Page:The character and extent of air pollution in Leeds - (A lecture delivered before the Leeds Philosophical Society, on March 3rd, 1896.) By Julius B. Cohen (IA b21534160).pdf/6

6 felt at the same time that the subject of air pollution in manufacturing towns really deserved more attention than it has generally received; for the evil is a growing one, and I believe we shall realize one day, as the result of a very costly experience, the same necessity for breathing an untainted atmosphere as we now do for drinking unpolluted drinking water, or for consuming unadulterated food.

Past experience, however, gives us little hope of any immediate remedy in the matter of atmospheric purification. And I lay this mainly at the door of our ungenial climate. If the weather permitted the restless activity of our busy manufacturing centres to relax a little during the day by an hour spent idly out of doors; if we could sit after the fashion of the Continentals, and drink coffee and smoke under the trees outside club or restaurant, we should begin to feel dissatisfaction with some of the hideous surroundings which we now tolerate, and from which those who can, hasten to escape. But the gloom of winter, followed by the severity of our summer weather, drives us, when work and physical exercise are over, within doors, where we strive to compensate for the ugliness and discomfort of outside, by the enhanced cheerfulness and attractiveness of our homes. I believe that in consequence of this, we have reached a standard of domestic comfort which is unknown in any other country. At the same time, we lose by comparison in nearly every other respect. Any pride we may have in our surroundings rarely extends beyond our own four walls, or, if we possess them, our garden palings. We suffer our river to become an open sewer, our buildings to be defaced by soot, our streets to be disfigured by huge advertisement hoardings, and our atmosphere to be polluted by smoke.

If the pollution of the river and the air, and the existence of unwholesome courts and uninhabitable dwellings offended the aesthetic sense only, we might wisely leave their disappearance to the improving hand of Time. But we know, without the aid of mortality tables, that these things affect