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In Hot Water

When the deadly 1903 typhoid epidemic sparked panic on campus and beyond, President Jacob Gould Schurman scrambled to keep Cornell from closing— maybe for good

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In early 1903, a typhoid epidemic struck Ithaca, claiming the lives of eighty-two people—including twenty-nine Cornell students—and sickening hundreds of others. In The Epidemic: A Collision of Power, Privilege, and Public Health (Lyons Press), journalist David DeKok explores the roots of the public health disaster. The main culprits, he writes, were not so much the disease carriers themselves—most likely immigrant laborers building the Six Mile Creek dam, who carried the typhoid bacilli from Italy—as the businessmen who put profits above human lives.

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President Jacob Gould Schurman found himself in a dilemma that was Homeric in its scope and complexity. A typhoid epidemic was killing his students. Those still on campus (nearly a third—about a thousand—had fled) were increasingly restive and angry, demanding remedies, such as free artesian water delivered to their boardinghouses, that his Board of Trustees and especially the governing Executive Committee were not willing to provide. The Executive Committee was dominated by friends of William Torrey Morris 1873; in 1901 they had arranged for Cornell University to invest $100,000 in Ithaca Water Works bonds so he could buy the water company. They showed no signs of backing away from him. And what about the fate of the University itself? Each student death was publicized around the country, and Ithaca was portrayed as a pestilential hellhole. Would any parent ever again agree to send his son or daughter to Cornell?

Schurman needed someone to make an intelligent investigation of how the epidemic came to be if he was to craft a way out of this mess. He wanted to know the present condition of the campus water supply, which came from Fall Creek, and how the campus and city supplies might be kept pure in the future. The Cornell president quietly asked Professors Veranus Moore 1887 and Emile Chamot 1891, PhD 1897, to carry out the work, which they did forthwith, returning a week later with a cogent report that examined all realistic sources of the epidemic.

The two professors believed Six Mile Creek was the source of the epidemic and had been contaminated by the Italian workers on the dam. But they admitted that with the workers gone since mid-November there was no way to prove the hypothesis conclusively. “The rocks and woods at and near the edge of the stream are reported to have been thickly sprinkled with human excrement and . . . the stream itself received directly much of their excreta. This condition was witnessed by one of us (Chamot) in the fall. At the time of our visit, February 12th, there was still evidence of such a condition.” They received a letter from an Ithaca businessman describing what he saw the previous fall, and collected statements from three Cornell botanists who saw the foul condition of the construction site during plant collecting hikes along Six Mile Creek around the same time.

They warned Schurman that Fall Creek, which provided the campus water supply, also passed through farming territory and was nearly as dirty as Six Mile Creek. Drinking it unfiltered was a disaster waiting to happen. The thing to do, the professors recommended, was to build a filtration plant for the water from one creek or the other, or to draw all water from artesian wells. Schurman released their findings to the public a few days later. 

On February 10, Schurman addressed a student meeting that filled Sage Chapel. He tried to minimize the typhoid epidemic, pointing out—as the University would for the next century—that no student who only drank the campus water from Fall Creek had become ill, as if that would make students (who mostly lived off campus) feel better. He praised coeds who resisted the pleas of their parents to come home, and suggested that many students who had left Cornell since the epidemic began did so because they had flunked out or simply wanted some time off. The president criticized “grossly exaggerated” claims in the press about the number of ill students. He insisted that students were as safe in Ithaca as they would be at home, provided that the water in their boardinghouse was first boiled to kill the typhoid bacillus. Schurman called it “a simple remedy.”

bookDespite the supposed safety of the Fall Creek water, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees decided on February 16 to supply artesian well water for drinking to all university buildings. This was done without much explanation, but the reason appears to be a letter Schurman had received three days earlier warning him that new tests of Fall Creek water showed it had nearly twice the bacteria count as Six Mile Creek. This did not mean typhoid was in the campus water, but it was hardly a clean bill of health. None of this was disclosed at the time. Students living off-campus—all of the men and some of the women—could either come on campus and carry artesian water back to their lodgings in jugs, or make sure that their landladies boiled the water at the houses. To that end, the Executive Committee sent two of its members to exact signed pledges from the boardinghouse operators not to serve or use unboiled water on pain of being reported to the Board of Health and their student tenants moving elsewhere, assuming they could. Morris attended the meeting, which the Ithaca Daily Journal said involved a long discussion of whether Cornell University ought to be closed. The committee ultimately decided that if even one student stayed, the University would remain open, according to the newspaper.

On the following day, unnerved and angered by the continuing illnesses and deaths, the senior class held an emergency meeting in Library Hall to make certain demands of the administration and Board of Trustees. High on their list was getting the same artesian water deal for their boardinghouses that the University had just given itself.

Leading the meeting was class president Floyd Carlisle 1903, a debate champion who would go on to head one of New York’s largest electric and gas utilities, Niagara Hudson, and be a leading, though principled, opponent of President Roosevelt’s utility reform legislation in 1935. Scores of Cornell students had become ill with typhoid and eight had died since the start of the epidemic, including two—Henry Schoenborn 1906 of Hacken-sack, New Jersey, and Otto Kohls 1906 of Rochester, New York—that very morning. A ninth student, Charles Schlenker 1905 of Batavia, New York, died in the infirmary even as the meeting got under way. Schlenker was a twenty-one-year-old engineering student who had been class president and captain of the football and track teams at his high school. All of Batavia mourned that night.

In their petition, the students painted a grim picture of the apocalypse around them. Alarmed parents had summoned many of their fellow students home, and those remaining in Ithaca were “in a demoralized state.” The petition dismissed the University plan to have students enforce the boiling of water in the boardinghouses as an impossible task and demanded that the University supply, at its own expense, artesian water to each of the student boardinghouses. They wanted enough for drinking, washing food and dishes, and brushing teeth. In addition, the students demanded the right to leave the University without penalty until the water delivery was under way.

They typed the petition hastily—the version in the Cornell Archives has overstrikes—in order to get it to Schurman before he left for the day, as they hoped he would bring it to the Executive Committee meeting that night. They might as well have mailed it. The Executive Committee thanked the students for their concern, proclaimed that the University was doing its utmost to help them, and then voted it down. In a written response, the trustees said delivering water to student boardinghouses scattered across the city “seems to us well nigh impracticable.” They also feared it would cause other, unspecified difficulties, “that would greatly embarrass us in the relief measures we are now pursuing,” the meaning of which would become clear a day later. Much faith was placed in the boil-water pledges signed by the boardinghouse keepers.

laborers

Alarmed parents summoned many students home, and those remaining in Ithaca were ‘in a demoralized state.’In an angry report to their fellow students, Carlisle and the other members of the senior class committee said the boarding-house keepers “could not be trusted with the disinfection of water polluted with virulent disease germs.” They said the university policy put student lives at the mercy of their landlords and landladies. “Every student who has lived in a boardinghouse or seen a student eating house kitchen knows the utter folly of expecting careful disinfection of the water, even if the University officials from time to time inspect the conditions.”

There had been much more to the February 16 meeting of the Executive Committee than a general discussion of whether the University ought to stay open. What had been hashed out was a plan for Ithaca Water Works, which was nearly broke, to build the filtration plant using a $150,000 loan from the University. The City of Ithaca would need to approve higher water rates—they were already among the highest in the state—to pay for the plant, but would be free to hold another referendum on the city taking over the water system or moving to artesian wells, as many had advocated. Loaning more money to Morris seemed to some on the Executive Committee like throwing good money after bad, but Schurman believed there was no other choice if he was to be able to tell students and their parents that clean water would be available by the start of the fall semester.

Morris, whose people were still telling citizens that the city water was fine to drink, had agreed to the deal, in large part because Schurman used the $100,000 in Ithaca Water Works bonds held by the University as leverage to force him to go along. But the quid pro quo seems to have been that the University would not deliver artesian water to the student boardinghouses. If we go back to one of the reasons given by the Executive Committee in rejecting the student petition, “that [it] would greatly embarrass us in the relief measures we are now pursuing,” the logical conclusion is that the committee members denied clean artesian water to the students out of fear of antagonizing Morris, the monster they themselves created. 

The Cornell president made a dramatic appearance before Ithaca Common Council on February 18 to announce the deal, more or less as a fait accompli. Council would have to accept the deal, Schurman believed. What other choice did it have? Because otherwise, Cornell University and all the economic benefit it brought to the city would be doomed.

Jacob Gould Schurman

In his comments to council and the public that night, Schurman ruled out artesian wells or Cayuga Lake as alternative sources of supply for Ithaca. He was not opposed to artesian wells, per se, but questioned whether they could provide the two million gallons per day the city needed. In any case, he doubted they could be ready by September 1, the deadline he imposed. As for Cayuga Lake, well, the lake was fed by streams running through the city, including Six Mile Creek, and was the receptacle of most of Ithaca’s untreated sewage. The eyes of the nation were upon Ithaca, Schurman said, waiting for an answer to the question, “Is it safe?”

‘There is a general belief that it is caused by the water,’ Schurman said of the epidemic. ‘It may not be possible to prove the water responsible, yet we believe it to be so. If it is, the officials of the water company are responsible.’And now that he had Morris boxed into a corner, Schurman unleashed his rhetoric, holding Ithaca Water Works and its management responsible for bringing the typhoid calamity to Ithaca. Not for nothing did he have national renown as a speaker. “I shall not discuss the cause of the present epidemic nor the parties who may be morally and legally responsible for this disaster,” Schurman said, and then proceeded to do just that. “There is a general belief that it is caused by the water. I believe it is. It may not be possible to prove the water responsible, yet we believe it to be so. If it is, the officials of the water company are responsible.” It was a remarkable speech, but there was more. “So far as the company is concerned,” Schurman said, “we have no faith in their management. We insist, first, upon a representation on their board, to have the right to control the plant and patrol the watersheds.”

Whatever he said was enough, or perhaps the council members truly believed they had no choice. There was much grumbling, both on council and among members of the public, about an option that forced them to drink “filtered sewage.” They eventually focused on the part of the deal that gave them the right to take over Ithaca Water Works by eminent domain. They would fix this later. Council approved the deal that night and set a referendum on municipal water for March 2. Schurman praised the council action as “the salvation of the city” that would ensure that Cornell University would have a full complement of students in the fall. 

Schurman’s troubles were far from over. As jubilant as he had a right to feel in fixing the deal for the filtration plant, he still had to win the battle of public perception. Yes, he could tell parents their children would have clean water by September 1, but the suffering and deaths among the students had left a public stain not easily washed away. The sins of Ithaca were known to journalists up and down the East Coast, in every city and town that sent students to Cornell. Newspapers around the country were running wire stories about the epidemic. Calling the University to account for its sins was almost a reflexive act for the newspapers. Schurman complained that “among other things from which we have to suffer at the present time are the awfully sensational reports of the newspapers.” Most of them were not, but they hurt, and the worst was yet to come. Weeks later, he would be railing against “the misrepresentations and lies circulated by a sensational press.” While the press made some mistakes, which is true of any big story, much of the coverage and editorials seemed to be accurate and fair.

The anonymous “ALUMNUS” letter published in the student newspaper on February 18 was the first shot in a barrage of harsh criticism of the University. The letter writer, who is unknown, professed to be shocked to learn that Cornell University owned $100,000 worth of Ithaca Water Works bonds and suggested that investment explained the University’s lack-adaisical response to the epidemic.

Schurman was livid. In a speech to students the next day in the Armory, he raged, “No statement has stung me more because none was more infinitely criminal.” He insisted that a bondholder had no control over a corporation’s policy, which was technically true but largely irrelevant given the size of Cornell’s debt holdings in Ithaca Water Works and the critical role the University played in making sure Morris had enough money to buy the company from the Treman family in 1901. The Ithaca Daily Journal attacked “ALUMNUS” in nearly as strong terms, accusing the letter writer of “foolish” and “silly” utterances, and claiming that every educated person should know that a bondholder does not have any control over a corporation. The editorial offered a series of examples that were far removed from the close relationship among the Executive Committee, the Treman family, and Morris.

In the same speech, Schurman partly conceded to the key student demand, saying that, if the students arranged to have arte-sian water delivered to their boardinghouses, the University would pay for it. He said that the Sage College gymnasium would be converted into a men’s dormitory for the duration of the epidemic, and that as many as 300 men could be accommodated there, far fewer than the potential need. And conceding to another student demand, Schurman waived all penalties for students who left campus until the epidemic was over, saying they could make up their classes in the summer.

Now the ball was in the student court. Should they accept the filtration deal, or rather give it their approval? They held their own meeting with their leaders a day later. The more radical of them—especially Manton Wyvell 1901, JD 1904, a law student who had traveled with William Jennings Bryan as he campaigned for president against William McKinley in 1900— did not trust Ithaca Water Works. Wyvell called the water company “an interested party” and doubted that it would carry out its pledge to build a proper filtration plant. But moderation prevailed, and the students in the end voted unanimously to endorse Schurman’s plan for filtration. They did urge that the shanty and latrine used by the Italian workers at the dam site be burned, but rejected the idea of doing it themselves.

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Almost in spite of himself, President Jacob Gould Schurman had extracted Cornell University from a seemingly impossible situation. He had persuaded Ithaca Common Council to accept a plan for filtration of the town’s water that many of the citizens despised, preferring to drill for artesian water, and he had stopped much of the negative commentary in the press that might have killed the University. Yet the disease had not run its course and his students continued to die, often in the homes and hometowns they thought would be a refuge from the calamity in Ithaca.

If Morris is the villain of DeKok’s book, one of its heroes is George Soper. A sanitary engineer, Soper launched a comprehensive disinfection campaign that was elemental in ending the epidemic. He had outhouses cleaned and closed, arranged for more frequent trash collection, and sanitized the Ithaca Water Works infrastructure, among other measures. The final typhoid patient was discharged from the Cornell infirmary in mid-May. “The surprise was how quickly Cornell University returned to normal life that fall and put the epidemic behind it,” DeKok writes. “Enrollment actually showed a healthy increase.” As he goes on to note, the disaster that had devastated Cornell the previous spring got just one mention in the Daily Sun the following fall.

Former investigative reporter David DeKok is the author of nonfiction books on crises in small-town America, including Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire (Globe Pequot).

Excerpted and condensed from the book The Epidemic by David DeKok. Copyright © 2011 by David DeKok. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Lyons Press.

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