The settling of the pending litigation between the city and the Monongahela and other private water companies on the South Side, together with the taking over of that property by the city was all that remained to be done before filtered water could be supplied to that part of the city.[14]
[14] In January, the Monongahela Water Company notified the city of its decision to abide by the decree of the Supreme Court, which granted permission to the city to take possession of this plant and system in consideration of $1,975,000.
In the meantime the North Side (Allegheny City) still has unfiltered water. Immediately after Allegheny was annexed to the Greater City in December, 1907, steps were taken to pave the way for filtered water there. $750,000 was appropriated for ten extra filter beds on city-owned land adjoining the plant, and their construction is now under way. Their use for the North Side involves extra pumping facilities, however. A plan to bring the old Allegheny pumping station at Montrose down to Aspinwall for this purpose was recently blocked by members of councils from the North Side. Satisfactory explanation for this action does not seem to be forthcoming. The reason alleged was that its removal would throw some of the men out of a job. In the meantime Allegheny continues drinking unfiltered water with no immediate prospect of relief, and the same sort of political influence that delayed filtration in the old city so long, seems to be accomplishing similar results on the North Side.
In conclusion, let me apply the economic facts brought out in the first section of this article, to the four years of unnecessary delays in the construction of the filtration plant, from April 3, 1900, to April 29, 1904. They must be considered in making up the whole bill of the city in the cause of pure water.
During all this time, more than $2,200,000, on which the city was paying three and one half per cent interest, was lying in the banks favored by the administration, bringing the city but two per cent; and the death rate from typhoid fever was the highest of any of the large cities in the United States. But for this delay the plant might have been brought to completion on January 1, 1904, or at least as far advanced as it was January 1, 1908, and four years,—1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907,—of excess typhoid fever might have been avoided. Not a startling statement, perhaps, on the face of it. But consider seriously what these four years of excess typhoid fever have meant to the people of Pittsburgh in deaths and economic cost. I have told you of but half of the people of six wards out of forty-three, one year out of four. In 1904, with an estimated population of 352,852, there were 503 deaths from typhoid in Pittsburgh. Cities with a fairly pure water supply do not have over twenty-five deaths annually per 100,000 population from typhoid. Had Pittsburgh's typhoid fever death rate in 1904 been twenty-five per 100,000, there would have been but 88 deaths instead of 503, and the grim total of 415 lives would not have been blotted out. By allowing $2,000 as the cost in loss of wages and expenses for each death (a little under the actual costs in the concrete study of economic cost already given), and allowing our previous minimum of $4,000 as the value of each life, the total excess deaths in 1904 alone from lack of pure water was a loss to the community of $2,490,000.
There were 425 unnecessary deaths in 1906, and a wastage of $2,550,000; 289 unnecessary deaths in 1905, and a wastage of $1,734,000; 415 unnecessary deaths in 1904, and a wastage of $2,490,000. In the four years the community lost $9,000,000,—over $4,000,000 more than the cost of the filtration plant. And in those four years, 1,538 lives were unnecessarily sacrificed.
There are those who will say, and perhaps rightly, that Pittsburgh's filtration plant of to-day is the magnificent triumph of construction that it is, only because of those years of delay in shaping the final plans; that while those who fought the measure tooth and nail for so many years did not have that purpose in mind, yet the set-backs they were able to accomplish, have made in the end for a larger, better, more efficient and more far-serving plant than could have been possible, had the first plans been carried hastily to completion. Such may be the case. If so, let the people be thankful that the cause of pure water triumphed ultimately over a lethargic public sentiment, selfish political purposes, and municipal shortsightedness. Let them at the same time remember at what cost to themselves and to their city the fight was won. And let the plant itself stand as an object lesson of tardy justice, and a monument to those hundreds of lives that paid the penalty unwillingly and unknowingly of being part and parcel of an unaroused municipal conscience.
GROSS NUMBER OF TYPHOID CASES, 1885 TO 1907.
