Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire by Rebecca Henderson

Author:Rebecca Henderson [HENDERSON, REBECCA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Learning from History: Black Smoke in the White City

The great industrial cities of the nineteenth century were incredibly polluted, and some of the earliest attempts at industry self-regulation were triggered by the desire to clean them up. These efforts sometimes worked—and sometimes they did not. When Chicago’s business elite set out to clean up the city, for example, they initially met with considerable success.18

On February 24, 1890, the US Congress selected Chicago as the host city for the great “world fair” that became known as the World’s Columbian Exposition.19 New York’s richest men had pledged $15 million (about $400 million in today’s money) to underwrite the fair if Congress awarded it to New York City. Chicago’s elite—including Marshall Field, Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Cyrus McCormick—not only matched the offer but also raised several million more dollars in twenty-four hours to beat New York’s bid.20

Hoping that the fair would bring international prominence to the city, the organizers drew up plans to build an elaborate “White City” in Jackson Park, a marshy bog seven miles outside Chicago’s city limits, and hired some of the country’s most prominent architects to design a suite of neoclassical buildings in the beaux arts style that would be covered with plaster of paris and painted a bright white.

As the date of the fair drew closer, many of its most ardent backers began to worry that the pristine buildings would be covered by a pall of thick, greasy smoke. Chicago—like all industrial cities of its time—was subject to appalling pollution. In the words of one historian:

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