The Villain Behind America’s Public-Restroom Calamity

Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s name has long epitomized municipal corruption and even electoral fraud, with President John F. Kennedy as the rumored beneficiary. After his death, some theorized that his machine politics wasn’t that bad. But now Bob Greene has inadvertently restored Daley to the ranks of the truly infamous—those who inflict immense suffering on humanity for frivolous reasons—by revealing that he abolished Chicago’s for-pay toilets, triggering their elimination nationwide (“When Chicago Flushed the Toilet Tax,” op-ed, April 24). Predictably, the result wasn’t free toilets, but no toilets, an absence that tortures uncounted numbers of Americans every day.

The blessed invention of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, pay toilets allowed citizens of expanding Rome to relieve themselves in a clean, enclosed space for one obolus, a bit of stamped copper, but enough to pay for a cleaner after the treasury’s take. Pecunia non olet, money does not stink, was his answer when a senator ridiculed him for accepting malodorous revenues.