“HELL WITH THE LID TAKEN OFF:” A CULTURAL HISTORY OF AIR POLLUTION – PITTSBURGH A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Angela Gugliotta, B.S., M.A., M.A. _____________________________ Christopher Hamlin, Director Graduate Program in History Notre Dame, Indiana December 2004 © Copyright by ANGELA GUGLIOTTA 2004 All rights reserved “HELL WITH THE LID TAKEN OFF:” A CULTURAL HISTORY OF AIR POLLUTION – PITTSBURGH Abstract by Angela Gugliotta Pittsburgh has been known for coal smoke since its founding. Yet no comprehensive study exists of the meaning of smoke to the city. Urban pollution is usually discussed in terms of problem and solution. Such narratives seldom do justice to the mixed losses and benefits inherent in historical outcomes or to the ambiguous motives and capacities of historical actors. This dissertation asks when, for whom, and why smoke became a problem in Pittsburgh. More broadly, it examines the rich variety of roles smoke played in urban history. Pittsburgh began as a frontier settlement. The smoky spectacle described in travelers’ accounts advertised its abundant coal and industrial promise. Valued for economic potential rather than civic culture, Pittsburgh’s future seemed precarious. Environmental sacrifice shored up its uncertain prospects. Nuisance judgements and local newspapers characterized opposition to smoke as a threat to economic necessity – arising from luxurious and vicious tastes of coddled and Angela Gugliotta feminized elites. By the 1880s technological changes, especially the introduction of natural gas, broke connections between particular production processes and economic success. For skilled workers of Pittsburgh’s National Labor Tribune, and their employers, values like cleanliness, previously regarded as antithetical to industry, became supportive of it. Natural gas made better steel, iron and glass than bituminous coal. Changes in class structure and social geography encouraged elites to reject provincialism and frontier exceptionalism. From the 1890s on, interest in economic diversification justified smoke abatement through values formerly seen as threats to economic welfare: leisure, consumption, and domesticity, embodied in real estate and retail commerce. The Mellon Institute Smoke Investigation and its successor studies (1911-1941) exhibit the interplay of such interests with changing environmental, scientific and reform orientations. Despite such sustained efforts, environmental attitudes fluctuated as depression and defense industry booms reshaped civic hopes and fears. Architects of Pittsburgh’s mid-twentieth century “Renaissance” would construct the previous 150 years as an environmental Dark Age. Yet, Pittsburghers had no more passively accepted smoke than they had unanimously resisted it. Throughout the period, smoke had been put to varied political uses, serving diverse and shifting constituencies, shaping and shaped by Pittsburgh’s social and cultural history. DEDICATION For Roswitha, Teresa, and Lucia ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . vii INTRODUCTION . 1 Notes . 13 CHAPTER 1: SMOKE ON THE URBAN FRONTIER . 17 1.1 Advantages . 19 1.2 Smoke and Health on the Frontier . 31 1.3 Instability and Industrial Growth . 37 1.4 Dissonance . 50 1.5 Frontier Ideology . 67 Notes . 72 CHAPTER 2: SMOKE’S REPUBLIC TO “NEW PITTSBURG,” 1868-1892 . 81 2.1 “Smoke:” That Single Word . 81 2.2 City of Smoke . 84 2.3 Jarring Transformations: Rivers to Railroads, Commerce to Industry, Iron to Steel . 90 2.4 Pittsburgh as Craftsmen’s Empire: Labor Struggles and Republican Ideals . 94 2.5 New Technology and Republican Ideology . 96 2.6 Demise of the Walking City: Fragmentation of the Urban Republic . 99 2.7 Smoke in James Parton’s Frontier Republic . .102 2.8 Technological Change and Transformed Meanings of Smoke . .121 2.9 Skilled Labor On the Natural Gas Supply: A Defense of Republican Entitlements . .132 2.10 The Wells Run Dry . .140 2.11 Natural Gas Deconstructs the Mythology: an Odd Anti-Smoke Consensus . .143 2.12 Experiments with and Rejection of Manufactured Gas . .151 iii 2.13 Conclusion . .158 Notes . 161 CHAPTER 3: SMOKE ABATEMENT ACTIVISM AND PROGRESSIVE REFORM, 1892-1911 . 176 3.1 Residential Segregation, Cultural Fragmentation and Municipal Housekeeping . 179 3.2 Municipal Housekeepers: The Ladies’ Heath Protective Association – Motives and Identity . 183 3.3 The LHPA’s Anti-Smoke Campaign and the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania . 190 3.4 Smoke, Health, Luxury and Necessity . 199 3.5 Newspaper Representation of the Meeting: “Strongly Smoke” . 206 3.6 Opposition to Smoke Abatement: In Like a Lion and Out Like a Lamb 210 3.7 Legislative Action on Smoke . 217 3.8 Enforcement of the 1892 Ordinance . 230 3.9 Andrew Carnegie and William Metcalf: Coal, Smoke and Pittsburgh’s Future . 240 3.10 The Chamber of Commerce Committee on Smoke Abatement . 247 3.11 Early Claims of Progress and Consensus: The Joke that Wasn’t Funny Anymore . 252 3.12 Overturning of the 1895 Ordinance . 263 3.13 The Struggle for Oakland: Nuisance Suits Against the Junction Railroad and Jones and Laughlin . 266 3.14 Progressive Reform in Pittsburgh and The Crusade of the Pittsburgh Sun . 282 3.15 Comfort and Cleanliness As Legitimate Values in the Sun’s Crusade 285 3.16 Framing a New Ordinance: Pittsburgh’s Mills and Its Exceptional Smoke Problem . 290 3.17 Drafting the 1906 Smoke Ordinance . 297 3.18 Railroads and the Resurrection of Old Ordinances . 299 3.19 Slow Progress on the Tilbury Bill . 301 3.20 Enforcement of the 1906 Ordinance . 313 3.21 The Pittsburgh Survey . 317 3.22 Conclusion . 327 Notes . 330 iv CHAPTER 4: SMOKE, INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, AND VISIONS FOR PITTSBURGH, 1911-1922 . 362 4.1 Counter-Surveys . 365 4.2 The Mellons, Industrial Research, Reform Research and Smoke . 368 4.3 Mellon Industrial Research: Gold From Lead? . 374 4.4 Psychological Effects . 386 4.5 Economic Cost . 389 4.6 Meteorological Aspects . 395 4.7 Effects of Smoke on Building Materials . 397 4.8 Effects on Vegetation . 402 4.9 Final Bulletins of Initial MISI Work: Health Effects and Emissions Survey . 404 4.9.1 Health Effects . 404 4.9.2 Emissions Survey and Directives for Action . 415 4.10 Fruits of Reform Research: Publicity, The Smoke and Dust Abatement League, New Smoke Laws and a New Smoke Inspector . 423 4.11 “War Smoke is not to Envelop Pittsburgh” . 451 4.12 Interpretations: Insurgency to Efficiency? Environmentalism to Conservationism? . 454. 4.13 Conclusion . .457 Notes . 460 CHAPTER 5: DARK AGE TO RENAISSANCE? . .476 5A The 1920s . 480 5A.1 Owls and Windowboxes . 481 5A.2 Overalls or Artist’s Smock? . 486 5A.3 “What Kind of a Pittsburgh Is Detroit?” . 488 5A.4 “Child of Necessity and Nature” . 490 5A.5 Smoke Abatement and the Future of Coal . 494 5A.6 Smoke Abatement After the Great War: Herbert Meller as City Official and Pollution Scientist . .500 5A.7 The 1923-24 Sootfall Study: Ambiguous Results . .504 5A.8 Claims of Comparative Success . 509 5A.9 The 1929-30 Sootfall Study: Even More Ambiguities . 514 5B The Great Depression . ..