654 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



ber8, often with the installation of mechanically operated stokers, 

 furnaces and boilers of sufficient capacity to avoid overcrovyding 

 even at peak loads, and, above all, a high order of intelligence in 

 supervision of the operation?^. 



In the matter of city ordinances ^ there is often a tendency to lay 

 all the stress on the regulation of existing plants, overlooking or 

 underestimating the fact that muc^h of the trouble comes from inade- 

 quate or faulty equipment in the first place. It has been very sig- 

 nificant in certain industrial centers to note how some of the older 

 Avorks for a long time opposed municipal regulation as impracticable 

 but later Avere found to be its staunch advocates. Investigation 

 showed in most cases that their original furnace equipment had in 

 the meantime Avorn out or become inadequate, and they had thus 

 been forced by business considerations to replace this by new, up-to- 

 date construction in the design of which the smoke problem was 

 given due weight, and under these circumstances they no longer 

 found it impracticable or even difficult to operate in conformity with 

 I'easonable smoke ordinances. The lesson that this teaches is the im- 

 portance of at least some degree of municipal control not only over 

 the operation of existing plants, but also over the construction 

 of new ones. There is the same reason for a city to pass upon the 

 adequacy from a sanitary standpoint of a proposed new power or 

 heating plant within its limits as there is for its similar control 

 of the fire protection and plumbing of a new office building. The 

 regulation of existing sources of smoke always seems, of course, of 

 more immediate importance, but for the future, the control of new 

 construction will undoubtedly prove the determining influence. 



Under the conditions of our present-day life and industr}', the 

 question arises in each instance, "What will be the cost and is it 

 worth while? " Nor is it meant by this to specially indict the indus- 

 trial sources of smoke. On the contrary, other things being equal, 

 the individual householder is a far more difficult element to deal 

 with than the large manufacturing plant. Compare, for example, 

 Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We are wont perhaps to think of 

 Pittsburgh as the typical smoky city and as almost hopeless in this 

 regard, yet to-day to the student of these matters, the cleaning up 

 of smoke in Pittsburgh appears an easier and more practical task 

 than the like service for Philadelphia, for in Pittsburgh the practi- 

 cally uniA-ersal use of natural gas in the home has left the smoke 

 problem centered simply about the larger industrial uses of fuel. 

 These, from their smaller number and gi'eater individual importance, 

 it is practicable to regulate by trained superAdsion and control, but 



1 U. S. Bureau of Mines Bulletin No. 49, entitled " City Smoke Ordinances and Smoke 

 Abatement," by Samuel B. Flagg. 



