ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR PITTSBURGH SURVEY; SUPERINTENDENT CHICAGO
TUBERCULOSIS INSTITUTE
One convincing and startling feature of the Pittsburgh Civic Exhibit
in November was a frieze of small silhouettes three inches apart
stretching in line around both ends and one side of the large hall in
Carnegie Institute in which the exhibit of the Pittsburgh Survey was
installed. The frieze was over 250 feet in length, and the figures were
distributed in correct proportion by age and sex. They represented six
hundred and twenty-two persons in all, the death-toll from typhoid
fever in Pittsburgh during the year 1907. Accompanying this frieze,
placed prominently over the doors where everyone could read them, were
duplicates of the following sign in large display letters:
* * * * *
IF THE DEATH RATE HAD BEEN 25 PER 100,000, still considerably
greater than that in Albany, Ann Arbor, Ansonia, Atlantic
City, Binghamton, Boston, Bridgeport, Brockton, Cambridge,
Canton, Detroit, Fall River, Hartford, Jersey City, Lawrence,
Lowell, Milwaukee, New York, Rochester, St. Paul, Springfield,
Syracuse, Worcester, and a score of other cities having a
fairly pure water supply, but _114_ of these persons would have
died and the line would _be only 2/9 as long_.
_Who is Responsible for this Sacrifice?_
* * * * *
And next to this placard was another sign, showing in comparative
columns the amount of typhoid fever in Pittsburgh during the four
months that had elapsed since the opening of a great municipal
filtration plant, compared with the amount for the same months of the
previous year; for example ninety-six cases in October, 1908, as
against 593 in October, 1907.
The typhoid problem in Pittsburgh in its larger cause has always been
a water problem; in its consequences it has become one of the city's
biggest social and economic problems; in its solution, it has been
tied up with all the politics of a boss-ridden city. The story of
filtration is the story of the navigation of an unwieldy craft through
a tempestuous channel. Buffeted by cross winds of public opinion, its
sails battered and torn by squalls of commercial opposition and abuse,
guided now to the right and now to the left by frequently changing
pilots, a plaything for the waves of councils, its booty coveted by
buccaneers of each political faction, filtration and its freightage of
health (or contracts) has been a prize over which the elements in the
municipal life of Pittsburgh have battled hard and long. The docking of
this craft in safety and security is one of Pittsburgh's greatest civic
achievements; its protracted passage is her most enduring disgrace.
In handling the question of typhoid in Pittsburgh, we must then, deal
with three distinct themes: water, economics, and politics.
[Illustration: Silhouettes are not here classified as to age, sex and
occupation.]
[Illustration]