Epidemic

by David DeKok

  13.Editorial, Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, April 16, 1903.

  14.“Pay the Doctor Bills,” Ithaca Daily News, May 20, 1903.

  15.Minutes of the Executive Committee of Cornell University, February 14, 1905, EC. New York was actually the first state to adopt a compulsory workers’ compensation law in 1910, but it was overturned as unconstitutional by the courts. The state then adopted a constitutional amendment and passed a new compulsory law in 1913. See, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/fishback.workers.compensation, accessed August 4, 2010. The purpose of workers’ compensation laws was to eliminate fault from the system. In return for the worker giving up his right to bring a lawsuit, the employer agreed to pay his medical expenses and about two-thirds of his wages or survivor benefits if he died.

  Chapter 15: Retribution

  1. “Person Can Vote Once on Question: City Attorney Makes Ruling Which Will Govern Election,” Ithaca Daily News, February 23, 1903.

  2.“Water Company’s Plans,” Ithaca Daily Journal, February 26, 1903.

  3.“Large Vote Cast for Water Works,” Ithaca Daily News, March 2, 1903; “People Vote on Water Ownership: Sexes Meet on Equal Terms at the Polls,” Ithaca Daily Journal, March 2, 1903; “Overwhelming Victory,” Ithaca Daily News, March 3, 1903; the number of taxpayers in Ithaca is found in “Petition Worded Satisfactorily,” Ithaca Daily News, March 27, 1903.

  4.Jacob Gould Schurman to David Roe Jr., February 12, 1903, JGS; Jacob Gould Schurman to Latin Prof. H. C. Elmer, February 28, 1903, JGS; Jacob Gould Schurman to Henry R. Ickelheimer, March 6, 1903, JGS; Jacob Gould Schurman to Rev. C. H. Parkhurst, March 2, 1903, JGS; Jacob Gould Schurman, to Mr. Palmer, February 28, 1903, JGS.

  5.R. S. Tarr, “Artesian Well Sections at Ithaca, N.Y.,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (February-March 1904), 69–82; Robert H. Thurston to Jacob Gould Schurman, March 5, 1903, CUTP.

  6.Editorial, “Pure Water in City Mains in Two Week’s Time,” Ithaca Daily News, March 3, 1903; “Seeking Pure Water Supply: Committee of 100 Proceeding with Much Energy,” Ithaca Daily Journal, March 3, 1903; Editorial, “Now for Pure Water,” Ithaca Daily Journal, March 3, 1903.

  7.Jared Treman Newman to Jacob Gould Schurman, March 4, 1903, CUTP; “Pure Water for Ithaca,” New York Times, March 12, 1903; “Water Plant for Ithaca,” New York Times, March 24, 1903.

  8.Jared Treman Newman to Jacob Gould Schurman, March 25, 1903, CUTP.

  9.The typhoid case of Stewart’s wife is mentioned in “New York Legislature: Five Republicans Bolt the Leadership of Senator Raines,” New York Times, February 25, 1903; “A Health Department Bill,” Elmira Advertiser, February 6, 1903; editorial, “For the Public Health,” New York Tribune, March 10, 1903.

  10.Water case transcript, Williams testimony, January 2, 1906, Vol. 8, p. 9.

  11.William T. Morris to the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University, April 15, 1903, EC.

  12.Minutes of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, April 19, 1903, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

  13.“Pushing Work Hard in the Six Mile Gorge,” Ithaca Daily News, April 27, 1903.

  14.Cornelius Vermeule to the Committee of 100, March 21, 1903, CUTP.

  15.Mayor George W. Miller to William T. Morris, April 28, 1903, MVC; Water Works Company States Selling Price,” Ithaca Daily News, May 6, 1903; “Water Company Meets New Board,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 6, 1903; Ithaca Water Board minutes, May 5, 1903, Ithaca City Archives.

  16.“Alderman Howell Opposes the Dam,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 21, 1903; “Common Council Says Stop the Dam,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 27, 1903.

  17. Editorial, “An Insult to Public Intelligence,” Ithaca Daily News, April 29, 1903.

  18.Editorial, “Will the Water Company Be Fair,” Ithaca Daily News, May 2, 1903.

  19.Editorial, “Nothing Less Than an Outrage,” Ithaca Daily News, May 28, 1903.

  20.Henry Woodward Sackett, The Law of Libel: What Every Tribune Employee Is Expected to Know about It; How to Guard against Libel Suits; and How to Be Prepared to Defend Them When Brought (New York: The Tribune Association, 1885), 6.

  21.Complaint, Tucker & Vinton, Inc., Plaintiffs, against the Ithaca Publishing Company and Frank E. Gannett, Defendants, Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, June 16, 1903, Frank E. Gannett & Caroline Werner Gannett Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; editorial, “We Shall Know the Facts,” Ithaca Daily News, June 20, 1903.

  22.Henry W. Sackett to Mynderse Van Cleef, July 24, 1903, MVC.

  23.“Beautiful Society House Damaged by the Flames: Chi Phi Members Lose Large Amount of Goods,” Ithaca Daily News, May 18, 1903; “Fire Damages Chi Phi House: Loss Estimated at Fifteen Thousand Dollars,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 18, 1903.

  24.“Will Rebuild Chi Phi House,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 19, 1903.

  25.Charles H. Blood to John W. Dwight, May 18, 1903, Charles H. Blood Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; “Cornell’s Second Varsity Crew Wins, Pennsylvania Second, Harvard Third,” Ithaca Daily News, June 1, 1903.

  26.Minutes of the Cornell University Executive Committee, May 12, 1903, EC; Minutes of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, June 17, 1903, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

  27.Samuel Hopkins Adams, “Typhoid: An Unnecessary Evil,” McClure’s Magazine, June 1905, 152.

  28.Hotchkiss, “Jacob Gould Schurman and the Cornell Tradition,” 208–11.

  Epilogue: Getting Away with Murder

  1.“Many Students at Cornell,” New York Times, September 26, 1903.

  2.“Schurman Tells of Cornell Gain,” Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, N.Y., October 7, 1907.

  3.“Campus Supplied with Pure Water: Carnegie Filtration Plant Now in Operation,” Ithaca Daily Journal, May 29, 1903.

  4.“Pure Water for Ithaca,” New York Times, August 24, 1903; “Penalty for Drinking Filtered Water: Ithaca Householders May Have to Break Law to Avail Themselves of New Plant,” New York Tribune, August 30, 1903. The headline referred to a municipal ordinance enacted during the epidemic that levied a $50 fine on anyone who drank city water without boiling it first; Emile M. Chamot to William T. Morris, October 10, 1903, CUTP.

  5.Dorothy Harris, History of Ithaca’s Water & Sewer Systems (Ithaca: City of Ithaca, 1956), 4, 6; Tarr, “Artesian Well Sections at Ithaca, N.Y.,” 69, 69n.

  6.William T. Morris to Mynderse Van Cleef, June 29, 1904, MVC; Ithaca Water Works to Ithaca Water Board, July 12, 1904, MVC.

  7.Nathan Mathews Jr. to William T. Morris, October 21, 1905, MVC. Mathews wrote to Morris because the expert witnesses in the case, including Allen Hazen and Gardner S. Williams, were upset by a flip remark Morris made to the effect that they should seek their witness fees from the city of Ithaca, or in other words, work on a contingency basis and only be paid in the event of a victory. Morris gave in and agreed to pay them from his company accounts.

  8.“Examiner’s Report of the Tompkins County National Bank, April 16–17, 1907,” and letter, Robert H. Treman to William B. Ridgley, Comptroller of the Currency, May 8, 1907, Record Group 101, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, National Archives, College Park, Md.

  9.Final ruling, water case, December 27, 1906, Jared Treman Newman Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; Nathan Mathews Jr. to Mynderse Van Cleef, January 5, 1907, MVC; Mathews to Van Cleef, January 30, 1907, MVC.

  10.Jacob Gould Schurman to Samuel D. Halliday, January 26, 1907, JGS.

  11.Minutes of the Cornell University Executive Committee, January 22, 1907, 192, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; final settlement, water case, Fe
bruary 23, 1907, MVC; Sisler, Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York, 23; minutes of the Ithaca Water Board, September 9, 1907, Ithaca City Archives.

  12.Charles H. Blood to William T. Morris, April 29, 1903, Charles H. Blood Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; Jared Treman Newman to Cornell University Executive Committee, December 13, 1904, EC.

  13.Editorial, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 28, 1903, 852.

  14.See Chapter 8.

  15.Soper, “The Epidemic of Typhoid Fever at Ithaca,” 437, 442; Robert H. Thurston to President Schurman and the Executive Committee, September 20, 1902, EC. Thurston’s letter refers to “the unusual frequency and magnitude of the summer rains” in the summer of 1902.

  16.Adams, “Typhoid: An Unnecessary Evil,” McClure’s Magazine, June 1905, 150–52; Samuel Hopkins Adams to Jacob Gould Schurman, April 1, 1905, EC; Emmons L. Williams to Samuel Hopkins Adams, April 5, 1905.

  17.Hewett, Cornell University: A History; Berry, Behind the Ivy; Bishop, A History of Cornell; David L. Schiller, “The Social History of the 1903 Ithaca Typhoid Fever Epidemic: A Study of Anger and Action,” submitted for History 435, Cornell University, Spring Term 1973.

  18.“Light Company Changes Hands,” Ithaca Daily Journal, June 9, 1903. Brush Electric Company of Cleveland eventually became a part of General Electric Company.

  19.Charles Nodder, Report of the Examination of the Accounts and Records of Associated Gas & Electric Co. as of Dec. 31, 1929, Vol. 1, p. 29 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Trade Commission); Associated Gas & Electric Certificate of Incorporation, March 17, 1906, Archives of the New York Public Service Commission, Albany, N.Y.

  20.At one of them, in a debate before the Chamber of Commerce in Elmira, N.Y., on May 3, 1907, Hughes, a future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, uttered his famous remark that the U.S. Constitution “is what the judges say it is.” See, Addresses and Papers of Charles Evans Hughes, Governor of New York, 1906–08 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 139.

  21.Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 202, 226; Robert F. Wesser, Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 167, 169.

  22.FTC Report, Vol. 4, 29–31; Barbara H. Brock, author of The Development of Public Utility Accounting in New York (East Lansing: Graduate School of Business Administration, Michigan State University, 1981), p. 91, says that New York’s 1907 Public Service Law regulated only local utility operating companies, not holding companies like Associated Gas & Electric. Donald C. Baldwin, author of Capital Control in New York (Menasha, Wis.: The Collegiate Press, 1920), p. 9, says the 1907 law “essentially” banned gas and electric holding companies.

  23.Jacob Gould Schurman to William T. Morris, May 31, 1907, JGS.

  24.William T. Morris to Mynderse Van Cleef, May 2, 1906, MVC.

  25.FTC, Vol. 4, p. 31.

  26.Samuel T. Williamson, Imprint of a Publisher, 79.

  27.W. Emerson Barger, “Examiner’s Report of the First National Bank of Ithaca,” August 29, 1905, R.G. 101, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, National Archives, College Park, Md.; Frank E. Gannett vs. Ithaca Publishing Company, January 22, 1907, Onondaga County Supreme Court, Syracuse, N.Y.

  28.The story about Duncan Campbell Lee and the country newspaper owners was printed in the New York Tribune of January 12, 1907.

  29.Interview with Nancy Lee Gluck, Nokesville, Va., April 19, 1996. Mrs. Gluck, who died at age ninety-nine in 2003, married into the family that discovered the long-missing half of the original manuscript of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in a trunk in the attic of their Los Angeles home around 1991. www.nytimes.com/1992/08/02/books/arts-artifacts-more-huck-finn-adventures-to-buffalo-via-hollywood.html.

  30.Ibid.; “Last Request of Hill Alumnus Carried Out by Classmates of ’91,” Utica Daily Press, August 8, 1945, Hamilton College Archives.

  31.David C. Tomlinson, a later owner of the Van Wagener Mansion, provided information on the history of the house in an e-mail to the author, May 18, 2004.

  32.Robert H. Treman to Mynderse Van Cleef, May 1, 1918, MVC; William T. Morris to Mynderse Van Cleef, May 6, 1918, MVC; Morris Tracy to Mynderse Van Cleef, December 19, 1918, MVC.

  Afterword: The Conquest of Typhoid

  1.George A. Soper, “The Discovery of Typhoid Mary,” British Medical Journal, January 7, 1939.

  2.Keith Christman, “The History of Chlorine,” http://www.waterandhealth.org/drinkingwater/history.html, accessed August 11, 2010.

  3.Frank Carey, “New Soil-Derived Drug Proves to Be the Only Enemy of Rickettsia,” Associated Press, June 27, 1948; Frank Carey, “Doctor Takes Big Chance as He Shows New Wonder Drug’s Effect on Typhus,” Associated Press, July 19, 1948.

  4.William E. Lawrence, “Wonder Drug, Foe of Plagues, Is Made Artificially in Quantity,” New York Times, March 27, 1949.

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