Business history has never paid much attention to the environment. Brushing aside the firm's reliance and impact on the natural world, early business historians zeroed in on the role of the entrepreneur in big business's rise. They found it easy to truncate, marginalize or altogether ignore the physical processes by which the stuff of nature—“raw” materials—was carved or coaxed out of mountains, forests, and deserts, channeled into factories and squeezed and cajoled into commodities. They scarcely considered the ever-changing varieties of “waste” generated by businesses and customers, which so often infiltrated, polluted, and otherwise altered the world beyond factory and office. They devoted equally little attention to the effects of resource extraction and use on plants, animals, land, air, or water, much less entire ecosystems and climate.

In the first half of the twentieth century, most firms sought to reduce emissions, effluents, and other pollution-causing discharges only when it resulted in the recovery of valuable material or decreased the amount of money spent on damage and nuisance suits. However, this did not necessarily mean that engineers and technical managers saw themselves—or the firms that employed them—as polluters. Rather, they assumed that as they made industrial operations more efficient, they would also address pollution concerns. This article illustrates the initial success and ultimate failure of this efficiency-based ethic of self-regulation by examining efforts to eliminate the pollution associated with the disposal of oil field brines. Until the 1950s, it argues, efforts to address problems associated with the disposal of oil field brines reinforced the notion that economic incentives to increase the efficiency of industrial operations overlapped with efforts to fight pollution. However, by the late 1950s, economic incentives proved incapable of encouraging further reductions in brine contamination. Yet pollution concerns remained. Since then, the efficiency-based ethic of self-regulation has gradually been replaced by an ethic that most people—and most firms—now treat as legitimate: reaching consensus on environmental objectives and then regulating pollution-causing discharges to meet those objectives.

This article counters a common misconception that business was universally opposed to air pollution control at the beginning of the twentieth century. In comparing the reaction of German and American businessmen to smoke abatement efforts before World War I, it shows that behavior was primarily shaped by national culture, rather than by a general desire to “externalize costs.” German smoke abatement did not meet significant resistance from industrialists, with regulation being based on a general consensus of all parties involved—a process which turned out to be as much a chance for abatement as it was an impediment for reforms. The American business community was split into two factions: those opposed to smoke abatement because they feared additional costs and the intrusion of factories by officials, and others, frequently organized in Chambers of Commerce or similar civic associations, who took a broader perspective and argued that the economic prospects of their city were at stake. The ultimate success of the latter group was largely due to changes in strategy, which allowed businessmen to develop a more positive attitude toward smoke abatement while simultaneously increasing the effectiveness of regulation. Business, therefore, should not be viewed as an inevitably “negative force” in environmental regulation.

In the early 1900s, a powerful antismoke movement in Chicago forced the Pennsylvania Railroad to develop strategies for reducing public protest against the company, limiting fines, and blocking legislation forcing railroads to electrify. The company pursued a policy of least steps, by retrofitting locomotives with ameliorative technology, through fuel substitutions, and by training firemen and engineers in efficient combustion methods. By 1909, however, pressure for electrification in Chicago intensified, and Pennsylvania managers worked to retain control over the pace of technological change. In coordination with other railroads, management attempted to obey smoke ordinances without interfering with railroad operations and profitability. Company archives reveal an earnest learning process and differences among railroad managers regarding appropriate responses to antismoke regulations.

This paper examines a pivotal moment in the history of the built environment in America. At the beginning of the twentieth century, factions within the American paint industry fought in state and federal legislatures over the definition of paint: What was pure paint? Were new paint formulations to be encouraged, or labeled “adulterated”? Was the known toxicity of lead to be a consideration? Despite some opponents' recourse to a rhetoric of toxicity and public health, all sides agreed that the best paints contained a significant quantity of lead, and that government should stay out of setting industry standards. This accord all but assured that Americans would apply tons of lead paint on the walls of their homes.