Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/613

Rh The meat business alone in New York runs up toward a hundred millions annually, and the city can not afford to lose it, with the hundreds of smaller allied businesses that must inevitably follow it wherever it goes. I have brought up this subject because, singularly enough, the same trouble and similar complaints have arisen in Paris this summer, and the parallelism between the course of the journals there and here is as marked in this case as in the others mentioned above.

The Paris correspondent of the London "Lancet," in the issue of July 31, 1880, writes: "For some time the atmosphere of Paris has been anything but agreeable. Toward the evening, an unpleasant smell—or rather a more unpleasant smell than usual—has been noticeable, so much so, indeed, that it has at last become offensive even to the republican nostrils of the Municipal Council. This odor has been supposed by some to emanate from the sewers, while others have attributed it to putrefaction in the numerous kiosques which adorn (or disfigure?) the boulevards. It would appear, however, that the effluvium originates outside the fortifications, in the twenty-seven dépotoirs, or night-soil depots, which at some distance surround the capital, and perhaps also in the sewage-boats which are anchored in the Seine, near the Pont des Invalides. It depends in a great measure upon the absence of the disinfectants which should be used by the contractors who empty the cesspools, but who appear, from the statement of one of the Municipal Councilors, to have been abetted by the police in their neglect."

A month later, August 28th, the same correspondent writes: "The pestilential smells which have infected Paris for some time are awakening a feeling of indignation against the responsible authorities, which is expressed freely in the daily papers, and that quite independent of party spirit. A few days since the well-known critic, Francisque Sarcey, devoted an article to this matter in the 'Dix-Neuvième Siècle,' and invited the inhabitants of his district to sign the petition in preparation against the nuisance; and the 'Figaro' of to-day prefaces some satirical remarks by the statement that 'Paris est en ce moment infecté par les odeurs les plus épouvantables. Tous les égouts sont à découvert.' The odors, which in reality emanate, as was stated in a previous letter, from the night-soil dépotoirs which surround the city, and also from the carts and boats which convey the sewage outside the walls, are due to the neglect of the contractors in the use of disinfecting measures, and there seems to he no doubt about the connivance of the police at this abuse. . . . The 'Petite République Française' thinks that the only remedy lies in the suppression of the bureaux which are fallaciously called 'sanitary' or 'hygienic,' and which cover the responsibility of the prefect by a semblance of official sanction, which, as a matter of fact, they can not withhold." (The italics are mine.)