Seventy-five years ago St. Louis mounted a great effort to rid itself of air pollution that had plagued the city, and many others throughout North America and Europe, for decades. This is another in a continuing series about that campaign.

By Bob Wyss

By the end of 1940 it was becoming hard not to rejoice.

The skies had been clear – or nearly clear – so often in St. Louis that everyone was beginning to count their blessings – literally.

A headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported: “Anti-Smoke Program is Bringing Business to St. Louis.”

Even the trees within the greenhouses at Shaw’s Garden were thriving this winter in smokeless St. Louis.

The Union Electric Co. estimated that residents would save $35,000 this winter because they did not need the lights on as often during the day.

Travelers arriving by air at Lambert-St. Louis field as it was then called were actually landing. The year before aircraft had often been diverted elsewhere because of the smoke, and airline schedules were erratic.

Some hotels reported that bookings were up 30 percent.

Silverware and jewelry were retaining their luster – there was less hydrogen sulfide in the air.

Household pets did not need as many baths. At the municipal zoo the polar bears did not look like brown grizzlies, as they had in past winters. The white swans on the lake were not partly black from picking up scum from the water surface.

Business however was down about 30 percent for laundries and dry cleaners. Curtains at the Hotel Jefferson needed cleaning about one-third less often.

The company that cleaned the Boatman’s Bank Building three months earlier could see no soot showing up on the surface. That was unusual. In past years the first side of the building cleaned would be streaked again with soot by the time workers completed hosing down the last side of the structure.

At Shaw’s Garden no one needed to clean the palms with soapy water and sponges. Other plants were thriving.

“Plants are much cleaner,” said City Forester Ludwig Baumann. “Last winter your hands got filthy when you ran them along the branch of an evergreen – you could have called them nevergreens. Why, our tree trimmers used to look like chimney sweeps.”

Evergreens were especially susceptible to damage from coal smoke. Yet Baumann was already considering planting more in the Municipal Plaza rather than the hearty hedges once under consideration.

Doctors were reporting that patients with respiratory issues, including asthma, sinus trouble and allergies, had been far more comfortable this winter. However they did point out that smoke was only a contributing factor to many of these ailments.

Real estate agents reported that they were seeing more families interested in moving back into the city. Many had once lived within St. Louis, but fled to the suburbs to avoid the winter smoke.

Even the astronomers were pleased. Jessica Young Stephens, an assistant professor of astronomy at Washington University, said that in the past the school’s six-inch telescope had struggled to make out the planets and the stars.

Sometimes conditions had been so poor that nothing was clear, other times the smoke would cause the stars to twinkle wildly. The density in the air caused those fluctuations in what could be seen, explained Stephens.

But this winter had been different. The stars not only twinkled less, they were brighter.

The entire universe was opening up for St. Louis.

St. Louis City Hall, while ravaged by former attacks of coal smoke, awaited the winter of 1940-41.

           Seventy-five years ago St. Louis mounted a great effort to rid itself of air pollution that had plagued the city, and many others throughout North America and Europe, for decades. This is another in a continuing series about that campaign.

By Bob Wyss

What a difference a year can make.

Except, St. Louis was not yet prepared to accept that there yet was a difference.

Nov. 26, 1940 dawned wet, cold and most importantly, free of smoke.

A year before this date was labeled Black Tuesday for the pall of black smoke that descended upon the city. Visibility was reduced to a few feet, traffic crawled, lights burned throughout the day.

And when the people of St. Louis in November, 1940 looked back at the last few weeks, the results so far had been just as positive.

A year earlier the city had already suffered through 11 days when heavy black clouds shrouded St. Louis. There had only been five so far this year.

“During the past week St. Louis has been rubbing its eyes, crossing its fingers and saying to itself that it can’t be true,” declared the St. Louis Globe-Democrat editorially.

“The results have been almost too good to be true,” added the St. Louis Post Dispatch in an editorial the next day.

Had the city turned a corner after undergoing decades of black smoke? Had the new city ordinance requiring residents, businesses and even government to buy cleaner burning coal begun to make a difference? Were people really paying more for their heating fuel in exchange for a cleaner sky?

Was the key to the city’s cleaner skies something as basic as chunks of coal?

City officials were not commenting. Their views were noticeably absent in the stories and editorials in the city’s newspapers.

The Globe-Democrat noted that on the one-year anniversary that there had been some smoke in outlying areas including East St. Louis and University City. But the Post Dispatch said that except for the rain the weather conditions were almost identical. The wind and heating conditions were nearly identical. Rain and fog a day such as this often forced the smoke down to ground level, but that was not the case.

Despite the conditions, the newspapers were cautious.

“It is too early to say that the smoke campaign is bearing fruit,” declared the Globe-Democrat. “St. Louis, which has suffered from the smoke blight for more than 50 years, is skeptical and naturally so. Let’s wait and see and hope and keep our fingers crossed.”

Added the Post Dispatch: “Most of us are still unwilling to accept (the current weather) as conclusive. Even those most intensely interested in the campaign for clean air still keep their fingers crossed. After 50 years of winter noons as dark as midnight, St. Louis naturally finds it hard to believe its eyes.”

The task as yet, it added, was unfinished.

Seventy-five years ago St. Louis mounted a great effort to rid itself of air pollution that had plagued the city, and many others throughout North America and Europe, for decades. This is another in a continuing series about that campaign.

By Bob Wyss

Hissing and steaming, Locomotive No. 4496 and its 40 cars of cargo arrived at the Grantlet rail yard in St. Louis at 9:35 a.m. It had made its 410-mile journey from Ft. Smith, Ark. in 20 hours. Waiting was a contingent of city officials, reporters, photographers and business people.

They were all there for one reason – the arrival of cleaner coal. It may have been a steamy mid-July day but many were already thinking the of heating in the coming winter.

The ore that warmed the hearth but clouded the sky.

City officials climbed onto one of the open freight cars to view the piles of coal. Smoke Commissioner Raymond Tucker said it was the cheapest alternative that would still burn far cleaner than what St. Louis had put up with for decades.

“This is an important event in the city,” declared James L. Ford, chairman of the Smoke Elimination Committee that had fought to convince St. Louis it needed to force its residents to buy cleaner heating fuel. “”Just as our country is arming itself for the battle which may come, so our city is arming itself with another weapon for the battle already here. I refer to the battle against smoke.”

What Ford did not mention was the other clash that had been going on for weeks. Coal interests and some railroads had fiercely fought the city’s efforts to buy the cleaner fuel from Arkansas. Illinois coal miners, having lost their previous sales of higher sulfur coal to St. Louis, were rallying to boycott St. Louis goods.

Most of the attack centered on a proposal by Frisco Railroad to deliver the Arkansas coal at $2 a ton, which was 75 cents a ton cheaper than the prevailing rate. Frisco had volunteered to undertake the lower tariff to assist in solving the St. Louis pollution problem. Other railroads and coal companies objected to the special treatment, warning that Illinois coal miners would suffer.

In late June the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission by a 2-to-1 vote approved the reduced rate.

The same day the ICC acted St. Louis aldermen authorized a $300,000 revolving fund to assist in sales to low-income residents. The fund was a contingency in case local dealers failed to stock the cleaner coal coming from Arkansas.

St. Louis City Hall where aldermen approved a $300,000 revolving fund. Photo by Bob Wyss

No one in Arkansas was worried that the fuel would not be bought. The day the first train left Ft. Smith local officials there also came to the rail yards to celebrate. The Ft. Smith Chamber of Commerce reported that an additional 500 men had been hired by local coal companies to meet the demand.

During the ceremony in St. Louis Ford urged residents to buy their fuel as early in the season as possible. Ford said prices were cheap and it was unclear how long that situation would remain and how plentiful supplies would be.

Residents “will have to buy when it is available,” he said. “I urge all consumers to lay in their supplies now.”

Yet that quickly was vanishing as an issue. Within a week after the ceremony the trainloads from Arkansas were arriving in St. Louis on a regular basis. Five retail dealers had ordered supplies and others were reported that they were about to order.

It was in sharp contrast to earlier warnings from the dealers, who complained that prices were going to be so low they could not turn a profit. By September so much coal had been delivered that coal stocks were greater in St. Louis than they had been in years.

The issue of coal supply had vanished as rapidly as smoke rising from a fire. But would the St. Louis winter coal smoke disappear as quickly?

           Seventy-five years ago St. Louis mounted a great effort to rid itself of air pollution that had plagued the city, and many others throughout North America and Europe, for decades. This is another in a continuing series about that campaign.

By Bob Wyss

A woman wrote to Smoke Commissioner Raymond Tucker during the summer of uncertainty of St. Louis in 1940

The railroads were being counted on to deliver the Arkansas coal. Raymond Tucker Archives, Washington University

“Could you tell me what widow women like me are going to do about this coal proposition,” she asked. “I am worried sick about it.”

She only was making $16 a week, she had a family to support, and she wondered how she was going to pay the rumored price of up to $8 a ton for coal.

“I would rather put up with the smoke than to see my family freeze,” she wrote. “I know you don’t realize how we poor people have to scratch to get along.”

But the city had already been working on such a plan to aid residents, especially the low income, since April when it adopted a new law aimed at cleaning the winter skies.

The first step was to approve a $300,000 revolving fund so that the city could buy coal wholesale and supply it to residents. If local coal dealers were unable to acquire the more expensive, and cleaner coal, that the city now demanded its residents burn, then the city would do it.

Then the city began negotiating and reached an agreement to buy up to 1.5 million tons of high-grade coal from Arkansas mining interests. As part of the deal the Frisco Railway agreed to haul the coal at the cut-rate price of $2 a ton.

That meant that the price would be about $5.50 a ton. That was somewhat higher than the $3 to $4 a ton many in St. Louis had been paying for their high sulfur coal that was now illegal. But it was slightly better than the higher grades sold by Illinois dealers, and it was a large, guaranteed supply.

But a problem developed almost immediately.

Not only did the coal miners and owners loudly protest the deal. But competing freight rail companies vowed to oppose the rate plan when it was considered by federal regulators.

Illinois coal miners and owners had already begun a drive to boycott St. Louis goods in retaliation for the city’s refusal to buy its cheap, dirty coal. Now, they were even more incensed.

Coal workers at mines like this is Illinois remained very worried.

Ray Edmundson, president of the Illinois state chapter of the United Mine Workers, said the plan to buy the Arkansas coal was “a treasonable act against the coal miners and mining communities of this state.” He said it would “result in further unemployment, want, hunger and misery to the already thousands of unemployed miners in Southern Illinois.”

Retail coal dealers in St. Louis were not that much happier. The agreement projected that the dealers would sell the coal at $5.50 a ton but when they did the math they realized that their profit margin would only be about $1.50 per ton. They said that was too low, they would be ruined by such a low margin.

The competing rail companies simply did not like the new rate that Frisco Railway was seeking. In a time when interstate prices for such precious commodities as coal were still strictly regulated, a consortium called the Central Freight Association filed a protest with regulators.

The problem with the plan, they contended, was that it was “designed solely to appease pressure groups in St. Louis which have sponsored a policy to secure high grade smokeless coal at low (prices) without regard to transportation services or other factors considered in the making of reasonable and non-discriminatory freight rates.”

St. Louis municipal officials meanwhile pressed for approval of the plan and told local coal dealers that the marketplace would ultimately determine the price and how much the merchants would make in profit.

Local newspapers were less restrained. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out in one editorial, the city had an excellent new law to reduce pollution. “But if we go no further, skies will be as black next winter as last.”

The St. Louis Star-Times said that Illinois coal operators could work together in the same way as Arkansas dealers have done, just as rail companies could compete with the Frisco rate plan.

Besides, said the Star-Times, the city had suffered enough from the air pollution caused by coal.

“If our people are willing to pay reasonably higher prices, at last, to conquer smoke,” an editorial stated. “The business of those who supply our market is to acquiesce in the city’s demands and furnish a fuel which meets our needs for both quality and price.”

But would they?