Chekhov’s Corner. This is a pretty place: visions of smokestacks and factories in 1910 and 2010.

Postcards were important means of communication in the early 1900s among family and friends in the rural USA. The images and written words can offer insights into the attitudes and beliefs of the day. One hundred years ago, the comment 'this is a pretty place' was written on a postcard with the image of the largest tin plate manufacturing factory at the time. We examined this comment in the context of public perceptions in 1910 and what we now know of the impacts of 'the four Ps' of industrialization on public health: politics, population, poverty and pollution.