in Canada until the half-decade 1836-40, and even then only one plant was added. In 1896 there were 145 works in Canada, supplying 161 places, besides which three places had domestic and 12 fire. service only, and 10 had works unclassified. From the fact that there were 528 works in 1915 and from returns for 1924 it is estimated that there were 685 works in Canada in 1924, supplying perhaps 750 places. The effect upon the standard of living caused by the introduction of a public water supply was thus pictured by M. N. Baker in "Manual of American Water Works" for 1897: "In place of the labor attendant upon lifting water by the old oaken bucket, the more prosaic hand pump, or of carrying water in pails from some spring or stream, only a turn of the faucet is now necessary in hundreds [thousands in 1925] of communities to secure either hot or cold water on any floor of a dwelling." To this convenience must be added the protection of health due to public water suppliesfar greater in 1925 than in 1897-the protection of both life and property against fire, the use of public water supplies for street sprinkling, washing and for sewer flushing and for manifold industrial uses. Public water supplies not only substitute safe for unsafe drinking water, but also make sanitary sewers possible and with them the abolition of the dangerous privy and cesspool. With the privy, the typhoid fly also goes. To the introduction of new water supplies and the improvement of both new and old by means of sanitary protection, filtration and chlorination the heavy reduction, and in many places the virtual disappearance, of typhoid fever is largely due. No longer than 30 years ago typhoid death rates of 20 to 100 were common, with rates in bad years in the most afflicted cities running much higher. The 1924 figures for American cities of 100,000 population or larger, collected by the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed 18 of 69 cities with typhoid death rates of 2 or less, 53 with rates of 5 or less and only 2 of the 69 above 15 per 100,000. Fall River, Mass., and Hartford, Conn., showed no typhoid deaths in 1924 and altogether there were 7 cities with rates of 1 or less. Nearly all the early works consisted of relatively short lengths of pipe delivering water from a nearby spring or stream by gravity, with no or but nominal storage. Bored wood pipe or else lead pipe was used, and where there was fire protection it was by means of bucket or fire pump brigades. Gradually cast-iron pipe was introduced, some of it imported from England or Scotland. This pipe was untreated until "tar" coating was introduced from England, following the Angus Smith patent of 1848. Masonry aqueducts were used for the larger gravity works, notably the Croton and Cochituate supplies for New York and Boston, dating from 1842 and 1848. Cast-iron pipe has always been in the ascendency, but it has had as rivals a continuation of bored wood pipe, machine made; wood stave pipe, cement-mortarlined and coated wrought-iron pipe, laid at Saratoga, N. Y., in 1845; riveted-wrought iron pipe laid by the Spring Valley Water Co. of San Francisco in 1862 and later, and by the City of Rochester, N. Y., 1873–75, these being forerunners of the Newark steel conduit put in use in 1892, and of various later types of steel supply mains; and concrete pipe, plain and reinforced. Since about 1920, centrifugally cast or spun iron pipe has been coming into use, as also cement lining for cast-iron pipe. Water meters date back many decades, but as recently as 1891 there were only some 165,000 in use in the United States and 3200 in Canada, compared with about 2,215,000 and 185,000 taps, respectively. Only 37 cities had 50 per cent or more of their taps metered in 1891. Since then the number of meters has multiplied many times and there are hundreds of works with from 90 to 100 per cent of their taps metered. The Venturi meter first introduced on a municipal water supply in the United States on the new 42inch steel conduit for Newark, N. J., in 1892, has since been widely adopted on large supply mains, masonry aqueducts, and filtration plants. Pumps and their motive power have seen great changes since the "severe struggles" of Christiansen at Bethlehem, Pa., in 1754–61 and the Philadelphia plant put in use in 1801—the first large pumping plant (for the times) installed in North America. For more than a hundred years after the crude pumps at Bethlehem were at last made to function, steam continued to be almost the only source of power (the exception being water power directly applied) and wood. and coal the fuel used to raise steam. Some form of reciprocating pump was almost universally used, with centrifugal pumps confined to low lifts. In the 80's high-duty attachments to horizontal pumps and the introduction of vertical triple expansion pumps of still higher duty put pumping plants on a new basis of efficiency and capacity. Since then the changes have been still more notable, higher duties being obtained by pumps of a tenth the dimensions and cost, now chiefly centrifugal pumps, driven by steam turbines or electric motors. Internal combustion engines have also come to the front, especially for smaller capacities, and crude oil is used in such engines as the Diesel. Until 1870 there were no water filtration plants in the United States, as the term is now understood, but some of the surface supplies then in use were passed through so-called filters or strainers of gravel, charcoal or sponge. Infiltration basins and galleries were used also. In 1870 Poughkeepsie and in 1874-5, Hudson, N. Y., built slow sand filters of the English type, which stood alone in the United States until modified slow sand filters were built at Lawrence, Mass., in 1893. Meanwhile in the late 80's the earliest rapid or mechanical filters were built. In 1897 there were about 100 rapid, but only a dozen or so slow, sand filters in use on public water supplies in America. In 1925 there were about 587 rapid and about 47 slow sand filters in use, with a total capacity of approximately 5000 million gallons per day. Chlorination dates from 1908. It is now used on nearly all surface supplies, whether filtered or not. Ownership of works has seen sweeping changes since the 16 privately- and 1 municipally-owned plant at the close of the eighteenth century. The accompanying table shows the swing to public ownership of works during the nineteenth century up to 1895 and the best available figures for later years (some 70 or 75 per cent public in 1924), but it does not indicate the far more rapid increase in the relative populations supplied by municipal and private works. Populations for 1890 on works of the two classes of ownership in that year, ascertained with care for the Baker, 1891, "Manual of American Water-Works" showed a total population supplied of 22,678,350, divided 15,018,522 public and 7,659,802 private or about 62 to 34 per cent, for the United States. For Canada the figures were a little over a million people supplied, of which 81.5 were on muncipally-owned works. Official Dominion statistics for 1915, given elsewhere in tabular form, show a total of 528 works divided. 396 to 132 or 75 to 25 per cent between public and private ownership. Today (1925) it may be assumed that at least 95 per cent in Canada and 85 to 90 per cent in the United States of the people having water supplies are served by municipally-owned works. |