Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/365

 yellow fever, born of water-supply and filth together with overcrowding, and all the evils of bad water and overcrowding.

Water-works were at last built, the most considerable then known, their site where the Public Buildings stand and their picture in the Historical Society; a systematic street scavenging began, building on the back of lots was prohibited, years before New York, and two generations before the European city; a fixed yardage, small, but sufficient to transform the city map, was required of each dwelling; paving and sewerage commenced, the almshouse was moved, a city hospital was established, and a most important legal decision made easy the purchase of house lots by the poor and frugal. The solution was not complete. Typhoid lurks where yellow fever once raged, but crowding was prevented and the city has no slums in the region outside of the area which has been built over since the ordinances of the first twenty to thirty years of this century stopped overcrowding and saved its poorer citizens from the awful fate inflicted by the titled avarice and civic mislegislation of London and Glasgow. Nor ought any one to look across the Schuylkill from the Zoölogical