Excerpt from The Collection and Disposal of Municipal Waste The subject of waste collection and disposal in American and Canadian municipalities has from the first been a perplexing and difficult problem of municipal administration. It has not been given the attention bestowed upon other branches of municipal service, but most cities have followed the primitive methods in use from the settlement of the country and along lines that are now proven too unsatisfactory and too insanitary to be continued. There is an increasing demand that more economical and sanitary results be obtained in this class of work, and to secure these it seems to be necessary that improved methods be employed, larger sums of money spent, and that the plants be designed and operated under more scientific and expert supervision. In this work the author presents, in as compact a form as possible, data gathered by him during nearly twenty-one years of continuous work along these lines, together with information collected from scattered reports, papers, and a great variety of other sources. The purpose of the author is to give a slight historical sketch of the work in the North American communities from the time when the subject first assumed general importance, about 1885, down to the present time. It is also his purpose to present an account of the various methods of waste collection and disposal that are in use in this country, together with a comparison of the older with the more modern systems of collection and waste treatment. There is also a short account of the progress of the work of refuse disposal in other countries of the world, for which the author is indebted to Mr. W. Francis Goodrich, of London. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.