City Streets and Sequoias The post-Civil War period in the United States was marked with unprecedented

levels of expansion and economic growth. Development and settlement of the western frontier were lucrative and enticing. Technological innovations were changing the capabilities and practices of businesses and industries in urban areas. Inevitably, the environmental impact of such dramatic expansion reared its ugly head. But it did so in two forms: problems of ecological conservation in the West, and those of pollution in the cities. Consequently, two distinct movements emerged to combat them. The contrast between the two is significantnot only in the specific issue advocated, but also in the types of advocates the issues attracted, success with the public, and policy outcomes. These distinctions did not arise randomly; rather, they exist in accordance with the nature (no pun intended) of the problem at hand. Environmental damage in the wilderness is inherently different from urban pollution is several observable ways. The primary distinction deals with the urgency, the perceptibility, and the scope of the problem. They also differ in reforms and the resistance to those reforms, due to the respective economic dynamics at play. Effects of urban pollution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were highly visible, especially compared to the often-hypothetical concerns of excessive deforestation. Phossy jaw (though not precisely an issue of pollution, still in the same family of afflictions) disfigured match factory workers. Outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases were undeniable. Anybody walking in an urban center would observe, as Jane Addams did, that The streets are inexpressibly dirty (Addams). Urban problems were

were also urgent; outbreaks of disease cannot be discussed on the scale of decades as many ecological issues can. Eventually, objective science came to supplement the visceral reactions to pollution and filth. Forcing the Spring characterizes it as a movement toward professionalization, where engineers and medical professionals sought to solve technical problems within the framework of various groups, such as the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases or the New York City sanitation department, revolutionized by Commissioner George Waring in the 1890s. Partially because of this professionalization, it appears that efforts to reduce urban pollution were not subject to quite the same federal legislative roadblocks experienced by the western naturalists. A Fierce Green Fire recounts how Carl Schurz, Rutherford B. Hayes secretary of the interior, tried to enact forest management reforms. The timber lobby exercised its might, and the legislation failed to receive funding. A tension existed between local economic concerns in western regions, and the conservation concerns from the federal government. Though there were several monumental pieces of environmental legislation, like the creation of Yosemite National Park and the conservation of the Adirondacks, they did not represent the general attitude of politicians. A key provision of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 allowing the president to set aside federal land existed only because several anti-conservation lawmakers did not understand the bill. Since naturalism was still in its early stages, conservationists and preservationists tended to embody the pioneer spirit, as opposed to the hard investigative science of Alice Hamilton and others in the city. Naturalists in the west found philosophical allies in Rousseau, Thoreau, and Emerson, who had elevated nature to the spiritual plane. John

Muir revered nature in an overtly religious fashion. These more conceptual thinkers were still crucial to the shaping of policy because they directly influenced policy makerstake for example John Muirs three-day expedition with Theodore Roosevelt into Yosemite, which convinced Roosevelt to designate it for federal control. On the other hand, there were still meticulous scientists at work on ecological issues. Arnold Hague, an early member of the U.S. Geological Survey, warned in the 1870s about the adverse effects of deforestation on streams. George Perkins Marsh, writer of the landmark environmental work Man and Nature, reconciled an appreciation of natures inherent value with an awareness of its usefulness for humanity. Meanwhile, scientific studies were the only means for average Americans to observe the devastating effects of deforestation and excessive hunting. Overuse of natural resources dealt largely with the abstract, especially for preservationists like John Muir; it raised philosophical questions of mans relationship with nature and the fragility of the environment as a whole. Ecologists like Gifford Pinchot had to overcome the obstacle of convincing the public that, contrary to the prevailing public attitude at the time (and even today), environmental harm is equivalent to harm to humanity. Because urban pollution was so obvious (and because of the aforementioned professionalization movement), legislative and regulatory action came more swiftly. The U.S. Public Health Service was established in 1912, but was preceded by private public health groups by several decades. Smoke, the most prevalent and apparent of the problems ailing cities, was one of the first to be fought. Chicagos first professional air pollution group was formed in 1891; the first national group came about in 1907.

Because of high visibility of city problems, tracing causality in the cases of urban pollution was often much clearer than in deforestation and western expansion. This also tended to yield simpler solutions. In London, John Snow was able to use straightforward geographic plotting to determine that a contaminated pump was the source of a cholera outbreak. As soon as phossy jaw was linked to white phosphorus, executive secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation John Andrews was able to prescribe a safer alternative. Even today, in the sphere of global warming, it is difficult and contentious to definitively determine that humans have negative impacts on planet-wide systems. But the urban revolution of the late nineteenth century was such an explicit change of variables that any resultant side effects were easily attributed to their respective causes. In cities like Chicago, Man was no longer acting within the confines of nature; he was replacing it. Of course, advocates of urban environmental reform did not avoid resistance by any stretch of the imagination, even though the resistance did not extend to the legislature as in the case of deforestation. Alice Hamilton, perhaps the most notable figure in the movement, found that economic concerns were the foremost obstacle to change. It was obviously in the financial interest of manufacturers to maintain the status quo, and there is no question that urban expansion did yield benefits for society in terms of employment and quality of life for many. Therefore, change was resisted not only by manufacturers, but also by the beneficiaries of the positive aspects of manufacturing. Hamilton encountered employers who were in denial and employees who feared losing their jobs and underreported their ailments as a result. Similarly, economic considerations drove resistance to preservation and conservation efforts. Logging was immensely profitable,

and Gifford Pinchot was aware that his forest legislation would not be possible unless it was demonstrated that commercial profits could be assured over the long run (Shabecoff, 65). In other words, the public had to understand that the benefits progressive environmental policy could compete with the benefits of the United States economic expansion. Occasionally, the effect of economic influence worked toward the benefit of the environment, underscoring its importance in determining policy outcomes. For example, the Northern Pacific Railroad, motivated to attract visitors, may have had a hand in the establishment of Yellowstone National Park. Prevailing social beliefs, in deforestation and western expansion as well as urban pollution, also provided resistance. People generally believed that outbreaks of disease in cities were less the result of environmental conditions and more the result of poor individual hygiene. It took studies like those by Snow, Hamilton, and Andrews to temper that belief with fact. Until the mid-nineteenth century, nature was seen as a static system impervious to substantial change. Though A Fierce Green Fire clarifies that this view was one of the first environmental misperceptions to go by the wayside, it was this same paradigm that led people to believe the western landscape was a bountiful garden of prosperity as opposed to a difficult-to-cultivate desert. John Wesley Powell attempted to correct this unrealistic optimism with his 1879 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region to no avail, until 1902 when the Reclamation Act put many of his recommendations into practice. But social currents also aided the two respective environmental movements. Urban pollution and living conditions were inextricably linked to social inequality, a deeply relevant issue in the Progressive era. Therefore, much of the discourse on

pollution adopted that larger theme. For example, Upton Sinclairs The Jungle is remembered as an expos of disgusting industrial standards, but it also focused in large part on pro-socialist rhetoric. The attitudes that enabled the urban pollution activists may have originated because of the West, however. According to Roderick Nash, Appreciation for wilderness began in the cities (Shabecoff, 45). Since much of the forestry initiatives took place before the era of urban environmental problems, city dwellers had already been primed to have some notion of public health and the human causes of environmental problems. Scientists were instrumental in shaping public perception in matters of environmental policy, particularly when they found support from politicians and activists. Men and women of science filled in gaps of understanding with studies and surveys, and the results often contradicted common beliefs. However, any legislation or regulation depended on its compatibility with the desire for expansion. A pure preservationist outlook has never taken hold in the United States. Where there were unavoidable inconveniences to economic interests, they could sometimes be outweighed when the environmental problems were so immediate and measurable that they could not be ignored. Urban environmental issues possess a set of inherent characteristics that place them in that category. Since conservation issues lack the immediacy of water and air contamination, the battle over forests and western land was often grounded in philosophy as well as science. We can see these principles have held true ever since.

Bibliography Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Print. Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, D.C.: Island, 1993. Print. Shabecoff, Philip. A Fierce Green Fire. N.p.: Hill & Wang, 1992. Print.