Chicago, the Great Lakes, and the Origins of Federal Urban Environmental Policy

Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 122-153

  Platt, Harold L ^a  

^a LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 33845233764     PISSN: 15377814     EISSN: 19433557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1537781400000177     Document Type: Article

References (141)

1. Chicago Tribune, January 17–19, 1900
2. Missouri vs. Illinois 200 US 496 (1906). Missouri also filed a similar case in the U. S. Circuit Court in case its bid for original jurisdiction before the high court was denied.
3. See US., January 18, 1900.
4. The other two key cases considered in this paper are Sanitary District of Chicago vs. United States 266 US 405 (1925)
5. Wisconsin vs. Illinois 278 US 367 (1929).
6. Joel Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, OH, 1996).
7. For general perspectives on the sanitary canal, see James C. O'Connell, “Technology and Pollution: Chicago's Water Policy, 1833–1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1980)
8. Louis P. Cain, Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (De Kalb, IL, 1978). I have prepared two working papers on a larger project on the environmental history of water management in Chicago.
9. See Harold L. Piatt, ‘“A Fountain Inexhaustible’: Environmental Perspectives on Water Management in Chicago, 1840–1880,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of the History of Technology (London, June 1996)
10. ‘“Everlasting Purity’: Science, Engineering, and the Chlorination of Chicago's Water Supply, 1880–1920,” a paper presented to the biennial meeting of the American Society of Environmental History (Baltimore, March 1997). The SDC's refusal to build sewage treatment plants is rooted in the city's political culture, which was unique in its resistance to reform and the corresponding strength of the regular party organizations.
11. For an introduction, see Kenneth Finegold, Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (Princeton, 1995)
12. Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864–1897 (Urbana, 1998).
13. For the rise of a new environmentalism of conservation, see Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1959)
14. the essays collected in Tarr, Ultimate Sink. On the coming of germ theory, see John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana, 1990)
15. Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge, UK, 1998)
16. Michael Worboys, Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 (Cambridge, UK, 2000).
17. On the role of the national government in the rise of Chicago, see Glen Holt, “The Birth of Chicago: An Examination of Economic Parentage,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 76 (Summer 1983): 83–94
18. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991).
19. For general perspectives on American law, see James Willard Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Madison, WI, 1956).
20. For the Trustees' plans to transfer control to the national government, see Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1900.
21. On federalism and the cities, see for example Charles Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago, 1962)
22. Anthony S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, MA, 1983)
23. Christopher Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age ofChadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, UK, 1998). Of course the so-called “Dillon Rule” severely restricted the autonomy of the municipal corporation as a “creature” of state government.
24. Yet, in the area of urban environmental policy, state legislators rarely intervened other than acting as enablers of local units of government. See W. D. Farnham, “The Weakened Spring of Government: A Study in Nineteenth Century History,” American Historical Review 68 (1965): 662–680
25. Alan Jones, “Thomas M. Cooley and Laissez-Faire Consitutionalism: A Reconsideration,” Journal of American History 53 (March 1967): 751–771.
26. Chicago Daily News, August 3, 1885, for the quotation.
27. Also see Chicago Times, August 4, 1885, which reported a final, record-breaking total of 6.33 inches for the storm.
28. The previous record was 4.14 inches, but the statistics only extended back to 1872. Perhaps more telling was the testimony of the city's sailors. “Old river men and vessel-owners who have sailed the lakes for thirty years or more state that nothing like the present storm has ever been known at this season of the year.” Chicago Times., August 3, 1885.
29. On the Citizens' Association, see Harold L. Piatt, “Creative Necessity: Municipal Reform in Gilded Age Chicago,” in The Constitution, Law, and American Life: Critical Aspects of the Nineteenth Century Experience, ed., Donald G. Nieman (Athens, GA, 1992): 162–190.
30. On the early activities of the drainage committee, see O'Connell, ‘Technology and Pollution,” 88–111.
31. On the politics of the great flood, see Piatt, “Fountain Inexhaustible.” One of the best studies of Chicago's fragile environmental site was written by the city's first master environmental engineer.
32. See E. S. Chesbrough, ‘The Drainage and Sewerage of Chicago,” Public Health Papers and Reports 4 (1877): 18–26.
33. M. Delafontaine, “Chemical Examination of the Chicago Water Supply,” in Report on Main Drainage, Citizens' Association of Chicago (September 11, 1885): 23–24. Bacteriological tests were also included in the array of studies of the quality and safety of the water supply sponsored by the Citizens' Association.
34. See B. W. Thomas, “Microscopical Examination of the Chicago Water Supply,” in Report on Main Drainage, Citizens., 21–23
35. Also see the bacteriological investigation of water quality by Dr. John Long, as reported in Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1884.
36. Also see Christopher Hamlin, A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth Century Britain (Bristol, UK, 1990). I wish to thank Angela Gugliotta, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, for stimulating discussions on the reception of germ theory and the importance of the various laboratory methods of testing in gaining acceptance of this model of etiology of disease.
37. For reports of the reform group's activities and political demands, see Chicago Tribune, July 31-August 29,1885, passim.
38. Also see Tribune, August 28,1885, for a complete transcript of the report.
39. For Reilly's biting commentary, see Chicago Morning News, August 2–29, 1885, passim.
40. For biographical information on Reilly, see the account of one of his contemporaries, Arthur Reynolds, “Three Chicago and Illinois Public Health Officers: John H. Rauch, Oscar C. DeWolf, and Frank W. Reilly,” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 1 (August 1912): 87–134.
41. Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1885, for quotation
42. “Preliminary Report of the Drainage and Water Supply Commission,” as reported in International Waterways Commission, “Reports of the International Waterways Commission 1906,” in Canada, Report of the Minister of Public Works, Sessional Paper No. 19a 1907 (Ottawa, 1907) 2:186–201.
43. A complete copy of the report can also be found in G. P. Brown, Drainage Channel and Waterway (Chicago, 1894), 336–373.
44. See O'Connell, “Pollution and Technology,” 82–111, on the background of the Citizens' Association investigation.
45. Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1889, for the quotation and May 5–30, 1889, for an account of the legislative history of the bill in the statehouse.
46. Also see Brown, Drainage Canal, 374–404, which includes a copy of the enabling act.
47. On Manchester's “invention” of the industrial park, see I. Harford, Manchester and Its Ship Canal Movement: Class, Work, and Politics in Late Victorian England (Halifax, NS, 1994).
48. For Cooley's involvement, see “Lyman Edgar Cooley,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed., Allen Johnson (New York, 1929) 2: 391–392
49. Robert A. Waller, “Illinois Waterway from Conception to Completion, 1908–1933,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 65 (Summer 1972): 125–141.
50. Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1889, for the quotation and December 3–14,1889, for the campaign and election returns.
51. Chicago Tribune., December 13,1890, for the quotations and December 11–12,1890, for related stories.
52. Lyman E. Cooley, The Lakes and Gulf Waterway as Related to the Chicago Sanitary Problem (Chicago, 1890), vii, for the quotation.
53. Also see Lyman E. Cooley, The Diversion of the Waters of the Great Lakes by Way of the Sanitary and Ship Canal of Chicago (Chicago, 1913). After his death, the genre lived on.
54. For example, see the one prepared by a SDC lawyer, George F. Barrett, The Waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico (Chicago, 1926).
55. Cooley, Lakes and GulfWaterway, 10, for the quotations and 17, for statistics on riverboats.
56. For the maneuvers in the legislature, see Chicago Tribune, April 4, 17–18, 25, November 2, 1891.
57. For editorial support for Cooley, see the city's main Democratic daily, Chicago Times, April 15 and 17, 1891
58. Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 29, 1891.
59. Chicago Tribune, November 4, 1891, for the quotation.
60. For the battle for control of the board, see Tribune and Chicago Times., December 9, 1891
61. Chicago Tribune, December 6, 9, 14, 16, 30, 1891, and January 2,10,16–18,1892.
62. Also see SDC, Proceedings (December 8,15,18,1891 and January 1,9,15–18, 1892).
63. Chicago Tribune, January 18, 1900, for the quotation and for a range of contemporary opinions.
64. Sanitary District of Chicago, Memorial Presented by the Trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago to the Congress of the United States: Deep Waterway from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River (n.p.,n.d. [1900]), 13,19,18, respectively for the quotations.
65. See U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Rivers and Harbors, Report upon…a Navigable Waterway 14 Feet Deep from Lockport, III.,…to The Mouth of the Illinois River…by the Mississippi River Commission and by a Board of Officers of the Corps of Engineers. U.S. Army (59th Congress, 1st session, 1905, H.R. 263).
66. For the SDC's promotional efforts, see Sanitary District of Chicago, Industrial Development Along Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (n.p., n.d. [1906]) and Sanitary District of Chicago, Real Estate Development Committee, The Manufacturing Site Possibilities of the Land Along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (Chicago, 1916).
67. Chicago Tribune, August 8, 1902 for the first quotation and October 6, 1902 for mortality statistics
68. Edwin Oakes Jordan, ‘Typhoid Fever and Water Supply in Chicago,” Journal of the American Medical Association 39 (December 20, 1902): 1561–1566.
69. Also see Carolyn G. Shapiro-Shapin, ‘“A Really Excellent Scientific Contribution’: Scientific Creativity, Scientific Professionalism, and the Chicago Drainage Case,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 71 (1997): 385–411.
70. Jordan, “Typhoid Fever,” 1563–1565 for the quotations.
71. Typhoid Fever.
72. Cooley, The Diversion of the Waters
73. Rudolph Hering, Report to Hon. Robert R. McCormick, President, on the Calumet Subdivision of the Sanitary District of Chicago (Chicago, October 15, 1907).
74. Jordan, “Typhoid Fever,” 1565 and 1566 for the quotations in this and previous paragraph.
75. Missouri vs. Illinois.
76. Missouri vs. Illinois., 523, 525–26, for the quotations.
77. Missouri vs. Illinois., 521, 522, 518 for the quotations.
78. For Major Handbury's report to the convention, see The Morning News, October 12, 1887
79. Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1887.
80. For the repercussions, see International Waterways Commission, “Joint Report on the Chicago Drainage Canal, 1907,” as reported in Canada, Sessional Paper, 174–186
81. Western Society of Engineers, The Levels of the Lakes as Affected by the Proposed Lakes and Gulf Waterway (Chicago, 1889)
82. esp. George Y. M. Wisner, et al., “Levels of the Lakes as Affected by the Proposed Lake Michigan and Mississippi Waterway,” Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies 8 (March 1889): 123–154.
83. IWC, Sessional Paper, 185 for the quotation. The IWC also hired Rudolph Hering and George W. Fuller as consulting engineers to report on alternative methods of eliminating the contamination of Chicago's water supply by the industrial and human wastes of the burgeoning, Calumet district. The engineers reported that rapid advances in sewage treatment technology now made it a cost-effective option to additional diversions of lake water.
84. The treaty [36 Stat. 2448] is found in Don Courtney Piper, The International Law of the Great Lakes: A Study of Canadian-United States Co-operation (Durham, NC, 1967), 124–130.
85. On the origins of the treaty, see L. M. Bloomfield and Gerald F. Fitzgerald, Boundary Waters Problems of Canada and the United States (The International Joint Commission 1912–1958) (Toronto, 1958)
86. Alan O. Gibbons, “Sir George Gibbons and the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909,” Canadian Historical Review 34 (June 1953): 124–138.
87. For the role of Chicago's withdrawal in the negotiations, see Piper, International, 71–103
88. Cornelius Lynde, “The Controversy Concerning the Diversion of Water from Lake Michigan by the Sanitary District of Chicago,” Illinois Law Review 25 (1930): 243–260
89. Hildegard Willmann, “The Chicago Diversions from Lake Michigan,” Canadian Bar Review 10 (1932): 575–583
90. William L. Griffin, “A History of the Canadian-United States Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909,” University of Detroit Law Journal 37 (1959–1960): 76–95.
91. Sanitary District of Chicago, Industrial Development of Chicago, 10 for the quotation. For other, similar statements, see Robert R. McCormick, “Future Value of the Drainage Canal,” in Chicago Record Herald, December 18, 1909 and Sanitary District of Chicago, The Manufacturing Site Possibilities.
92. Hering, Report to Hon. Robert R. McCormick, 33–34 for the quotation.
93. See George A. Soper, John D. Watson, and Arthur J. Martin, A Report to the Chicago Real Estate Board on the Disposal of the Sewage and Protection of the Water Supply of Chicago, Illinois (Chicago, 1915) for a telling critique of its engineering flaws.
94. For the concerns about lake dumping and the passage of the Mann Act, setting an eight-mile limit, see Chicago Record Herald, April 21, May 12–14, June 20, 1910.
95. For early, scientific investigations of the bacteriology of the bottom of the lake in the Calumet area, see Chicago Record Herald., November 27, 1906, October 13, 1908, January 27 and February 10, 27, 1909. In 1910, health department officers would finally obtain partial relief in the form of a Congressional act imposing an eight-mile limit on the dumping of dredgings in Lake Michigan. Two years later, they would turn to chlorine as a last defense against another sharp rise in the incidence of typhoid fever in the district served by the 68th Street intake crib.
96. SDC, Proceedings (March 27,1907) contains a copy of Taft's report, as well as the district's response, an effort to mount a lobbying campaign for the needed legislation. Taft cited the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 of Congress that completely prohibited making changes in any navigable waterway without the approval of the Chief of Engineers and the authorization of the Secretary of War. Under this law, the Corps' General A. Mackenzie had duly submitted his strong condemnation of Chicago's sanitation strategy because of its negative impacts on navigation in the Great Lakes.
97. Lynde, “The Controversy,” 250 for the first quotation
98. Wisconsin vs. Illinois 278 VS 367 (1930) for the second quotation.
99. For the role of district court judges as protectors of local interests, see Charles L. Zelden, Justice Lies in the District: The U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1902–1960 (College Station, TX, 1993).
100. For biographical information on Landis, see “Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” in The Book ofChicagoans - 1917, ed. Albert Nelson Marquis (Chicago, 1917): 400. SDC vs. US supplies a basic chronology of events in the case.
101. Also see SDC, Proceedings (January 16, 1913) for Cooley's report on his efforts in Washington and a copy of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's rejection of the district's petition
102. Cooley, The Diversion of the Waters and Lyman E. Cooley, Supplement to the Brief on ‘The Diversion of the Waters of the Great Lakes by Way of the Sanitary and Ship Canal of Chicago’ (New York, 1913).
103. For the SDC's position in the case, see C. Arch Williams, The Sanitary District of Chicago: History of its Growth and Development (Chicago, 1919)
104. George M. Wisner, Report on Sewage Disposal: The Sanitary District of Chicago (Chicago, October 12, 1911).
105. For an account of the Canadians' stream of protests against Chicago's withdrawal of water, see J. Q. Dealey, “The Chicago Drainage Canal and the St. Lawrence Development,” American Journal of International Law 23 (1929): 307–328.
106. SDC vs. US.
107. Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1925 for the headline and for the quotation of King
108. For information on Kelly and his rise from unskilled worker to chief engineer and beyond to become the mayor from 1933 to 1947, see Roger Biles, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb, IL, 1984).
109. Tribune, January 6,1925, for the quotation and January 6–9,1925. Canada too added its voice to the chorus denouncing Chicago's illegal withdrawal of massive amounts of water from the lakes. Several bills were introduced, all of them marked by provisos that authorized a withdrawal of 10,000 cubic feet a second (4.5 mgpm). One measure, introduced by Representative William Hull, called for a federal takeover of the ship canal project, including its financial liabilities. However, the SDC itself now opposed this plan because it meant a loss of local control over the patronage-rich agency. In the midst of the crisis, it announced its annual budget of almost $37 million, with close to $28 million of the total earmarked for construction projects.
110. A copy of the permit of March 3, 1925 is found in SDC, Proceedings (March 19, 1925). The permit also required the SDC to build controlling works at the mouth of the river to help forestall sewage backflows into the lake. And the SDC was required to deposit $1 million in the national treasury to pay for engineering projects in the Great Lakes which would help compensate for lowered water levels.
111. I have dealt separately with the water department in Piatt, “Everlasting Purity.”
112. For purposes here, see Chicago, Proceedings of the Common Council (April 14, 1925-March 31, 1926): 1331–1333, for the passage of the universal meter ordinance. The ordinance was passed during the administration of William Dever, but William Hale Thompson would soon campaign for re-election by calling for its repeal. As during his previous two terms in office from 1915–1923, his third would continue the fight against meters and efficiency in the water department.
113. See for example, the defiant denunciation of the meter ordinance and federal authority by his corporate council, Samuel A. Ettelson, Opinion to Mayor William Hale Thompson…on Water Meters (Chicago, November 4, 1927)
114. his commissioner of public works, Richard W. Wolfe, Filtration and Meterization of the Chicago Water Supply System (Chicago, 1930). In 1927, the SDC estimated that it was handling the sewage of 3.5 million people, and the industrial wastes of an equivalent of an additional 1.5 million people.
115. In contrast, the district was processing the waste of only 150,000 people, or three percent of the district. See Sanitary District of Chicago, Engineering Facts Concerning The Sanitary District of Chicago 1927 (n.p., 1927) and the booster publication by its lawyer, Barrett, The Waterway.
116. Wisconsin vs. Illinois (1929). Taft's position in this case is consistent with his larger goal of a more active federal judiciary.
117. See Stanley Kutler, “Chief Justice Taft, National Regulation and the Commerce Power,” Journal of American History 51 (1965): 651–668.
118. Dealey, “Lake Diversion,” 310, for the quotation
119. Wisconsin vs. Illinois.
120. Wisconsin vs. Illinois., 420, for the quotation.
121. Wisconsin vs. Illinois 281 US 179 (1930), 191–93 for the quotation
122. Charles Evans Hughes, “Report of the Special Master on Re-Reference,” US., (October 1929).
123. See US., 289 US 395 (1933)
124. 309 US 569 (1940)
125. 388 US 426 (1967) for the most important follow-up decisions.
126. For the continuing international implications of Chicago's withdrawal of lake water, see Adams, “Diversion of Lake Michigan Waters”
127. Larry B. Morandi, Great Lakes Water Law from Basin to States: Broadening the Perspective (Denver, 1986).
128. Wisconsin vs. Illinois (1930).
129. Wisconsin vs. Illinois., 197 for the quotation
130. Wisconsin vs. Illinois. (1933). The new special master was Edward F. McClennen of Boston.
131. See Chicago Tribune, May 23,1933.
132. Chicago Tribune., January 15, 1930 for the first quotation
133. Lynde, “Diversion of Waters,” 256 for the second quotation.
134. Piper, “International Law,” 90 for the quotation. Piper deserves credit for uncovering the 1926 memos in the State Department that set a foundation for its objection to Chicago's withdrawal of lake water since then. In a key document, the Department Solicitor noted that “Canada has substantial rights in respect of the waters of Lake Michigan which must be respected, and…these rights are recognized at least by implication in the second paragraph of Article 2 of the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.”
135. See Solicitor's note, June 5, 1926, Department of State, file 711.4216M58/97 (National Archives) as quoted in International Law., 99.
136. Chicago Tribune, January 15,1930 for the first quotation and May 23, 1933 for the second quotation.
137. Also see Chicago Tribune., April 16, 1930
138. Ross A. Woodhull, The Sanitary District of Chicago: A Brief History (n.p., n.d. [1935]). At the time, Woodhull was serving as the president of the sanitary district.
139. Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1933 for the quotation and May 23, 1933, for Bowler's comments.
140. See Woodhull, Sanitary District, for details on the finances of the agency.
141. For insight into the city's political influence, see Biles, Big City Boss.