Short Response Essay 2

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CHAPTER 2 Organizing Environmental Protest

Swill Milk and Social Activism in Nineteenth-Century New York City1

Michael Egan

This essay is a fraud. It offers an account of efforts to end the distribution of swill milk in New York City in the decades prior to the Civil War. Swill milk was milk drawn from cows living in cramped urban dairy barns and fed the cheap (and nutritiously dubious) slop from neighboring distillery facto- ries. Urban dairy workers milked these diseased and dying cows, and sold their milk to the urban poor at discount prices. The essay is a fraud, because it trades on the anachronistic notion that the urban reformers who pushed for quality control and public health were early environmentalists. They cer- tainly would never have called themselves environmentalists; environmen- talists and environmentalism are products of a more recent time. Nor would these urban health reformers have considered that their protests contained elements of ecological thought; the German Darwinist Ernst Haeckl coined the term oecology only in 1866 to refer to the interaction of species within a specific region. Nevertheless, in hindsight, we can identify various practices and trends that we now associate with environmentalism in these early urban reform movements, and as such, they warrant our attention if we are to un- derstand the origins and dynamics of American environmental protest. Just as social and environmental advocates today challenge industry on issues of

Natural Protest : Essays on the History of American Environmentalism, edited by Michael Egan, and Jeff Crane, Routledge, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rit/detail.action?docID=425302. Created from rit on 2019-01-14 11:30:17.

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40 • Natural Protest

environmental risk and risk to human health, nineteenth-century opponents of swill milk engaged in methods of organization and practices consistent with twentieth-century environmentalists and—also similarly—sought inte- gration into the political debate to achieve control of polluting or hazardous or unsavory industrial practices.

More importantly, however, nineteenth-century reformers shared in- trinsic interests with modern environmentalists and this, too, deserves our attention, if only because it enriches our reading of the history of environ- mentalism. In contemporary urban spaces, a variety of planning and health issues have been cast as environmental problems. Sewage treatment, waste disposal, the use and reuse of space, and the planning of green areas have all attracted input—and sometimes ire—from environmental groups. The prob- lem, however, is that this urban activism has frequently been regarded as a post-World War II phenomenon, spurred by suburbanization, urban blight, and economic downturns that left many cities in decay. This essay means to stress the truism that even before a language of natural protest united activ- ists under an environmental umbrella, efforts to protect health and establish sustainable communities were a predominant feature of the American urban landscape. And in so doing, this essay suggests that as historians we might sensibly listen for echoes through the past as a means of identifying potential relationships that might enrich our reading of the past. To do so permits us to draw better lines over and across time that help us to appreciate complexities inherent in historical study.

Too often histories dismiss the origins of American natural protest by waving deftly at a conservation movement that grew out of the Romantic naturalism of the early nineteenth century. Pastoral love of nature typically interpreted industrial urban centers with their smokestacks, railroads, noise, and cramped living as the apotheosis of the evils it condemned. As a result, there was no room for specific action to address urban problems within the traditional lament for nature. Casting so narrow a net fails to appreciate the social dimensions of American environmentalism and restricts the possible parameters of its history, which in turn marginalizes the potential of the movement. Indeed, this limited definition dismisses from the spectrum of the environmental movement themes such as public health, environmental justice, and urban reform, many of which preceded the conservation move- ment, which enjoyed its entry into the mainstream during the Progressive era. Such a dismissal has serious contemporary political implications. As Marcy Darnovsky notes, “excluding urban reformers from the history of environ- mentalism can seem to imply that those who take up similar issues today are latecomers to, or even worse, interlopers in, environmental politics.”2 Rather, this essay seeks to identify roots of American environmentalism in histories of public health and social activism.

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Organizing Environmental Protest • 41

Social activism arises in response to the discovery of an objective prob- lem.3 In the instance of the development of swill milk dairies, its origins were innocent enough. As New York’s population grew after 1830, the amount of enclosed pasturage available for cows shrank noticeably. The establishment of dairy stables in urban enclosures was common and often a necessity with- out the means of refrigeration and rapid transportation. Many rural dairies were not equipped with the economic or technological means to supply milk to larger, distant urban populations. As a result, large dairy herds were kept on New York’s West Side near 16th Street; both dairying and butchering took place in the city.4

Facilities for healthy dairy production were available, but all too often the power of the market economy prevailed and dairymen opted for less expen- sive alternatives. It was cheaper to crowd the cows into cramped, filthy quar- ters, with little light or ventilation; the stalls were very rarely cleaned as sani- tation cost money. In a further effort to reduce costs and maximize profits, city stable owners discovered that after a period of enforced semi-starvation, cows could be persuaded to eat distillery slop. A marriage of convenience was arranged between brewers and dairymen, who located their dairies next to distillery manufactories and fed the cows the waste from the distilleries’ fermentation process; this boiling hot swill was channeled straight into the stable troughs. Dairymen had a constant and ready food source for their cattle and distillers were turning a profit on their waste.5 Without sewers, the disposal of waste in antebellum New York City was an expensive and time-consuming process; that cows would consume the distillery waste was a significant solution for distillery owners.6 Although swill had a relatively high nutritional value, it required supplementation with hay and grain to provide a healthy diet for the cows, which were already living in deplor- ably unhygienic conditions. Although they had reduced costs by taking on distillery waste, most dairy owners showed little inclination to raise their overheads in order to supply their livestock with a more wholesome diet. As a result, the milk from cows fed on alcoholic dregs smelled strongly of beer and displayed a tendency to coagulate into a hard lump.7 Not surpris- ingly, diseases were also commonplace in these urban stables, because of the close quarters, the cows’ lack of access to proper ventilation, and their limited diet. Nevertheless, dairymen continued to milk their diseased herds and sold the milk daily to consumers. The diseased milk was a pale blue color, so the dairymen adulterated it with magnesia, chalk, and plaster of paris to give it a rich, creamy texture and appearance.8 Cows rarely survived for more than a year in these conditions, being milked until they died—the last milking be- ing performed “posthumously”—and their meat then being sold to butchers who then distributed the diseased meat to more consumers (Figure 2.1). By 1835 there were an estimated 18,000 cows in New York and Brooklyn being

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fed distillery slop and by the 1850s, more than two-thirds of New York City’s milk came from distillery herds.9

Public criticism of this practice emerged during the 1820s and 1830s, but neither the city nor the state felt compelled to restrict the growing swill milk industry. Their reluctance was based on a series of related factors. First, most of the wealthy city-dwellers, who might have presented a stringent chal- lenge to the legislators’ political hegemony, were in the process of insulating themselves from the urban poor. As New York grew, members of the upper class started a migration from decidedly urban areas, surrendering those neighborhoods to immigrants and the city’s poor. Furthermore, the wealthy were predominantly unaffected by and therefore uninterested in the debate as they could afford good, rural milk from farms in Westchester, Queens, and Connecticut.10 For the urban poor, however, there was no alternative to the swill milk.

A second factor explaining lawmakers’ reluctance to control the production and distribution of swill milk was based on the premise that governmental regulations impinged upon the freedom of the market economy.11 Moreover, by the 1830s, New York’s integration into the world market made it impossi- ble—logistically and ideologically—for the city government to maintain its

Figure 2.1 A cow too weak to stand is strung up to be milked in a swill milk dairy stable. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 15 May 1858, 374.

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Organizing Environmental Protest • 43

control over economic regulation. The city’s exceptional population growth in the following decades—New York’s population quadrupled between 1830 and 1860—forcibly changed the context of city politics and urban living. The swill milk controversy emerged and was fought during a period in which civic politics was experiencing growing pains while trying to reinvent itself. Out of the eighteenth-century system that bred stiff controls came a new industrial system of machine politics pitting special interests against reform- ers. Furthermore, by the mid-1830s the locus of political power shifted away from the central City Hall and established itself within the political interests of the city’s separate wards. The conflict over swill milk was prolonged, then, by the efficiency with which the swill milk distributors immersed themselves into this new and still-developing system. Many of the swill milk stable own- ers were in fact respected members of the community, further entrenching official reluctance to act against them.12 The opponents of the sale of un- healthy milk were far less effective in learning the new ropes.13

Benevolent societies were the first to come to the defense of the powerless urban poor. A substantial increase in humanitarian reform sentiment spread across the United States—and, indeed, the western world—in the century after 1750. By the 1830s, the second Great Awakening galvanized a resur- gence in humanitarian activity.14 That a growing humanitarianism should develop simultaneously with an increase in industrialism was hardly coin- cidental. However, reformers’ motivations were not simply a genuine desire to help the marginalized. Rather, benevolent societies invariably functioned to advance their own interests.15 With an increase in industrialization and its subsequent urbanization, significant populations of oppressed workers and destitute immigrants were crowded into filthy, unventilated tenements. Their living conditions and opportunities for work—never mind their prospects of upward mobility—were meager at best. Many critics of nineteenth-century humanitarianism and benevolent societies saw benevolent societies’ actions toward the poor as an effort to maintain a social hegemony that would dis- courage the growing hordes of immigrants and downtrodden citizens from resisting oppression. By helping just enough to appease those who could not help themselves, the humanitarians were also protecting their own desirable lifestyle.16

More often than not humanitarianism in the early nineteenth century was infused with religious piety and therefore lacked the secular pragmatism that might have contributed to solving social crises. This was certainly the case with early resistance to swill milk by such benevolent societies as the New York Temperance Society (NYTS) and the Association for Improving the Condi- tion of the Poor. For example, in February 1838 the New York Female Reform Society—composed of evangelical women from the elite classes—proposed

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distributing charity to those living in destitution that they deemed virtuous and receptive to religious doctrine. Most of the poor, they concluded, were not deserving of charity, as they were either intemperate or (worse) Catholic or both.17 Moreover, whatever help was provided by benevolent societies was predominantly spiritual rather than political; such activity was not designed to manufacture legislative change. Help was offered piecemeal with strings attached, but benevolent societies were generally unwilling to embark on significant social change for the poor and oppressed.

Some were, however, more deliberate in their efforts to help New York’s growing poor masses. The first concerted attack against swill milk came from Robert M. Hartley, the corresponding secretary for the NYTS since 1833. In his investigation of distilleries Hartley discovered that they sold slop to dairy- men. Having initially fought for temperance, he accidentally fell into the milk question and, in 1842, published An Essay on Milk, a comprehensive history and treatise on the social significance of milk as a nutritional substance. In the essay, Hartley turned his attention to the immoral practices of the urban milk trade and condemned the sale of swill milk. He characterized the typical stall as holding 2,000 cows in the winter, while noting the unhealthy condi- tions in which the cows were kept.

In raising an alarm against swill milk, Hartley sought to kill two birds with one stone. Ever the temperance advocate, Hartley alerted his readers to the connection between urban dairies and distilleries and noted that many distilleries were in financial straits. “In order that the expenses may not ex- ceed the profits, the slop must be turned to good account; hence a milk dairy . . . [is an] indispensable adjunct to every distillery.”18 Hoping to break the entire ring, Hartley proposed “let the customers withdraw their patronage, and the business of these milkmen will be broken up, and a check given to the business of distillation.”19 If the distilleries could be closed, then the dairy owners would be forced to look elsewhere for food for their cows, hopefully improving the condition of the dairies. In concluding, Hartley insisted that “we see no relief, but in the entire prevalence of temperance principles.”20

After chastising the swill milk traders, Hartley did offer some solutions. He noted that supply of wholesome milk from the country did not meet the city’s demand and appealed to country dairymen to better organize their resources in order to profit from increased sales in New York City. Hartley addressed the persistent question of distance from New York and insufficient means with which to transport and refrigerate the milk by pointing to the extension of the railway that already crossed the Hudson River to Orange, Sullivan, and Rockland Counties. He also noted the imminent construction of the New York and Albany railroad, which would connect the city with the counties of Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess, as well as adjoining portions

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Organizing Environmental Protest • 45

of Connecticut.21 Indeed, the combination of train and canal made possible the delivery of milk to New York from Goshen—seventy miles away—in five or six hours.

Hartley emphasized that the purchase of swill milk was unnatural, but this lacked pragmatic value for the poor who were left with no choice. He could not escape the fact that swill milk was still produced less expensively than country milk. At the time Hartley was writing, the sale of pure country milk could no longer be a profitable endeavor at less than 6¢ a quart, while adulterated swill milk could be sold at profit for 3¢ a quart.22 Nevertheless, he seemed oblivious to the widespread nature of poverty in New York. The reform-minded editor of the Tribune, Horace Greeley, estimated that in 1845 at least two-thirds of New Yorkers subsisted on no more than $1 per week per person. “On this pittance, and very much less in many thousands of in- stances, three hundred thousand persons within sight of Trinity steeple must pay City rents and City prices.” Estimates also suggested that between 50,000 and 75,000 New Yorkers were forced to resort to charity. Furthermore, dur- ing the 1840s the economy froze with the weather during the winter months as the canals were closed and ocean commerce was reduced.23 The difference between 3¢ and 6¢ was likely more significant than Hartley realized.

Hartley’s campaign rang of divine righteousness and his attack on two insalubrious industries pointed to the woes of nineteenth-century indus- trialism and urbanization, but much of his efforts fell on deaf ears, mainly because the political actors to whom he appealed were strong supporters of the swill milk trade. After the publication of Hartley’s book, resolutions were presented to the city’s Board of Aldermen, calling for a special committee to investigate the swill milk question, but the Board took no action on these rec- ommendations and did not appoint a committee.24 This inactivity was due in no small measure to Hartley’s strong demands. After claiming that swill milk was responsible for the city’s high infant mortality, he insisted that trade be- tween distilleries and dairies be terminated.25 His request fell on deaf ears in large part because he offered no acceptable alternative to supplying the city’s destitute with more wholesome milk that was comparably priced. Proposing that rural dairies should form associations so that country milk could be available for all of New York’s inhabitants, he grossly misjudged the amount of milk required and the manner in which it might be transported to the city before it soured or went bad. Furthermore, Hartley did not recognize the complexity of the milk industry and the fact that many of the rural dairies— who produced wholesome milk—also had interests in the distillery stables. In 1858, the Daily Tribune noted that several rural dairies rotated their cows between urban and rural stables. Milk was produced and sold less expen- sively in this manner and a distinct division between pure and swill milk was

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almost impossible.26 Caught in his righteous humanitarianism, Hartley also failed to appreciate the relative expense of country milk even when it was incorporated into combines. Although the Orange County Milk Association was distributing 7,000 quarts a day to the city, there was no corresponding decline in the sale of swill milk.27

Hartley’s other failing was his inability to escape his evangelical back- ground. Throughout his career, Hartley saw a distinct relationship between poverty and depravity and he deplored both; poverty was caused not by the economic failures of recent years—over which his class had presided—but by moral deficiencies in the poor themselves. He excused the epidemics that regularly afflicted the city as God’s retribution for sin. Among the victims of the 1832 cholera outbreak, for example, more than 40 percent of the dead had been Irish Catholic. Hartley, like many others of his class, failed to make the connection with the fact that Irish immigrants were also among the most numerous inhabitants of the city’s squalid tenements.28

John H. Griscom’s career in public health mirrors but also represents a foil for Hartley’s.29 Hartley’s contemporary, Griscom was a Quaker who in 1842 was appointed City Inspector and conducted a thorough study of city health and concluded that the city’s unsanitary conditions represented a distinct social problem that needed to be addressed. Whereas his predecessor’s an- nual review had very briefly listed a series of health-related statistics for the year, Griscom labored over the city’s mortality statistics and provided fifty- five pages of commentary. His central argument was that preventive action should be the focal point of public health. Griscom was particularly con- cerned about the city’s crowded, unventilated housing and its general filth. His model for preventive action called for the regulation of the construction of housing and for a comprehensive drainage and sewage system to alleviate the buildup of toxic substances.30 Griscom also proposed replacing politically appointed health wardens with a team of impartial medical experts.

Not surprisingly, his recommendation of controls and checks and bal- ances on both the market and the government did not sit well with pro- market economy authorities, who categorically dismissed Griscom’s survey. No doubt the Board of Aldermen who convened to consider Griscom’s recommendations were particularly unwilling to eliminate more than thirty political appointments—a form of machine politics patronage to favorites— in order to fill them with independent medical personnel.31 Furthermore, Griscom was not re-appointed as City Inspector. With the help of city re- formers, however, Griscom published his study in 1845 under the title The Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Class of New York.32 In demonstrating the unnatural quality of city life, Griscom also lauded the healthy—natural—life of the country. In so doing, he compared the life and physique of the “sav-

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Organizing Environmental Protest • 47

age” with that of the wan and slight New Yorker. In nature, the “savage” was living in a more healthful environment. In promoting the healthy lifestyle in the country, Griscom anticipated the “rigorous life” mantra of the early twentieth-century Progressive era.33

Griscom’s study is significant, because he broke from conventional wis- dom by refusing to blame the poor for the unsanitary living spaces in which they were confined. Like members of the modern environmental justice movement, he perceived deep-seated connections between social and envi- ronmental problems; “for Griscom, dirt was a symptom of poverty, not its cause.”34 Indeed, in light of the cholera outbreak in 1849 and the Astor riot the same year a degree of radicalism was entering New York; excusing the plight of the poor or the sick as simply the result of their own immoral- ity only fueled the fires. Within this broad spectrum of social and public health problems, swill milk provided a plausible and focused platform upon which to base the efforts of social and environmental reform. Milk consump- tion took place in almost any home with children and swill milk’s ubiquity contributed significantly to the city’s growing health problems. But neither Griscom’s nor Hartley’s manuscript was published widely or made readily available for more than a select group of readers. Although Griscom and Hartley continued to participate in the movement and their early works were certainly catalysts for later improvements, the initial lack of reception to their ideas is attributable to their inability to organize a sustained and pragmatic attack on city legislators who remained reluctant to regulate markets. Their solutions, too, failed to resolve the myriad and inchoate difficulties involved in the distribution of city funds for large projects while they also antagonized the interests of the aldermen who voted on them.

The worsening of the swill milk situation, however, helped galvanize fur- ther support. In 1847, distemper or “cow fever” broke out in the swill stables near the South Ferry.35 The disease spread rapidly through the crowded stables and was uniformly fatal, until it was discovered that cows could be inoculated by slitting their tails and inserting parts of a dead cow’s lungs. The tail generally swelled and rotted off, but only 20 percent of the inoculated cows died.36 Inoculated cows, cows suffering from distemper, and dead cows were all milked, however, and their milk continued to be distributed among the urban poor. Even at the height of the epidemic, the swill milk remained the only milk that many poor New Yorkers could afford. For 1843, before the epidemic hit the swill stables, the City Inspector of New York reported that children under five years of age represented 4,588 of the 13,281 deaths reported in the city. In 1856, 13,373 children under the age of five died, but the number of deaths of people over the age of five had hardly changed at all. Whereas in 1843 children under five had represented roughly one-third of all deaths, by 1856 they represented more than 60 percent of all deaths.37

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Concerned about the widespread disease among cows and the increase in infant mortality, the New York Academy of Medicine set up a commit- tee to investigate the swill milk stables in 1848. The committee found that conditions under which the cows were kept were atrocious and unacceptable. The larger stables kept 2,000 to 4,000 cows confined in unventilated stalls, which—combined with their inadequate diet of distillery slop—led to the easy transmission of disease throughout the entire herd. Running, ulcerated sores all over their bodies, missing teeth, sore feet, hair loss, and consumptive lungs were just some of the common ailments listed by the committee. After a chemical analysis of the milk, the committee found that the milk contained only one-half to one-third the amount of butter fat found in country milk and concluded that the distillery milk was very likely the cause of scrofula and cholera infantum, which had claimed so many of the city’s young. On 1 March 1848, the committee’s chair, Dr. Augustus Gardner, presented two resolutions to the Academy: that swill milk was “not only less nutritious than that of unconfined and well-fed animals, but is positively deleterious, espe- cially to young children,” and that city officials should take action against the swill milk dairymen “as in their wisdom they may think fit.”38 The Acad- emy accepted Gardner’s report, but the resolutions were tabled until further evidence could be obtained. The Gardner report was not published by the Academy until 1851, and even then its condemnation of swill milk was not spread publicly. Although Gardner and Griscom both persisted in their fight, they received little assistance from the powerful body of respected health authorities. Indeed, the Academy did not really act again upon the swill milk issue until it gained widespread publicity in the city’s newspapers.

The swill milk campaign was one of the first journalism crusades in his- tory. The “power of the press” highlighted the dangers of the swill milk trade and galvanized support for the movement against the practice among its readership. The Daily Tribune published a long article and editorial on 26 June 1847, attacking swill milk for containing “positively noxious properties.” The article was anonymously written “by a scientific gentleman of the highest character,” who pointed to swill milk as being responsible for the excessive infant mortality numbers in the city and concluded by chastising city offi- cials for not acting. “What other city,” the article asked, “would allow 100,000 quarts of impure, demonstrably diseased milk, to be distributed every week among its inhabitants?”39

Among the more vociferous (and successful) antagonists of the swill milk dairy industry was the journalist Frank Leslie. In May 1858, Leslie’s weekly newspaper, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, devoted extensive time and energy to researching and exposing the social and moral ills of the “nefarious and revolting trade.”40 Leslie’s challenge to the industry was comprehensive as

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he increased public awareness, articulated the health risks associated with the swill milk, publicized the trade routes taken by the distributors, and attacked the political machine that looked the other way. “Shall these manufactories of hell-broths be permitted longer to exist among us?” he boldly queried.41 Previous attempts to counter and arrest the abuses of the milk trade had been unsuccessful, but Leslie’s attack—complete with vivid illustrations— demonstrated the power of pictorial journalism.42 Compared with Hartley and Griscom, Leslie combined the distribution of information and advocacy with a more confrontational position that made it very difficult for authori- ties to dismiss or ignore him.

Leslie joined the ranks of public health officials and benevolent societies that opposed the distribution of diseased milk. His prose—often melodra- matic and always full of panache—was designed to stimulate reaction from its readers, but it also rang of goodwill and concern for his fellow citizen:

In presenting to our readers the sickening details connected with the distillery milk manufacture which prevails to an alarming extent in both New York and Brooklyn, we are animated solely by a desire to benefit our fellow-citizens, to expose the shameless frauds which are every day perpetrated under the eyes and with the full cognizance of the public authorities, and to break up a system which, by the wholesale distribu- tion of liquid poison, is decimating our population, bringing death into a thousand homes, and demoralizing the general health of the city. . . . Ours has been no pleasing task! we should not have selected it for pas- time or amusement! we would rather have shunned it as we would avoid a place infected by the plague; but a sense of public duty and the powerful lever of faithful and accurate illustrations taken on these leper spots . . . prompted us to pursue our present course, and the hope of ameliorating a great evil has encouraged us to persevere.43

But his participation in the attack of the swill milk industry does not ex- actly qualify as being wholly altruistic, as the popularity of his exposé effec- tively saved his business. In 1857, Leslie claimed to have 90,000 subscriptions, but he was embroiled in a fierce battle with the newly established Harper’s Weekly. By the end of 1858, Leslie boasted a subscription total of 140,000 with special issues selling considerably more copies. This rise in subscrip- tions was likely directly attributable to Leslie’s investigation of the swill milk controversy; during his exposé Leslie reduced and eventually eliminated his gossip columns in favor of presenting news and editorials. While he still com- peted with Harper’s for the illustrated newspaper market, Leslie established his newspaper as a first-rate publication of investigative journalism.44

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Nevertheless, Leslie’s exposé was powerful and it attacked not just the men directly involved in the production and distribution of swill milk; after his initial flurry of articles exposing the trade, Leslie struck at the political ma- chine that condoned it. By 1858, some sixteen years after Hartley published his essay on the history of milk and fourteen years since Griscom had derided the sanitary conditions of the city, civic authorities still had not imposed any restrictions on the sale of swill milk. The resistance to reform remained in- tractable, owing largely to the dairy owners’ political sway. Leslie noted that the high profits realized from swill milk production had made the dealers a potent lobby against reforms. In 1856, for example, the Brooklyn Com- mon Council passed a law requiring ample room for dairy cows, but within a couple of months the Council buckled under the pressure of the swill milk dealers and passed an amendment exempting urban swill milk distilleries. By 1858, one anonymous, prominent official told Leslie it was unlikely that the authorities would take action: “They dare not do it! Don’t you know that every one of those cows has a vote?”45

Leslie’s coverage of the diseased milk trade did, however, provoke a series of formal inquiries, the first by a committee of city officials altogether too friendly with the swill milk dealers to provide a balanced report. Indeed, the Daily Tribune mocked the investigation as an example of political corrup- tion.

After giving the swill-milk venders ample time to brush up and ‘make it all right’ for the official visit, Alderman [Michael] Tuomey yesterday led his Committee up to Johnson’s distillery, looked about a little, found all in tolerably good condition, took a drink at the corner groggery, got a few samples of milk from cows, and rode back to City Hall.46

Tuomey issued reassuring reports, but Leslie challenged his credibility and his connections to the industry. His attacks against the committee mem- bers were particularly ruthless. Leslie called Tuomey “a barefaced, shameless rascal” and was even more disparaging of Tuomey’s second, Alderman E. Harrison Reed, who “in all that constitutes the scurrilous blackguard and mouthy poltroon is Tuomey’s superior.”47 He further escalated his mockery of the committee’s work and findings by printing a now-famous cartoon of three aldermen whitewashing a stump-tailed cow (Figure 2.2).48 After the whitewashing cartoon, Leslie was indicted for criminal libel, but after a hear- ing marred by violence the action was dismissed by the grand jury. It was blatantly obvious that, as incriminating as Leslie’s cartoon had been, it was not libelous.

Responding to growing tensions, the Board of Health decided to appoint a new committee to conduct a more thorough study. Two reports resulted from

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this second study. The majority report, signed by Tuomey and Reed, found the stables and the conditions of the cows to be adequate, but recommended that the stables receive better ventilation. Critics of the report—who then submitted the minority report—complained that the investigation sought to protect the dairymen and that the committee spent most of its time putting Leslie’s charges on trial.49 Charles H. Haswell submitted the minority report that presented a stark criticism of all facets of the swill milk industry. Wit- nesses had admitted that diseased cows were regularly milked and that urine was occasionally—through accident or negligence—added to the milk.50 Haswell listed four objections to the swill dairies: crowded stalls, widespread disease, unsanitary milking process, and the slaughter of diseased cows for meat. On 14 July 1858, the Council discussed the majority and minority re- ports and opted in favor of the corrupt majority report. No concessions were made to appease the angry committee members; even a resolution requiring that distillery dairies post signs on their carts that read “Swill-fed Milk” was rejected.51

With no resolution in sight, Leslie dedicated himself to persevering in his crusade. Accompanying his vivid illustrations were extensive lists of the

Figure 2.2 Three New York City aldermen charged with investigating the swill milk industry shown “whitewashing” a diseased, stump-tailed cow and her owner. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 17 July 1858, 110.

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routes taken by the distillery milk carts, the numbers of the houses to which they delivered, the locations of the depots that advertised their milk as “coun- try pure,” the names of the owners of the cows, and the false inscriptions on the carts that carried the swill milk around the city (Figure 2.3). Leslie did achieve some success as some milk distributors started to buy country milk and he was quick to publish these small victories along with his weekly stories. Mitchell and Blain, from Fulton Market, wrote Leslie to “thank you for your exposure of the Swill Milk trade. We have changed our milkman, and now use none but the best Country Milk.”52

Given the impotence or unwillingness of city officials to act, Leslie likely saw his crusade as an attempt not just to raise public awareness, but also to arouse public action. Like the later muckrakers of the Progressive era and, later, the scientists who participated in environmental protest after World War II, he understood that informing the public could lead to meaningful reform. In 1848, the inhabitants of a small town near Elberfeld, Germany, burned a swill milk distillery to the ground and drove out the owners, after officials had not acted. By drawing on this example early in his exposé, it is possible that Leslie was hoping to incite a similar reaction in New York if

Figure 2.3 False advertising of swill milk with a “country wagon” pulled up to a distillery yard. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 8 May 1858, 368.

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reforms were not enacted.53 What Leslie did not know or neglected to men- tion was that the events in Elberfeld were part of a greater uprising associated with the Revolution of 1848. Leslie also left out the fact that the Prussian state eventually crushed such civil disobedience. Nevertheless, Leslie promoted his exposé as the catalyst for social change and stoked the fires of public ac- tivism. “During the past week,” he wrote the week after he first broke the story, “it has been the subject of serious and animated discussion in almost every house. . . . Each one asked himself, ‘How could I be so supine as to sit quiet and never make an effort to cleanse this foul nest for humanity’s sake, if not from personal motives?’ ”54 Again, in attempting to stir public activism, Leslie wrote, “every man who rests in the vain and selfish security that he is ‘safe’ is a traitor to the cause, and gives comfort and help to the general enemy.”55

Besides challenging the moral goodness of men involved in the urban dairy trade as well as those who did not act against it, Leslie also attacked the swill milk distributors’ gender identity. Gail Bederman notes that the popular conception of “manliness” in the mid-nineteenth century was as- sociated with a man’s strength of character and a duty to protect and guide those weaker than himself, namely his family or his employees.56 By referring to the New York and Brooklyn milkmen as scoundrels and modern Herods, Leslie was implying that their immorality made them less than manly.57 And he went even further, referring to swill milk dairy owners and distributors as “ ‘milkmaids,’ with large beards and excessive dirt.”58 In so doing, Leslie openly provoked gender stereotypes that hearkened back to pre-industrial Europe, where milking was seen as women’s work. Leslie continued referring

Figure 2.4 “Attack of the milkmaids.” Frank Leslie’s artist is accosted in Skillman Street, Brooklyn, between two swill milk stables. Note the artist’s noble stance in contrast with the slovenly mob. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 15 May 1858, 384.

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to “milkmaids” in subsequent issues of his paper, even illustrating an “at- tack of the ‘milkmaids’ ” on one of his artists (Figure 2.4).59 The image clearly showed an upright, strong, and noble artist defiantly preparing to meet a dirty and raucous horde of “milkmaids.” In persisting with attacks on the swill milk distributors’ gender, Leslie sought to further demonstrate gender differences that would antagonize his adversaries.

In contrast to the immoral, effeminate “dairymaid,” Leslie was recognized as a masculine savior for his moral crusade. In appreciation of his efforts, Leslie was presented with a gold watch and chain, the inscription reading “in behalf of the mothers and children of New-York, as a grateful testimonial of his Manly and Fearless Exposure of the Swill Milk Traffic.”60 Leslie even pro- moted himself as more masculine during the controversy after a meeting in which Alderman Reed suggested that only dignity prevented him from doing Leslie bodily harm. In response, Leslie submitted that—in spite of his great patience—he was glad not to have been “within hearing of that cowardly and wretched maligner,” or else “[that] hawk’s bill which ornaments [Reed’s] Aldermanic face would certainly have been rubbed, thumb-and-fingerwise, to a very ‘fine point’ indeed.”61 Even as Leslie presented the members of the swill milk trade and their political allies as effeminate and less than men, he sought to exemplify and articulate an aggressive masculinity of morality whose central goal was the defense of the home against corrupt polluters of milk and bodies.

Conscious that increased numbers would maintain the momentum of the actions he had begun, Leslie also worked to persuade the strong temperance movement to join his crusade. Attacking both the distilleries and the swill milk at the same time, Leslie pointed up the irrevocable relationship between the two:

Wherever large masses of people congregate, thus creating a great de- mand for milk, a distillery springs up at once, and while this furnishes fiery alcohol which makes fathers and husbands drunkards, loafers, and, perhaps, murderers, the filthy cow stables, which hang around it like bloated parasites, dispense the poison that deals death to the mothers and children.62

In broadening the scope of the protest, Leslie was attracting more people to the movement. If the plight of urban women and children was not enough to attract middle- and upper-class women to the movement, perhaps relating the environmental problems with swill milk to their own benevolent issues such as temperance and family problems associated with alcohol would. Fur- thermore, Leslie was demonstrating how swill milk had an impact on men as

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well as women and children. By expanding the issue to one of public health in general, Leslie found a broader base, though ultimately insufficiently so. Where Hartley’s prosaic attempts to galvanize public sentiment into action had failed, Leslie’s persistence and sensationalism was highly effective. The il- lustrations no doubt brought to life the conditions in the swill stables, but his message was also heard by far more people. Leslie also managed a sustained attack that appeared serially in his newspaper, whereas Hartley’s book was not followed by further writings that reached a wide audience.

Timing, however, may ultimately have been the critical factor. By the late 1850s railroad expansion was making the transportation of country milk to the city an ever-increasing possibility. The supply of milk continued to grow and milk associations began forming, dropping the overall cost of whole- some milk. The feasibility of bringing country milk to the city spurred a dif- ferent legislative body into action against the distillery milk traders. In 1861, Otsego County Senator Francis M. Rotch proposed a bill to stop the sale of swill milk in New York City. Inspired perhaps by some of Hartley’s sugges- tions regarding the potential economic growth of rural dairies almost twenty years earlier, Rotch might have seen an economic opportunity for his rural constituents if the swill milk trade were abolished. As the travel time between New York City and outlying counties got continually and dramatically shorter, a cost-effective alternative to swill milk presented itself. The senate passed the bill, but the assembly rejected it. The following year, however, the law was enacted and it represented the first Milk Law to be passed in New York State. The law made the sale of “any impure, adulterated, or unwholesome milk” a misdemeanor and punishable by a fine of fifty dollars or a jail sentence in default of the fine. The law further outlawed the feeding of cows on food that would produce unwholesome milk—an attack on distillery slop—and imposed stricter laws of stable conditions.63 That the law was passed at the state rather than the municipal level suggests that the distillery and urban dairy owners still held considerable sway in city politics.

Although this legislation represented a monumental victory in the fight against swill milk, distributors quickly found loopholes, namely in the law’s vagueness regarding what constituted “adulterated” or “unwholesome” milk under the statute. An amendment in 1864 specifically defined “the addition of water or any substance other than a sufficient quantity of ice to preserve the whole milk while in transportation” to be an adulteration.64 Given that the swill milk required adulteration to even look like milk, the amendment legally put an end to the production of swill milk in Manhattan. But in Brook- lyn the swill milk trade was still protected by the local amendment passed in 1856 protecting swill milk businesses within the city limits. As late as the turn of the century, swill milk was still produced and sold in Brooklyn. The

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Department of Health, formed in 1866, entered the fray in 1873, banning— and making specific reference to—swill milk as part of the sanitary code.65 As the swill dairies decreased in number and were pushed further from the city, their owners found it increasingly difficult to manage both production and distribution, while lower prices for milk from the countryside hurt them through competition. The division of labor ultimately ruined the political power of the swill milk trade; as the milk industry grew, the interests of milk producers were often in conflict with those of the distributors and what had once been a formidable political lobby was in shambles.

But was this really a significant environmental victory? The protest against bad milk was ultimately successful, but it took almost twenty years for pub- lic health advocates to realize the changes they sought. The growth of the activism and the amount of pressure it could exert on the political machine depended largely on its support base, which grew slowly and ineffectively, allowing its opposition to build a powerful political lobby. Opponents to the swill milk trade enjoyed a relative victory, but it was not entirely due to their own efforts. That it took more than twenty years after the initial, con- certed alarm over swill milk to realize any kind of control over the industry is testament to the disorganized nature of the early protest against it and the lack of interest in this issue on the part of the community leaders. Leslie’s efforts must be recognized as the most effective public condemnation of the distillery milk trade, because his exposé directly and aggressively attacked the political machine in a manner that administrators could not ignore. Les- lie also struck a chord with a wider audience and galvanized action from a broader support base than did efforts from smaller groups. But the protest was ultimately hampered by not effectively outlining a distinct problem or organizing in a manner that would exact change. Swill milk was accepted as the problem, but activists could not agree amongst themselves whether it was the production or the distribution that should be challenged. Furthermore, reformers disagreed on whether the feeding of distillery slops to the cows, the stable conditions, the unethical business practices of the dairymen, or the lack of municipal licensing within the milk industry presented itself as the central target for civil objection. In spite of these internal conflicts, however, the lobby was likely never sufficiently strong to represent any legitimate chal- lenge to the status quo.

That such demands were not realized quickly—indeed as late as 1904 only six American cities used dairy inspectors—speaks more to difficulties in organizing a politically potent protest than it does to a lack of social and en- vironmental concern.66 Whereas the heated battle over swill milk dissipated after state legislation was passed in the 1860s, the 1906 Food and Drug Act represented a more official closure of sorts, with more stringent, enforceable,

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and enforced laws against the production and distribution of contaminated or dangerous food products. It finally took a dramatic expansion of state and federal regulatory powers at the beginning of the twentieth century to bring meaningful reform to the problem of contaminated and adulterated foods.

As a rule, environmental protest must move from the public sphere into the political arena in order to exact change that might solve or mitigate the existing environmental problem.67 To receive political attention the public organization must be sufficiently broad and vocal enough that legislators feel pressure to act. Central to any success, then, is the process of organiz- ing responses to perceived environmental problems. Intrinsic to organizing responses is galvanizing the public into action through impressing upon them the potential hazards. In New York City’s battle over swill milk, the organizational process that resulted in a growing and concerted attack on the distributors of swill milk and their political allies slowly found ways to engage the public while pushing for political action. In different capacities, Hartley, Griscom, and Leslie sought to inform the public about the nature of the hazards inherent in the distribution and consumption of swill milk. Among the three, Leslie’s newspaper provided him with the widest audience. And when Leslie insisted that the sale of adulterated milk be outlawed, he also advocated creating clear standards: “Milkmen should be licensed, and the license should be granted only upon positive evidence of a dairy of grass or hay fed cows.”68 This argument might have galvanized a concerned public and readership, but it also focused on legislators who could act. Nevertheless, although the initial movement to ban swill milk was premised on a strong social and moral ethic, it lacked a focused foundation upon which it could build the bigger structure of an effective political movement. Moreover, New Yorkers with political sway were hard to engage; they had access to fresh country milk because they could afford it.

These factors are useful to keep in mind, because they are present in more recent environmental struggles. In many instances, the dissemination of information is a form of political activism. And the problem of arousing the urban elite is also a common problem in twentieth-century American environmentalism. Those with means are able to protect themselves from environmental harm; bottled water, organic fruits and vegetables, and healthier communities are contemporary expressions of this.69 And this is an intriguing and problematic feature of the larger American environmen- tal consciousness: there is little collective or altruistic spirit in much natural protest. Since World War II, the major environmental victories—halting aboveground nuclear weapons testing, removing lead from gasoline, and the bans on some heavy metals and synthetic pesticides—have been those that affected all Americans. Nuclear fallout, for example, was not discriminatory

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along race or class lines in where it fell; it threatened everyone. The same is true of the release of lead into the air. American environmentalists have been less successful when addressing health and environmental problems that are more local in their nature, because it becomes harder to gain support from people who are not affected by the harm.

Notes 1 A version of this essay was published as “Organizing Protest in the Changing City:

Swill Milk and Social Activism in New York City, 1842–64,” New York History 86 (Summer 2005), 205–25. I am grateful to the New York State Historical Associa- tion for their permission to reprint this essay here.

2 Marcy Darnovsky, “Stories Less Told: Histories of US Environmentalism,” Socialist Review 22(4) (1992), 11–54. Quotation is from p. 28. Modern environmentalism certainly owes much to figures such as Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, Gifford Pinchot, and Theodore Roosevelt. From their conservationist prin- ciples came a parks system, forest silviculture and management, and the champi- oning of serene nature as a place for reflection and spiritual renewal. Such systems, management tools, and expanded notions of human ethics have been critical in shaping a “green” agenda, but critics note that they are inherited from a predomi- nantly white and male ancestry. Indeed, conservation and wilderness preservation have played a significant role in the growth of the environmental movement and their interests are notably central to the agendas of the “Group of Ten,” the nation’s ten largest environmental organizations. Given the cultural and ethnic breadth in contemporary American demographics and the ubiquity of environmental problems, historical perceptions of a strictly conservationist agenda require revi- sion. This singular root of modern environmentalism, I submit, is as historically problematic as Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis; both are awkwardly ethnocentric and suffer from a positionality that makes the incorporation of non- white and non-middle-class concerns exceedingly difficult.

3 Focusing on environmental lobbies and their organization over time constitutes an important avenue for historical study. Frank Uekoetter proposes that analyzing the process of the organizing of responses to environmental problems represents an intriguing new direction for environmental histories. By locating social percep- tions of divergences between objective natural conditions and certain political, economic, or cultural norms and values, an organizational approach, he argues, offers the historian an opportunity to gauge the degree to which societies are able to recognize, control, and regulate their environmental impact. This organizational approach, therefore, allows historians to contribute to contemporary environ- mental discussions in a more relevant manner. Frank Uekoetter, “Confronting the Pitfalls of Current Environmental History: An Argument for an Organisational Approach,” Environment and History 4 (1998), 31–52.

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4 John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625–1866 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968), 427–39.

5 Interestingly, this kind of practice serves as a precursor for modern ideas sur- rounding industrial ecology, in which industries consume each other’s waste, thereby reducing the amount that requires disposal. Modern industrial ecology is currently regarded as a paradigm for more sustainable industrial practices. For a brief introduction to modern industrial ecology, see David Salvesen, “Making Industrial Parks Sustainable,” Urban Land (February 1996), 29–32.

6 During the first half of the nineteenth century, the institutional limitations of New York’s political system hindered the ability to legislate for the construction of the infrastructure that was necessary to realize an adequate sewage system. For a his- tory of the construction of New York sewers, see Joanne Abel Goldman, Building New York’s Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1997). For the history of the development of antebel- lum New York politics, see Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

7 Norman Shaftel, “A History of the Purification of Milk in New York, or, ‘How Now, Brown Cow,’ ” in Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers (eds.), Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health (Madi- son: University of Wisconsin, 1978), 277.

8 The adulteration or watering down of milk had previously been a serious issue of contention, especially since the water used was invariably contaminated. Physi- cians continued to fight against the adulteration of milk, but this issue was largely secondary to the protesters of swill milk.

9 Duffy, A History of Public Health, 427–39; Shaftel, “A History of the Purification of Milk in New York,” 277. For the “posthumous” milking of cows, see Shaftel, “A History of the Purification of Milk in New York,” 278. For summaries of the ori- gins of the “swill milk” controversy, see also Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 788; Budd Leslie Gambee Jr., Frank Leslie and his Illustrated Newspaper, 1855–1860 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Department of Library Science, 1964), 69–72; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850–1865 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938), 456–58; Kenneth T. Jackson (ed.), The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 308–9.

10 The wealthier classes did eventually get behind the movement to ban the distri- bution of swill milk, but generally on the premise that the odor of the distillery stables permeated through the city. For them, it seems that their motivations were spurred less by the social crisis of unhealthy milk, and more by their interest in preserving their comfortable mode of living. By mid-century, the wealthier classes were also in the midst of a migration uptown, away from the swill milk battle- ground.

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11 For a description of the market economy in antebellum America, see Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

12 In Brooklyn, for example, Samuel Bouton was a dairyman and also served as alderman from the Seventh Ward in 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1843. Jacob Judd, “Brooklyn’s Health and Sanitation, 1834–55,” Journal of Long Island History 7(1) (1967), 40–52.

13 For a variety of perspectives on political change and the emergence of the indus- trial metropolis during the middle of the nineteenth century, see Bridges, A City in the Republic; Goldman, Building New York’s Sewers; Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Sam Bass Warner Jr., The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Carroll Smith Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971).

14 See, as introduction, Sellers, The Market Revolution, 202–36. 15 Thomas L. Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibil-

ity, Part 1,” American Historical Review 90(2) (1985), 339–61. See also Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2,” American Historical Review 90(3) (1985), 547–66; and Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).

16 Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 1.” 17 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 620. 18 Robert M. Hartley, An Historical, Scientific and Practical Essay on Milk as an Arti-

cle of Human Sustenance (New York: Jonathan Leavitt, 1842), 112. 19 Ibid., 113. 20 Ibid., 348. 21 Ibid., 335. 22 Ibid., 326–27. Hartley conceded that 6¢ a quart was the bare minimum price for

country milk being delivered and that prices were generally higher. 23 Daily Tribune, 9 July 1845. Cited in Spann, The New Metropolis, 71–72. Spann

notes that by the 1860s, railroad construction and more manufacturing signifi- cantly improved the winter economy.

24 Duffy, A History of Public Health, 428–29. 25 Hartley, An Essay on Milk. 26 Daily Tribune, 28 May 1858, 5. 27 Shaftel, “ A History of the Purification of Milk in New York,” 278–79. 28 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 785. In The Cholera Years, Charles E. Rosenberg

traces the evolution of American thinking about disease during the mid-

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nineteenth century. Concentrating on New York’s numerous cholera epidemics during the period, Rosenberg notes that “cholera in 1866 was a social problem; in 1832, it had still been, to many Americans, a primarily moral dilemma.” Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (1962; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 228.

29 For a comparison of Hartley and Griscom, see Charles E. Rosenberg and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Pietism and the Origins of the American Public Health Movement: A Note on John H. Griscom and Robert M. Hartley,” in Leavitt and Numbers (eds.), Sickness and Health in America, 345–58.

30 Such demands mirror the demands made by postwar suburban groups. 31 Duffy, A History of Public Health, 302–7. 32 John H. Griscom, The Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Class of New York (New

York: Harper & Brothers, 1845). Martin V. Melosi notes the influence of the Eng- lish sanitarian Edwin Chadwick on Griscom and the title of his work. Chadwick had, in 1842, published his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Pop- ulation of Great Britain and corresponded with Griscom during the 1840s. Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 43–72. For more on Chadwick and the European influence on American notions of public health, see Christopher Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

33 For a study of masculinity during the Progressive era, see Gail Bederman, Manli- ness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

34 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 785. 35 S. Rotton Percy, “Report of the Committee on City Milk,” Transactions of the New

York Academy of Medicine, 2 March 1859, 97–149. Reference to “cow fever” is on pp. 104–6.

36 Ibid., 104–6. Percy posited that the inoculation was “a needless piece of folly,” and that there was no evidence that the fever was contagious.

37 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 8 May 1858, 359. 38 Augustus K. Gardner, “Report of a Committee Appointed by the Academy of

Medicine, upon the Comparative Value of Milk Formed from the Slop of Distiller- ies and Other Food,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Medicine, 1 March 1848, 31–49. Quotations are from p. 49.

39 Daily Tribune, 26 June 1847, 2. John Duffy suggests that the author of this article was very likely Dr. Augustus Gardner, who wrote extensively on the topic of swill milk as chair of the New York Academy of Medicine. Duffy, A History of Public Health, 429.

40 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 369. 41 Leslie’s, 22 May 1858, 385.

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42 Gambee, Frank Leslie and His Illustrated Newspaper. Gambee notes that issues in early 1858 had very few pictures, likely because Leslie’s illustrators were busy researching and drawing for the swill milk exposé.

43 Leslie’s, 8 May 1858, 353. 44 Gambee, Frank Leslie and his Illustrated Newspaper, 68–72. 45 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 379. 46 Daily Tribune, 28 May 1858, 4. 47 Leslie’s, 10 July 1858, 90; 24 July 1858, 120. 48 Leslie’s, 17 July 1858, 110. Reed, one of the whitewashers, was defeated for alder-

man that fall. 49 C. H. Haswell, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian of the City of New York, 1816–

1860 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896), 511–12. 50 Majority and Minority Reports of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the

Character and Conditions of the Sources from which Cows’ Milk is Derived (New York: Charles W. Baker, 1858), 24–28.

51 Duffy, A History of Public Health, 433–34. 52 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 384. 53 Leslie’s, 8 May 1858, 353, 359. 54 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 378. 55 Leslie’s, 22 May 1858, 385. 56 Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 11–12. The gender mixing in which Leslie

engaged was a time-tested rhetorical strategy that dated back to the ancient Greeks. For a discussion of masculinity and Athenian politics, see John J. Winkler, “Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men’s Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens,” in David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 171–209.

57 The reference to modern Herods comes from Leslie’s, 8 May 1858, 359. 58 Leslie’s, 8 May 1858, 353. There is a considerable amount of scholarship on the

interpretation of gender in the dairy industry. In most western countries, women lost their predominant role in the dairying industry as production became centralized and mechanized. Interestingly, the introduction of machines shifted the balance of power in the industry from women to men. For the masculiniza- tion of the machine, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980). For a good introduction to the literature on dairy history, see Lena Sommestad, “Gender- ing Work, Interpreting Gender: The Masculinization of Dairy Work in Sweden, 1850–1950,” History Workshop Journal 37 (Spring 1994), 57–75. For American examples, see also Joan Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); Jensen, “Butter Making and Economic Development in Mid-Atlantic America from 1750–1850,” Signs 13 (Summer 1988), 813–29; Deborah Valenze, “The Art of Women and the Business of Men: Women’s Work and the Dairy Industry c. 1740–1840,” Past and Present

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130 (February 1991), 142–69; and Sally McMurry, “Women’s Work in Agriculture: Divergent Trends in England and America, 1800–1930,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34(2) (1992), 248–70.

59 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 384. The accompanying story and further references to “milkmaids” are in Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 380–81.

60 Leslie’s, 19 February 1859, 186. 61 Leslie’s, 24 July 1858, 120. 62 Leslie’s, 22 May 1858, 385. 63 New York State Laws, 85th session, chapter 467, 23 April 1862, 866–67. 64 New York State Laws, 87th session, chapter 544, 2 May 1864, 1195–96. 65 New York Department of Health Sanitary Code, 2 June 1873. 66 William T. Howard, Public Health Administration and the Natural History of Dis-

eases in Baltimore, Maryland, 1797–1920 (Washington, DC: 1924), 120–21. 67 For a discussion of environmental concerns and the power of the political ma-

chine, see Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progres- sive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). For an example of more recent environmental politics, see Hays (with Barbara D. Hays), Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

68 Leslie’s, 15 May 1858, 379. 69 Andrew Szasz, Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the

Environment to Protecting Ourselves (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

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