*A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; Send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon river. *Booker T. Washington, Atlanta address.
Not even in great cities like Canton, built in the meshes of tideswept rivers and canals; like Hankow on the banks of one of the largest rivers in the world; nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama or Tokyo, is such waste permitted. To them such a practice has meant race suicide and they have resisted the temptation so long that it has ceased to exist.
Dr. Arthur Stanley, Health officer of the city of Shanghai, in his annual report for 1899, considering this subject as a municipal problem, wrote:
"Regarding the bearing on the sanitation of Shanghai of the relationship between Eastern and Western hygiene, it may be said, that if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanitation, the Chinese are a race worthy of study by all who concern themselves with Public Health. Even without the returns of a Registrar-General it is evident that in China the birth rate must very considerably exceed the death rate, and have done so in an average way during the three or four thousand years that the Chinese nation has existed. Chinese hygiene, when compared with medieval English, appears to advantage. The main problem of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling day by day, and if this can be done at a profit so much the better. While the ultra-civilized Western elaborates destructors for burning garbage at a financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the Chinaman uses both for manure. He wastes nothing while the sacred duty of agriculture is uppermost in his mind. And in reality recent bacterial work has shown that faecal matter and house refuse are best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where natural purification takes place. The question of destroying garbage can, I think, under present conditions in Shanghai, be answered in a decided negative. While to adopt the water-carriage system for sewage and turn it into the river, whence the water supply is derived, would be an act of sanitary suicide. It is best, therefore, to make use of what is good in Chinese hygiene, which demands respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending from more than a thousand years before the Christian era."
The storage of such waste in China is largely in stoneware receptacles such as are seen in Fig. 109, which are hard-burned, glazed terra-cotta urns, having capacities ranging from 500 to 1000 pounds. Japan more often uses sheltered cement-lined pits such as are seen in Fig. 110.
In the three countries the carrying to the fields is oftenest in some form of pail, as seen in Fig. 111, a pair of which are borne swinging from the carrying pole. In applying the liquid to the field or garden the long handle dipper is used, seen in Fig. 112.
We are beginning to husband with some economy the waste from our domestic animals but in this we do not approach that of China, Korea and Japan. People in China regularly search for and collect droppings along the country and caravan roads. Repeatedly, when walking through city streets, we observed such materials quickly and apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored under conditions which ensure small loss from either leaching or unfavorable fermentation. In some mulberry orchards visited the earth had been carefully hoed back about the trunks of trees to a depth of three or four inches from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet, and upon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, the moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves and stem left after feeding. Some disposition of such waste must be made. They return at once to the orchard all but the silk produced from the leaves; unnecessary loss is thus avoided and the material enters at once the service of forcing the next crop of leaves.
On the farm of Mrs. Wu, near Kashing, while studying the operation of two irrigation pumps driven by two cows, lifting water to flood her twenty-five acres of rice field preparatory to transplanting, we were surprised to observe that one of the duties of the lad who had charge of the animals was to use a six-quart wooden dipper with a bamboo handle six feet long to collect all excreta, before they fell upon the ground, and transfer them to a receptacle provided for the purpose. There came a flash of resentment that such a task was set for the lad, for we were only beginning to realize to what lengths the practice of economy may go, but there was nothing irksome suggested in the boy's face. He performed the duty as a matter of course and as we thought it through there was no reason why it should have been otherwise. In fact, the only right course was being taken. Conditions would have been worse if the collection had not been made. It made possible more rice. Character of substantial quality was building in the lad which meant thrift in the growing man and continued life for the nation.
We have adverted to the very small number of flies observed anywhere in the course of our travel, but its significance we did not realize until near the end of our stay. Indeed, for some reason, flies were more in evidence during the first two days on the steamship, out from Yokohama on our return trip to America, than at any time before on our journey. It is to be expected that the eternal vigilance which seizes every waste, once it has become such, putting it in places of usefulness, must contribute much toward the destruction of breeding places, and it may be these nations have been mindful of the wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of the evolution of their waste disposal system have been dictated by and held fast to through a clear conception of sanitary needs.
Much intelligence and the highest skill are exhibited by these old-world farmers in the use of their wastes. In Fig. 113 is one of many examples which might be cited. The man walking down the row with his manure pails swinging from his shoulders informed us on his return that in his household there were twenty to be fed; that from this garden of half an acre of land he usually sold a product bringing in $400, Mexican,—$172, gold. The crop was cucumbers in groups of two rows thirty inches apart and twenty-four inches between the groups. The plants were eight to ten inches apart in the row. He had just marketed the last of a crop of greens which occupied the space between the rows of cucumbers seen under the strong, durable, light and very readily removable trellises. On May 28 the vines were beginning to run, so not a minute had been lost in the change of crop. On the contrary this man had added a month to his growing season by over-lapping his crops, and the trellises enabled him to feed more plants of this type than there was room for vines on the ground. With ingenuity and much labor he had made his half acre for cucumbers equivalent to more than two. He had removed the vines entirely from the ground; had provided a travel space two feet wide, down which he was walking, and he had made it possible to work about the roots of every plant for the purpose of hoeing and feeding. Four acres of cucumbers handled by American field methods would not yield more than this man's one, and he grows besides two other crops the same season.