This second Pittsburgh issue deals with certain physical necessities of
a wage earning population. It shows a city struggling for the things
which primitive men have ready to hand,--clear air, clean water, pure
foods, shelter and a foothold of earth. Thus we have in Pittsburgh a
smoke campaign, a typhoid movement and the administrative problems of
the Bureau of Health in milk and meat inspection; thus we have the
necessity for sanitary regulation of dwellings wherever people live
dense or deep, whether squatters' shanties such as those of Skunk
Hollow or company houses such as those of Painter's Row, whether
city tenements or mill-town lodgings; and the necessity further for
increased numbers of low-cost dwellings. Similarly, flood prevention,
traction development, bridge building and the like are so many efforts
to expand, or conquer the difficulties of, the town's corrugated floor.
The first issue of this series, that of January 2, pointed out
that with the moving into Pittsburgh of new and immigrant peoples,
the spirit of the frontier and of the mining camp possessed the
wage-earning population. This spirit has characterized civic
development. Wherever there has been profit in public service, private
enterprises have staked their claims to perform it. While the biggest
men of the community have made steel, other men have built water
companies, thrown bridges across the rivers, erected inclines and laid
sectional car lines. To bring system and larger public utility out of
these heterogeneous units, has become the present governmental problem
of the city.
In a sense, this situation is repeated with respect to the institutions
transplanted into Pittsburgh, or initiated there, to meet the cultural
and social needs of the community. Thus we have local alderman's
courts, unco-ordinated charitable enterprises, and a ward system
of schools. The trend of the decade here, too, is obviously toward
system,--toward a municipalization of lower courts, an expansion of the
health service, an association of charities, a city system as against
a vestry system of schools, a civic improvement commission that will
focalize public sentiment in all movements for municipal improvement.
* * * * *
In the third and final issue of the series, that of March 2, the
emphasis will be transferred from the civic to the industrial
well-being of the wage-earning population,--the vital and irrepressible
issues of hours, wages, factory inspection, accidents and the cost of
living.
A supplementary group of studies,--of the libraries, schools,
playgrounds and children's institutions of Pittsburgh,--will also be
published in the issue of March 2.