All the Modern Conveniences: American Household Plumbing, 1840–1890 by Maureen Ogle

Abstract

166 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE in the fight against assimilation. Elsewhere, Umble implies that the telephone was an agent ofchange itself. “The Old Order Mennonite and Amish story shows how habitual use of a new technology fosters change” (p. 158). However, we learn little here about the conse­ quences ofthe telephone’s partial introduction into these communi­ ties. Traditionalists initially resisted it because of fears of what it would do; in more recent years the telephone has become accepted in order to deal with other, nontechnological changes. The one part of the story we do not know in any detail is who was right in those debates around 1905. Was the telephone a device with practical ben­ efits that helped keep far-flung kin together? Or was it a device that broke down barriers between members and the outside world, by that undermining the community? Or was it both? Claude S. Fischer Dr. Fischer is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, author of America Calling: A Social History ofthe Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), winner of the 1995 Dexter Prize, and coauthor of Inequal­ ity by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). All the Modem Conveniences: American HouseholdPlumbing, 1840—1890. By Maureen Ogle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xii+ 191; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95 (hardcover). All the Modem Conveniences is the twentieth volume in the Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology. Maureen Ogle, an assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama, sets her study of American household plumbing squarely within the his­ toriography of technology. She identifies two general approaches to the study of technology. On the one hand, one can ask how technol­ ogy affects society. On the other, one can explore how a particular society shapes and uses technology. Ogle argues for the superiority of the second alternative and frames her study as one which consid­ ers how the adoption of plumbing contributed “to order and pat­ tern in nineteenth-century America” (p. 154). At the outset of the book Ogle debunks the notion “that the use of plumbing requires an external infrastructure of water and sewer conduits” (p. 2). She then shows in her first chapters the ways in which American domestic plumbing was revolutionized in the years between 1840 and 1870—before, not after, the explosion in munici­ pal water and sewer systems. Ogle argues that Aanericans tried to reform and improve domestic life in a variety of ways during these years and that plumbing was part of this quest for national progress. Ogle clearly shows the variety of ingenious ways in which house­ holders utilized new plumbing without connections to municipal sys- TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 167 terns. She explores the introduction of showers, stationary basin bowls and sinks, hoppers, and pan water closets into homes across America. Ogle notes that the wide array of choices is often masked by a paucity oflanguage, as “privy,” “necessary,” and “water closet” were used interchangeably in contemporary accounts. While she does not address effectively the degree to which they were adopted across America, her clear descriptions of the plumbing fixtures and informative illustrations bring this era to life. Her discussion on the unreliable nature of these new fixtures, due to factors that included cold weather, rats, and foul odors, is compelling. Ogle also makes a strong argument for the individualistic adop­ tion of these new fixtures. As Ogle explains, families chose among a wide array of fixture options and typically scattered these fixtures throughout their houses. The standard “bathroom” containing a tub, water closet, and basin emerged slowly. Ogle chronicles a major change in the way Americans adopted plumbing after 1870. The rise of sanitarians and the acceptance of water carriage sewerage as the preferred technology for the removal ofwaste “played a key role in plumbing history after 1870” (p. 112). By 1890, household plumbing had becomejust a small part oflarger water and waste systems. As sanitarians and systems became central to plumbing in the 1880s and 1890s, the idiosyncratic adoption offixtures which charac­ terized the mid-19th century disappeared. Sanitarians fought for oversight and regulation...