Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Concerns, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry (review)

were natural resources in abundance and spectacular growth in both economy and society, but everywhere nature was defiled, and over generations tens of thousands of human beings were exploited and alienated” (p. 195). The thick pall of poisonous fumes and smoke that hung over coke settlements stripped plants of their leaves and damaged crops (it must have made people sick, too). Much of the pollution was unnecessary, for by the 1880s European manufacturers were recycling volatiles and gases to aid combustion and lessen the impact of coke ovens on workers’ communities. It was typical of Frick and his fellows not to adopt conserving methods. Warren argues that living conditions in the coke region were worse than those in most coal mining areas, excepting only the extremely isolated coal patches of Appalachia. From about 1880 on, the majority of Connellsville coke workers were immigrant Italians or Hungarians. Managers’ prejudice against them went unchecked. Families who suffered the maiming or death of male providers were lucky to receive any company assistance. Coke villages had poor sanitation, lousy drainage, and often no cultural institutions to leaven the drudgery. Truck shops consumed what workers might have saved. Unemployed workers had few alternatives in what Warren describes as the region’s “dangerously narrow” economy—Connellsville’s mineral wealth did not generate local development as the mining of anthracite did in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1830s. Without diversification, the decline of Connellsville coke after World War I made the region a hollow shell. Specialists will appreciate Wealth, Waste, and Alienation for its authoritative detail. Haunting black-and-white photographs help readers imagine the landscape, but I wish the book had better maps. The maps Warren includes present data with an abstract purity that does not ground the data in place. A good map showing the distance, topography, and rail connections between Connellsville, Pittsburgh, and the region’s expanding links to national and global markets would have cinched the bigger story.