Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:13:16.123Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Garbage Problem: Corruption, Innovation, and Capacity in Four American Cities, 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2019

Patricia Strach ,
Kathleen Sullivan  and
Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués
Patricia Strach*
Affiliation:
University at Albany, State University of New York
Kathleen Sullivan*
Affiliation:
Ohio University
Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués*
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
*
E-mail: pstrach@albany.edu
sullivak@ohio.edu
elizabeth.perez@cide.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While American political development scholars tend to focus on national or state-level politics, late nineteenth-century cities provided the lion's share of services: clean water, paved and lighted streets, and sanitation. How did cities innovate and build municipal capacity to do these things? We answer this question by looking at municipal responses to the garbage problem. As cities grew and trash piled up in the 1890s, cities explored ways to effectively collect the garbage. A government requires not just resources, but also the ability to marshal those resources. Corruption could provide such abilities. Looking at four corrupt cities—Pittsburgh, Charleston, New Orleans, and St. Louis—we consider whether corruption, and what type of corruption, fostered innovation and capacity. We compare these corrupt cities with a shadow study of the reformist government of Columbus. We found the following: (1) The logic of corruption is the most important factor to explain why municipal governments chose particular garbage strategies. Corrupt regimes chose garbage collection and disposal strategies that would benefit themselves—but these varied depending on what type of corruption dominated a city. (2) Corruption sometimes promoted innovation and capacity, but at other times, corruption hindered them. For better or worse, cities ruled by corruption gained the capacity that these informal regimes held.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , October 2019 , pp. 209 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Melosi, Martin V., Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 17Google Scholar.

2. Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, The Search for American Political Development (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 22–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Brown, Craig M. and Halaby, Charles N., “Machine Politics in America, 1870–1945,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 3 (1987): 611Google Scholar.

4. Trounstine, Jessica, Political Monopolies in American Cities: The Rise and Fall of Bosses and Reformers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valdimer Orlando Key, Jr., “The Techniques of Political Graft in the United States” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1936), 5.

6. Scott, James C., “Handling Historical Comparisons Cross-Nationally,” in Political Corruption: A Handbook, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold, Johnston, Michael, and T., Victor LeVine (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1999), 129Google Scholar.

7. We are not alone in this endeavor. See also Darden, Keith, “The Integrity of Corrupt States: Graft as an Informal State Institution,” Politics & Society 36, no. 1 (2008): 35–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fjelde, Hanne and Hegre, Håvard, “Political Corruption and Institutional Stability,” Studies in Comparative International Development 49, no. 3 (2014): 267–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grzymala-Busse, Anna, “The Best Laid Plans: The Impact of Informal Rules on Formal Institutions in Transitional Regimes,” Studies in Comparative International Development 45, no. 3 (2010): 311–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Helmke, Gretchen and Levitsky, Steven, ed., Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Helmke, Gretchen and Levitsky, Steven, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 4 (2004): 725−740CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Radnitz, Scott, “Review: Informal Politics and the State,” Comparative Politics 43, no. 3 (2011): 351–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. See, for example, Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55, no. 4 (1964): 157–69Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reason: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Knopf, 1955)Google Scholar; Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Scott, James C., “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change,” The American Political Science Review 63, no. 4 (1969): 1142–158CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gottfried, Alex, Boss Cermak of Chicago: A Study of Political Leadership (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Gottfried, Alex, “Political Machines,” International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences 12 (1968): 248–52Google Scholar.

9. For example, researchers have challenged the accounts that identified the New Deal as the end of political machines: Stave, Bruce M., The New Deal and the Last Hurrah: Pittsburgh Machine Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970)Google Scholar; others have argued that the power of the machines and prevalence of machines were overstated, including their role in the incorporation of immigrants: Stone, Clarence, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989)Google Scholar; Thelen, David P., The New Citizenship: The Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Sterne, Evelyn Savidge, “Beyond the Boss: Immigration and American Political Culture from 1880 to 1940,” in E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, ed. Gerstle, Gary and Mollenkompf, John (New York: Russell Sage, 2001), 33–66Google Scholar; McDonald, Terrence J., “The Burdens of Urban History: The Theory of the State in Recent American Social History,” Studies in American Political Development 3 (1989): 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; that the literature lacks specificity and tends to overgeneralize: Teaford, John C., “Finis for Tweed and Steffens: Rewriting the History of Urban Rule,” Reviews in American History 10 (1982): 143–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown and Halaby, “Machine Politics in America,” 587–612; that it misrepresents the power bases of the machines and of reform movements: Finegold, Kenneth, Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; that reformers and bosses were not that different: Gimpel, James, “Reform-Resistant and Reform-Adopting Machines: The Electoral Foundations of Urban Politics, 1910–1930,” Political Research Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1993): 371–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rebecca Menes, “The Effect of Patronage Politics on City Government in American Cities, 1900–1910” (Working Paper No. 6975, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999); Trounstine, Political Monopolies in American Cities; McCormick, Richard L., “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (1981): 247–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Zane L., “Bosses, Machines, and the Urban Political Process,” in Ethnics, Machines, and the American Urban Future, ed. Greer, Scott (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1981)Google Scholar; that machines have not withered away: Wolfinger, Raymond E., “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” Journal of Politics 34, no. 2 (1972): 365–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and that the origins of machines date to changes undergone in antebellum American cities: Bridges, Amy, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See, for example, Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Wilson, James Q., ed., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980)Google Scholar; Shefter, Martin, “Regional Receptivity to Reform: The Legacy of the Progressive Era,” Political Science Quarterly 98, no. 3 (1983): 459–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Clarence N., “Urban Regimes and the Capacity to Govern: A Political Economy Approach,” Journal of Urban Affairs 15, no. 1 (1993): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peterson, Paul E., City Limits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dilworth, Richard, ed., The City in American Political Development (New York: Routledge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rast, Joel, “Why History (Still) Matters: Time and Temporality in Urban Political Analysis,” Urban Affairs Review 48, no. 1 (2011): 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rast, Joel, “Urban Regime Theory and the Problem of Change,” Urban Affairs Review 51, no. 1 (2015): 138–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lucas, Jack, “Urban Governance and the American Political Development Approach,” Urban Affairs Review 53, no. 2 (2015): 338–361CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. By 1902, for example, expenditures of local governments represented 57 percent of all government expenditures and 54 percent of all government revenues. Calculation based on figures included on Table 1, “Summary of Payments for Expenditures and Receipts from Revenues of the National Government, States and Territories, Counties, Cities and Other Minor Civil Divisions of Continental United States: 1902 of the United States Bureau of the Census,” in Wealth, Debt, and Taxation (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907): 963, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t4jm2v48t;view=1up;seq=7.

12. Dilworth, City in American Political Development; Rast, “Urban Regime Theory and the Problem of Change”; Lucas, “Urban Governance”; Bridges, Amy, Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

13. Katznelson, Ira, “Conclusion: On Diversity and the Accommodation of Injustice: A Coda on Cities, Liberalism, and American Political Development,” in City in American Political Development, ed. Dilworth, Richard (New York: Routledge, 2009), 246Google Scholar.

14. Nye, Joseph S., “Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis,” The American Political Science Review 61, no. 2 (1967): 417–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Myrdal, Gunnar, “Corruption: Its Causes and Effects,” in Political Corruption: A Handbook, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J., Johnston, Michael, and LeVine, Victor (Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989): 953–61Google Scholar; Heywood, Paul, “Political Corruption: Problems and Perspectives,” Political Studies 45, no. 3 (1997): 417–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bayley, David H., “The Effects of Corruption in a Developing Nation,” in Political Corruption: A Handbook, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J, Johnston, Michael, and LeVine, Victor (Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989): 935–54Google Scholar; Jain, Arvind K., “Corruption: A Review,” Journal of Economic Surveys 15, no. 1 (2001): 71–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nauro F. Campos, Ralitza Dimova, and Ahmad Saleh, “Whither Corruption? A Quantitative Survey of the Literature on Corruption and Growth,” (Discussion Paper No. 5334, IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany, 2010); Mauro, Paolo, “Corruption and Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 3 (1995): 681–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warren, Mark E., “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 328–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Christopher J. and Tverdova, Yuliya V., “Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes toward Government in Contemporary Democracies,” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 1 (2003): 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Pittsburgh (PA), St. Louis (MO), Charleston (SC), New Orleans (LA), San Francisco (CA), Savannah (GA), Louisville, (KY). We visited the following archives: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, PA); Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA); Missouri State Archives (Jefferson City, MO); South Carolina Historical Society (Charleston, SC); Charleston Archive, Charleston County Public Library (Charleston, SC); City Archives, New Orleans Public Library (New Orleans, LA); Ohio State University Library (Columbus, OH); San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library (San Francisco, CA); Research Library and Municipal Archives (City of Savannah, GA); and Louisville Public Library (Louisville, KY).

16. Lustick, Ian, “History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 3 (1996): 605–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Bell, Germa and Miralles, Antonio, “Factors Influencing the Privatization of Urban Solid Waste Collection in Spain,” Urban Studies 40, no. 7 (2003): 1323–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chandler, Timothy D. and Feuille, Peter, “Cities, Unions, and the Privatization of Sanitation Services,” Journal of Labor Research 15, no. 1 (1994): 53–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dubin, Jeffrey A. and Navarro, Peter, “How Markets for Impure Public Goods Organize: The Case of Household Refuse Collection,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4, no. 2 (1988): 217–41Google Scholar; Walls, Margaret, Macauley, Molly, and Anderson, Soren, “Private Markets, Contracts, and Government Provision: What Explains the Organization of Local Waste and Recycling Markets?” Urban Affairs Review 40, no. 5 (2005): 500–613CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Corruption, along with family relations, is a resource governments use to accomplish their goals. See Strach, Patricia and Sullivan, Kathleen, “The State's Relations: What the Institution of Family Tells Us about Governance,” Political Research Quarterly 64, no. 1 (2011): 94–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Manna, Paul, School's In: Federalism and the National Education Agenda, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

20. Philp, Mark, “Conceptualizing Political Corruption,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002): 41–58Google Scholar; Gardiner, John, “Defining Corruption,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002): 25–40Google Scholar; Leys, Colin, “What Is the Problem about Corruption?” The Journal of Modern African Studies 3, no. 2 (1965): 215–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedrich, Carl J., “Corruption Concepts in Historical Perspective,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 15–23Google Scholar; Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael, “Introduction to Part I,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 3–14Google Scholar; Kleveren, Jacob van, “Corruption as a Historical Phenomenon,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 83–94Google Scholar; Scott, James C., “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” The American Political Science Review 66, no. 1 (1972): 91–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swart, Koenraad W., “The Sale of Public Offices,” in Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, ed. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Johnston, Michael (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 95–106Google Scholar; Treisman, Daniel, “What Have We Learned about the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-National Research?” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007): 211–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government; Svensson, Jakob, “Eight Questions about Corruption,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 3 (2005): 19–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. As Pittsburgh's city controller once noted: corruption was not an open secret in Pittsburgh, it was not a secret. City of Pittsburgh, Annual Report of the Departments and Offices, Report of the City Controller 1915, p. 91, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

22. Medical professionals lamented that state Boards of Health were largely advisory, while municipal Boards of Health, which did have power, had limited and poorly defined powers. The best that medical professionals could do was to urge the Boards of Health, which might not even have doctors as members, to make full use of police powers by keeping streets clean, maintaining abatement of nuisances, enforcing laws for tenements and lodging houses, AND inspecting food for sale in markets and regulating slaughterhouses. Even late in the century, physicians and sanitarians did not dominate many Boards of Health, and they had limited funds for long-range programs. See Smith, Stephen, “On the Limitations and Modifying Conditions of Human Longevity, the Basis of Sanitary Work,” Public Health Papers and Reports 1 (1873): 4Google ScholarPubMed; “The Consulting Physicians of the City of Boston Sent a Communication to the Board of Aldermen Yesterday,” Boston Daily Advertiser, April 19, 1870, no. 92, col B; “Public Health,” Boston Daily Advertiser, March 9, 1872.

23. East, Dennis Jr., “Health and Wealth: Goals for the New Orleans Public Health Movement, 1879–1884,” Louisiana History 9 (1968): 249Google Scholar; Jerrold Michael, “The National Board of Health, 1879–1883,” Public Health Reports 126 (January–February 2011): 124, 127.

24. Sanitarians of this period studied garbage collection thoroughly; see Hering, Rudolph, “Modern Practice in the Disposal of Refuse,” Journal of the American Public Health Association 1, no. 12 (1911)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Chapin, Charles V., Municipal Sanitation in the United States (Providence, RI: Snow and Farnham, 1901)Google Scholar; Winslow, C. E. A. and Hansen, P., “Some Statistics of Garbage Disposal for the Larger American Cities in 1902,” Public Health Papers and Reports 29 (1903): 141–65Google ScholarPubMed. Each of these studies surveyed cities, collecting information on the type of collection, who collected, whether garbage was separated, the types of receptacles required, the receptacles actually used, whether garbage cans were covered, the conditions and make of garbage carts and whether they were covered, the frequency of collection, the placement of garbage cans on property, and so on. Detailed information was likewise collected on methods of disposal, with a particular interest in any scientific methods used in treatment of waste.

25. Hering, “Modern Practice in the Disposal of Refuse,” 910.

26. Ibid.

27. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation in the United States, 19.

28. Ellis, John H., Yellow Fever and Public Health in the New South (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992), 34Google Scholar.

29. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation in the United States, 108.

30. Melosi, Martin, Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 120Google Scholar; Baker, M. N., Municipal Engineering and Sanitation (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 165Google Scholar. Municipal Engineering has a section called “Improvement and Contracting News” that listed then-upcoming ordinances, bids, and competed contracts for such city services as paving, sewers, waterworks, bridges, streets lighting, parks, and garbage disposal See November.

31. McGowan, William, “American Wasteland: A History of America's Garbage Industry, 1880–1989,” Business and Economic History 24, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 155Google Scholar.

32. Ibid., 157.

33. Morse, William, “The Sanitary Disposal of Municipal and Institutional Waste by Cremation,” Public Health Papers and Reports 29 (1903): 134–37Google ScholarPubMed.

34. Gugliotta, Angela, “Class, Gender, and Coal Smoke: Gender Ideology and Environmental Injustice in Pittsburgh, 1868–1914,” Environmental History 5 (April 2000): 165–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. “A Civic Club,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 26, 1985, 2.

36. Year Book of the Civic Club of Charleston, 1922, Civic Club Papers: Year Books: 1910–1992, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston.

37. “Annual Address of Edward Fenner, Vice President, at the Regular Meeting of the New Orleans Auxiliary Sanitary Association,” November 23, 1880, 3–4, the Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, LA.

38. Thompson, Hugh Miller, “Method Introduced by the Auxiliary Sanitary Association for Disposing of the Garbage of New Orleans,” Public Health Papers and Reports 5 (1879): 33–34Google ScholarPubMed.

39. “Picayune Disapproval,” New Orleans Times, May 2, 1879, 4.

40. St. Louis's civic league declares that the “garbage problem has been satisfactorily and economically solved” in 1909—when it hasn't! See 1909 Year Book of the Civic League of St. Louis (St. Louis, MO: Civic League of St. Louis, 1909), 4.

41. Couvares, Francis, The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984), 64Google Scholar.

42. Ibid.

43. Baumann, John F. and Muller, Edward, Before Renaissance: Planning in Pittsburgh, 1889–1943 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 21–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. “Given Over to the Boss,” Pittsburgh Post, June 15, 1887, 1.

45. Bauman and Muller, Before Renaissance, 21.

46. Thomas Loughrey, et al. v. City of Pittsburgh, Controller, and Booth & Flinn, Ltd., Court of Common Pleas, 1898, from Flinn Letterbook, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh. See also From Flinn Letterbook, letter dated February 12, 1898, to S.E. Taylor, Secretary, Trinidad Asphalt Paving Company.

47. Pennsylvania Public Law 350 No. 258, sec. 20, June 26, 1895.

48. “Report of the Director, Contracts Awarded by the Director of Public Safety During the Fy Ending Jan 31, 1900,” in 12th Annual Report of the Department of Public Safety, City of Pittsburgh, 1899, 1900, p. 2, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

49. Osborn, Irwin, “Disposal of Garbage by the Reduction Method,” American Journal of Public Health 2, no. 12 (1912): 937–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Fisher et al. v. American Reduction Company 189 Pa. 419 (1899).

50. City of Pittsburgh, Annual Report of the Department of Public Safety, 1899, p. 208, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

51. William Flinn to Klein, Cohn & Hurtig, March 12, 1898, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

52. William Flinn to John Fredericks, April 21, 1898; George Flinn to William Flinn, April 23, 1898, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh. Flinn was so pleased that he struck up deals with agents in Rochester, NY, and Washington, DC, to contract for the construction and/or investment of new plants there. William Flinn to F. G. Lauer, January 13, 1898; William Flinn to F. C. Lauer, February 2, 1898; William Flinn to F. C. Lauer, February 12, 1898; William Flinn to A. W. Dow, March 1, 1898; William Flinn to A. W. Dow, March 7, 1898. Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

53. Letter dated January 13, 1898, to F. G. Lauer, President, Rochester Vulcanite Pavement Co.; letter dated February 2, 1898, to F. C. Lauer, Esq., Rochester, Pa. [sic]; letter dated February 12, 1898, to F. C. Lauer, Esq. Rochester, NY; letter dated March 1, 1898, to A. W. Dow, Esq., Washington, DC; letter dated March 7, 1898, to A. W. Dow, Esq., Washington, DC, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

54. Letter dated February 22, 1898, to Harry Powell, Esq., Alexander near S. Clinton St., Rochester, NY, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

55. William Flinn to Mr. C. Gray, January 31, 1898, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

56. City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Annual Reports, 1912, p. 30, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

57. Digest of the General Ordinances and Laws of the City of Pittsburgh to March 1, 1938 (1938), Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh; City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Annual Reports, 24.

58. City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Annual Reports, 23.

59. William Flinn to John Fredericks, May 27, 1898, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh; William Flinn to T. F. Van Kirk, March 5, 1898, Letterbooks, Series II, William Flinn Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

60. City of Pittsburgh, “Department of Public Health Report,” Annual Report of Mayor for Year Ending January 31, 1912 (1912), Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

61. Fisher et al. v. American Reduction Co., 3.

62. Chris Potter, “Who Was William Flinn?” Pittsburgh City Paper, March 3–10, 1994, 8; Philip Klein and Joe Hoogenboom, A History of Pennsylvania (University Park: Penn State University Press), 419–20.

63. Klein and Hoogenboom, History of Pennsylvania, 420; Bauman and Muller, Before Renaissance, 41.

64. “Grenet Is Given New Position,” Pittsburgh Press, December 13, 1907, 1.

65. Klein and Hoogenboom, History of Pennsylvania, 421.

66. Pittsburgh Select and Common Council Records, 1806–1938, box 7, folder 3, Standing Committees—Finance Committee, September 1910, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

67. City of Pittsburgh, “Department of Public Health Report.”

68. City of Pittsburgh, Annual Reports of Departments and Offices of the City of Pittsburgh, 1914, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

69. “Heal Director Names Committees: Will Study Municipal Waste Disposal and Squatter Control,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 2, 1933, 17; Mrs. Templeton, “Cincinnati v. Pittsburgh: Ohio City Saves Money in Nearly Every Phase of Government,” Pittsburgh Press, March 9, 1933, 30.

70. “Herron-Flinn Real Estate Deal Made Mayoralty Issue,” Pittsburgh Press, October 30, 1933, 4; “City Denies Payment of Refuse Bill: Complaints of Faulty Collection Aired in Council,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 1939, 13.

71. “Garbage Firm ‘Rescues’ City,” Pittsburgh Press, March 30, 1940, 3; “Another Bungle,” Pittsburgh Press, March 31, 1940, 26.

72. “Praise Given by Roessing: Incinerator Is Doing Well, Says Director,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 18, 1940, 13.

73. “Garbage Bids Hearing Today,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 15, 1931.

74. Stein, Lana, St. Louis Politics: The Triumph of Tradition (St. Louis: Missouri History Museum Press, 2002), 9Google Scholar; Alexander Scot McConachie, “The ‘Big Cinch’: A Business Elite in the Life of a City, Saint Louis, 1895–1915” (PhD diss., Washington University, 1977).

75. McConachie, “The ‘Big Cinch,’” 169.

76. Ibid., 169.

77. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 10, 1911. In Howard, Robert Lorenzo and Lawson, John D., American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials Which Have Taken Place in the United States from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day, vol. 9 (St. Louis: F.F. Thomas Law Books, 1918), 493–94Google Scholar.

78. City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis at Its May Session (May 25, 1875), reel no. C19393, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

79. City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis at Its Regular Session (May 28, 1878), reel no. C19393, p. 226, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

80. Rafferty, Edward C., “The Boss Who Never Was: Colonel Ed Butler and the Limits of Practical Politics in St. Louis, 1875–1904,” Gateway Heritage 12, no. 3 (1992): 59Google Scholar.

81. “Butler, Edward (1838?–1919),” in Dictionary of Missouri Biography, ed. Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, and Gary Kremer (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 140–42.

82. City of St. Louis, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Health Commissioner 1889–1890, (April 28, 1890), box 148, p. 6, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

83. City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis at its Session (June 1889), reel no. C19396, p. 351, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

84. Osborn, “Disposal of Garbage by the Disposal Method,” 937–42.

85. City of St. Louis, Seventh Annual Report of the Health Commissioner 1883–1884 (April 1, 1884), box 148, folder 1, p. 237, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

86. Ibid., 240.

87. Ibid.

88. City of St. Louis, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Health Commissioner (March 31, 1896), box 148, pp. 31–32, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

89. City of St. Louis, Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Health Commissioner for the Year Ending March 31, 1901, (August 9, 1901), box 148, pp. 251–252, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

90. Ibid., 252.

91. “Ed Butler on Trial for Boodling,” The Macon Times-Democrat, February 4, 1904, p. 7.

92. “Murrell's Statement and Its Significance,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 8, 1902, p. 2.

93. “Novel Methods Used to Force Collectors to Take up Garbage,” St. Louis Republic, September 4, 1902.

94. McConachie, “The ‘Big Cinch,’” 229, citing Wells, 1933, 128.

95. The “St Louis Sanitary Co paid Butler a salary of $2500 a year in order to promote a ‘good feeling’ between the hauling company and the sanitary company” (Howard and Lawson, American State Trials, 492–93).

96. “Journal of the City Council. Regular Session. 1901–1902. City of St. Louis,” St. Louis Republic, May 16, 1901.

97. Howard and Lawson, American State Trials, 495.

98. “Under the provision that the B.P.S. is to let all contracts for public work, the board of health has no power to contract for removal of garbage, and such a contract is void” (State vs. Butler, 178, Mo., 272). See, as to garbage ordinances, Rev. Code, 1912, Chapter 12, Art. X, and see notes thereto: City of Saint Louis, Charter of the City of St. Louis, Missouri: With the Scheme of Separation between County of St. Louis and City of St. Louis and Provisions of the Constitution of Missouri Especially Applicable to the City of St. Louis (St. Louis: Wilson Printing Co., 1915), 110Google Scholar; Howard and Lawson, American State Trials; Piott, Steven L., Holy Joe: Joseph W. Folk and the Missouri Idea (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Steffens, Lincoln, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957 [1904])Google Scholar.

99. Howard and Lawson, American State Trials, 566.

100. Piott, Holy Joe, 55, citing letter from Roosevelt to Folk dated December 12, 1903.

101. City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis for the Fiscal Year Ending April 11, 1904 (1904), reel no. C19402, C19403, first page of the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Public Improvements, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

102. City of St. Louis, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Health Commissioner, (August 1, 1904), box 149, p. 128, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

103. “Discovery of ‘Phillipine Island’ in Mississippi River by Hiram Phillips Probably Gives to St. Louis Most Remarkable Reduction Plant in Country,” St. Louis Republic, December 11, 1904.

104. Ibid.

105. Ordinance No. 23526, approved September 30, 1907; see City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis for the Fiscal Year Ending April 12, 1909 (November 26, 1909), reel no. C19405, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City; City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message with Accompanying Documents to the Municipal Assembly of the City of St. Louis for the Fiscal Year Ending April 11, 1910, p. 44. reel no. C19407, St. Louis Microfilm Collection, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City; Municipal Journal, Index vol. 34 (New York: Municipal Journal and Engineer, 1913), 866.

106. City of St. Louis, Mayor's Message for the Fiscal Year Ending April 11, 1910, 44.

107. James L. Blair, “The St. Louis Disclosures,” in Proceedings of the Detroit Conference for Good City Government and the Ninth Annual Meeting of the National Municipal League in Detroit, Michigan, April 22–24, 1903,” ed. Clinton Rogers Woodruff (Philadelphia: National Municipal League, 1903).

108. “the tremendous wrong … carried on against Missouri taxpayers is a fact that is not merely whispered from lip to lip. The general public knows just how much and how it was robbed” (James Folk quoted in Howard and Lawson, American State Trials, xvii).

109. McConachie, “The ‘Big Cinch,’” 262, citing St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 27, 1911.

110. Stein, St. Louis Politics, 19.

111. Notwithstanding the mayor's stated goal—and later 1917 campaign promise of establishing a municipal reduction plant and lowering costs— these promises remained unfulfilled, and prices continued to rise while no permanent solution to garbage disposal was found—by 1921 the City of St. Louis was paying $6.35 for handling a ton of garbage: $3.60 a ton for collection and $2.75 a ton for garbage disposal (50 cents a ton, freight $2.25), which was paid to Guy W. Caron's hog farm! See “How Kiel Has Kept Garbage Plant Promise,” St. Louis Star and Times, February 17, 1921, pp. 1, 3.

112. “Hoover's Help to Be Asked to End Garbage Dispute—Unless 87 Cent Reduction Charge Is Waived Board Will Resume Dumping on Chesley Island,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 1918, 3.

113. “The City Garbage Fiasco,” St. Louis Star and Times, February 5, 1930, 18.

114. “War Hikes Demand for City Garbage as Food for Hogs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1940, 3.

115. Banner, James, “The Problem of South Carolina,” in The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial, ed. Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 60–93Google Scholar; Jaher, Frederic Cople, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Nye, “Corruption and Political Development,” 420.

116. Charleston City Council, “Statement of Receipts and Expenditures by the City Council of Charleston, from the 1st of September 1850 to 1st September 1851,” South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston.

117. “In municipal government bluebloods made their best showing: Peter C. Gaillard (1865–68), R. Goodwin Rhett (1903–11), Thomas P. Stoney (1923–27), Burnett Rhett Maybank (1931), and J. Palmer Gaillard (1973)” (Jaher, The Urban Establishment, 405).

118. City of Charleston, “Journal of the Commissioner of Streets and Lamps, 1806–1818,” Charleston Archive, Charleston County Public Library.

119. Ibid.

120. City of Charleston, Digest of the Ordinances of the City Council of Charleston from the Year 1783 to July 1818 to Which Are Annexed, Extracts from the Acts of the Legislature Which Relate to the City of Charleston (Charleston: Archibald E. Miller, 1818), 44.

121. Greene, Harlan, Hutchins, Harry S. Jr., and Hutchins, Brian E., Slave Badges and the Slave-Hire System in Charleston, South Carolina, 1783–1865 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004)Google Scholar; Powers, Bernard E., Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

122. Greene et al., Slave Badges, 127.

123. Ibid., 138.

124. “The Health of Charleston—No. 2,” Charleston Daily News, March 23, 1869. This taxpayer is writing in support of the continued enforcement of the ordinance that prohibited the practice. The writer describes how communities were basically decimated by this practice. Describing how the practice affected communities: “The change that has taken place is its conversion from a marsh overflowed twice in twenty-four hours by pure sea water, into a porous, putrefying, undrained soil, composed almost entirely of the offal of the city.”

125. “The losses of the elite were enormous. John Berkeley Grimball did not exaggerate when he declared “the war ruined us.” William Middleton told his sister in Philadelphia that no one could imagine “the utter tipsy–turveying of all our institutions.” The James Heyward family took on sewing. Some reopened their mansions to take on boarders, while others became tellers in banks”; see Fraser, Walter J. Jr., Charleston! Charleston!: The History of A Southern City (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 275Google Scholar.

126. “Local Laconics,” Charleston Daily News, December 3, 1872; “The City Council—an Important Meeting—Election of City Officers,” Charleston Daily News, November 27, 1872. The resolution went into effect in December 1872.

127. Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 296.

128. Ibid., 301.

129. Ibid., 310; Crooks, Daniel J. and Bostick, Douglas W., Charleston's Trial: Jim Crow Justice (Charleston: The History Press, 2008), 24Google Scholar.

130. Crooks and Bostick, Charleston's Trial, 24–25.

131. City of Charleston, Year Book (Charleston: News and Courier Book Presses) for several years: Year Book 1880; Year Book 1883; Year Book 1884, Charleston Archive, Charleston County Public Library.

132. City of Charleston, Year Book 1883.

133. City of Charleston, Year Book 1887.

134. City of Charleston, Year Book 1888; Year Book 1894; Year Book 1903.

135. Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 320.

136. City of Charleston, Year Book 1896, 297.

137. City of Charleston, Year Book 1899, 308.

138. City of Charleston, Year Book 1902.

139. Authors’ analysis of data from the yearbooks, 1892–1910.

140. City of Charleston, Year Book 1903, 133.

141. City of Charleston, Year Book 1907, 102.

142. Transactions of the Medical Association of Georgia, 40th Annual Session, 1889; “Charleston Buzzards,” Timely Topics 4 (October 6, 1899): 410.

143. Christina Shedlock, “‘Prejudicial to the Public Health’: Class, Race, and the History of Land Reclamation, Drainage, and Topographic Alteration in Charleston, South Carolina, 1836 to 1940” (master's thesis, The Graduate School at the College of Charleston and the Citadel, 2010).

144. These families’ hold over city politics “perpetuated a social structure founded on race, class, and family. The names of the persistent old elite who controlled the social, economic, and political life of the city predominated among the charter members of the Charleston Club: Alston, DeSaussure, Frost, Grimball, Heyward, Huger, Jervey, Laurens, Manigault, McCrady, Middleton, Pringle, Ravenel, Rutledge, Simons, and Vanderhost” (Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 312).

145. Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 311.

146. City of Charleston, Year Book 1903, 127.

147. City of Charleston, Year Book 1905, 137.

148. Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!, 354.

149. “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1915, 123–124.

150. “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1917, 214–215.

151. “Mayor Hyde's Annual Review,” Charleston Year Book 1918, xvii; “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1918, 117.

152. “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1919, 123.

153. “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1918, 121.

154. E. R. Conant, “The Operation and Efficiency of the High Temperature Destructor Plant at Savannah, Georgia,” Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Convention of the American Society of Municipal Improvements held at Dayton, Ohio, October 12, 13, 14 and 15, 1915 (Indianapolis: Charles Carroll Brown, 1916), 16

155. “Mayor Grace's Annual Review,” Charleston Year Book 1920, xxi–xxii.

156. Ibid., xxiii.

157. “Report of Street Department,” Charleston Year Book 1921, 117.

158. Nussbaum, Raymond, “‘The Ring Is Smashed!’: The New Orleans Municipal Election of 1896,” Louisiana History 17, no. 3 (1976): 283Google Scholar.

159. Ettinger, Brian Gary, “John Fitzpatrick and the Limits of Working-Class Politics in New Orleans, 1892–1896,” Louisiana History 26, no. 4 (1985): 345Google Scholar.

160. Ibid., 344.

161. Humphreys, Margaret, Yellow Fever and the South (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 54Google Scholar.

162. Arensen, Eric, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class and Politics: 1863–1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 76Google Scholar.

163. Strach, Patricia and Sullivan, Kathleen, “Dirty Politics: Public Employees, Private Contractors, and the Development of Nineteenth-Century Trash Collection in Pittsburgh and New Orleans,” Social Science History 39, no. 3 (2015): 387–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

164. Of the 108 names listed as cart operators in 1900, we were able to identify 53 (36 of whom had garbage carts, 4 server carts, 2 fly carts, and 11 were unlisted) and match them to U.S. Census data (City of New Orleans, “City Records—Carts, 1900” City Archives, New Orleans Public Library).

165. See, for example, “Women at Home and Abroad,” New Orleans Times Democrat, August 30, 1903; “Garbage Destruction,” New Orleans Times Democrat, March 24, 1908.

166. “Refuse Collection in New Orleans,” Public Works 52, no. 23 (1922): 419–20.

167. Letter to T. J. Moulin, Commissioner of Public Works, from Joe A. Malloy, May 14, 1900 (City Archives, New Orleans Public Library, 1900); Letter to T. J. Moulin, Commissioner of Public Works, from Rob Ewing, June 18, 1900, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library.

168. City of New Orleans, “City Records—Carts.”

169. Johnston, Michael, “Patrons and Clients, Jobs and Machines: A Case Study of the Uses of Patronage,” The American Political Science Review 73, no. 2 (1979): 385–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; City of New Orleans, “City Records—Carts.”

170. “Garbage Disposal,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), April 21, 1893.

171. “City Garbage: The Collection of Its Collection and Final Disposition,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), May 30, 1892.

172. “The Garbage Job,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), August 15, 1893; “The Cost of Garbage Service,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), August 18, 1893.

173. Colten, Craig, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 59–60Google Scholar; Morse, William Francis, The Collection and Disposal of Municipal Waste (New York: Municipal Journal and Engineer, 1908Google Scholar, https://archive.org/details/collectionanddi02morsgoog/page/n8.

174. “Mayor Shakespeare [sic] Firm,” New York Times, November 22, 1891.

175. “City Hall: Get Your Garbage Boxes,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), March 4, 1894; Ettinger, “John Fitzpatrick and the Limits of Working-Class Politics,” 355–56; “The Garbage Job and Garbage Boxes,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA); “A Lady's Plan to Bring About a Better System of Garbage Gathering,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), March 10, 1894.

176. In 1900, the city of New Orleans reported 134 garbage carts on the payroll (88 were listed under women's names (City of New Orleans, “City Records—Carts”); Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis, 59–60; Morse, The Collection and Disposal of Municipal Waste.

177. Ettinger, “John Fitzpatrick and the Limits of Working-Class Politics,” 358.

178. Haas, Edward, “John Fitzpatrick and Political Continuity in New Orleans, 1896–1899,” Louisiana History 22, no. 1 (1981): 13Google Scholar.

179. Ibid., 21.

180. Williams, Robert, “Martin Behrman and New Orleans Civic Development, 1904–1920,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1961): 373–74Google Scholar.

181. Dodd, Walter L., Report on the Health and Sanitary Survey of the City of New Orleans, 1918–1919 (New Orleans, 1919), 112Google Scholar, cited in Williams, “Martin Behrman,” 394.

182. Ibid.

183. Letter from New Orleans Progressive Union dated May 9, 1905; Letter from New Orleans Progressive Union dated January 7, 1907, Mayor Martin Behrman Records Series I, 1904–1920, New Orleans Public Library.

184. Letter from George Smith dated April 10, 1907, Letters and Orders of the General Superintendent: Department of Public Works, New Orleans Public Library.

185. Letter from George Smith dated April 14, 1908, Letters and Orders of the General Superintendent: Department of Public Works, New Orleans Public Library.

186. Letter from George Smith to Joseph Gleason dated January 22, 1909, Letters and Orders of the General Superintendent: Department of Public Works, New Orleans Public Library.

187. Letter from Joseph Gleason to All Superintendents dated May 26, 1911, Letters and Orders of the General Superintendent: Department of Public Works, New Orleans Public Library.

188. George Smith, Report of the Commissioner of Public Works of the Workings of his Department, March 9, 1909, Letters: No. 13, Department of Public Works, New Orleans Public Library.

189. Williams, “Martin Behrman,” 22–23.

190. Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis, 112.

191. City of Columbus, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending December 31, 1901 (Columbus: American Publishing Company, 1902), 236; and Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending December 31, 1902 (Columbus: American Publishing Company, 1903), 258.

192. City of Columbus, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending December 31, 1901, 227.

193. City of Columbus, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending December 31, 1896 (Columbus, OH: Westbote, 1897), 279.

194. City of Columbus, “Report of the Garbage Reduction Department of Columbus, Ohio,” Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending December 31, 1910 (Columbus, OH: Courier, 1911), 718–735.

195. “Columbus Municipal Reduction Plant,” Municipal Journal and Public Works 49 (November 6, 1920): 441–442.

196. Steffens, Shame of the Cities, 24.

197. In June 1883, the department spent $7,614 on street “labor” (quotes in the original) and $3,422 on carts, employing 80 carts to work an average of 22 hours, at $2 per day.

198. Olson, Mancur, “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 567–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

199. Family relations as well as corruption are resources governments use to accomplish their goals. See Strach and Sullivan, “The State's Relations.”