 
FRANK E. WING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR PITTSBURGH SURVEY; SUPERINTENDENT CHICAGO TUBERCULOSIS INSTITUTE One convincing and startling feature of the Pittsburgh Civic Exhibit in November was a frieze of small silhouettes three inches apart stretching in line around both ends and one side of the large hall in Carnegie Institute in which the exhibit of the Pittsburgh Survey was installed. The frieze was over 250 feet in length, and the figures were distributed in correct proportion by age and sex. They represented six hundred and twenty-two persons in all, the death-toll from typhoid fever in Pittsburgh during the year 1907. Accompanying this frieze, placed prominently over the doors where everyone could read them, were duplicates of the following sign in large display letters: If the Death Rate Had Been 25 per 100,000, still considerably greater than that in Albany, Ann Arbor, Ansonia, Atlantic City, Binghamton, Boston, Bridgeport, Brockton, Cambridge, Canton, Detroit, Fall River, Hartford, Jersey City, Lawrence, Lowell, Milwaukee, New York, Rochester, St. Paul, Springfield, Syracuse, Worcester, and a score of other cities having a fairly pure water supply, but 114 of these persons would have died and the line would be only 2/9 as long. Who is Responsible for this Sacrifice? And next to this placard was another sign, showing in comparative columns the amount of typhoid fever in Pittsburgh during the four months that had elapsed since the opening of a great municipal filtration plant, compared with the amount for the same months of the previous year; for example ninety-six cases in October, 1908, as against 593 in October, 1907. The typhoid problem in Pittsburgh in its larger cause has always been a water problem; in its consequences it has become one of the city's biggest social and economic problems; in its solution, it has been tied up with all the politics of a boss-ridden city. The story of filtration is the story of the navigation of an unwieldy craft through a tempestuous channel. Buffeted by cross winds of public opinion, its sails battered and torn by squalls of commercial opposition and abuse, guided now to the right and now to the left by frequently changing pilots, a plaything for the waves of councils, its booty coveted by buccaneers of each political faction, filtration and its freightage of health (or contracts) has been a prize over which the elements in the municipal life of Pittsburgh have battled hard and long. The docking of this craft in safety and security is one of Pittsburgh's greatest civic achievements; its protracted passage is her most enduring disgrace. In handling the question of typhoid in Pittsburgh, we must then, deal with three distinct themes: water, economics, and politics. Silhouettes are not here classified as to age, sex and occupation. I.—WATER. THE MENACE.The publicly supplied drink of Pittsburgh has been river water and whatever that river water contained. Prior to the opening of the new filtration plant last summer, that part of the city known as "old Pittsburgh," comprising the first twenty-three With the exception of two or three wards, which receive a company supply of filtered water, that part of the city known as the South Side, comprising wards twenty-four to thirty-six, and ward forty-three, formerly the Borough of Sheraden, receives its water from the Monongahela direct, and from the Ohio direct, just below the junction of the Monongahela and the Allegheny. The former city of Allegheny, the present North Side, was supplied directly from the Allegheny River from two sources; first from the Allegheny at a point near Montrose, about eleven miles up the river, and second from another point on the Allegheny near Sixteenth street. This latter source of supply was discontinued on March 5, 1908. THE NEW FILTRATION BASINS. The Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers are turbid at all times, and after a rain or in the spring, so muddy that a platinum wire cannot be seen more than a quarter of an inch from the surface. In addition to this, investigations have shown that the rivers commonly carry in solution the soluble chemical products of the mills along their shores,—organic and inorganic, acid and alkali; oils, fats, and other carbon compounds; dead animals,—rats, cats and dogs; flesh-disintegrated and putrescent; as well as the offscourings of iron and steel mills, tanneries and slaughter houses, and similar industries. But this is not all. Seventy-five up-river towns,—with an estimated population of 350,000 inhabitants,—in the Allegheny or tributary valleys; and in the Monongahela a long string of towns, Swissvale, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin and McKeesport, all furnish their supply of common sewage as a further contamination of the already dirty water with its long list of disease-breeding bacteria. These conditions have existed since Pittsburgh came into prominence as an industrial center. Typhoid has been endemic. The duration of this "plague" in Pittsburgh, unbelievable though its sufferance may appear in view of the facts already given, is a matter of history and record. For thirty-five years, up to the beginning of 1908, the city was in the grip of a scourge which has been in the words of the most recent treatise on typhoid With what result? For the last twenty-five years, an average death rate of 102.3 per 100,000 population; since 1889 never below 107; for the last nine years an average of 130; and last year, the year of the completion of Pittsburgh's filtration plant, 131.5 deaths and 1,115 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants. A black record this, in the face of uncontrovertible evidence from other cities, both in this country and abroad, that the purification of the water supply should blot out at least seven-ninths of the typhoid fever. In contrast with Pittsburgh's high mortality, the average for other large American and European cities since 1898 may be seen from the following list:
The very even distribution of typhoid in Pittsburgh,—another indication pointing to infected water as the chief cause,—is seen in the map on page 927, on which each dot represents a case of typhoid within the year,—July 1, 1907, to June 30, 1908, the period covered by the main part of this study. The second map shows the relative mortality, by wards, for the same period. The following chart shows the relative rise and fall from year to year in cases and deaths during the past twenty-five years, and is based on estimates of population provided by the United States Census Bureau. The morbidity figures are taken from the United States census prior to 1901, and from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health records following that year. Previous to 1883 very little attempt was made to compel physicians to report typhoid cases to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health; hence no reliable morbidity records are available up to that time. But in the year 1882 an ordinance was passed requiring such reports to be made. It is very certain that several years elapsed before a majority of the cases was actually reported, and even at the present time But even more telling in its significance is the fact that out of these 54,857 reported cases, 8,149, or 14.8 per cent died as a result of their illness. Over eight thousand men, women and children were sacrificed here in Pittsburgh in the last twenty-five years to a disease known by modern science to depend for its very existence upon lax methods of handling food, drink and waste. Over eight thousand graves have been dug, half of them (4,069) since February 6, 1899, more than nine years ago, when the report of Pittsburgh's Filtration Commission, advising the necessity of a pure water supply, was placed in the hands of the Pittsburgh councils. In life, these eight thousand people, standing single file, four feet apart, would form a line six and one-sixth miles long, extending from the court house in a straight line to the Filtration Plant; or from the Point Bridge down the Ohio as far as the Borough of Emsworth. II.—THE COST.In order to establish a sure ground for estimate as to the economic drain of this disease upon this community, a concrete study of the cost of typhoid in six selected wards of Greater Pittsburgh was undertaken by the Pittsburgh Survey. The sections of the city chosen are fairly representative of living conditions among the wage-earning population. Wards 8 and 11, in what is commonly known as the Hill District, represent a congested quarter made up largely of Russian Jews, Austrians and Italians, with a considerable number of Americans and American Negroes. The residents of these two wards are chiefly employes of the small trades and the sweating and stogie industries, clerks, factory hands, common laborers, etc., who are rather below the average scale of earning capacity. They number about 22,000 for the two wards and among them there were forty-four per cent of the cases studied. Wards 25, 26 and 27 are on the South Side. Their total population is about 33,000; mill hands, mostly of Slavic origin, occupy those parts of these wards bordering the Monongahela River, and a better-off class of Americans occupy the hilltops overlooking the river. The wards would, therefore, represent a rather uneven population, as based on nationality or wage scale, but were not a large factor in this study, as only eight per cent of the case Ward 21, the other section selected, is in area one of the largest in the city, lying to the east in what is known as the Homewood District. The population of this ward is about 26,000, living mostly in good homes, with occasional poorer dwellings along the railroad and in some of the "runs." In the main, they represent a high wage or small salaried class. From this section, the other half of the cases studied, about forty-eight per cent was taken. The period covered by the investigation was one year, beginning July 1, 1906, and ending June 30, 1907. The field work was done by Miss Anna B. Heldman, visiting nurse of the Columbian School Settlement, whose personal acquaintance with many of the families of the Hill District, and whose six or eight years' experience in caring for typhoid patients in this same neighborhood, enabled her to secure in detail many facts that might have escaped a person less familiar with the district or the families concerned. An analysis of the cases thus studied, shows that there were either reported to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health, or known to the investigator, but not reported, 433 cases of typhoid fever in wards 8 and 11, 94 in wards 25, 26, and 27, and 502 in ward 21—a total of 1,029 in these six wards within the one year studied. These cases occurred in 844 families. Miss Heldman, five months after the close of this year period, was able to locate but 338 of these families, the remainder having either moved out of the state, or been lost track of by people living in the neighborhood. There were 2,045 individuals in these 338 families, or an average of 6.4 persons per family. Of this number, 448 individuals, or 22 per cent had typhoid fever within the year. Out of these 448 cases, there were 26 deaths and 422 recoveries, an exceptionally low percentage of deaths to cases. Line representing 8,149 people who have died from typhoid fever in Pittsburgh since report of Filtration Commission in 1899 advising necessity of pure water. Standing in marching order, single file, four feet apart, they would make a procession six miles long. The other large item of cost is that of expense for care and treatment of patients. Ninety cases were treated in hospitals for all or part of the time, as pay patients, half-charity, or full-charity cases. To meet these hospital expenses, $2,332.00 was paid to hospitals by full-pay patients themselves, and $1,834.50 was paid the hospitals by either individuals or charitable organizations for the care of half-pay patients, making the total cost of caring for 90 hospital patients $4,166.50. This is an understatement, because it omits the contribution of the hospitals themselves to the care of half-charity and full-charity patients. If figures were available, there should be added the amount represented by the difference in the money paid to hospitals and the actual cost of maintenance, presumably another $1,800. The expenses of the remaining 358 patients cared for in their homes amounted to $12,889.90 for doctors' bills, $1,965.50 for nurses, $2,640.60 for medicines and drugs; $1,810.10 for milk, $629.20 for ice, $861.50 for servants made necessary by the illness of those naturally caring for the home, and $1,204.45 for other expenses, of which the largest single item was the cost of a trip to Colorado and return at the doctor's orders, for a patient threatened with tuberculosis. The total of these expenses was $22,000.35. The funeral expenses of the 26 patients who died, amounted to $3,186.00. It may be argued that sooner or later funeral expenses must inevitably be met, and that they should not, therefore, be charged against this account. Under the circumstances, however, these expenses were premature, and were directly chargeable to typhoid fever. Consequently, it has seemed fair from the point of view of this study, to include them. The grand total loss in wages and in expenses thus outlined was $56,252.50. Further analysis shows that the average loss in wages per patient among the 187 wage earners was $126; that the average cost per patient in loss of wages and expenses for the 446 patients was $128; and that the average cost in loss of wages and expenses for each typhoid death among the 448 cases was $2,164. Consider the losses in these wards in their bearing upon the city as a whole. There were 5,421 cases of typhoid fever in Greater Pittsburgh in 1907. If the cost to each patient was $128, typhoid fever cost the city that year $693,888 in expenses and loss of wages alone. There were 622 deaths from typhoid fever in Greater Pittsburgh during the same period. If we put the value of these lives lost at so low a figure as $4,000, an additional loss of $2,448,000 was sustained. Or in round numbers $3,142,000 was the minimum economic loss to the community of Greater Pittsburgh, due to typhoid fever alone in the year 1907. This is a conservative estimate, in view of recent values placed on deaths from tuberculosis. When it is considered that typhoid fever has been almost constantly prevalent within the city limits, with practically no abatement, for the past thirty-five years, it requires only a little applied mathematics to calculate the probable enormity of the money loss to the community, through the ravages of this disease alone, year after year. Was it not time for it to stop? In the face of over a $3,000,000 loss last year, $5,450,000 was not more than the city could afford to pay for the filtration plant that is purifying the drinking water. Nor was it extravagance for the mayor and city councils to grant the superintendent of the Bureau of Health an increased staff of tenement house and milk inspectors, to make it possible to clean up other sources of infection, and hasten the time when typhoid fever in Pittsburgh shall constitute a no greater menace than in any other well-kept American city. I have used the term "economic cost" of typhoid fever with reference to Pittsburgh families. The mere phrase carries with it no knowledge of all those family readjustments and inconveniences, the distress of mind and unalloyed misery that must be considered before we can form any adequate idea of what such sickness holds for a wage earning population. Were it necessary to measure the result of typhoid fever only in cold cash, it would be a relatively easy task. In the first place there are the thousand and one makeshifts and re-establishments that must be reckoned with in order to get a clear idea of what typhoid means to those poorer families, where, without the invasion of sickness, the business of getting bread is a constant struggle. In a family consisting of a man, wife and three children, the sixteen year old daughter, who had not been very strong, contracted typhoid. At the end of sixteen weeks in bed and thirty-two weeks out of work, she had developed a marked case of tuberculosis. Not being strong enough to go back to her former employment, she secured work in a bakery where she was subsequently seen coughing as she wrapped up bread for customers. The father of this girl, during her sickness, was keeping six cows on the premises and selling milk to customers living in the neighborhood. The twenty-year-old wife of a Hungarian laborer had a six weeks' old baby when she came down with a slow case of the fever. She remained at home for a week with no one but herself to do the work and care for the baby. The husband, who did not realize the cause of her weakness, gave her a beating each day when he came home, because he thought her lazy. He made her carry up coal for the fires until she became so delirious that he could not keep her in the house. She was then sent to a hospital and the baby given to friends. The woman died in a week and the baby two weeks later. A family of five, consisting of father, mother and three little children, cooked, ate and slept in one uncurtained room. The mother and four year old girl were taken sick at the same time. The girl occupied an Arbuckle coffee box, with a pillow and pillow-case for a mattress, and the man's overcoat was her only covering. The mother slept in the only bed, furnished with a mattress and one small comforter, and shared it at night with the father, the baby and their six year old girl, who lay across the foot of the bed. The girl was in danger of contracting pneumonia from exposure. A family of seven occupied a store and kitchen on the first floor and two rooms upstairs. A small bedroom was the only one which had a fireplace; and the entire family slept there; the mother (who had typhoid), in the only bed, and the father and five children in a row on the floor. In another family, the six year old boy had the fever, and was found lying on an improvised bed, his little dog tied One family, consisting of father, mother and five children, managed ordinarily with a bed for the parents, a child's bed for the eight year old girl, a two-third size bed for the eighteen and sixteen year old daughters, and a cot for the fourteen year and ten year old sons, one sleeping at each end. First the mother and one of the boys were taken sick, and during the early part of their illness, no one was disturbed. But within a month, and before the first two patients got well, the four other children came down with typhoid, making six in the family sick together. Then the father slept on the floor and the sick mother got out of her bed to give place to two of the children, she, herself, sleeping at the foot of the bed until one of the children became delirious. After that she moved to the foot of the two-thirds bed. In the day time she had no place to lie down, and sat all day in a chair until she became so weak that she could hardly walk. Occasionally she helped her husband who did the cooking and cared for the patients, by paring potatoes and doing other small work about the kitchen. No one had time to keep the kitchen sink clean, and the accumulation of vegetable matter became so filthy that it had to be reported to the Bureau of Health. With family income cut off, and with nothing saved, the family would have been penniless had it not been that the doctor made his bill moderate; the family was trusted for groceries, milk and ice; friends gave about twenty dollars in cash, and Columbian Settlement furnished bedding and the services of a visiting nurse. The mother did not fully recover for about six months. The father, who suffered a good deal from loss of sleep and exposure while caring for the patients, contracted a cold. This developed into a serious case of asthma from which he died. To these and many similar families there were more serious results than the debts incurred. A school girl's unrecovered health, a stogie roller's reduced speed, a blacksmith's and a tailor's loss of strength, a case of tuberculosis developed, a boy become a truant, a family broken up and deserted, a baby's death,—all are of tremendous concern as items in the annual wear and tear of the city's potential resources. They are items of "economic cost" that cannot be handled by the statistical method. They are, after all, the real human finger marks that typhoid leaves when its clutches are loosened. Such a showing, then, of actual economic and personal loss as this study of six Pittsburgh wards brought out, is offered as a final leverage to those who in other American cities may be endeavoring to dislodge inertia and clear their water supplies. This investigation of typhoid fever, however, as it was found in the households of the wage earners of Pittsburgh, had its immediate practical bearings. The sanitary facts it brought out showed unequivocally the necessity for ridding the city of other sources of infection at the same time that the water supply was cleared. There was evidence that many of the after cases in the families studied, were due to conditions existing entirely apart from the water. Reports on housing conditions in Pittsburgh show that a favorable laboratory for the growth and dispersal of germs exists in the city's unsanitary dwellings. Insufficient water supply renders cleanliness almost impossible. Overcrowding means increased possibilities of infection through contact with food and drink in the combined family kitchen, pantry, dining-room, and How much of the Pittsburgh typhoid has been due to direct contagion from such conditions as these, can only be inferred at the present writing. In line with the general question of contagion, and secondary cause, however, our data afford some clews. They show that in forty of the families studied, the first case was followed in from ten days to one or two months by other cases, seventy-six cases in all, in addition to the original forty. It shows further that in at least eighteen of these families, one or more of the following conditions existed: Family crowded into one or two rooms; home dirty and poorly kept; the person who cared for the patient also doing the family cooking; well and sick members of the family sleeping in the same room and often in the same bed; privy vaults in exceedingly bad condition, and often stopped up and overflowing with filth. In one family, consisting of man, wife, four children and three lodgers, crowded into two dirty rooms, a three year old boy was taken sick in October. The mother did the family cooking and cared for the patient. The cesspool in the yard which was in bad condition was used by two families. Another member of the family became ill November 3, and the mother came down on December 19. There were seven cases in this one courtyard within the year. In another instance a man, wife, and nine children were living in three rooms. The sixteen year old son was taken sick on June 20 and was sent to the hospital. Then in July came the thirteen year old daughter for whom her mother cared at home. The mother also did the family cooking. The father, mother and eleven year old son all slept in the same room with the patient. All three of them followed within a month, and another son twelve years old, was taken sick in August. In another family of eight, the sink in the kitchen and the toilet in the yard were in a very filthy condition. The mother and one son were taken sick in August. The sick and the well slept together in the crowded bedrooms. In November four more members of the family came down with the disease, on the sixth, ninth, eleventh and fifteenth, respectively. Let the reader judge for himself whether or not, in the face of these facts, it can be expected that filtered water alone will solve the problem. The Pittsburgh Typhoid Fever Commission is a recognition of these facts, and a recognition also from a national and scientific point of view, that probably never again in the history of any large American city will there be such a favorable laboratory in which to study the epidemiological facts of typhoid fever both before and after filtration. The commission was appointed in April, 1908, by Mayor Guthrie; is made possible by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, and by the co-operation of the bureaus of health and water, which offered the free use of their laboratories for analytical and administrative purposes. Dr. James F. Edwards is chairman, and the membership includes Dr. Dixon of the State Board of Health, Prof. Wm. T. Sedgwick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr. E. S. Rosenau, of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, who has been directing the elaborate governmental investigations into typhoid in the District of Columbia. The following report is made (January The work of the commission to date has consisted of a minute investigation of all cases of typhoid which have appeared since May 1, 1908, including the sanitary condition of their living and working places. Investigations have also been made into neighborhoods where there appeared to be fewer cases than the average of the city, the milk supply, and the water supply, both public and private. It is remarkable that not even the smallest outbreak has been traced to milk. A particular feature of the study of water supply is that in connection with the acidity of the Monongahela and the eastern affluents of the Allegheny and its effect upon the sewage discharged by an enormous town population into them. So far typhoid has declined greatly in Pittsburgh since January, 1908, as compared with the average or even the minimum of previous years. This decline has naturally been a subject of great interest though it is too soon to give the results of investigations. We have ascertained that this decline has been shared by the towns on the lower Allegheny, which have hitherto been supposed to be the most important source of our epidemics. During November and December, which would represent the first months of the filtered water period, typhoid has been reported from the filtered water area at the rate of the most favorable American cities, and in Allegheny, which receives nearly the same water unfiltered, at about twice this rate. III.—THE STORY OF THE LONG FIGHT FOR PURE WATER.And now we come to the story of the long fight for pure water in Pittsburgh. The irony of the situation is, that there should ever have been a long fight in a city which has since 1863 publicly recognized the danger of impure water, the significance of which has almost continually been brought before the people by press and platform alike, for the past fifteen years. The story of the whole filtration movement cannot be separated from the story of the struggle for supremacy of contending factions in the dominant political party. And the result,—excess typhoid with its terrible cost,—becomes part of the penalty the city has had to pay for such corruption as the present graft proceedings in councils are bringing to light. The situation at the beginning of the filtration movement in 1895-96 was this: One of the strongest political machines in the history of municipal government was in absolute control in Pittsburgh. It mattered not who was elected mayor; he had no responsible power. Heads of departments were appointed by outgoing councils. This meant that department heads held over, and used their power to re-elect as in-coming councilmen the outgoing councilmen who had elected them. Moreover, councils were controlled by the ring. The municipal election in February, 1896, was hard and bitterly fought. George W. Guthrie headed the reform party as candidate for mayor. According to one authority the majority of ballots cast were for Guthrie, but when the count came in officially a few days after election, the ring had won. With the mayor, both branches of councils, and the director of public works all of the dominant party, the carrying out of their ante-election pledges so far as filtration was concerned would seem a matter of course. True to these pledges, a resolution for the appointment of a Filtration Commission, to include the mayor, the president of each council, and eight citizens,—making eleven in all,—passed The commission was promptly appointed and set to work to make a thorough investigation into the relative merits of various methods of filtration and water supplies in use in cities of the United States and Europe. Allen Hazen, a leading expert on filtration, was employed for the first phase of the investigation, and Prof. William T. Sedgwick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eminent as a sanitary expert, investigated the typhoid situation in the city. Morris Knowles, C. E., was appointed resident engineer in local charge of all items of experiment and investigation. Various members of the commission visited European and American cities to study filtration methods; extended bacteriological and analytical studies of the Allegheny River water were made; small, slow, sand filter beds and standard make mechanical filters were set up at the experiment station to test the relative merits of each as applied to Allegheny River water; and nothing was left undone as a means of arriving at a sound conclusion. Over two and a half years elapsed between the appointment of the commission and the rendering of its report. The report, which was very elaborate, was presented at a joint session of councils on February 6, 1899, and showed that the members of the commission were united in their belief that, all things taken into consideration, a slow, sand filtration plant should be constructed. In accordance with its recommendation steps were immediately taken for the issue and sale of bonds to provide the necessary funds, a public election for this purpose being held on September 19, 1899. The appropriation ordinance for the year 1900 contained "No. 100; for the purpose of extension and improvement of water supply and distribution, including the filtration of such water supply, and providing and furnishing meters to be used in connection therewith ... $2,500,000." The ordinance authorizing the controller to issue bonds for the purpose as above specified was passed by Select Council in March, and approved by the mayor April 3. So that prior to May 1, 1900, a fund of $2,500,000 became available, and the prospect for the prompt erection of the plant would have been bright, but for the fact that during the four years since 1896 certain changes in the attitude of the members of the ring toward one another had taken place, that were destined to involve further complications. One member (Magee) had aspirations toward the United States Senate. In this he encountered opposition from the other end of the state, and in the struggle for state supremacy that followed, Pittsburgh was left largely to another member of the ring. In the early part of 1900 E. M. Bigelow, who for a long time had been director of public works, had a row with this leader (Flinn) over certain matters of public work. The result was that on June 11, 1900, the ring-controlled councils threw Mr. Bigelow out of office and elected as director of public works a man more friendly to the ring. This break between Flinn and Bigelow was the beginning of the long series of events that retarded the filtration movement for at least four years. Bigelow was now "out." The new director of public works, appointed by councils was acceptable to the ring that was "in"; so was the membership of councils. The question with Bigelow was, naturally, how to get back into office. This is the way he accomplished his desire. The ousted director had a brother, who, it is said, had an old grudge against the ring. As might be expected, the newly appointed recorder soon exercised the authority vested in him by the terms of the new charter, and on June 11, 1901, removed the head of the department of public works again installing Mr. Bigelow in that important position, just one year after he had been removed by councils. It must be remembered that while Mr. Bigelow had again secured the directorship of the Department of Public Works, there had been no change in councils, which were still enrolled on the side of the ring. While councils could not now stop the preparation of plans and specifications for the proposed filtration plant, they could make a lot of trouble in other ways; and so they did. There are contradictory statements at this time as to just how much progress had been made on plans during the year that Mr. Bigelow was out of office. One side claims that "sixty per cent of the plans had been drawn"; the other said, "only part of the plans." At any rate, within six weeks Mr. Bigelow removed the engineer who had served under his immediate predecessor, appointed as resident engineer Morris Knowles (who was later appointed chief engineer of the newly created Bureau of Filtration), and directed him to start work on plans for the filtration plant. At the same time councils proceeded in an attack on the director for alleged delay in the preparation of plans; and on November 11, 1901, presented a report to its filtration committee declaring Mr. Bigelow entirely responsible for all the delay in the preparation of plans and specifications, adding that these delays had been "gross and inexcusable." This report was accompanied by a resolution ordering Director Bigelow to furnish within ten days, to the filtration committee, for its approval, all the plans and specifications for the work lying north of the Western Pennsylvania Railroad, directing him further to proceed with the utmost diligence to the completion of the plans and specifications for the remainder of the plant, and to submit the same to the filtration committee on or before December 2, 1901. The report and resolution were adopted by both councils on the day of their presentation. The real motive for this attack is readily inferred. In the meantime the opposing faction had been working with the governor, and after a notorious meeting at the Duquesne club, the governor was prevailed upon to remove his first appointed recorder, on the pretext that he had displaced several old soldiers from office, and to appoint another recorder in his place,—this time a man upon whom the machine could rely. At the close of the letter of removal, the governor added a now famous postscript, "I was not bribed." With the appointment of the new recorder, Bigelow was again forced out of the office of director of public works. This put the ring again in full control, with even greater powers than it had before. A year and a half had elapsed since the $2,500,000 became available, and all that the people had to show for it were eighty-five acres of land, part of the plans and specifications completed, and over 600 more deaths from the scourge of typhoid fever. The next move was made within ten days after Director Bigelow's dismissal, when another ordinance for the letting of Under this ordinance the new director advertised for bids, which were received and opened. It appeared that the lowest bid was made by the T. A. Gillespie Company, at about $1,292,000. The director and recorder were preparing to let this contract for part of the work to the Gillespie Company, and it looked as though the faction of the ring now in the saddle would win the stakes. But they had not reckoned all the odds. The opponents of the ring, in this two-sided hold-up game, brought out another winning card. It was in the person of John P. Edgar, a citizen of Steubenville, Ohio, but the owner of property in the thirty-seventh ward, Pittsburgh, who entered suit in the United States Circuit Court at Pittsburgh for an injunction to restrain the recorder and director of public works from awarding the contract. The case was argued before Judge Buffington on March 3, 1902, W. B. Rodgers and George W. Guthrie appearing for the plaintiff, and Thomas D. Carnahan, city solicitor, for the city. Suit was based on the allegation that no estimate had been presented to councils for the whole cost of the improvement, and that the letting of this partial contract would be in violation of the new charter, which required that before any contract for public improvement could be entered into, such an estimate for the entire cost must have been presented. The city solicitor showed that an estimate had been made of the entire cost, but this estimate had not been made public or submitted to councils. Mr. Rodgers maintained that this estimate must be submitted to councils and approved by them. He and Mr. Guthrie also claimed that the contract should embrace the completion of the work. On March 13, 1902, Judge Buffington issued the injunction prayed for. The court held that the estimate of the whole cost, required by the charter, must be made to councils and become a matter of public information, and that such an estimate had not been made. The machine was temporarily blocked, but five days after the injunction had been granted, the recorder instructed his director of public works to have blueprints, plans and estimates of the entire filtration system ready to present to councils at as early a date as possible, thus starting the necessary legal steps for placing a new contract. Within a month these plans and estimates, involving an expenditure of $3,635,500, were prepared and submitted to councils, and three ordinances for the letting of contracts were presented. The increase over the first estimate was explained as due to an increase in the number of services to be metered, and to a general increase in the cost of materials. These three ordinances were indefinitely postponed, however, in councils, because more money for the construction of the plant under the increased estimate was not available. The next hold-up came from the city controller, who on May 1, 1902, sent the following letter in duplicate to Recorder Brown and Director McCandless: In view of the uncertainty attending the proposed filtration of the water, and the doubt as to the ultimate disposition of the matter by councils, this department desires to notify you that on and after May 10, no indebtedness against that appropriation for any purpose, except for labor or supplies previously furnished, should be incurred, as, under the decision of the court, there is now no authority for any expenditure for filtration purposes. In the meantime, about April, 1902, and all through that summer, advocates of a mountain water supply were at In the meantime an ordinance was presented authorizing a public election for a bond issue large enough to cover the difference between the amount of money then available and the amount required under the increased estimate. All that came of this was an inquiry by the sub-committee to which it had been referred as to whether the new estimate included coverings for the filter beds, and whether the South Side was to be given filtered water. After ten months' further delay, this sub-committee reported that the estimate did not provide for covered filter beds and that it made no provision for the South Side. Another year and a half had elapsed, with 650 additional deaths from typhoid fever; 1,250 to date. In April, 1903, by the election of Mayor Hays, the Bigelow faction again came into power and Mr. Bigelow was reappointed director of public works. Councils reorganized. A reform, or Bigelow man, was elected to the presidency of councils, control of committees was secured, and by the middle of 1903, the Bigelow faction was again in full power. By this time the South Side was demanding filtered water. The new estimates presented by Director Bigelow in September, 1903, included ten filter beds for the South Side, and the raising of the pumping capacity for the first twenty-three wards by twenty million gallons, and included also, new machinery and boilers for the Brilliant pumping station, and a fifty-inch steel main across the city to supply the South Side and the Monongahela River wards of the old city. These brought the total new estimate up to over seven million dollars. The time between September 21, 1903, and January 12, 1904, was required to get a resolution through councils and approved by the mayor, authorizing the finance committee to employ three experts, Col. Alexander M. Miller of Washington, John W. Hill of Philadelphia, and Rudolph Herring of New York, "to verify and make a report on or before March 1, 1904, to the committee on finance, as to the correctness of the estimates made by the director of public works." Under this resolution the experts were employed and went to work. In the meantime, councils had received a petition from the Pittsburgh Section of the American Chemical Society, urging the establishment of a sand filtration plant; also a resolution of the Civic Club of Allegheny county, and a resolution of the permanent civic committee of the women's clubs of Allegheny county, urging sand filtration at an early date. During 1903 there were 450 deaths from typhoid fever. On February 27, 1904, the filtration experts made their report recommending a receiving basin, three sedimentation basins, a clear water basin, and forty filter beds. They also recommended sand filtration and covers for filter beds, but cut down the capacity of the various parts of the plant sufficiently to reduce the estimated cost by $700,000. On March 31, 1904, the Bureau of Filtration in the Department of Public Works was created for the purpose of constructing these important works. No further opposition of a serious character was met, and in July of that year a second bond election for $5,000,000 was held and passed by a vote of nearly two to one. These bonds were issued in September; plans and specifications for the enlarged plant were prepared as soon as possible; bids were advertised; and the contract was let on March 4, 1905. With the final award of the contract the fight for pure water was practically won. Director Bigelow again stepped out of office in 1900 with the election of a mayor independent of either Republican faction; but the work of pushing the plant forward to completion was carried on by the Guthrie administration under the efficient supervision of Directors Clark and Shepherd, and Superintendent Knowles; so that by October, 1908, the plant was supplying a good quality of filtered water to the first twenty-three wards,—the old city. The settling of the pending litigation between the city and the Monongahela and other private water companies on the South Side, together with the taking over of that property by the city was all that remained to be done before filtered water could be supplied to that part of the city. In the meantime the North Side (Allegheny City) still has unfiltered water. Immediately after Allegheny was annexed to the Greater City in December, 1907, steps were taken to pave the way for filtered water there. $750,000 was appropriated for ten extra filter beds on city-owned land adjoining the plant, and their construction is now under way. Their use for the North Side involves extra pumping facilities, however. A plan to bring the old Allegheny pumping station at Montrose down to Aspinwall for this purpose was recently blocked by members of councils from the North Side. Satisfactory explanation for this action does not seem to be forthcoming. The reason alleged was that its removal would throw some of the men out of a job. In the meantime Allegheny continues drinking unfiltered water with no immediate prospect of relief, and the same sort of political influence that delayed filtration in the old city so long, seems to be accomplishing similar results on the North Side. In conclusion, let me apply the economic facts brought out in the first section of this article, to the four years of unnecessary delays in the construction of the filtration plant, from April 3, 1900, to April 29, 1904. They must be considered in making up the whole bill of the city in the cause of pure water. During all this time, more than $2,200,000, on which the city was paying three and one half per cent interest, was lying in the banks favored by the administration, bringing the city but two per cent; and the death rate from typhoid fever was the highest of any of the large cities in the United States. But for this delay the plant might have been brought to completion on January 1, 1904, or at least as far advanced as it was January 1, 1908, and four years,—1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907,—of excess typhoid fever might have been avoided. Not a startling statement, perhaps, on the face of it. But consider seriously what these four years of excess typhoid fever have meant to the people of Pittsburgh in deaths and economic cost. I have told you of but half of the people of six wards out of forty-three, one year out of four. In 1904, with an estimated population of 352,852, there were 503 deaths from typhoid in Pittsburgh. Cities with a fairly pure water supply do not have over twenty-five deaths annually per 100,000 population from typhoid. Had Pittsburgh's typhoid fever There were 425 unnecessary deaths in 1906, and a wastage of $2,550,000; 289 unnecessary deaths in 1905, and a wastage of $1,734,000; 415 unnecessary deaths in 1904, and a wastage of $2,490,000. In the four years the community lost $9,000,000,—over $4,000,000 more than the cost of the filtration plant. And in those four years, 1,538 lives were unnecessarily sacrificed. There are those who will say, and perhaps rightly, that Pittsburgh's filtration plant of to-day is the magnificent triumph of construction that it is, only because of those years of delay in shaping the final plans; that while those who fought the measure tooth and nail for so many years did not have that purpose in mind, yet the set-backs they were able to accomplish, have made in the end for a larger, better, more efficient and more far-serving plant than could have been possible, had the first plans been carried hastily to completion. Such may be the case. If so, let the people be thankful that the cause of pure water triumphed ultimately over a lethargic public sentiment, selfish political purposes, and municipal shortsightedness. Let them at the same time remember at what cost to themselves and to their city the fight was won. And let the plant itself stand as an object lesson of tardy justice, and a monument to those hundreds of lives that paid the penalty unwillingly and unknowingly of being part and parcel of an unaroused municipal conscience. GROSS NUMBER OF TYPHOID CASES, 1885 TO 1907. |
|
