HOW TO CLEAN OUR SKIES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Many people who ardently desire pure air and a smokeless sky feel that the associations for the promotion of those conditions are mistaken in their theories. Here are three points for consideration :—
1. The coke-burning furnaces of flats, office chambers, public baths, hotels, theatres, etc., throw out much black smoke, which in the damp air of England often cannot rise, imd which is peculiarly oppressive and far more irritating to the chest and throat than coal smoke. One such furnace ehimney will form a black pall over a large area when the wind is in the south-east. These furnaces are apparently suffered free play both in London and elsewhere, so they can easily be studied.
2. If domestic fires pollute the air more than industrial, how is it that large residential towns are not affected, while the manufacturing towns which employ coal or coke are cliarged with soot ? And why is an industrial town such as Coventry, which employs electricity, free from black dirt ?
8. How is it that New Zealand, with considerably less water power than Great Britain, can use that power both domestically and agriculturally, with plant installed by British firms, if we cannot do likewise ?
The truth is that coal, a good servant but a bad master, has got the better of us, and we do not dare to make ourselves at least semi-independent of it. Wherever there has been a watermill there is water power, and where a windmill wind- power. The source of these powers is cheap and infinite. The use of them would correct our dependence upon one tyrannical industry, would cleanse our towns, bring back beauty to miles of poisoned vegetation, and health to smoke and gas-soaked human beings. For heaven's sake do not let us repudiate one form of air pollution to rush upon another. Coal, coke, and gas are all filthy, and only fit for use on a high site and in a dry air, or in open country where the fumes are quickly dispersed—of the three coal is the cleanest and healthiest. But the locks of the Thames are waiting at London's gates with -their power unused, and men are crying out for work. Meanwhile, the coke furnaces multiply and the fogs continue.-1 am, Sir, &c., W. JONES. 9 Old Square, W.C. 2.
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