It required both civic enterprise and moral
conviction to be willing to do this three evenings a week during
the hottest and most uncomfortable months of the year.
Nevertheless, a certain number of women persisted, as did the
residents, and three city inspectors in succession were
transferred from the ward because of unsatisfactory services.
Still the death rate remained high and the condition seemed
little improved throughout the next winter. In sheer
desperation, the following spring when the city contracts were
awarded for the removal of garbage, with the backing of two
well-known business men, I put in a bid for the garbage removal
of the nineteenth ward. My paper was thrown out on a
technicality but the incident induced the mayor to appoint me the
garbage inspector of the ward.
The salary was a thousand dollars a year, and the loss of that
political "plum" made a great stir among the politicians. The
position was no sinecure whether regarded from the point of view
of getting up at six in the morning to see that the men were
early at work; or of following the loaded wagons, uneasily
dropping their contents at intervals, to their dreary destination
at the dump; or of insisting that the contractor must increase
the number of his wagons from nine to thirteen and from thirteen
to seventeen, although he assured me that he lost money on every
one and that the former inspector had let him off with seven; or
of taking careless landlords into court because they would not
provide the proper garbage receptacles; or of arresting the
tenant who tried to make the garbage wagons carry away the
contents of his stable.
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