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Professor

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History of the United States

Before 1895, the streets of America were commonly in a grimy state. During the wet weather, the streets were enclosed with slime while in the dry weather; the air had a lot of dust. There was rubbish of all kind, ashes and mud that were neglected and left to lie on the streets. Seeing the pavements along the streets was not easy due to the dirt that lay in the streets. Cleaning the streets was not easy because of the grease that came from the wagon axles. The sewers within the streets were also blocked with refuse.

The performance of standing unharnessed wagons and trucks in the open streets was almost worldwide in all apart from the best residence districts and major thoroughfares. The people in charge of all health services made details of vehicles and by standing every Sunday, counting a portion of 25 vehicles on one part of the city. The health board then made a conclusion that all the vehicles were more than sixty thousand (Channing & Edward, 173). The trucks that stood on the road side did not only create traffic jam and made the cleaning of the street impossible but also harbored crime and vice.

Highway men and thieves made the trucks their dens, harsh caroused in the trucks, both men and women hid in them and used them for their vilest purposes, until they all became both factually and symbolically; a stench in people’s nostrils. The poor people faced hard times as they had no power of getting relief from the criminals who lived in the trucks. The top most officials of the city admitted that removing the trucks from the streets was not possible (Bancroft, George & Russel, 189). The conditions of the strets were nobody’s fault but the fault of the system.

The department concerned with the elimination of the trucks was throttled by adherent so much that it could not deliver good work. The department could not command its personal respect nor the public’s and could not maintain the materials available in good order. Today, the streets of the city are clean; the empty trucks are all gone. The clean streets mean a lot. With the clean streets, life has become easy and cheap for everybody (Bancroft, George & Russel, 189).

The work of the department has benefited people in various ways like: fewer injuries that occur from dust to goods in shops, furniture and clothes; mud is not tracked from the streets on to the sidewalks and later into houses, shoes and boots require lesser cleaning and the wearing of oversized shoes have since been abandoned. Bedraggled skirts and wet feet have become things of the past and children can now play freely in the play grounds which were very impossible before the department did the marvelous work (Channing & Edward, 173). Liverymen and truck men were once infected by scratches- a skin disease of the horses due to slush and mud. This disease no longer exists.

The biggest and most immeasurable advantageous work of the department is seen in the reduced death rate and also the reduced sick rate. The death rate of 1882 to 1894 was 26.78, 8195 death rate was 23.10, 1896 it was 21.52 and of 1897 was 19.63. If this concluding figure is maintained throughout the year, then the death rate shall have reduced by 15,000. The 1986 health report given by the Board of Health majoring its findings on diarrheal diseases, there are reduction in the number of the filthiest wards within the city.

Works Cited

Bancroft, George, and Russel B. Nye. The History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the Continent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.

Channing, Edward. A History of the United States. New York: Macmillan,2005. Print.