Like Caesar's wife, it must be above suspicion. Within an hour I
had learned that the nitrites meant in fact that there had been at
one time sewage contamination; consequently that we were face to
face with a most grave problem. How had the water become polluted,
and who guaranteed that it was not in that way even then, with the
black death threatening to cross the ocean from Europe?
I sounded the warning in my paper, then the _Evening Sun_, counselled
the people to boil the water pending further discoveries, then
took my camera and went up in the watershed. I spent a week there,
following to its source every stream that discharged into the
Croton River and photographing my evidence wherever I found it.
When I told my story in print, illustrated with the pictures, the
town was astounded. The Board of Health sent inspectors to the
watershed, who reported that things were worse a great deal than I
had said. Populous towns sewered directly into our drinking-water.
There was not even a pretence at decency. The people bathed and
washed their dogs in the streams.
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