by David DeKok
Chapter 3: Conflict of Interest
1.Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance, 294.
2.“For New Telephone Lines: Inter-Ocean Company to Be a Long Distance Branch of Connecting Company,” New York Times, June 29, 1901. The company changed hands several times over the years and eventually became part of the International Telephone & Telegraph Company, or ITT, in 1951.
3.Naomi R. Lamoreaux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1; Noyes, 286–87; James Grant, Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending in America from the Civil War to Michael Milken (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), 18.
4.Water case transcript, August 3, 1906, Vol. 21, p. 38.
5.Water case transcript, August 3, 1906, Vol. 21, p. 23.
6.Water case transcript, August 3, 1906, Vol. 21, pp. 21, 25–26.
7.“Fraternity House Burned: Students Leaped from the Third Story Windows,” Ithaca Daily Journal, January 29, 1900; “East Hill Aroused: The Question of Ampler Fire Protection Discussed,” Ithaca Daily Journal, January 30, 1900; “Death of a Student: J. P. Lonergan’s Injuries Prove Fatal,” Ithaca Daily Journal, January 31, 1900.
8.“Fire Protection,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 8, 1900.
9.“Report of the Finance Committee of the Common Council of the City of Ithaca Upon Propositions of the Ithaca Water Works Co. to Sell Their Plant or Contract to Supply the City for a Long Term of Years” (Ithaca, N.Y., February 21, 1900), 4.
10.Ibid., 21.
11.John W. Bush to Mynderse Van Cleef, December 2, 1901, MVC.
12.William Irwin, The New Niagara: Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls, 1776–1917 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press), 99.
13. “Two Companies Consolidated: Will Be Known as the Niagara Falls Gas & Electric Light Company,” Niagara Falls Gazette, January 3, 1900.
14.“To Tap the Trunk Sewer: Application for Permission to Do So Will Be Made to the Council Tonight by Gas and Electric Company,” Niagara Falls Gazette, January 29, 1900; “Novel Plan for Municipal Plant: Sewage Used to Turn Turbines Which Will Generate Power,” Buffalo Sunday Times, February 4, 1900.
15. Morris to Van Cleef, August 3, 1901, MVC.
16.“Pan-American Closes: Total of Eight Million People Saw Big Show in Buffalo,” Ithaca Daily News, November 4, 1901.
17.“Ithaca Did Full Share for Pan-Am: Number Who Went to Buffalo Larger than Its Population,” Ithaca Daily News, November 4, 1901.
18.Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901. Found in collection #2920, Division of Rare and Manuscripts Collection, Cornell University Library.
19.Isabel Dolbier Emerson scrapbook, Collection #37/5/2161, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
20.Bush to Van Cleef, June 28, 1901, MVC; “Rites for Mrs. Bush: Prominent Buffalo Club Woman Passes Away at 86,” Buffalo News, November 9, 1933.
21.McKinley’s physicians billed Congress nearly $100,000 for their losing effort to save the president, which press reports said was almost twice the amount billed by physicians attending the mortally wounded President Garfield twenty years earlier. “M’Kinley’s Doctor Bill Big,” Ithaca Daily News, October 12, 1901.
22.“Opening of Cornell: President J. G. Schurman Talks to the Students About Anarchy,” New York Times, September 28, 1901.
23.David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), 360.
24Ibid., 596–601.
25.“A Great Disaster: Forty-eight of Our Soldiers Fall in a Philippine Battle,” Ithaca Daily News, September 30, 1901; “Schurman Speaks on the Philippines,” Ithaca Daily News, January 11, 1902; “President Schurman Makes Reply to Opponents of Free Speech,” Ithaca Daily News, January 27, 1902; “Our Humane War,” Ithaca Daily News, April 9, 1902.
26.Bush to Van Cleef, October 7, 1901, MVC.
27.Morris to Van Cleef, October 2, 1901, MVC.
28.Solomon Stanwood Menken Scrapbook, 1890–1916, #37/5/2534, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
29.Letter, Morris to Van Cleef, October 2, 1901, MVC.
30.The amount of Ithaca Light & Water Company bonds purchased by Cornell University came to light between February 18 and 21, 1903, in articles in the Cornell Daily Sun, New York Sun, and New York Daily Tribune. Although he had ample opportunity to be heard, President Jacob Gould Schurman did not deny the accuracy of the $100,000 figure. In fact, both he and the Board of Trustees acknowledged owning “a comparatively small part of the company’s bonds” and saw nothing wrong with it.
31.“Statement of the Amount of Mortgages on the Property of the Ithaca Water Works Company,” circa 1905, MVC.
32.“Cornell Heights Historic District,” included on the City of Ithaca (N.Y.) municipal website, http://tinyurl.com/ye6tgtd (November 21, 2009).
33.“New Suburb Will Be Begun at Once: Syndicate Which Purchased Cornell Farm to Develop It,” Ithaca Daily News, November 20, 1901.
34.John W. Bush to Mynderse Van Cleef, November 13, 1901, MVC.
35.Bush to Van Cleef, December 2, 1901, MVC.
Chapter 4: Newsmen
1.“Foreign Capitalists Negotiating Purchase of Ithaca’s Waterworks,” Ithaca Daily News, October 31, 1901. Today’s reader might look askance at the wording of the headline, judging the Daily News to be a Marxist publication. But foreign meant “out of town,” and mainstream newspapers commonly used capitalists to refer to wealthy individuals who bought and sold companies. It had not yet acquired a political meaning.
2.“Sale Concluded: Ithaca Gas and Water Companies Change Ownership,” Ithaca Daily Journal, November 12, 1901.
3.James K. McGuire, The Democratic Party of the State of New York: A History of the Origin, Growth, and Achievements of the Democratic Party of the State of New York, Including a History of Tammany Hall and Its Relation to State Politics (New York: United States History Company, 1905), 391–95; “Duncan Campbell Lee,” The Shield 9 (March 1893): 5–8; “Cornell University,” New York Times, March 12, 1893.
4.“Brainard G. Smith, Herald’s Owner and Publisher, Dies,” Ridgewood (N.J.) Herald, December 12, 1930.
5.Duncan Campbell Lee to Jacob Gould Schurman, May 1, 1901, EC.
6.“Department of Elocution and Oratory, Course 23, Extemporaneous Speaking, 1897–98,” 14/13/2305, Duncan Campbell Lee Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
7.“Cornell Professor Enlists: Prof. Lee, Head of the Department of Oratory, Now a Recruit,” New York Times, July 22, 1898.
8.“Two Hundred and Third Regiment, Infantry,” New York in the Spanish-American War, 1898, Part of the Report of the Adjutant-General of the State for 1900, Volume III (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1900), 655–56.
9.New York in the Spanish-American War, 1898, Part of the Report of the Adjutant-General of the State for 1900, Volume I (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1900) 214–50. The date and cause of death of any soldier in a New York unit is included in this list.
10.Victor C. Vaughan, A Doctor’s Memories (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926), 389.
11.New York in the Spanish-American War, 1898, Vol. III, 737.
12.McGuire, The Democratic Party of the State of New York, 393.
13.Schurman to Lee, September 28, 1898, Letterbook, Vol. 6, p. 776, JGS. Schurman and Lee discuss the latter’s return to Ithaca, which Schurman says he confidently expects will not be later than October 15, 1898.
14.The New York Tribune, in a story about Duncan Campbell Lee on November 2, 1902, said his brief and lackluster military career became fodder for student verse, to wit: “Duke Lee is daily hoping some generous millionaire . . . Will listen to his pleadings and e
ndow for him a chair . . . Of military science, where Duncan may declaim . . . Of his sanguinary battle against the hordes of Spain . . . Giving frequent demonstrations how his famous battle went . . . With the murderous mosquito that dared invade his tent.” Lee may have encountered a few northern mosquitoes in his brief Army service, but not the malarial variety.
15.Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie, 544–45, 550.
16.Jacob Gould Schurman, Philippine Affairs: A Retrospect and Outlook (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), 1–2.
17.Samuel T. Williamson, Frank Gannett: A Biography (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940), 32. This was Gannett’s campaign biography when he sought the Republican nomination for president in 1940, losing to Wendell Willkie, a utility executive, who went on to lose to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. One must tread carefully with this book, which regrettably (along with a 1948 update) is almost the only source of information about Gannett’s early career. Scholars would feel more comfortable with Williamson’s book if there were alternative sources to check some of its more self-serving claims on behalf of his client, some of which are disprovable.
18.Ibid., 48–49.
19.Samuel T. Williamson, Imprint of a Publisher: The Story of Frank Gannett and His Independent Newspapers (New York: Robert H. McBride & Co., 1948), 70. This is essentially the same as Williamson’s 1940 campaign biography of Gannett and may have been published in anticipation of Gannett making another run for the Republican nomination for president that year. That didn’t happen.
20.“The News Circulation,” Ithaca Daily News, January 8, 1902; letter of reference, Duncan Campbell Lee to newspaper in Terre Haute, Indiana, May 15, 1903, Collection #1900, Frank E. Gannett and Caroline Werner Gannett Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
21.“Ice Trust and Tammany; State Convention Hastily Suppresses a Resolution,” New York Tribune, September 12, 1900.
22.Ibid.
23.David Hemenway, Prices and Choices: Microeconomic Vignettes, 3d ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), Chapter 19, “The Ice Trust,” 189–90.
24.Ibid., 191–93.
25.“Ice Trust and Tammany,” New York Tribune, September 12, 1900.
26.Hemenway, Prices and Choices, 193–94.
Chapter 5: The Dam
1.“Water Analyzed: Chemist Chamot Makes an Unfavorable Report,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 12, 1902. This article mentions that Chamot followed the American Public Health Association testing protocols; American Public Health Association, “Report of the Committee on Standard Methods of Water Analysis to the Laboratory Section of the American Public Health Association, 1897,” published in Journal of Infectious Disease, Supplement #1, May 1905, 11.
2.Lauby’s Cornell Chemical Recollections, March 1972, http://www.chem.cornell.edu/history/vignettes/LaubyChamot.htm; “Poison in Wall Papers: Remarkable Results of Analysis by Dr. Chamot of Cornell,” New York Times, March 14, 1899; “Girl Accused of Murder,” New York Times, October 19, 1902; “Chemist Declares Wells Dangerous: Instructor Chamot Says All in City Should Be Condemned,” Ithaca Daily News, November 27, 1901.
3.“City Water Supply: Wells Strongly Condemned by Professor Chamot,” Ithaca Daily Journal, November 27, 1901.
4.“Board of Health Plans Campaign: Center of City Must All Be Connected with Sewer Soon,” Ithaca Daily News, October 9, 1901; “Increase Sewer Capacity: Commission Will Likely Arrange Tomorrow Night for Laying Another Pipe into Lake,” Ithaca Daily News, January 29, 1902.
5.“City’s Condition Much Improved: Health Officer Hitchcock Reviews Work of Past Year,” Ithaca Daily News, December 12, 1901.
6.John W. Hill, a prominent evangelist for water filtration who in 1901 was designing filtration plants for the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, denounced the dilution theory in his book The Purification of Public Water Supplies (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1898), 16–17, 20–21.
7.The Ithaca Daily News provided a long account of the Ithaca Board of Health meeting in its November 27, 1901, issue. The Ithaca Daily Journal also covered the meeting and reported on it the following day. Both articles should be read to get the full flavor of what was said.
8.Report of the Geological Survey of the State of Ohio, Vol. VIII (Columbus, Ohio, January 1906), 181.
9.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, November 21, 1905, Vol. 5, 12–13.
10.Water case transcript, Vol. 5, 13–15, & Vol. 6, 162; Waterman Thomas Hewett, Cornell University: A History, Volume 2 (New York: The University Publishing Society, 1905), 338–39.
11.Helmi Raaksa, Finding Aid for Gardner Stewart Williams Papers, 1900–1945, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
12.Water case transcript, Vol. 5, 103.
13.Water case transcript, Vol. 5, 15.
14.Water case transcript, Vol. 5, 16, 48.
15.Amory Prescott Folwell, Water Supply Engineering: The Designing, Construction, and Maintenance of Water-Supply Systems, Both City and Irrigation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1900) 164–65; William T. Sedgwick, Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903), 246.
16.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, November 22, 1905, Vol. 6, 203–4, Vol. 8, 104.
17.Purification of the Washington Water Supply: An Inquiry Held by Direction of the United States Senate Committee on the District of Columbia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), 131.
18.Folwell, Water Supply Engineering, 2–3; Allen Hazen, The Filtration of Public Water Supplies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1895), preface to first edition, iii–iv.
19.Hill, The Purification of Public Water Supplies, 131.
20.James H. Fuertes. Water Filtration Works (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1901), 15.
21.Washington Water Supply, 22, 92; Folwell, Water Supply Engineering, 291; Whipple, Typhoid Fever, 240.
22.Hazen, The Filtration of Public Water Supplies, preface to first edition, iv.
23.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, November 21, 1905, Vol. 5, 20–21.
24.“Professor Williams’s Report,” Ithaca Daily Journal, January 28, 1902.
25.“Special Election: Taxpayers to Vote on Water Works Problem,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 6, 1902.
26.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, November 21, 1905, Vol. 5, 23; “Judge Finch’s Views: Strongly Opposed to Municipal Ownership,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 12, 1902; “Person Can Vote Once on Question: City Attorney Makes Ruling Which Will Govern Election,” Ithaca Daily News, February 23, 1903.
27.“Water Analyzed,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 12, 1902; American Public Health Association, 83. A book by Chamot and Harry W. Redfield, The Analysis of Water for Household and Municipal Purposes (Ithaca: Taylor & Carpenter, 1911) follows the AMHA protocols very closely; Hill, The Purification of Public Water Supplies, 24–25.
28.Water case transcript, Vol. 10, testimony of Thomas W. Summers, January 30, 1906, 50, 60–61.
29.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, Vol. 5, 22.
30.A Study of the Conditions Governing the Water Supply of Large Cities, a thesis presented to the College of Civil Engineering, Cornell University, by Herbert E. Fraleigh, for the degree of civil engineer, June 1902. Olin Library, Cornell University. Fraleigh’s thesis is also a useful compendium of what was taught about water filtration to Cornell engineering students at the time, and proves that the department was entirely up to date. Even the meeting in New York City in January 1901 to discuss water filtration for Washington, D.C., is mentioned. Williams knew what had to be done in Ithaca.
31.Invitation to hear Lord Kelvin, with handwritten note from George S. Sheppard that he attended with William T. Morris, Laura Hosie Treman, and Mary
Bott Treman, May 2, 1902, Oliver Sheppard Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; “Greatest Interest in Famous Visitor,” Ithaca Daily News, May 2, 1902; “Lord Kelvin: Royal Welcome Accorded Here Yesterday Afternoon,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 3, 1902; “Most Picturesque in all the World: That Is Lord Kelvin’s Opinion of Situation of University,” Ithaca Daily News, May 3, 1902; “The Cornell Yell,” Cornell Daily Sun, January 14, 1887.
32.Lord Kelvin’s coronation honors are mentioned in The Tribune Almanac and Political Register 1903 (New York: Tribune Associates), 44.
Chapter 6: Lives of the Students
1.Hendrik W. Van Loon, E. B. White, et al. Our Cornell (Ithaca: The Cayuga Press, 1939), 11–12.
2.Descendants of John Carlisle, Generation No. 4, http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/o/m/Tom—Bombaci-jr/GENE6-0004.html, accessed January 14, 2010.
3.“In Loving Remembrance: Tribute to Oliver G. Shumard,” Bethany Democrat, Bethany, Missouri, February 18, 1903.
4.“Death Ends Lengthy Career of Medical Missionary to India,” The Guardian, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, January 22, 1957. In addition to information on Dr. Zella Marie Clark’s life, the article provides details of the Clark siblings’ living arrangements at Cornell.
5.Time magazine assessed the Pulitzer Scholar program in its January 1, 1940, issue and pronounced it an overwhelming success based on interviews with 268 of the 366 living graduates.
6.“International Recognition for Arthur Dove, County Artist,” by Clyde M. Maffin, Ontario County historian, Canandaigua Messenger, Canandaigua, N.Y., December 5, 1967.
7.“Jarvis A. Wood Dead: Senior Member of Advertising Firm of N. W. Ayer & Son Was 71,” New York Times, April 10, 1925; Edd Applegate, Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 51; Ralph M. Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press), 98; Jarvis A. Wood to Jacob Gould Schurman, April 16, 1903, CUTP.
