MY MOTHER’S WHITE GLOVES (COMMENT).

MY MOTHER’S WHITE GLOVES (COMMENT). I responded below to Annalisa’s kind speculation that economists should get credit for having the tools to analyze air pollution. I should add that, without a great deal of attention from economists or environmentalists, the fifties and sixties were probably better than the thirties and forties in terms of air pollution. The reason is that the use of coal to heat buildings declined after World War II. My mother, as a proper young legal secretary in the thirties, wore white gloves on her way to work. She told me that she needed two pairs of clean gloves each day. The first pair would be so dirty after exposure to the dusty air, that she would wear a second pair on the way home.