The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

Parton quite literally inspected Pittsburgh in the dark: in the summer “every street appears to end in a huge black cloud, and there is everywhere the ominous darkness that creeps over the scene when a storm is approaching.” In November he could not tell when the sun had risen, and the gas lamps had to burn even at midday. Everywhere there was smoke—smoke from factories, smoke from coke ovens, smoke from stoves and furnaces. This caused obvious problems and health problems unrecognized until later. Women passed “their lives in an unending, ineffectual struggle with the omnipresent black.” Neither men nor women paid much attention to dress; there was no point amidst the “ever-falling soot.” The legal problem was that it was virtually impossible to connect a particular piece of soot to a particular polluter, thus rendering nuisance law ineffectual.48

Oh my god