¹ Chicago Tribune, January 17–19, 1900; Missouri vs. Illinois 200 US 496 (1906). Missouri also filed a similar case in the U. S. Circuit Court in case its bid for original jurisdiction before the high court was denied. See ibid., January 18, 1900. The other two key cases considered in this paper are Sanitary District of Chicago vs. United States 266 US 405 (1925) and Wisconsin vs. Illinois 278 US 367 (1929).

² Tarr, Joel, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, OH, 1996).Google Scholar

³ For general perspectives on the sanitary canal, see O'Connell, James C., “Technology and Pollution: Chicago's Water Policy, 1833–1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar; and Cain, Louis P., Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (De Kalb, IL, 1978).Google Scholar I have prepared two working papers on a larger project on the environmental history of water management in Chicago. See Harold L. Platt, “‘A Fountain Inexhaustible’: Environmental Perspectives on Water Management in Chicago, 1840–1880,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of the History of Technology (London, June 1996) and “‘Everlasting Purity’: Science, Engineering, and the Chlorination of Chicago's Water Supply, 1880–1920,” a paper presented to the biennial meeting of the American Society of Environmental History (Baltimore, March 1997). The SDC's refusal to build sewage treatment plants is rooted in the city's political culture, which was unique in its resistance to reform and the corresponding strength of the regular party organizations. For an introduction, see Finegold, Kenneth, Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar and Schneirov, Richard, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864–1897 (Urbana, 1998).Google Scholar

⁴ For the rise of a new environmentalism of conservation, see Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1959)Google Scholar; and the essays collected in Tarr, Ultimate Sink. On the coming of germ theory, see Duffy, John, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana, 1990)Google Scholar; Tomes, Nancy, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge, UK, 1998)Google Scholar; and Worboys, Michael, Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 (Cambridge, UK, 2000).Google Scholar

⁵ On the role of the national government in the rise of Chicago, see Holt, Glen, “The Birth of Chicago: An Examination of Economic Parentage,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 76 (Summer 1983): 83–94Google Scholar and Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991).Google Scholar For general perspectives on American law, see Hurst, James Willard, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Madison, WI, 1956).Google Scholar For the Trustees' plans to transfer control to the national government, see Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1900. On federalism and the cities, see for example Rosenberg, Charles, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; Wohl, Anthony S., Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, MA, 1983)Google Scholar; and Hamlin, Christopher, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age ofChadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, UK, 1998).Google Scholar Of course the so-called “Dillon Rule” severely restricted the autonomy of the municipal corporation as a “creature” of state government. Yet, in the area of urban environmental policy, state legislators rarely intervened other than acting as enablers of local units of government. See Farnham, W. D., “The Weakened Spring of Government: A Study in Nineteenth Century History,” American Historical Review 68 (1965): 662–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jones, Alan, “Thomas M. Cooley and Laissez-Faire Consitutionalism: A Reconsideration,” Journal of American History 53 (March 1967): 751–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Chicago Daily News, August 3, 1885, for the quotation. Also see Chicago Times, August 4, 1885, which reported a final, record-breaking total of 6.33 inches for the storm. The previous record was 4.14 inches, but the statistics only extended back to 1872. Perhaps more telling was the testimony of the city's sailors. “Old river men and vessel-owners who have sailed the lakes for thirty years or more state that nothing like the present storm has ever been known at this season of the year.” Ibid., August 3, 1885.

⁷ On the Citizens' Association, see Platt, Harold L., “Creative Necessity: Municipal Reform in Gilded Age Chicago,” in The Constitution, Law, and American Life: Critical Aspects of the Nineteenth Century Experience, ed., Nieman, Donald G. (Athens, GA, 1992): 162–90.Google Scholar On the early activities of the drainage committee, see O'Connell, , “Technology and Pollution,” 88–111.Google Scholar On the politics of the great flood, see Platt, “Fountain Inexhaustible.” One of the best studies of Chicago's fragile environmental site was written by the city's first master environmental engineer. See Chesbrough, E. S., “The Drainage and Sewerage of Chicago,” Public Health Papers and Reports 4 (1877): 18–26.Google Scholar

⁸ Delafontaine, M., “Chemical Examination of the Chicago Water Supply,” in Report on Main Drainage, Citizens' Association of Chicago (September 11, 1885): 23–24.Google Scholar Bacteriological tests were also included in the array of studies of the quality and safety of the water supply sponsored by the Citizens' Association. See B. W. Thomas, “Microscopical Examination of the Chicago Water Supply,” in ibid., 21–23 Also see the bacteriological investigation of water quality by Dr.Long, John, as reported in Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1884.Google Scholar Also see Hamlin, Christopher, A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth Century Britain (Bristol, UK, 1990).Google Scholar I wish to thank Angela Gugliotta, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, for stimulating discussions on the reception of germ theory and the importance of the various laboratory methods of testing in gaining acceptance of this model of etiology of disease.

⁹ For reports of the reform group's activities and political demands, see Chicago Tribune, July 31-August 29, 1885, passim. Also see Tribune, August 28, 1885, for a complete transcript of the report. For Reilly's biting commentary, see Chicago, Morning News, August 2–29, 1885Google Scholar, passim. For biographical information on Reilly, see the account of one of his contemporaries, Reynolds, Arthur, “Three Chicago and Illinois Public Health Officers: John H. Rauch, Oscar C. De Wolf, and Frank W. Reilly,” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 1 (August 1912): 87–134.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1885, for quotation; “Preliminary Report of the Drainage and Water Supply Commission,” as reported in International Waterways Commission, “Reports of the International Waterways Commission 1906,” in Canada, Report of the Minister of Public Works, Sessional Paper No. 19a 1907 (Ottawa, 1907) 2:186–201.Google Scholar A complete copy of the report can also be found in Brown, G. P., Drainage Channel and Waterway (Chicago, 1894), 336–73.Google Scholar See O'Connell, , “Pollution and Technology,” 82–111Google Scholar, on the background of the Citizens' Association investigation.

¹¹ Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1889, for the quotation and May 5–30, 1889, for an account of the legislative history of the bill in the statehouse. Also see Brown, , Drainage Canal, 374–404Google Scholar, which includes a copy of the enabling act. On Manchester's “invention” of the industrial park, see Harford, I., Manchester and Its Ship Canal Movement: Class, Work, and Politics in Late Victorian England (Halifax, NS, 1994).Google Scholar For Cooley's involvement, see “Cooley, Lyman Edgar,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed., Johnson, Allen (New York, 1929) 2: 391–92Google Scholar; and Waller, Robert A., “Illinois Waterway from Conception to Completion, 1908–1933,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 65 (Summer 1972): 125–41.Google Scholar

¹² Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1889, for the quotation and December 3–14, 1889, for the campaign and election returns.

¹³ ibid., December 13, 1890, for the quotations and December 11–12, 1890, for related stories.

¹⁴ Cooley, Lyman E., The Lakes and GulfWaterway as Related to the Chicago Sanitary Problem (Chicago, 1890), viiGoogle Scholar, for the quotation. Also see Cooley, Lyman E., The Diversion of the Waters of the Great Lakes by Way of the Sanitary and Ship Canal of Chicago (Chicago, 1913).Google Scholar After his death, the genre lived on. For example, see the one prepared by a SDC lawyer, Barrett, George F., The Waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico (Chicago, 1926).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cooley, , Lakes and GulfWaterway, 10Google Scholar, for the quotations and 17, for statistics on riverboats.

¹⁶ For the maneuvers in the legislature, see Chicago Tribune, April 4, 17–18, 25, November 2, 1891. For editorial support for Cooley, see the city's main Democratic daily, Chicago Times, April 15 and 17, 1891 and Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 29, 1891.

¹⁷ Chicago Tribune, November 4, 1891, for the quotation. For the election, see Tribune and Chicago Times, November 1–4, 1891. For the battle for control of the board, see ibid., December 9, 1891 and Chicago Tribune, December 6, 9, 14, 16, 30, 1891, and January 2, 10, 16–18, 1892. Also see SDC, Proceedings (December 8, 15, 18, 1891 and January 1, 9, 15–18, 1892).

¹⁸ Chicago Tribune, January 18, 1900, for the quotation and for a range of contemporary opinions.

¹⁹ Sanitary District of Chicago, Memorial Presented by the Trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago to the Congress of the United States: Deep Waterway from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River (n.p., n.d. [1900]), 13, 19, 18, respectively for the quotations. See U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Rivers and Harbors, Report upon…a Navigable Waterway 14 Feet Deep from Lockport, Ill., …to The Mouth of the Illinois River…by the Mississippi River Commission andby a Board of Officers of the Corps of Engineers. U.S. Army (59th Congress, 1st session, 1905, H.R. 263). For the SDC's promotional efforts, see Sanitary District of Chicago, Industrial Development Along Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (n.p., n.d. [1906]) and Sanitary District of Chicago, Real Estate Development Committee, The Manufacturing Site Possibilities of the Land Along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (Chicago, 1916).Google Scholar

²⁰ Chicago Tribune, August 8, 1902 for the first quotation and October 6, 1902 for mortality statistics; Jordan, Edwin Oakes, “Typhoid Fever and Water Supply in Chicago,” Journal of the American Medical Association 39 (December 20, 1902): 1561–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Shapiro-Shapin, Carolyn G., “‘A Really Excellent Scientific Contribution’: Scientific Creativity, Scientific Professionalism, and the Chicago Drainage Case,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 71 (1997): 385–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Jordan, , “Typhoid Fever,” 1563–65Google Scholar for the quotations.

²² Ibid.; Cooley, The Diversion of the Waters; and Hering, Rudolph, Report to Hon. Robert R. McCormick, President, on the Calumet Subdivision of the Sanitary District of Chicago (Chicago, October 15, 1907).Google Scholar

²³ Jordan, “Typhoid Fever,” 1565 and 1566 for the quotations in this and previous paragraph.

²⁴ Missouri vs. Illinois.

²⁵ Ibid., 523, 525–26, for the quotations.

²⁶ Ibid., 521, 522, 518 for the quotations.

²⁷ For Major Handbury's report to the convention, see The Morning News, October 12, 1887 and Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1887. For the repercussions, see International Waterways Commission, “Joint Report on the Chicago Drainage Canal, 1907,” as reported in Canada, Sessional Paper, 174–86Google Scholar; Western Society of Engineers, The Levels of the Lakes as Affected by the Proposed Lakes and Gulf Waterway (Chicago, 1889)Google Scholar; and esp. Wisner, George Y. M., et. al., “Levels of the Lakes as Affected by the Proposed Lake Michigan and Mississippi Waterway,” Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies 8 (March 1889): 123–54.Google Scholar

²⁸ IWC, Sessional Paper, 185Google Scholar for the quotation. The IWC also hired Rudolph Hering and George W. Fuller as consulting engineers to report on alternative methods of eliminating the contamination of Chicago's water supply by the industrial and human wastes of the burgeoning, Calumet district. The engineers reported that rapid advances in sewage treatment technology now made it a cost-effective option to additional diversions of lake water. The treaty [36 Stat. 2448] is found in Piper, Don Courtney, The International Law of the Great Lakes: A Study of Canadian-United States Co-operation (Durham, NC, 1967), 124–30.Google Scholar On the origins of the treaty, see Bloomfield, L. M. and Fitzgerald, Gerald F., Boundary Waters Problems of Canada and the United States (The International Joint Commission 1912–1958) (Toronto, 1958)Google Scholar and Gibbons, Alan O., “Sir George Gibbons and the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909,” Canadian Historical Review 34 (June 1953): 124–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the role of Chicago's withdrawal in the negotiations, see Piper, , International, 71–103Google Scholar; Lynde, Cornelius, “The Controversy Concerning the Diversion of Water from Lake Michigan by the Sanitary District of Chicago,” Illinois Law Review 25 (1930): 243–60Google Scholar; Willmann, Hildegard, “The Chicago Diversions from Lake Michigan,” Canadian Bar Review 10 (1932): 575–83Google Scholar; and Griffin, William L., “A History of the Canadian-United States Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909,” University of Detroit Law Journal 37 (1959–1960): 76–95.Google Scholar

²⁹ Sanitary District of Chicago, Industrial Development of Chicago, 10 for the quotation. For other, similar statements, see McCormick, Robert R., “Future Value of the Drainage Canal,” in Chicago Record Herald, December 18, 1909Google Scholar and Sanitary District of Chicago, The Manufacturing Site Possibilities.

³⁰ Hering, , Report to Hon. Robert R. McCormick, 33–34Google Scholar for the quotation. See Soper, George A., Watson, John D., and Martin, Arthur J., A Report to the Chicago Real Estate Board on the Disposal of the Sewage and Protection of the Water Supply of Chicago, Illinois (Chicago, 1915)Google Scholar for a telling critique of its engineering flaws.

³¹ For the concerns about lake dumping and the passage of the Mann Act, setting an eight-mile limit, see Chicago Record Herald, April 21, May 12–14, June 20, 1910. For early, scientific investigations of the bacteriology of the bottom of the lake in the Calumet area, see ibid., November 27, 1906, October 13, 1908, January 27 and February 10, 27, 1909. In 1910, health department officers would finally obtain partial relief in the form of a Congressional act imposing an eight-mile limit on the dumping of dredgings in Lake Michigan. Two years later, they would turn to chlorine as a last defense against another sharp rise in the incidence of typhoid fever in the district served by the 68th Street intake crib.

³² SDC, Proceedings (March 27, 1907)Google Scholar contains a copy of Taft's report, as well as the district's response, an effort to mount a lobbying campaign for the needed legislation. Taft cited the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 of Congress that completely prohibited making changes in any navigable waterway without the approval of the Chief of Engineers and the authorization of the Secretary of War. Under this law, the Corps' General A. Mackenzie had duly submitted his strong condemnation of Chicago's sanitation strategy because of its negative impacts on navigation in the Great Lakes.

³³ Lynde, , “The Controversy,” 250Google Scholar for the first quotation and Wisconsin vs. Illinois 278 US 367 (1930) for the second quotation. For the role of district court judges as protectors of local interests, see Zelden, Charles L., Justice Lies in the District: The U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1902–1960 (College Station, TX, 1993).Google Scholar For biographical information on Landis, see “Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” in The Book of Chicagoans — 1917, ed. Albert Nelson Marquis (Chicago, 1917): 400. SDC vs. US supplies a basic chronology of events in the case. Also see SDC, Proceedings (January 16, 1913)Google Scholar for Cooley's report on his efforts in Washington and a copy of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's rejection of the district's petition; Cooley, The Diversion of the Waters and Cooley, Lyman E., Supplement to the Brief on ‘The Diversion of the Waters of the Great Lakes by Way of the Sanitary and Ship Canal of Chicago’ (New York, 1913).Google Scholar For the SDC's position in the case, see Williams, C. Arch, The Sanitary District of Chicago: History of its Growth and Development (Chicago, 1919)Google Scholar and Wisner, George M., Report on Sewage Disposal: The Sanitary District of Chicago (Chicago, October 12, 1911).Google Scholar For an account of the Canadians' stream of protests against Chicago's withdrawal of water, see Dealey, J. Q., “The Chicago Drainage Canal and the St. Lawrence Development,” American Journal of International Law 23 (1929): 307–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ SDC vs. US.

³⁵ Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1925 for the headline and for the quotation of King; January 7, 1925 for the final quotation; and January 8, 1925 for the meeting. For information on Kelly and his rise from unskilled worker to chief engineer and beyond to become the mayor from 1933 to 1947, see Biles, Roger, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb, IL, 1984).Google Scholar

³⁶ Tribune, January 6, 1925, for the quotation and January 6–9, 1925. Canada too added its voice to the chorus denouncing Chicago's illegal withdrawal of massive amounts of water from the lakes. Several bills were introduced, all of them marked by provisos that authorized a withdrawal of 10, 000 cubic feet a second (4.5 mgpm). One measure, introduced by Representative William Hull, called for a federal takeover of the ship canal project, including its financial liabilities. However, the SDC itself now opposed this plan because it meant a loss of local control over the patronage-rich agency. In the midst of the crisis, it announced its annual budget of almost $37 million, with close to $28 million of the total earmarked for construction projects.

³⁷ A copy of the permit of March 3, 1925 is found in SDC, Proceedings (March 19, 1925).Google Scholar The permit also required the SDC to build controlling works at the mouth of the river to help forestall sewage backflows into the lake. And the SDC was required to deposit $1 million in the national treasury to pay for engineering projects in the Great Lakes which would help compensate for lowered water levels. I have dealt separately with the water department in Platt, “Everlasting Purity.” For purposes here, see Chicago, , Proceedings of the Common Council (April 14, 1925-March 31, 1926): 1331–33Google Scholar, for the passage of the universal meter ordinance. The ordinance was passed during the administration of William Dever, but William Hale Thompson would soon campaign for re-election by calling for its repeal. As during his previous two terms in office from 1915–1923, his third would continue the fight against meters and efficiency in the water department. See for example, the defiant denunciation of the meter ordinance and federal authority by his corporate council, Ettelson, Samuel A., Opinion to Mayor William Hale Thompson…on Water Meters (Chicago, November 4, 1927)Google Scholar and his commissioner of public works, Wolfe, Richard W., Filtration and Meterization of the Chicago Water Supply System (Chicago, 1930).Google Scholar In 1927, the SDC estimated that it was handling the sewage of 3.5 million people, and the industrial wastes of an equivalent of an additional 1.5 million people. In contrast, the district was processing the waste of only 150, 000 people, or three percent of the district. See Sanitary District of Chicago, , Engineering Facts Concerning The Sanitary District of Chicago 1927 (n.p., 1927)Google Scholar and the booster publication by its lawyer, Barrett, The Waterway.

³⁸ Wisconsin vs. Illinois (1929). Taft's position in this case is consistent with his larger goal of a more active federal judiciary. See Kutler, Stanley, “Chief Justice Taft, National Regulation and the Commerce Power,” Journal of American History 51 (1965): 651–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Dealey, , “Lake Diversion,” 310Google Scholar, for the quotation; Wisconsin vs. Illinois.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 420, for the quotation.

⁴¹ Wisconsin vs. Illinois 281 US 179 (1930), 191–93 for the quotation; Charles Evans Hughes, “Report of the Special Master on Re-Reference,” ibid., (October 1929). See ibid., 289 US 395 (1933); 309 US 569 (1940); and 388 US 426 (1967) for the most important follow-up decisions. For the continuing international implications of Chicago's withdrawal of lake water, see Adams, “Diversion of Lake Michigan Waters”; and Morandi, Larry B., Great Lakes Water Law from Basin to States: Broadening the Perspective (Denver, 1986).Google Scholar

⁴² Wisconsin vs. Illinois (1930).

⁴³ Ibid., 197 for the quotation and ibid. (1933). The new special master was Edward F. McClennen of Boston. See Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1933.

⁴⁴ Ibid., January 15, 1930 for the first quotation and Lynde, , “Diversion of Waters,” 256Google Scholar for the second quotation.

⁴⁵ Piper, , “International Law,” 90Google Scholar for the quotation. Piper deserves credit for uncovering the 1926 memos in the State Department that set a foundation for its objection to Chicago's withdrawal of lake water since then. In a key document, the Department Solicitor noted that “Canada has substantial rights in respect of the waters of Lake Michigan which must be respected, and…these rights are recognized at least by implication in the second paragraph of Article 2 of the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.” See Solicitor's note, June 5, 1926, Department of State, file 711.4216M58/97 (National Archives) as quoted in ibid., 99.

⁴⁶ Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1930 for the first quotation and May 23, 1933 for the second quotation. Also see ibid., April 16, 1930 and Woodhull, Ross A., The Sanitary District of Chicago: A Brief History (n.p., n.d. [1935]).Google Scholar At the time, Woodhull was serving as the president of the sanitary district.

⁴⁷ Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1933 for the quotation and May 23, 1933, for Bowler's comments. See Woodhull, Sanitary District, for details on the finances of the agency. For insight into the city's political influence, see Biles, Big City Boss.