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Sanitation in late 19th century cities was not up to modern [Man and woman surrounded by trash]

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standards well actually it wasn't up to any standards at all not because it was

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lazy because standards didn't exist cities were an all-out mess sewage

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systems were a joke so people just chucked their business into a street or

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a nearby river or ocean you know a lot of horse-drawn carriages back then so [Trash bags thrown into piles]

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you can imagine humans plus horses, not a good combo well the same went for

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whatever trash folks had laying around the house don't need it when I'll just throw [Man throwing trash round a room]

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it out the window what's the worst that could happen well how about that city's

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wreaked cities where people trudge to work through a mounds of waste cities

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where people constantly got sick from tainted water well the New York of today

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is positively sterile compared to what it used to be still we wouldn't try [Man eating food from sidewalk]

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eating off the sidewalk or anything all of New York City used to be like one big

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trash can even worse it was like when people mashed down a full can to make

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room for whatever they want to throw away next as we all know eventually the

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bags going to burst without any kind of trash pickup NYC was burying itself in [NYC buried in trash bags]

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waste and it wasn't just light trash like sandwich crusts or apple cores even

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a hardcore trash like industrial waste was tossed into the streets seriously

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New York City was also giant-free petting zoo pigs and other livestock [Man on sidewalk and pigs appear]

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casually sauntered around town and horses pulled carriages and carts so that

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might seem kind of quaint these BC's definitely were not toilet trained in

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addition to creating numerous what's that smell following me around mysteries [Man walking as smells follow behind]

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all the trash and feces contaminated the water New York City wasn't just a little

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bit dirty it became a petri dish for diseases like cholera and yellow fever

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which killed plenty of folks well a guy named Aaron Burr proposed pumping in

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water from upstate to solve this problem you might be thinking great! finally an [Aaron Burr beside a river]

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upstanding guy who cares about fixing problems but don't get too excited he

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didn't actually help much he just wanted to charge people for water and start a

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rival bank to spite Alexander Hamilton so [Burr and Hamilton bank side by side]

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turns out creating a rival bank wasn't a satisfying revenge so Burr put a cap in

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Hamilton in a duel several years later killing him yeah Aaron Burr that's the

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guy who killed Alexander Hamilton New York City took the water problem

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seriously when it struggled to fight the Great Fire of 1835 if the city had had [NYC burning]

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more water it would have just been the average fire of 1835 yeah so the Croton

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Aqueduct was created in 1842 to solve the water problem for real and to stop [Earth burning in the flames]

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all fires from having delusions of grandeur and if that wasn't good enough

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the new sanitation department of NYC began to eradicate the infectious

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diseases in 1896 George Waring; a Civil War Colonel developed a sanitation

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department that actually cleans the streets and hauled away the trash what [Truck removes trash from streets]

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a concept! He was such a hero and a genius that in 1903 street cleaners and garbage

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men were honored with a parade don't tell today's garbage man that the

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old-school ones have got a parade that's the last thing we need is a garbage

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strike..

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