GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

42THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONattributed approximately 22 percent of the area’s air pollution to steam locomotives(Chicago Association of Commerce 1915, 173). This figure substantiallydiffered from that arrived at earlier by the city’s smoke inspector and theCAC’s first report. The city’s inspector estimated that steam locomotivesaccounted for 43 percent of the smoke generated in Chicago (Stradling 1999,128), whereas the Association’s initial report estimated that they wereresponsible for anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of smoke emitted in the area(Chicago Association of Commerce 1915, 22–23).Moreover, the thrust of the report served to present the railroad firms’point of view on the air pollution question as it related to steam locomotives,and this is in part a reflection of the fact that the committee relied very heavilyon the railroads for its data (Stradling 1999, 129). First, the 1,052-pagereport focused almost exclusively on the costs associated with the electrificationof trains within Chicago. Second, it almost totally ignored the costs associatedwith air pollution and hence the benefits potentially accrued with theabatement of such pollution. 2 Third, the report began with a history describinghow the growth of the city can be directly related to railroad investmentin the area (Chicago Association of Commerce 1915, 11–16). The authors ofthe report explained that “wherever a railroad has chosen to marshal its cars,there the city has ultimately crowded in.” They went on to write that “therailroads have been an impelling force which has aided in the city’s legitimatedevelopment” (Chicago Association of Commerce 1915, 15).With the committee’s emphasis on the costs of electrification and its uncertaintyregarding the benefits associated with air pollution abatement, along withits view that steam locomotives accounted for only approximately one-fifth ofthe smoke in the area, unsurprisingly the committee advised against “immediateor general electrification of railroads for the purpose of eliminating their part inair pollution.” Additionally, it advised against any action abandoning “the useof Illinois and Indiana coal” (Chicago Association of Commerce 1915, 1052),which is generally of the bituminous or soft coal type (Chicago Association ofCommerce 1915, 16–17; Platt 1995, 74). The report’s release in 1915 effectivelyended the possibility of the government mandated electrification of the railroadswithin the Chicago area (Stradling 1999, 130).It is not that the owners and managers of industry and the railroads wereindifferent to the difficulties associated with air pollution. For example, historianScott Dewey (2000, 25) explains that “in Pittsburgh, AndrewCarnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and George Westinghouse all shared with thelocal chamber of commerce an interest in smoke control” (also see Grinder1978). Moreover, in 1927 the Illinois Central did voluntarily electrify its suburbanlines in Chicago (Stradling 1999, 130). Nevertheless, the costs anduncertainties associated with pollution abatement technologies led industryand the railroads throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesto oppose government enforced pollution abatement regulations.