Utilities.

Between 1880 and 1899 technological innovations made it possible for more and more middle-class homes to be connected to city services supplying water, heat, light, and sewerage. The new utilities came to wealthy people and city dwellers before poor people and farmers. Easterners tended to get them before southerners and westerners. Homeowners enjoyed the new services; yet they also brought a host of new expenses and worries.

Water.

During the 1870s hauling fresh water into the house and carrying wastewater out was a daily chore for many women and children. In the country they filled buckets at cisterns, rain barrels, wells, or springs and other natural water sources. Some houses had a kitchen pump located over a well, or they had their own water tanks with windmill-powered pumps. In small cities water-hauling trucks filled outdoor water barrels. By 1880 most cities of more than...