Corruption and Public Health: Building the Nation’s Sanitation Infrastructure

• In Event: The Expansion of Health Policy and Public Health: Historical Perspectives

Abstract

Nineteenth-century American cities were a mess. As trash accumulated in the streets, in waterways, and in yards, mobility was limited and the stench was noxious. Perhaps most troublesome, diseases flourished. Waves of cholera and yellow fever outbreaks hit the country, killing thousands. Clearly, mounting trash created a “garbage problem” in cities across the nation (see Melosi 2005; McGowan 1995; Schultz & McShane 1978; Tarr 1984; Zimring 2009). Although householders had informal ways of disposing of their own waste--burying trash in the backyard, feeding animal and vegetable waste to chickens or swine, and collecting ashes from fires and use it as filler—these traditional means no longer worked as city populations ballooned in the latter half of the nineteenth century. How would cities find the resources to successfully address this problem?

In this paper, we draw on original archival documents from six important cities (Pittsburgh, Charleston, San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans) and secondary sources to show that there were plenty of people—sanitarians, health officials, and engineers—who offered scientific, sanitary solutions to the garbage problem. City officials, however, often by-passed these “best practices” in favor of another resource: corruption. Corruption helped city officials provide decent (albeit imperfect) garbage collection in Pittsburgh at the same time it hamstrung efforts in New Orleans.

Corrupt regimes, that set up systems to benefit themselves, nonetheless built systems of garbage collection that were in line with sanitary practices, setting a path that has generally continued to this day. Lily Baum Pollans has pointed out that modes of governing in waste management are currently shifting to diversion or reduction, and city infrastructure continues to be guided by the 19th century mode of sanitation (Pollans 2017). Our research suggests that the development of municipal health infrastructure relied on sometimes unsavory individuals and organizations. We show the ways that sanitation was both flouted and preserved in early, corrupt, garbage collection programs.

Authors

• Kathleen S. Sullivan, Ohio University

• Patricia Strach, University at Albany, SUNY