by David DeKok
Was it meant to refer to the water they drank that year? Or was it nothing more than a drinking song? Isabel Dolbier Emerson, a member of the Class of 1903, preserved the song lyrics in her scrapbook and caught the irony, intentional or not.
Chapter 14
The Man Who Saved
Cornell University
Even before the Ithaca epidemic was over, the financial toll on Cornell students unlucky enough to be attacked by typhoid was obvious. The same was true for Ithaca residents who were not students, but for now let us look at the situation of the young men and women at Cornell. Health insurance was rare to nonexistent in America in 1903, and if a student did not have wealthy parents, paying typhoid bills from hospitals, doctors, nurses, and pharmacies was a crushing burden. They were victims of a crime, but still they had to pay.
Warren S. Barlow, a student from Marcellus, New York, faced bills of $573.12 for his typhoid case, a little more than the average $543 in wages earned by a steadily employed workingman in a year at that time, and considerably more than the approximately $400 that four years of Cornell tuition then cost. Bills of that size were far from unusual. Howard C. Smith, a junior from Texas, spent six weeks in a private hospital in Ithaca and was delirious for much of that time. He was presented with bills for $555.00 upon discharge. A former member of the Cornell cross-country team, Smith was so weak that he could not walk a mile without stopping to rest.1
Letitia R. Odell, of Erie, Pennsylvania, who had borrowed much of her tuition money and then enrolled in Cornell as a freshman after ten years of teaching high school math and German, found herself deeply in debt after she recovered from typhoid. One of the two nurses who had provided her day and night care, Mrs. D. D. Hammond, wrote to President Schurman seeking relief, noting that the university was paying to bring in nurses from other cities to work in the Cornell Infirmary. She said some of Odell’s friends had raised twenty or thirty dollars to give to her, but Hammond doubted it would cover more than a small fraction of the total. A professor at the University of Chicago Law School who knew Odell also wrote to Schurman asking that he arrange for her to be helped as a deserving charity case.2
More than eight hundred students gathered on March 27 to consider how to help their fellows left destitute by typhoid. Many ill students had exhausted their savings and still owed much more. They had planned on working their way through college but were now too physically weak to work. Some had little clothing left to wear. “They cannot pay their medical expenses, some of them cannot even get home to recuperate. We who have not been sick and who are in more fortunate surroundings can, with difficulty, perhaps, realize the situation of the students now needing assistance,” the Cornell Daily Sun wrote in an editorial. At the March 27 meeting, the Students’ Hospital Fund collected $178.50 in cash and $521.50 in pledges. But as welcome as the donations were, they covered only a tiny fraction of the unpaid student bills.3
Schurman had reason to worry about parental anger, especially if their son or daughter had died. Commander Edward L. Prime, a Navy officer from Huntington, New York, was at sea with the Pacific Squadron when his son and only child, Edward, died on February 15. His son’s case appears to have been botched from the get-go. A physician at the Cornell Infirmary first diagnosed his disease as tonsillitis, then as paracolon fever, an imprecise, catchall diagnosis used by physicians who weren’t sure their patient had typhoid. But it was typhoid. Edward’s mother didn’t receive any official notice from Cornell that her son was ill but finally heard about it from an Ithaca friend. She arrived in time to bring Edward’s body home. Commander Prime received word of his son’s death only when the fleet reached Honolulu eight days later. On March 11, finally back home on Long Island, Prime sent a bitter letter to Schurman, who responded by sending Thomas F. Crane, dean of the university faculty and Edward Bailey, an alumnus who knew Prime, to meet with him on March 18 at the Hoffman House hotel at Madison Square in New York City.
Commander Prime arrived at the meeting with guns blazing, despite being accompanied by a minister, and told Crane he meant every word in his letter to Schurman. “His attitude was that of the Centurion [in the Bible] who told men to go and they went,” Crane wrote to Schurman. “He referred everything to the standards of the quarterdeck and felt that the university, having received students, was bound to look out for their health and to supervise even their boardinghouses.” Crane was relieved that Prime did not bring up the controversial Cornell Infirmary, where his son died, or “the asserted connection of the university and the water company.” He did not think he had changed Prime’s mind, and indeed he had not. Nor was Prime the only angry parent.
Crane traveled by train to New York the previous day with a Mr. Gilbert, who was taking his typhoid-stricken son, Harold A. Gilbert, home to Brooklyn. To Crane’s shock, Gilbert was nearly as angry as Commander Prime. “Mr. Gilbert seemed to think that the university was a stock company and managed for the pecuniary benefit of the trustees,” Crane wrote in despair. “If an intelligent businessman can entertain such notions as he did of the purpose and management of the university, it seems hopeless to attempt to enlighten the general public.” Told that Cornell University had already spent $12,000 on student care and other epidemic expenses, Gilbert was politely incredulous. But by the time the train reached Hoboken, Crane wrote, Gilbert had come around and seemed to understand the position of the university. Or perhaps he simply agreed with Crane to be left in peace at the end of a long train ride.4
Left unchecked, there is no telling where parental anger over their sick children might have led. Lawsuits over dirty water were rare in 1903 because the courts made them difficult, but they were not unknown. But before that anger could boil over, one of the world’s wealthiest men came to Cornell University’s rescue. One of the more remarkable episodes in the Ithaca epidemic story was the decision by Andrew Carnegie, a member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees since 1890, to pay or reimburse $86,000 in typhoid medical bills for 381 Cornell students, living or dead, in addition to the $18,000 to 20,000 in 1903 money that he donated for the campus water filtration plant.
Carnegie only rarely attended Board of Trustees meetings in Ithaca and had previously rebuffed Cornell University in the mid-1890s when it sought a major philanthropic gift, despite assiduous courting by Andrew Dickson White and Jacob Gould Schurman. The situation was different now, different because he had been showered with untold riches when he sold his steel company to J. P. Morgan in 1901 for inclusion in the new U.S. Steel. He now was a full-time philanthropist and peace activist. Carnegie donated public libraries to cities and small towns across America. In February, he had announced plans to fund construction of a grand “Peace Palace” in the Netherlands to house the new Permanent Court of Arbitration created by the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. He and President Schurman were one in their opposition to the U.S. war against the Philippine rebels.
But Carnegie also provided charity on occasion to individuals who were down on their luck. In the same month the Peace Palace was announced, Carnegie bestowed a $500 check and a $500 annuity on Samuel Nicholls of Kenesaw, Nebraska, whom he had befriended on the ship when he first came to America from Scotland in 1848. Nicholls had applied to Carnegie for assistance several years earlier but heard nothing back until the check arrived.5
The unanswered question is whether Carnegie’s action was specifically done to head off more angry parents like Commander Prime. Available documents do not suggest this was the motive behind the decision, but that does not completely settle the matter. Prime, incidentally, in another angry letter to Schurman nearly three years after his son’s death, called Carnegie’s offer “blood money” and “a sop to keep my mouth shut.” It is quite possible that Carnegie had more than one motive for offering to pay the student medical bills: a desire to help the students, but also to help Cornell University out of a jam.
The students’ financial problems were driven home
to Carnegie by a letter in late March from George G. Cotton of Syracuse, New York, the same parent who had written to Schurman twelve days earlier about his son’s typhoid and that of another student, Warren Barlow. Paying his son’s medical bills would be tough, Cotton wrote to Carnegie, but he thought he could do it. “But I am of the opinion [emphasis in original] that there are many of those who . . . will be seriously distressed to pay their expenses, let alone to provide money for the extra time it will take them to make up,” Cotton wrote. He told Carnegie that in addition to paying for the new campus filtration plant, he ought to consider helping Cornell students left destitute by typhoid. “A sum of money placed in the hand of President Schurman,” Cotton wrote, “might relieve many a case of actual distress.” He mentioned Warren Barlow, who had been hospitalized for four weeks, survived hemorrhages, and needed special nurses in constant attendance. His father was superintendent at a livestock farm in South Onondaga, New York, and didn’t make much money. For Barlow’s father, Cotton wrote, it would be “hard sledding for some time.”6
Was this all a setup? Are we too cynical if we wonder how Cotton knew Carnegie well enough to send such a chatty, personal letter? He was a mid-level executive in charge of worker training for the Solvay Process Company, a chemical manufacturer in Solvay, New York, and not of Carnegie’s social rank. The philanthropist’s only known connection with the town of Solvay was a $10,000 grant to build a public library, which was announced on January 14, 1903. Frederick Warren, president of the Solvay Process Company, was another big donor to the library and most likely would have been the company executive to have had dealings, if any, with Carnegie. Did Schurman put Cotton up to it? We don’t know, but in any case Carnegie took the hint. He wrote on the back of Cotton’s letter, “Dear President, Should be glad to relieve necessitous cases of this kind if any, A.C.,” and sent it to Schurman.
Carnegie certainly knew the horror of typhoid. He nearly died of the disease in 1886 at his home in Cresson, Pennsylvania. During his convalescence, he lost first his brother and then his mother, suffering a relapse upon hearing of the former’s death. When his mother died, his caregivers kept the news from him, even lowering Margaret Carnegie’s coffin out a window so he would not see it pass his bedroom door. Five years later, his wife, Louise, suffered a severe attack of typhoid and a long convalescence that left him shaken and scared. Even one of the wealthiest men in the world had no defense against typhoid.7 So perhaps it is not so surprising that Carnegie chose to become the health insurer of last resort for the students of Cornell University. Still, questions linger.
Schurman wrote back to Carnegie on April 1 to thank him for the “beautiful and most helpful act of beneficence you propose.” He promised to carefully investigate the finances of the ill students, in Ithaca and elsewhere, and let him know the findings. Meanwhile, Schurman took Carnegie’s offer to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, which accepted it with thanks on April 6. News of Carnegie’s offer broke in the New York Sun the following day, and requests for aid from parents and students poured in. Students—or their parents, if the student was deceased—were notified by letter to send Schurman an itemized statement of expenses related to their illness. Carnegie asked that donations or pledges to the Students’ Hospital Fund be returned to those who gave them, which suggested that the university might have been embarrassed by the student action on the medical bills. Carnegie instructed his bankers to turn over an initial $59,000 to the university on April 25.8
Cornell students on May 8 adopted a resolution thanking Carnegie for helping them. “We wish to express to Mr. Carnegie our deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for the thoughtful and noble gift to those of our number who were stricken with the fever, a gift which enabled many of them to continue their work in the university, and has lifted a heavy burden from scores of others.”9 And students being students, the wags on the Cornellian staff came up with a bit of verse, “The ABC of Cornell,” expressing the same sentiment in more vulgar language:
A is Andy of Pittsburgh fame;
Carnegie is his other name.
To cure us of financial ills
He paid up all our fever bills.
The letters sent to Schurman requesting help from Carnegie provide an often raw and searing look at the impact of the epidemic on students and their families. Many writers struggled with accepting the billionaire’s money, but ultimately nearly all did. Homer S. Sackett, a student who admitted that his father “is a poor man,” opened his letter to Schurman by telling the Cornell president how the “spirit of independence and a sense of right” had battled within him:
At first, the independent spirit had resolved me not to send in any bills incurred during my late sickness, but later, after due consideration of the question, and after consultation with my father, I have decided, in as much as my father is a poor man and, as I am helping myself through college to a great extent, to avail myself of Mr. Carnegie’s most generous offer.10
Parents often argued their moral worthiness for assistance, offering proof that they were not poor managers of their money but rather good people in an impossible situation. Hannah Spencer, mother of Charlotte Elizabeth Spencer, the second Cornell student to die of typhoid, laid out her life story, and an interesting story it was for a woman of her day. She told Schurman how she worked as a young woman to get her father out of debt from a business failure, becoming a teacher at age fifteen and turning over her money to her father after sleeping with it under her pillow for a night. She attended Alfred University in Alfred, New York, married a farmer, and had six children, five boys and a girl, Charlotte. They had a successful farm, of which she was the formal half-owner. Her goal was to put her children through college and she did, even cosigning student loans for them despite the fact that her husband “did not see the necessity for much school.” Her youngest boy, Alfred, was at Yale, winning scholarships for his tuition and waiting tables for his board, and Charlotte was in her second year at Cornell when her death from typhoid made all her mother’s hard work seem like a cosmic bad joke. Her husband, she wrote to Schurman, placed the blame for Charlotte’s death on her, saying, “If [you] had not been so anxious for the children to go to school she would be living now.”11
Jarvis A. Wood, the Philadelphia advertising executive whose son, Graham, was one of the last Cornell students to die in the epidemic, expressed deep gratitude to Carnegie in his letters to Schurman. He acknowledged that the medical and funeral expenses were a burden but politely rejected any help. “I would not like to do without the satisfaction of paying these last expenses of my boy, and yet I consider Mr. Carnegie’s spirit in this matter most beautiful. He seems to me by this act to say that the Alma Mater will go beyond what has hitherto been known, and will do this toward carrying the burden and allaying the grief for those of her sons who have prematurely fallen.”12
The praise for Carnegie was accompanied by the occasional skeptical note, such as this editorial in the Oakland Tribune in California:
The typhoid epidemic at Cornell University has one compensating feature. It has enabled Andrew Carnegie to announce that he will pay the medical expenses of all the students who contracted the disease including those who died. The latter can fully appreciate Mr. Carnegie’s kindness. It is a pity a man with such beneficent inclinations must accompany his good deeds with circus poster advertising. The old adage says, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” but Mr. Carnegie compels you to look. He cannot give a ragged urchin a nickel without having the pipes swirl in his honor. But there are spots on the sun, even.13
Carnegie’s offer did not extend to Ithaca residents who were not Cornell students. The financial impact on them was no less than on the students, and many families delayed payment to their physicians. The problem was such that the Ithaca Daily News published an editorial, “Pay the Doctor Bills,” on May 20 urging all Ithaca residents to do the right thing:
Rememb
er how hard he worked, how earnestly he threw himself into the task of saving those who had not yet been stricken and of cleansing the home of the dangers which lurked all about. If you do not know from your own experience that people watched eagerly for his mandates and observed them carefully, frightened lest failure to obey should make conditions worse, take the word of all who were engaged in that work. The people needed help.14
Two years after the epidemic, the Cornell University Executive Committee took up the case of Bernard Reilly, an employee of the university, apparently of the grounds crew, who was killed in an accident on the job. Reilly’s family, who lived at 129 Hazen St., was left deeply in debt by medical bills and funeral expenses from his injury and death. They still had unpaid medical bills from the typhoid epidemic, when Reilly and two members of his family were stricken with the fever. The Executive Committee did not accept any responsibility for the accident—few employers did before state workers’ compensation laws began being adopted in the second decade of the twentieth century—but agreed to pay $405 to Reilly’s family, “in recognition of his long and faithful service,” to defray his medical expenses, both from the injury and the typhoid epidemic.15
Remarkably, there is no record of any lawsuits seeking damages for the epidemic being filed in Tompkins County, New York, the most likely venue for any such lawsuits. Cornell families who had the means to sue were perhaps influenced by Carnegie’s generosity to quiet their anger, and for many Ithaca residents, a lawsuit was simply beyond their means in an era before the widespread use of the contingency fee method of financing litigation. People just didn’t sue as much back then, even if they had been harmed beyond all reason. Or perhaps they feared retaliation from the people who controlled their livelihoods if they sued William T. Morris.
