Epidemic

by David DeKok

  Chapter 15

  Retribution

  William T. Morris let Thomas W. Summers be the public face of Ithaca Water Works during the epidemic, so the burning question in Ithaca in the late spring of 1903 was less what to do about him than what to do about the water company. But city officials and public water advocates had no illusions about who was in charge. Can any man responsible for the deaths of people, the deaths of children, expect no retribution? After the Ithaca epidemic, though, the anger flowed in both directions.

  The deal announced by President Schurman on February 18 for Morris to build a filtration plant for Ithaca in exchange for higher water rates explicitly authorized the city to hold another referendum on creating its own water system, an act that implied taking over Ithaca Water Works by condemnation. Schurman didn’t much care what happened to Morris, blaming his incompetent management for the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the city and university. He wanted to be able to tell parents that their children would have safe water to drink when they arrived in Ithaca for the fall semester in 1903.

  Ithaca Common Council members acted quickly to schedule the referendum for March 2. This time there would be no funny business as there was in the 1902 referendum, no landlord agents casting ten to thirty-seven votes because the rules said people could vote as many times as the number of properties they owned and didn’t have to go in person. It was widely believed that the landlord agents had given Morris his margin of victory in 1902.1 And unlike last time, women who were taxpayers would be allowed to vote in the referendum.

  There were things that had influenced the voters in 1902 that would not be repeated this time. Francis Miles Finch, respected dean of the Cornell Law School (but more importantly, an officer of Ithaca Trust Company, which had financed Morris’s acquisition of the gas and water companies from the Tremans), had publicly denounced a municipal takeover as “socialism.” Morris had hired “opposition talkers” to buttonhole voters and urge them to vote against a takeover and had paid for carriages to haul his supporters to the polls. He won the 1902 referendum, 718 to 583.

  During the run-up to the new referendum on March 2, 1903, the Ithaca Daily News accused Morris of again trying to influence the outcome of voting, but he protested in a letter to the Ithaca Daily Journal that he had not hired canvassers and would stay neutral in the campaign. Nevertheless, Morris used the letter to release information aimed at disarming some of his most vocal critics, namely those who feared the ninety-foot dam he was building on Six Mile Creek, the one they suspected would unleash a Johnstown-like flood upon Ithaca if it broke. He said that “in deference to public opinion and the recommendation of Dr. Daniel Lewis, Commissioner of Health of the State of New York,” he had abandoned the dam and would instead construct a steam-powered pump to lift water up to East Hill “and other high levels.” That may have been a reference to the Cornell Heights real estate development being promoted by his friends Charles H. Blood and Jared Treman Newman. Trouble is, none of this was true, but the facts would come out only after the election.2

  Taking no chances this time, public water advocates in Ithaca organized under the banner of the “Committee of 100” and pushed hard for a “yes” vote. They did not simply assume the rightness of their cause would carry the day against entrenched supporters of the water company. Public attitudes had shifted markedly, though, in the wake of the epidemic, and a poll taken by the Ithaca Business Men’s Association a few days before the election predicted a five-to-one victory margin for municipal water.

  This may have been one of the first elections in New York State open to women voters who were taxpayers, a right not granted statewide in all elections until 1917. Women had borne the brunt of caring for typhoid victims, and both Ithaca newspapers made much of their participation in the referendum. The Daily News commented on how early in the afternoon, “many women taxpayers” were brought to the Ithaca police station in carriages, got out, and went inside to cast their votes. The Ithaca Daily Journal observed that the polling place was quieter than usual, which it attributed to the presence of women voters. Several voters of both sexes who were well on in years and feeble were helped to the ballot box to cast their votes. In the end, Ithaca’s anger turned into 1,330 votes—oddly, almost the same number as had typhoid—in favor of the city owning its own water system. Just thirty voters were opposed. The total number of taxpayers who could vote was about 2,600, so turnout was just over 50 percent. “The people have achieved a great victory and everyone who has the welfare of the city at heart can well rejoice over the result,” the Daily News exulted in an editorial.3

  In early February, before the vote, Ithaca Business Men’s Association had released a new proposal for the city to take over the water company, prompting an appeal from President Schurman to hold off until the cause of the epidemic was determined. As the epidemic progressed, though, he became obsessed with obtaining clean water for students by the start of the fall semester. Schurman told one correspondent that while he preferred to drink pure artesian water, he doubted any water source other than Six Mile Creek was practical for Ithaca. In any case, he did not believe artesian water in sufficient volume could be obtained by September 1. Now, in the wake of the vote, he told Henry R. Ickelheimer that while there might be “difficulties” between the city and Ithaca Water Works, he had no doubt the former would eventually take over the latter, given the “relentless campaign” pursued by the public water advocates. If in the “chaotic interval,” Ithaca Water Works could supply pure water, perhaps with the help of the Board of Trustees, “the university will at least be safe,” Schurman wrote.4

  For the true believers among the public water revolutionaries, the citizens of Ithaca had come out of the wilderness and reached the promised land. Many of them, including publisher Duncan Campbell Lee, believed that vast supplies of pure artesian water—pockets of groundwater trapped under pressure—lay beneath Ithaca and could be quickly tapped and connected to the existing water system. “The present poisonous supply can be shut off, the mains and pipes of the city can be cleansed by disinfectants, and the most delicious, wholesome, and pure water can be supplied the city,” the Ithaca Daily News wrote in an editorial “Even the thought of it alone is refreshing.”

  Much artesian water lay deep beneath Ithaca, trapped in ancient gravel deposits and replenished by the streams plunging down from the hills around Cayuga Lake as well as by rainwater. Illston Artesian Water Company, which had done a brisk business supplying jugs of clean artesian water during the epidemic, drew from this source. The company’s well yielded 300,000 gallons per day. Robert H. Thurston, dean of the mechanical engineering faculty at Cornell, told Schurman that all the signs pointed to a bountiful supply.5 The question was whether there was enough to supply a growing city, and whether it could be tapped quickly enough to meet Schurman’s September 1 deadline for clean water. The Cornell president obviously didn’t think so.

  But assuming there was enough artesian water, what if Ithaca Water Works resisted an immediate surrender of its mains? The network of mains would be horribly expensive to duplicate, and the city could not realistically expect to operate its own water system without them. One of the more radical members of the Committee of 100, Marcus E. Calkins, president of the Cayuga Lake Cement Company, advocated confiscation of the water mains if necessary. That is what any large corporation would do, Calkins said—act first and fight it out in court later. Seeking to halt this Jacobin fervor, the Ithaca Daily Journal rejoined, “Let us consider this matter calmly. Wild talk of seizing the Water Works Company’s plant by force only does us injury.”6

  Before the city of Ithaca could set up a municipal water company, with or without the Ithaca Water Works system, it needed a bill passed by the New York State Legislature to allow it to do so. A twelve-member committee led by city attorney Randolph Horton, whose members came from Common Council, the Board of Health, the Committee of 100, and Cornell University, began d
rafting a bill. Among the members were Alderman Charles C. Howell, whose five-year-old daughter, Esther, had died of typhoid on February 13, and Jared Treman Newman, a member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees and Executive Committee and codeveloper of Cornell Heights. Newman and his partner, Charles H. Blood, needed the water that would rise behind the Six Mile Creek dam to serve lot buyers in the new development.

  Newman reported back to Schurman on March 4 that the first meeting of the committee had been contentious, especially when he argued for naming the members of the new Water Board in the legislation, rather than giving the Democratic mayor George W. Miller the power to appoint them. He was also opposed to giving the Water Board “unlimited powers without check,” although he never explained publicly what he meant by that. The bill as drawn up by Horton gave the Water Board the power to acquire and condemn property, notably the property of Ithaca Water Works, and to incur almost unlimited debt to do so. Some committee members believed Newman was trying to kill the bill entirely for Cornell University. “It required a very free use of my conciliatory ‘oil can’ to restore my status as a persona grata to act with the [committee] at all,” he wrote to Schurman.

  The committee agreed to defer action on the draft bill until the following night, by which time Samuel D. Halliday, chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees and its Executive Committee, was expected to return. Newman proposed a compromise he hoped would ensure that Cornell students had clean water to drink by September 1. “It eliminates the water company as a factor in the situation, and will allay the intense feeling that prevails in respect to anything affecting the company and which prevents dispassionate and disinterested consideration of what is best for the whole city,” he wrote.7 The compromise, hammered out after Halliday’s return, provided the mayor with the power to appoint members of the Water Board with Common Council consent, set limits on spending, and most importantly, did not permit the Water Board to mount an immediate takeover of Ithaca Water Works’ facilities. The board would first have to negotiate a price with Ithaca Water Works and Morris, but if that effort failed, it could resort to condemnation.

  In a letter to Schurman, Newman credited Halliday for the outcome, saying that his “uncompromising vigorous policy” and “occasional sledge-hammer blows” had made clear to the rest of the committee the sort of resistance they would face from Cornell University and Ithaca Water Works if the legislation was not modified. He wrote that some of the “rabid artesian men” were disconsolate and had accused the rest of the committee with “absolute surrender.”8

  Now the proposed bill went to state senator Edwin Stewart of Ithaca, who needed little encouragement to run with it. His wife lay seriously ill with typhoid, but he continued to commute to Albany to do his job. Stewart had introduced legislation on February 5 to give the state health commissioner new powers to regulate discharges of sewage and other waste into public waterways, requiring revocable permits and disclosure of what was being discharged. The commissioner was also given authority to order municipalities to improve sanitary facilities, even if it meant raising taxes, and authority to regulate construction of new water and sewerage facilities.9 He introduced the Ithaca Water Board bill on March 11, and it was signed into law on April 15 by Governor Benjamin Odell, who himself was disturbed by the relentless severity of the Ithaca epidemic.

  Buried in the details of the legislation was a startling revelation: the Six Mile Creek dam was back, albeit reduced in height from ninety feet to thirty feet, “for the use of the said filtration plant.” The water company’s engineers believed that at least a small dam was necessary if the filtration plant was to work properly. And what of the February 26 letter from Morris to the Ithaca Daily Journal, the one in which he said he was bowing to public opinion and abandoning the dam? Gardner S. Williams, the architect of the dam, testified in 1906 that the reduction in height was done only because of the passage of the Water Board bill and “not because of public opposition.”10 It is hard to view the letter as other than willful prevarication aimed at influencing the election, but in fairness to Morris, perhaps the need for a dam and reservoir only became evident when he began looking seriously at what a filtration plant would entail.

  Although the original plan that Schurman had outlined to Ithaca Common Council called for the university to loan Ithaca Water Works $150,000, the actual cost of the filtration plant turned out to be only about $80,000. Because the start of construction could not be delayed until Ithaca Water Works obtained financing through a bond sale, at least not if the filtration plant was to be online by September 1, Morris approached the Cornell Board of Trustees on April 15 seeking a short-term, $40,000 loan carrying his personal guarantee. The other $40,000 would be loaned by “certain financial interests in Ithaca.” Who that was is unknown. Morris complained in his letter to the board that his plans for financing extensions and improvements to the water system had been upset by “the recent epidemic,” as well as “this agitation for municipal ownership.”11

  Four days later, the trustees held their noses and approved the loan. The university demanded $70,000 in bonds of Ithaca Water Works’ parent company, Ithaca Light & Water Company, as security. Eleven board members voted for the loan, among them Charles E. Treman, back in town now that the epidemic was all but over. George R. Williams, Duncan Campbell Lee’s father-in-law, and Alonzo B. Cornell, a son of the university founder, voted against it, and there was one abstention. No one at the meeting was under any illusion that this was a quality investment. The minutes noted:

  It is understood by every member present that the quality and security of this loan are not in accordance with our university standards of investments, but is deemed necessary and warranted by the existing exigencies of the local sanitary situation, and in the interest of this university.12

  With the money in hand, work on the dam and filtration plant began in earnest. This time nearly 250 Italian workers were on the job, and we can only assume sanitation was enforced this time. No further issue in that regard seems to have arisen. In deference to Schurman’s desires, Morris was building a mechanical filtration plant, which included a sand filter but added a coagulant chemical, aluminum sulfate, to speed up the filtration process. The Cornell president believed a mechanical filter could be built more swiftly than a traditional sand filter, and nothing could stand in the way of having clean water available by September 1. Morris hired Allen Hazen, the foremost American authority on water filtration who had designed the filtration plant at Albany, to design the Ithaca facility.13

  Almost in a parallel universe, the Ithaca Water Board pressed forward with its righteous cause of bringing clean artesian water to the city. The Committee of 100 hired Cornelius Vermeule, a prominent consulting engineer from New York City who specialized in water system design, to investigate the prospects. He tramped the valleys of Fall Creek and Cascadilla Creek from Ithaca to Dryden and Freeville, studying the geology and examining existing artesian wells. What he saw amazed him, especially the Illston well, where the underground pressure was such that it pushed water thirty feet above the ground in a tube and the volume was tremendous. “I have seen no region in my experience which is more promising as a field for artesian wells than this about Ithaca,” Vermeule wrote in a letter to the Committee of 100. “This water could be delivered by gravity into the highest reservoir in Ithaca, namely the one on the grounds of Cornell University.”14

  The battle was soon joined. On April 28, Mayor George Miller, acting on behalf of the Water Board, demanded that Morris open the books of Ithaca Water Works so the Water Board could obtain the information it needed to carry out a purchase of the water system. In addition, Miller directed Morris to either attend the next meeting of the Water Board to answer questions, including the price he wanted for the system, or send a knowledgeable representative.

  Morris arrived at the May 5 meeting with his posse, Ebenezer M. Treman, Thomas W. Summers, and Mynderse Van Cleef, and told
the Water Board that if it wanted to avoid a lengthy court fight, it would have to pay $650,000 for the water system. It was an eye-popping price for a company Morris had owned for just over seventeen months. He had paid the Tremans $100,000 and assumed $250,000 in existing debt, so his sale price represented an 85 percent premium over what he had paid for the company originally. It was hard to justify on business grounds, let alone moral ones: His incompetent management of the company had unleashed a catastrophe that killed more than eighty-two people and sickened hundreds more. We can only imagine the stunned anger that must have greeted his demand. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, the board met privately and concluded that it would need to hire experts to examine the water company from top to bottom to determine what it was really worth.15 A court fight seemed inevitable.

  In the meantime, work on the dam and filtration plant continued day and night. The Ithaca Daily News speculated that Morris was trying to finish them before the Ithaca Water Board could bring artesian water online, forcing the city to buy both the dam and filtration plant. “Sections of the great dam about 12 feet high and 20 feet long have been built from both sides,” the Daily News reported. “The work of installing the five-foot outlet pipe and the mains in the section on the north side of the creek has been finished, and the creek channel has been turned so that all the water is now running through the outlet pipe.” It seemed the hated dam and filtration plant would be finished in no time, and the reaction among public water advocates was dark anger.

  At the council meeting on May 20, Alderman Charles C. Howell, “who was greatly agitated,” according to the Ithaca Daily Journal, raged against the dam, the dam that had claimed his five-year-old daughter Esther’s life by bringing typhoid to Ithaca. He did not mention her that night—everyone knew his sorrow—but cast his opposition as a safety issue, saying that Cornelius Vermeule, the engineer hired by the Committee of 100, had told him the sand used in the concrete was not the proper kind and the concrete itself had not been mixed properly. “Behind this structure will lie a quantity of water so great that it would if released cause damage beyond the conception of the people of Ithaca, and a probable loss of life,” Howell said angrily, demanding that council do something to stop the dam. A week later, council directed city attorney Randolph Horton to seek an injunction to stop construction. But the effort went nowhere, and work on the dam continued.16