Maybe it's Graft

There are so many Harvard professors addressing public and private gatherings of people anxious or willing to be enlightened, that it is difficult to keep run of them all and consider on their merit their statements of fact. But it wasn't at all difficult to learn that Philip Drinker, "assistant professor of ventilation and illumination at the Harvard School of Public Health" addressed an audience on Sunday at the Harvard Medical School and declared that "Boston is not a particularly smoky city," and "it is almost impossible to inhale coal smoke in sufficient amounts to be harmful."

According to the Herald of Monday, Professor Drinker said just that. If he said it, he is not competent to be an assistant professor in any school or kindergarten of public health. Boston is a particularly smoky city, and it is getting smokier every month. It is not as smoky as Pittsburg, but it is too smoky, and everybody except Assistant Professor Drinker and those responsible for the smoke are ready to say so and to prove it.

The death rate from inhaling coal dust may not be as great as the death rate from taking poison or being shot, but the discomfort and dirt caused by our very smoky city is visible on every hand. Ask those who come in contact every day with the nuisance caused by too much smoke. Ask the women folk, who know more about it and talk more about it than the males.

The steam railroads out of Boston are "not particularly smoky," compared with other steam railroads, but they are a good deal smokier than the roads that have been electrified and their trains are a good deal less inviting than the trains of electrified systems and sections. That particular assistant professor, if he said what he was credited with saying, might well receive a vote of thanks from those who are directly responsible for the increasing smokiness and dirtiness of Boston's atmosphere. Boston Review