Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951

The author describes the evolution of one of America's first environmental movements - the anti-smoke crusade of the early 1900s. The roots of modern environmentalism, David Stradling explains, reach into this Victorian era when air quality became an important issue for middle-class residents in coal-dependent cities - how could a city without pure air, they asked, truly be clean, healthful and moral? Stradling shows how activists soon forced environmental issues onto municipal agendas. But as governments began to take the smoke problem seriously, those same activists largely lost their influence. Cities hired "experts" in the form of engineers, who argued smoke abatement for economic rather than aesthetic reasons - smoke meant waste and waste cost money. Gender was an issue as well, Stradling points out, as the balance of power shifted from largely female activists to predominantly male engineers.