In late years pneumonia has assumed a very acute and fatal form in Pittsburgh. That “much of human life, energy and happiness is wasted by the effects of vapors, noxious because wasted, is now an established certainty” (Gillespie, 8). It has been estimated that London’s annual smoke tax amounts to $1,500,000 in death, disease and lowered working capacity alone. Unfortunately up to the present time there has been no scientific attempt made to directly measure the degree in which the producing capacity and the bodily and mental efficiency of city dwellers may be impaired by atmospheric impurities, nor has any effort been made to measure the direct or indirect influences of smoke upon sensory, motor, intellectual, affective and emotional functions, and on the habits and conduct of human beings. A part of the human waste caused by smoke-polluted air is certainly due to the irritation caused by solid smoke particles. The functional efficiency of the visual, naso-pharyngeal, pulmonary, gastro-intestinal and neural mechanisms, may be more or less disabled by constant irritation by solid particles. But it is likewise presumptively probable that irritating, acrid soot particles and poisonous smoke compounds may become factors in causing premature decay, untimely death, exaggerated fatigue, frequent sickness, instability of attention, malcontent, irritability, lessened self-control and possibly psychic disequilibrium. It is probable that there goes on a gradual process of absorption by the human system of the poisonous products of imperfect smoke combustion. This insensible intake may not give rise to any definitely recognizable acute disorder or specific disabilities. But the process of slow poisoning may insidiously eat away like a mild canker at vital tissues and thus in time deplete our potential reserve, thereby making it impossible for body and brain to function at their points of maximal efficiency. With an impaired brain the mind cannot reach its highest levels of creative insight and constructive achievement. It has often been a matter of comment that people who have lived in relatively smoke-free cities after coming to live in a city like Pittsburgh, have experienced a distinct disinclination to work, or a sort of chronic ennui. A Pittsburgh business man writes that “people coming to Pittsburgh to reside notice a great depression; likewise many residents of Pittsburgh on visits find they feel infinitely better and business men working for periods in cities where there is not the same smoke find they can do twice as much work. These are not isolated cases but the result of very general inquiry which I have made for a number of years.[2] People very frequently remark on the depressed expression not only on the working men of Pittsburgh, but they also observe it in the clubs. It is very frequently referred to humidity, but this is entirely wrong as the humidity in New York ranges much higher than in Pittsburgh. This