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The Garbage Problem: Corruption, Innovation, and Capacity in Four American Cities, 1890–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2019
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.
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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.”
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