your committee finds that the recent report from Hamburg, Zurich, and particularly the one from Berlin, have given material for a better understanding and judgment regarding the cremation of garbage than has been possible since the early English reports on the subject. A final report on similar experiments with similar results recently gained in Paris is also about to be issued.

The experience and results now before your committee indicate that the English pattern of cell furnaces with sloping ante-chamber for a preliminary drying and heating of the garbage gives more economical results than the large and level American furnaces. It also plainly indicates that a skillful construction of the entire plant, and a skillful operation, requiring special training of the firemen, are prime requisites to obtaining successful results.

HONESTY AND CLEANLINESS.

From the Brooklyn Eagle.

Our esteemed but misguided contemporary, the Herald of Rochester, takes us to task in a most astonishing fashion for our advocacy of free baths and a lot of them. It begins by the assertion that it is better to be honest than clean. To that we agree, heartily; but what is the matter with being honest and clean, too? It says that the proposition to establish free baths is a proposition to destroy public morality. "It is to teach people that they have a right to what they have not earned. Gloss the matter as you may, the person who accepts a free public bath has accepted what another person has been compelled to pay for. In ethics it is no more honest than would be the theft of 25 cents spent on a bath in a private establishment." It then argues that when the people have been taught that they have a right to wash in a public establishment they have also the right to sleep in public bedsmany of them do; in jail and in the almshouse; to public dinners-many of them do if they can if they can get into Congress or the Legislature; to free public clothes-look at our army! And if we once start out in this free handed way of doing things there is simply no end to it. It also says that the relation of baths to health is all moonshine and that one might as well say that free medical service is as essential to health. What! Have they no hospitals and dispensaries and health inspectors in Rochester? The desire to be clean cannot be cultivated, it says, by baths, for it is notorious that paupers are filthy. They are, and that is why we want to get some of them into the water. And it then draws the inference that, instead of makng people cleaner, free public baths, by tending to pauperize them, would make them dirtier.

If we had not heard it we never would have believed it. Not only would we not have believed that bathing, even in the East River, makes people more dirty, but we would not have believed that we pauperized ourselves by setting up baths for ourselves. If it is wrong to have free baths-and these are and always have been as free for the rich as for the poor--it must be equally wrong to have public works of all sorts. It must be degrading to have band concerts, since not one in ten thousand listens to them; it must be