Section Foreman.Stable Foreman.Driver.Sweeper.Sweeper.Sweeper.
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District Superintendent.Chief Clerk.Driver.General Superintendent.
THE BOARD OF CONFERENCE.
IMPROVED HEALTH AND COMFORT—DECLINE IN THE DEATH RATE.
Few realize the many minor ways in which the work of the Department has benefited the people at large. For example: There is far less injury from dust to clothing, to furniture, and to goods in shops; mud is not tracked from the streets on to the sidewalks, and thence into the houses; boots require far less cleaning; the wearing of overshoes has been largely abandoned; wet feet and bedraggled skirts are mainly a thing of the past, and children now make free use as a playground of streets which were formerly impossible to them. "Scratches," a skin-disease of horses due to mud and slush, used to entail very serious cost on truckmen and liverymen. It is now almost unknown. Horses used to "pick up a nail" with alarming frequency, and this caused great loss of service, and, like scratches, made the bill of the veterinary surgeon a serious matter. There are practically no nails now to be found in the streets.
The great, the almost inestimable, beneficial effect of the work of the Department is shown in the great reduction of the death rate, and in the less keenly realized but still more important reduction in the sick rate. As compared with the average death rate of 26.78 of 1882-1894, that of 1895 was 23.10, that of 1896 was 21.52, and that of the first half of 1897 was 19.63. If this latter figure is maintained throughout the year, there will have been fifteen thousand fewer deaths than there would have been had the average rate of the thirteen previous years prevailed. The report of the Board of Health for 1896, basing its calculations on diarrheal diseases in July, August, and September, in the filthiest wards, in the most crowded wards, and in the remainder of the city, shows a very marked reduction in all, and the largest reduction in the first two classes.
It is not maintained, of course, that this great saving of life and health is due to street-cleaning work alone. Much is to be ascribed to improvements of the methods of the Board of Health, and not a little to the condemnation and destruction of rear tenements; but the Board of
