For Stephenville residents that could afford it, sewage was kept in privately owned vaults, pumped out periodically by low-paid “scavengers.” The majority of people used backyard outhouses set over a hole in the ground and theoretically moved to a fresh hole as stench demanded. This was the rainy summer of 1908 and nobody, not even the wealthy, had window screens, so flies were everywhere and the whole town suffered from fly-borne diseases. When a majority of citizens wanted to modernize by building a city-wide sewage system, the minority well-off enough to have private sewage vaults, tried to turn public opinion against the idea. An anonymous group known only as the “taxpayers” fought a circular and poster campaign against the proposed system. On July 14, 1908, sewer bonds were passed by a vote of 183 to 71. In 1909, this article appeared in the Stephenville Tribune: “Sewers would be a Godsend to the people of Stephenville in that they would greatly minimize the fly nuisance, hence there would be fewer cases of typhoid fever. Filth accounts for a large percent of unnecessary human suffering.”