Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800

8 Regulating Pollution

CH A P T E R 8 Regulating Pollution The present condition of the air we breathe is nothing short of a grave national calamity, and one which calls for the active interference of the Legislature. —The Lancet, 1 FOR MOST OF THE nineteenth century the right to vote in Britain was restricted to adult male property owners. Women did not gain the right to vote until ; even then, it was initially restricted to women aged thirty and over. Both houses of Parliament were dominated by the upper classes, and politicians across the ideological spectrum believed that one of the principal roles of government was to protect private property. As a result, most were extremely hesitant to grant government the power to interfere with the exercise of property rights. Despite this laissez-faire ideology, the authority of government to regulate the actions of property owners expanded significantly from the s onward. What accounts for this apparent paradox? The answer lies in the theory of individualism that formed an integral part of nineteenth-century political economy. According to this view, those able to make decisions for themselves (mentally competent adult males) should be allowed to use their own property and labor power without the interference of government, as long as they did not impose costs on other individuals who did not or could not You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. consent to them. This logic explains how legislation restricting the actions of property owners could win passage during the mid-nineteenth century . The Factory Acts of  and , which limited the hours of employment , applied only to women and children—individuals who were thought incapable of negotiating terms of employment on their own behalf. In contrast to this, bills aiming to protect adult males from overwork and unsafe occupational conditions were frequently opposed on the grounds that they interfered with the rights of competent individuals to establish their own contractual terms. Early environmental legislation was similarly justified by the argument that state intervention was necessary in cases where it was impractical for individuals to identify and hold responsible the particular firms that were causing harm to their property. The Alkali Act of , for example , functioned primarily to protect landowners from having their trees, hedges, and agricultural crops damaged by hydrochloric acid emissions from the chemical industry. Supporters of the bill argued that although they would have preferred to see the two sides work privately to negotiate compensation for this damage, such a solution was impossible given the existence of multiple chemical works in many of the areas affected by this problem. Related to the question of consent was the issue of whether individuals possessed the ability to take reasonable steps to avoid a particular risk or inconvenience. Clean air activists who sought to expand government regulations frequently insisted that people could do little to protect themselves against smoke. Fred Scott, who spent his career running a multitude of public health and antipollution groups in Manchester, asserted in the s that the intervention of government to protect the health of the individual was even more justified in the case of smoke prevention than in regard to water and food. For a man “can boil water or milk before use, and he can have any article of food analysed, . . . but he cannot protect himself against the pollution of air upon which he has more immediately to depend for existence than upon any other commodity.” Despite this, argued Scott, local sanitary authorities frequently neglected their duty to prosecute those who polluted the air, and magistrates often failed to impose penalties.2 Others shared Scott’s view that strong state intervention was needed to prevent air pollution. Admonishing Sir Henry Hussey Vivian, a Liberal MP who believed that the state had no business entering factories to ensure that manufacturers complied with laws regulating air pollution, the Regulating Pollution |  You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Builder asserted in  that the rights of private property had to be weighed against the rights of all people to common resources such as air. Turning...