To the Tap: Public versus Private Water Provision at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper uses the examples of three nineteenth-century cities—London, Philadelphia, and New York—to explore both what is permanent about the problem of water provision (that consumers want it clean, accessible, and free) and what is mediated by the forces of government policy and economic constraints. In some cases, municipal authorities first claimed control over water supplies before figuring out how to pay for their works. In others, they calculated that such arrangements were both too expensive and too risky to bear alone. Both approaches were complicated by the high costs of providing water to urban areas and by urban dwellers' belief that water should flow from their taps without charge. The result was, and remains, a market in which price is largely dictated by political demand, set by what the government, rather than the market, will bear.