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World War I and the Birth of American Regionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Harold L. Platt
Harold L. Platt
Affiliation:
Loyola University of Chicago
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Extract

Soon after American entry into World War I, Colonel Charles Keller of the Army Corps of Engineers confronted an emergency on the home front that threatened to stymie victory abroad. For several years, the West Point career officer had been in charge of overseeing the development of hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls, New York. Now Keller began receiving urgent messages from manufacturers in nearby Buffalo complaining that shortages of electricity were preventing them from producing vital materials such as high-grade steel for shell casings, aluminum for airplanes, chlorine for poison gas, and other electrochemicals.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 5 , Special Issue 1: Urban Public Policy: Historical Modes and Methods , January 1993 , pp. 128 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1993

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References

Notes

1. Keller, Charles, The Power Situation During the War (Washington, D.C., 1921), 19Google Scholar; see pp. 1–9 for an account of the problems at Buffalo. For biographical information, see “Charles Keller,” National Cycbpedia of American Biography (New York, 1953), 380:99Google Scholar. See also Johnson, James P., “The Wilsonians as War Managers: Coal and the 1917–18 Winter Crisis,” Prologue 9 (Winter 1977): 193–208.Google Scholar

2. Topalov, Christian, “Scientific Urban Planning and the Ordering of Daily Life— The First ‘War Housing’ Experiment in the United States, 1917–1919,” journal of Urban History 17 (November 1990): 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a description of their work, see pp. 14–45. See also Lubove, Roy, “Homes and ‘A Few Well Placed Fruit Trees’: An Object Lesson in Federal Housing,” Social Research 27 (Winter 1960): 469–86Google Scholar; and Whitaker, Charles Harris, The Joke About Housing (College Park, Md., 1969 [1920]), 17–25.Google Scholar

3. Johnson, James P., The Politics of Soft Coal: The Bituminous Industry from World War I Through the New Deal (Urbana, I11., 1979)Google Scholar, presents the most complete account of the Fuel Administration. Johnson's book is essential reading, full of insight on the policy implications of the war experience for the coal industry and the government's attempts to help it achieve stability. Cf. Cuff, Robert C., “Harry Garfield, the Fuel Administration, and the Search for a Cooperative Order During World War I,” American Quarterly 30 (Spring 1978): 39–53Google Scholar, which is not particularly useful on the coal crisis but does provide good biographical information on Garfield.

4. For a general overview, see Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980)Google Scholar. For special topics, see Crosby, Alfred W., Jr., Epidemic and Peace, 1918 (Westport, Conn., 1976)Google Scholar; Tuttle, William, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Murray, Robert K., Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis, 1955).Google Scholar

5. I have attempted to examine this historiographical problem at length in Pratt, Harold L., The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880–1930 (Chicago, 1991), 201–8Google Scholar. For two standard interpretations, see Kennedy, Over Here; and Hawley, Ellis, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar. In the area of policy studies, the leading exponent of discounting the war's impact on society is Cuff, Robert C., The War Industries Board: Business-Government Relations During World War I (Baltimore, 1973)Google Scholar. For a dissenting view, presented from a European perspective, see Wynn, Neil A., From Progressivism to Prosperity: World War I and American Society (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. Cultural historians have also been sensitive to the pivotal nature of the war. See the brilliant essay by Ekstein, Modris in The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar. Also consider Wilson, Richard Guy, “America in the Machine Age,” in The Machine Age, ed. Wilson, Richard Guy, Pilgrim, Dianne H., and Tashjian, Dickran (New York, 1968), 23–42.Google Scholar

6. Consult Sutcliffe, Anthony, comp., The History of Urban and Regional Planning: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; and Birch, Eugenie Ladner, “Design, Process, and Institutions: Planning in Urban History,” in American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review, ed. Gillette, Howard, Jr., and Miller, Zane (Westport, Conn., 1987)Google Scholar. For recent perspectives, see two review articles, Silver, Christopher, “New Paths in City Planning History,” ]ournal of Urban History 15 (May 1989): 337–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Stach, Patricia Burgess, “Preparing for the Urban Future: The Theory and Practice of City Planning,” Journal of Urban History 17 (February 1991): 207–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Brownell, Blaine A., “Urban Planning, the Planning Profession, and the Motor Vehicle in Early Twentieth-Century America,” in Shaping an Urban World: Planning in the Twentieth Century, ed. Cherry, Gordon E. (London, 1980), 60.Google Scholar

8. The argument here is not that historians have missed the connections between technology and the emergence of city planning. On the contrary, scholars have paid considerable attention to this topic. Recent studies that emphasize this relation include Monkkonen, Eric H., America Becomes Urban (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988)Google Scholar; Schultz, Stanley K., Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800–1920 (Philadelphia, 1989)Google Scholar; Wilson, William H., The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore, 1989)Google Scholar; and Tarr, Joel A. and Dupuy, Gabriel, eds., Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia, 1988)Google Scholar. The point I emphasize in this article is the role of the war in broadening the planners' perspectives to regional proportions. The planners' wartime experiences with technology, especially the electric power grid and hydroelectric and water-related issues helped bring this environmental concept into focus.

9. Brownell, “Urban Planning,” 67. Brownell relies heavily on Foster, Mark, From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900–1940 (Philadelphia, 1981)Google Scholar. See also Barrett, Paul,The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900–1930 (Philadelphia, 1983)Google Scholar; and Seely, Bruce E., Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar. For a useful overview of energy policy, see Melosi, Martin V., Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

10. Platt, Electric City; Wilson, Pilgrim, and Tashjian, The Machine Age; Ostrander, Gilman M., American Civilization in the First Machine Age: 1890–1940 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Harrison, Helen A., ed., Dawn of a New Day: The New York World's Fair, 1939/40 (New York, 1980)Google Scholar. Hughes, Thomas P., Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983), 201–26Google Scholar, confirms that the war had radical impacts on the electric utility industry here and abroad.

11. For the best introduction to the RPAA, see Sussman, Carl, ed., Planning the Fourth Migration: The Neglected Vision of the Regional Planning Association of America (Cambridge, 1976), 1–45Google Scholar. See also the still-valuable book of Roy Lubove, Community Planning in the 1920s: The Contributions of the Regional Planning Association of America (Pittsburgh, 1963).Google Scholar

12. On Chicago, see Miller, Ross, American Apocalyspe: The Great Fire and the Myth of Chicago (Chicago, 1990)Google Scholar; Hines, Thomas S., Bumham of Chicago: Architect and Planner (Chicago, 1979)Google Scholar; and Cain, Louis P., “The Creation of Chicago's Sanitary District and Construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal,” Chicago History 8 (Summer 1979): 98–111. On engineers as planners, see note 8 above.Google ScholarPubMed

13. Wright, Gwendolyn, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873–1913 (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar; Miller, Helen, “Cities and Evolution: Patrick Geddes as an International Prophet of Town Planning before 1914,” in The Rise of Modem Urban Planning 1800–1914, ed. Sutcliffe, Anthony (New York, 1980), 199–223Google Scholar; Mullen, John R., “American Perceptions of German City Planning at the Turn of the Century,” Urbanism Past and Present 3 (1976–1977): 5–15.Google Scholar

14. See Sies, Mary Corbin, “The City Transformed: Nature, Technology and the Suburban Ideal, 1877–1917,” Journal of Urban History 14 (November 1987): 81–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Keating, Ann Durkin, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis (Columbus, Ohio, 1988).Google Scholar

15. Platt, Electric City; McDonald, Forrest, Insull (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar. For a wartime affirmation of Insull's reputation as the creator of the first regional grid, see “Atlantic City Convention of the N.E.L. A.,” Electric World 71 (15 June 1918): 1245Google Scholar. The trade reported that Insull was “gratified at … the belated recognition of the economy of concentrated power production from superstations. … Mr. Insull has been the leading exponent of the central-station industry in that cause and in the welding together of great distribution networks.” Quoted in ibid. The phrase “superstation” in this article is the first use of the prefix “super” that I could find.

16. Hughes, Networks of Power, 201–26; Platt, Electric City, 163–97; Insull, Samuel, “The Production and Distribution of Energy,” a paper presented to the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, in 1913Google Scholar, as reprinted in Central Station Electric Service, ed. Kelly, William Eugene (Chicago, privately printed 1915), 357–91Google Scholar; U.S. Census Bureau, Special Reports: Central Electric Light and Power Stations—1912, pt. 2, 112–13.

17. Platt, Electric City, 163–97; Public Service Company of Northern Illinois (PSCNI), “Report of the PSCNI,” 31 December 1912, in Commonwealth Edison Company Historical Archives, Box 4222; Whetstone, Imogene, “Historical Factors in the Development of Northern Illinois and Its Utilities” (typescript, Chicago, PSCNI, 1928)Google Scholar, in Commonwealth Edison Company Library.

18. For quantities and prices of coal in Chicago, see Chicago Board of Trade, Annual Report (1858–1902), passim. For the blight of coal dealers faced with glutted markets, see Bischoff, A. Alexander, comp., Coal Trade at Chicago (Chicago, 1885)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the rise of Chicago as a regional transportation hub, see Cronon, William J., “To be the Central City, Chicago, 1848–1858,” Chicago History 10 (Fall 1981): 130–40.Google Scholar

19. Chicago Tribune, 7 January 1918; for the crisis in Chicago, see 1 December 1917–27 January 1918, passim; Johnson, “Coal Crisis”; Platt, Electric City, 201–34.

20. L'Brant, John, “Technological Change in American Manufacturing During the 1920s,” Journal of Economic History 27 (June 1972): 234–43Google Scholar; DuBoff, Richard, “The Introduction of Electric Power in American Manufacturing,” Journal of Economic History 20 (December 1967): 508–18Google Scholar; Committee on Recent Economic Changes of President's Conference on Unemployment, Recent Economic Changes in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1929).Google Scholar For the concept of “Fordism,” see Flink, James J., The Car Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 67–112Google Scholar; and Hounshell, David A., From the American System to Mass Production: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, 1984), 1–15.Google Scholar

21. Keller, The Power Situation, 28; the term “natural power districts” is Major Malcom MacLaren's, as quoted in ibid., 23. For similar regional perspectives resulting from the warborne emergency, see the report of the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Smith, George Otis, in “Problem of Energy Supply Under Conditions of War,” Electric World 70 (14 July 1917): 75Google Scholar; “Electrical Interconnection to Conserve Fuel,” Electric World 71 (5 January 1918): 12–14Google Scholar, on meetings among utility company representatives and state regulatory officials in New York and California; “Pacific Coast Companies Meet War Problems,” ibid., 15–17; and detailed regional plan proposed for New England by McClelland, R. J, “Electric Power Supply for War Industries,” Electric World 72 (20 July 1918): 100–105.Google Scholar An analysis of the index of this important trade journal reveals that the word “interconnection” was not used in 1917 (vols. 69–70), although it appears in several articles. In contrast, the term became a subtopic under “Transmission Systems” the following year with seventy-three citations (vols. 71–72). However, the term “superpower” first appears in the index for 1919, where it is cited twice. Also see the presidential address of E. W. Rice of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, as reported in “A Review and Forecast of the Electrical Industry,” General Electric Review 21 (August 1918): 528–34.Google Scholar

22. McClelland, “Electric Power Supply,” 105. See Hughes, Networks of Power, 285–362, for the construction of regional power systems in the United States and Europe after World War I. Hughes provides an especially valuable transatlantic perspective on the engineers’ reactions to power shortages during the war leading to the construction of regional systems. On the economies of scale of the steam turbogenerator, see Hirsh, Richard, Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

23. MacLaren as quoted in Keller, The Power Situation, 25; see ibid., 29, for similar statements by Keller. For Keller's career, see National Cyclopedia, 38:99. For similar conclusions from the wartime experience, see the remarks of Keller's successor on the Power Section of the War Industries Board, Darling, Frederick, “Vision of Power Development,” Electric World 74 (15 and 22 November 1919): 930–32.Google Scholar Darling was an engineer at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.

24. Adams, Thomas, “Regional and Town Planning,” Proceedings of the Eleventh National Conference on City Planning (Niagara Falls and Buffalo, 1919), 77 [hereafter cited as NCCP Proceedings].Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 77–89. Considering the divergent paths of Adams and the community planners, it is ironic that Adams's notions of the regional survey probably came from his countryman Patrick Geddes, who would be one of the community planners’ major inspirations. See Helen Miller, “Cities and Evolution,” 199–223.

26. Knowles, Morris, “Engineering Problems of Regional Planning,” in NCCP Proceedings (1919), 115, 116.Google Scholar

27. Donald, W. J., “Regional Planning in Motion,” NCCP Proceedings (1919), 103–13Google Scholar. Also see the followup paper, Haldeman, B. Antrim, “Report on Regional Planning,” NCCP Proceedings (1920), 118–28Google Scholar; and discussion by Tom Adams, ibid., 128–30.

28. Scott, Mel, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 204–13, 248–51Google Scholar; and the list compiled by John Nolen, “Twenty Years of City Planning Progress in the United States,” Planning Problems of Town, City, and Region: Papers and Discussions of the Nineteenth National Conference on City Planning.

29. For the origins of the study, see “Super-Power Zones Urged by Mining Engineers' Committee,” Electric World 75 (24 April 1920): 968Google Scholar; Lacombe, Lieutenant Colonel C. F., “Urgent Need of Super-Power Development,” Electric World 75 (15 May 1920): 1128–31Google Scholar; “Superpower Report Reveals Electrical Opportunities,” Electric World 78 (5 November 1921): 910Google Scholar; and Flood, Henry, Jr., “The Superpower System-I,” Journal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 41 (April 1922): 287–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of the report, see L. E. Imlay, “The Superpower System-II,” ibid., 292–97; Goodwin, H., Jr. (a committee member), “What the Superpower Survey Means to the United States,” General Electric Review 25 (February 1922): 77–87Google Scholar; and “Advantages of Superpower System,” Electric World 78 (5 November 1921): 916–21Google Scholar. For Smith's early call for regional coordination of energy systems, see Smith, “Problem.”

30. Harriman, Henry I., as quoted in “Meeting the Problems of the Reconstruction Era,” Electric World 72 (November 1918): 1021.Google Scholar

31. Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 240.Google Scholar See Mannikko, Nancy Farm, “Regulating the Water Wheels: Hydroelectricity and the Federal Power Commission in the 1920s,” a paper presented at the meeting of American Society for Environmental History (Houston, 1991), for an analysis of the legislation and its enforcement during the postwar decade.Google Scholar

32. Hoover, Herbert, “For Superpower Development and Control,” Superpower Conference (New York City, October 1923)Google Scholar, as quoted in American City 29 (November 1923): 525. Of course, the electric industry was elated at Hoover's endorsement. See the trade journal editorial, “Support Action with Action,” Electric World 82 (20 October 1923): 793.Google Scholar See also the extensive bibliography of contemporary discussion in professional and popular publication in Beman, Lemar T., comp., Superpower, The Reference Shelf, vol. 2, no. 9 (New York, 1924).Google Scholar For perspectives on Hoover, see Wilson, Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975).Google Scholar

33. Hoover, Herbert, “Public Relationship to Power Development,” radio address to the annual meeting of the National Electric Light Association (Atlanta City, May 1924)Google Scholar, reprinted in Beman, Superpower, 15, 17, 25, 15–27, and passim. Hoover's use of the term “interconnection” in reference to the radio is an accurate description of early radio broadcasts. Signals from the source of the sound would be transmitted over long-distance telephone lines to local stations, where they would be broadcast electronically to listeners.

34. Platt, Electric City, 235–67, on the 1920s; Sies, “The City Transformed,” 81–111, for an admirable summary of the origins of a suburban ideal in the prewar period; Keating, Building Chicago, on the influence of the real estate industry in the formation of public policy. For two important overviews, see Jackson, Ken, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; and Weiss, Marc, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

35. See Hubbard, Preston J., Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920–1932 (Nashville, 1961)Google Scholar; McCraw, Thomas K., The TVA and the Power Fight, 1933–1939 (Philadelphia, 1971)Google Scholar; Funigillo, Philip J., Toward A National Power Policy: The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry, 1933–1941 (Pittsburgh, 1973).Google Scholar

36. Survey Graphic, no. 54 [The Regional Plan Number] (May 1925), as reprinted in Sussman, Planning the Fourth Migration, 51–140.

37. See notes 2 and 13 above.

38. Charles Whitaker, The Joke About Housing, 14 and 132–33.

39. Ackerman, Frederick L., “Where Goes the City-Planning Movement?” Journal of the American Institute of Architects 7 (December 1919); 520 and 519–21.Google Scholar

40. Mumford, Lewis, Sketches of Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford: the Early Years (New York, 1982), 333.Google Scholar See Miller, Donald L., Lewis Mumford: A Life (New York, 1989), 100–107, 170–71, for his wartime experience and introduction to Whitaker.Google Scholar For insight on Mumford's early views, see Mumford, Lewis, “The City,” in Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans, ed. Stearns, Harold E. (New York, 1922), 3–20.Google Scholar

41. See Mumford, Lewis, “Introduction,” in MacKay, Benton, The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (reprint ed.; Urbana, Ill., 1962 [1928]), 34–43Google Scholar; Bruere, Robert W., “Pandora's Box,” Survey Graphic, no. 51 (March 1925): 557Google Scholar, for the term; Bruere, Robert W., “Giant Power,” Survey Graphic, no. 53 (October 1924): 84Google Scholar, for the quotation. See also Martha Bensley Bruere, “What Is Giant Power For?” American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals 117 (March 1925): 120–23. For biographical information on the Brueres, see Who's Who in America (Chicago, 1918–1919), 10:3Google Scholar, and (1924–25), 13:556.

42. Mumford, Sketches from Life, 338.

43. Mumford, Lewis, “The Fourth Migration,” Survey Graphic, no. 54 (May 1925): 130—33Google Scholar, as reprinted in Sussman, Planning the Fourth Migration, 55 and 64.

44. Bruere, Robert W., “Giant Power-Region Builder,” Survey Graphic, no. 54 (May 1925): 161–64Google Scholar, 188, as reprinted in Sussman, Planning the Fourth Migration, 114and 111–20.

45. Stein, Clarence, Toward New Towns for America (Cambridge, Mass., 1966 [1957])Google Scholar; Lubove, Community Planning, 63–67; Arnold, Joseph L., The New Deal in the Suburbs: A History of the Greenbelt Town Program, 1935–1954 (Columbus, Ohio, 1971)Google Scholar; State of New York, Report of the Commission of Housing and Regional Planning to Governor Alfred E. Smith (Albany, 1926)Google Scholar, as reprinted in Sussman, Planning the Fourth Migration, 141–98; Brown, D. Clayton, Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA (Westport, Conn., 1980)Google Scholar; Pence, Richard A., The Next Greatest Thing (Washington, D.C., 1984).Google Scholar On the TVA, see note 28 above and Jacobs, Jane, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York, 1984), 105–23.Google Scholar

46. Mumford, Lewis, My Work and Days: A Personal Chronicle (New York, 1979), 107.Google Scholar