• the majority of people worked in agriculture
• factories were just beginning to be built
• improved roads and canals were being built and railroads just starting, steamboats growing
• Santee Canal in South Carolin and Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts.  Both designed in 1790s by engineers who came over from Europe
  
• most advanced technology came from Europe
• engineering was learned by apprenticeship
  

• moral theory--disease is the result of sin
  
• anticontagion=miasma theory
• combine with social reform--more needs to be done to help the poor (Griscomb)
  
• combine with nativism (prejudice against immigrants)--protect the upper class from diseases spread by dirty immigrants (Shattuck)
  
• focus on prevention rather than cure of disease
• to what extent was understanding of disease scientific?
• modern understanding of cholera, but it wasn't clearly separated from other diarrheal diseases
  

Role of government
government vs. what can private industry do

• maintain army for national defense (federal)
  
• school system (local)
• national standards and maybe regulations
• before mid to late 19th century government didn't pass laws to protect citizens, principle instead was buyer beware
• gradually government begins to get involved in regulations for the public good
• individuals may not see the costs as outweighing the benefits, but they do for the community
• this led to government taking a larger and larger role
  

what level of government should do the job: local, city, state, federal

could you have private water sewer

•  government gives a franchise to lay pipes under the street and also no competitors will be allowed
• build the system
• charge households a fee
  

possible government role

• if individuals do not keep their property sanitary, should the state step in?
• on what issues?
• sewers and water supply
• street cleaning
• bathhouses
• vaccination for smallpox
• pure food regulations
• air pollution (smoke nuisances)
  
• asylums
• restrictions on alcohol

Federal government or state government or city government?

Development of engineering education

• West Point 1820 (and Norwich University in Vermont)
• Rensselaer Polytechnic 1835
  
• others starting in the 1850s
• land grant colleges after the Morrill Act of 1862

Water supply

• private companies with franchises
• systems owned and operated by city governments became more common
• by midcentury most cities raised money with property taxes
• corrupt politics vs. organizing systems to be run by experts
• water was not treated in any way until the 1870s
• in some cases from local sources, but in others from distant reservoirs
• cast iron pipe after 1850

Sewers

• you could charge a fee for water, so sewers were harder to pay for
• cesspools worked ok until water supplies meant households used more water
• combined systems carried both household waste and stormwater
• sewage was usually dumped into the nearest river