Iowa Heritage Illustrated

Swaim, Ginalie

Tuberculosis
The White Plague in Iowa
by G in alie Sivaim
B
oil handkerchiefs for a half hour. Keep car­
pets, curtains, and upholstered furniture out of 
the room. Shave off beards and mustaches. Open 
the bedroom window night and day. Spit in a paste­
board cup (above) and burn it afterward. In 1906 the State 
Board of Health issued these directives as ways of pre­
venting the spread of tuberculosis. Doctors and health 
officials fully understood that the tubercle bacillus, dis-
covered by Robert Koch and the cause of tuberculosis, 
was communicable through sputum. Thus, patients 
plagued with pulmonary TB, and their caretakers, were 
ordered to confine and destroy spit and to control ex­
posing others when coughing.
Called the "white plague" because of patients' pale 
appearance, tuberculosis ran rampant in America's 
crowded cities, where the impoverished living in squa­
lor had low resistance to disease. But it was not 
a disease of only the poor. In the late 19th cen­
tury, TB killed one of every seven Europeans and 
Americans. Sanitation and quarantine had made 
some inroads against the disease in urban areas 
at the end of the century.
Early in the 20th century, public health ex­
perts fighting tuberculosis shifted to personal 
hygiene—thus the long lists of instructions for 
the in-home care of "lungers," as TB patients 
were called. Physicians also recommended that 
TB patients move to states with mountain or 
desert climates; fresh air and rest were among
Spittoons (left) were commonplace in taverns, ho­
tels, barbershops, and other public places. Women’s 
clubs and health officials campaigned for anti-spit­
ting ordinances.
DO N O T
S p it  o n  t h e  F l o o r
TO DO SO M AY
SPR EA D  D ISEA SE
¿/Hi*
the few weapons with which to fight the 
persistent disease.
Prolonged and direct exposure was 
required to contract tuberculosis, and the 
tubercle bacilli grew extremely slowly. 
Nevertheless, the public feared that TB 
was quite contagious, and in time, more 
patients were moved out of their commu­
nities to sanatoria, where they could rest 
in fresh air, eat nourishing food, and limit 
activity—in a facility usually isolated from 
the public.
Iowa's oldest and largest public tuber­
culosis sanatorium was Oakdale, built in 
1907 on 280 acres about seven miles out­
side of Iowa City and the university's 
medical college. By 1910 Oakdale housed 
506 patients. The number peaked in 1926, 
at 814. In the late 1920s, doctors started 
using surgery, in which a diseased lung 
was allowed to collapse and rest, as an­
other weapon against TB.
Early stages of TB were hard to detect, 
and many were reluctant to find out they 
were infected. But in 1906, an estimated
7.000 to 8,000 Iowans had TB. The State 
Board of Health and the Iowa Tuberculo­
sis Association worked together to spread 
information about prevention and pushed 
for early testing. The association's annual 
Christmas Seal campaign, begun in 1907, 
raised considerable money. Later, legisla­
tion was strengthened to require that dairy 
cattle be tested for bovine tuberculosis 
(and destroyed if diseased), and to require 
pasteurization of milk.
Mortality rates did fall in Iowa: from
2.000 deaths in 1906; to 1,000 in 1925; and 
to 600 in 1934. By 1946-1947, writes medi­
cal historian Susan Lawrence, "Iowa 
boasted the lowest death rate from tuber­
culosis in the nation (11.8 per 100,000, com­
pared with the 33.5 national rate), which 
had resulted from extensive efforts to iden­
tify people with tuberculosis as early as possible so that 
they, and those around them, could take preventive mea­
sures against its spread. State-funded tuberculin test­
ing, along with traveling x-ray diagnostic clinics paid 
for by donations and staffed partly by volunteers, had 
eased the burden of tuberculosis before streptomycin 
was widely available." By 1950, TB was no longer con­
sidered one of the ten leading causes of death in Iowa,
BOTH PHOTOS UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES. UNIVERSITY OF IOWA LIBRARIES
Treatment of tuberculosis included near-constant exposure to fresh air, re­
gardless of the temperature. Above, patients bundled in shawls and blankets 
at Oakdale Sanatorium resist the cold.TB patients often slept in sleeping 
porches or pavilions, even when snow drifted in (below, also at Oakdale).
and in 1981, Oakdale Sanatorium closed as a TB treat­
ment center.
Worldwide, however, tuberculosis is still the sec­
ond leading cause of adult deaths—with more than two 
million deaths yearly. When compared to the past, it is 
seldom seen in Iowa, but still the state averages 30 to 50 
new cases a year. ❖
Summer 2005 73


English

Tuberculosis: The White Plague in Iowa

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.86 no.3, Fall 2005

Healthy Homes: Mothers, Children, and Nurses

Currier, Russell W

People and Pigs: Iowa's Role in 20th-Century Influenza History

Lane, Tim

Lorenzo Coffin 
and Railroad Safety
by Tim Lane
I
n Boone County there is a bridge named in honor 
of Kate Shelley, the 15-year-old who braved rising 
floodwaters to stop the midnight express. Yet there 
is no structure named for Lorenzo Coffin (a contempo­
rary of Shelley's who resided one county north near Fort 
Dodge). Shelley was credited and lauded for saving 
hundreds from death and disability in one night's work. 
Coffin's numbers saved would be expressed as count­
less thousands. Shelley's effort was a dramatic Hollywood- 
style, cliff-hanging affair in which she crossed a rail­
road bridge despite flood and storm. Coffin's effort was 
a long, drawn-out, grass-roots measure to enact basic 
worksite safety for the rail industry that eventually be­
came the standard for the nation.
Shelley performed her high-bridge act on July 6, 
1881. At that point Coffin had been rallying support for 
safer conditions for railroad workers for seven years and 
would continue for twelve more.
While traveling by rail in 1874, Coffin witnessed an 
accident when a brakeman attempted to manually hook 
a freight car to the train he was riding on. The task was 
far from simple or safe. The link-and-pin coupling 
method required the brakeman to drop a pin between 
two iron loops as they came together. On this particular 
morning the brakeman miscalculated and his right hand 
was caught between the two cars. Two fingers were in­
stantly sheared off. Many of his fellow workers prob­
ably considered him lucky that he had only lost two 
fingers, given the daily hazards of railroad work; most 
injured workers were released without compensation.
At this point in his life, Coffin was 51, a minister, 
and a progressive farmer. That morning on the train he 
became a crusader. He initiated a one-man campaign to 
address the apathy of the public and the railroad re­
garding the appalling working conditions. Coffin was 
destined to become the nation's most ardent advocate 
for rail safety and reform.
TOP **v
Lorenzo Coffin, I 823-191 5
In 1888 the Iowa Board of Railroad Commissioners 
reported 101 deaths and 564 injuries among railroad 
employees. Of those, 19 percent of the deaths and 43 
percent of the injuries were incurred while coupling cars. 
Across the nation it was not unusual for 20,000 to 30,000 
to be maimed or killed each year. Those figures are even 
more unfortunate when one realizes that the technol­
ogy was already available to both couple and brake au­
tomatically. Eli Janney had by then patented an auto­
matic coupler that locked like two hands clasping, and 
George Westinghouse had developed a prototype air 
brake designed to stop a train from controls in the loco­
motive. Railroad officials referred to the mechanized 
methods as impractical, which translates into too ex­
pensive.
F
ew industries have been as powerful as the U.S. 
railroads in the 19th century. If railroads wanted 
time zones, they got times zones. They owned 
senators, intimidated the press, and controlled com­
merce. But Coffin was relentless, speaking to local and 
national railroad workers' conventions, sending thou­
sands of letters to newspapers across the country, and 
addressing religious organizations. In Iowa he became 
a railroad commissioner in 1883 and lobbied for dem­
onstrations to test the effectiveness of air brakes. The 
only reason the railroads agreed to the tests was their 
belief that the tests would fail. The initial tests did fail, 
but he kept up his advocacy. In this case the third time 
was the charm. George Westinghouse used these tests 
and their initial failure to iron out design flaws and im­
prove his system. In 1887 in a test conducted by the Mas­
ter Car-Builders Association, the air brake was able to 
stop a 50-car train going 40 miles an hour on a long 
grade west of Burlington. Westinghouse's design and 
Coffin's persistence had won a battle, but not the war.
Summer 2005 67
t
SH
SI
 (
D
E
S 
M
O
IN
E
S)
Manual braking and coupling of railroad cars were incredibly dangerous practices. Iowa’s State Board of Health records noted 
with alarm the devastating rates of trainmen’s injuries and deaths and called for reform.
Coffin next needed to write and enact a state rail­
road safety appliance act. In 1890, the Iowa legislature 
passed such a law, which would take effect in three 
stages, 1890 to 1895. In the spring of 1893 President Ben­
jamin Harrison signed a federal railroad safety act into 
law. This act mandated air brakes and automatic cou­
plers. President Harrison signed the bill and then pre­
sented the pen to Coffin.
Under the federal law, railroads had until 1901 to 
meet code for interstate train cars. That year in Iowa, 
coupling accidents fell from 51 pecent in 1878 to only 8 
percent.
The advent of automatic coupling and air brakes 
put an end to thousands of needless deaths and inju­
ries, but it didn't slow down Coffin. He continued cru-
sading for various social reforms, from temperance, to 
YMCAs for railroad workers and rural residents, to 
more effective treatment for ex-convicts returning 
to society. ❖
Tim Lane is the Fitness Consultant and ICN Coordinator for 
the Iowa Department of Public Health. In that capacity he initi­
ated FITnet, a daily e-mail publication that combines health and 
histori/. FITnet is delivered to hundreds of thousands of readers 
around the world every weekday.
68 loica Heritage Illustrated
<S - (.


Lorenzo Coffin and Railroad Safety

Campbell, Cameron

Every Building in its Best Form

Conard, Rebecca

A Gamble fo r  Freedom
Frances Overton 
and the Underground Railroad
in Grinnell
by Rebecca Con arc!
I
n the spring of 1887, Amos 
Bixby sat down to write a let­
ter to his old friend Leonard 
Parker. Parker had asked for 
Bixby's memories of a dra­
matic event in which they both had 
been involved three decades earlier.
For readers today, Bixby's letter 
offers a rare glimpse into Iowans' 
participation in the Underground 
Railroad prior to the Civil War. That 
glimpse frames a young woman, a 
teenager really, who, in a gamble for 
freedom, abandoned the familiar to 
become a fugitive slave in unknown 
territory, literally and figuratively, 
where she was utterly dependent on 
the kindness of strangers.
The metaphor "underground 
railroad" came into use as railroad 
companies were building a tangible 
network of iron rails throughout the 
young, expanding nation. After 
Congress passed the Fugitive Slave 
Law in 1850 (which required North­
erners to assist in capturing run­
away slaves), abolitionists intensi­
fied their activities, more runaway 
slaves sought and received aid from 
antislavery sympathizers, and "un­
derground railroad" entered the 
common lexicon. Modern usage as­
signs the capital letters "U" and "R," 
signifying in part the legendary 
quality this vast, nebulous, con­
spiratorial movement assumed af­
ter the Civil War.
During the late 1850s, the time 
period Bixby recalls in his letter, the
nation was polarizing on the issue 
of slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 
Uncle Toni's Cabin appeared in 1852, 
strengthening the opposition to sla­
very on moral grounds; the 1854 
Kansas-Nebraska Act institutional­
ized the slavery debate into west­
ward expansion; the 1857 U.S. Su­
preme Court ruling in the Dred 
Scott case denied citizenship to es­
caped slaves and free blacks alike 
and ruled unconstitutional the Mis­
souri Compromise, thereby deny­
ing Congress the power to prohibit 
slavery in any U.S. territory; and the 
zealous abolitionist John Brown re­
lentlessly agitated in Kansas, Mis­
souri, and Iowa. Until the Civil War 
was decided, slaves who managed 
to unloose the chains of human 
bondage were never truly free in 
U.S. states and territories, which is 
why the various routes of the Un­
derground Railroad led to Canada, 
Mexico, and the Caribbean.
Iowa was a stopping place on 
the Underground Railroad. Al­
though some escapees made Iowa 
their permanent home, those who 
provided aid expected fugitive 
slaves either to move on or to make 
it on their own once they were out 
of danger. The new town of 
Grinnell, which attracted both 
staunch abolitionists and outspoken 
anti-abolitionists, became a micro­
cosm of the nation's turmoil. Anti­
slavery activists in Iowa often had 
ties to Oberlin, Ohio, one of the
staunchest abolitionist communities 
in the country. In Grinnell, those ties 
included Leonard F. Parker and his 
wife, Sarah, both graduates of 
Oberlin College. After teaching for 
a few years in Pennsylvania, the 
Parkers had ventured west and 
settled in Grinnell in 1856; shortly 
thereafter, Leonard became the 
county superintendent of schools. In 
Grinnell, the Parkers rejoined 
former Oberlin classmates: Samuel 
F. Cooper, a newspaper editor, and 
his wife, Jane. They also found kin­
dred spirits in Amos and Augusta 
Bixby, social reform advocates who 
had come to Grinnell from Maine. 
Amos was a lawyer. Together with 
Josiah B. Grinnell, the Parkers, the 
Coopers, and the Bixbys helped to 
establish Grinnell as a center of pro­
gressive education.
Leonard Parker's long profes­
sional career included teaching at 
Iowa College (now Grinnell Col­
lege) and at the University of Iowa; 
serving with the 46th Iowa Volun­
teers in the Civil War; and serving a 
term in the Iowa House of Represen­
tatives. The Bixbys eventually con­
tinued westward, moving to Colo­
rado and then on to California. But 
in the late 1850s they were core abo­
litionists in Grinnell and advocates 
for racial equality in education. The 
fugitive slave Frances Overton 
played an unwitting part in their bid 
to integrate the Grinnell public 
school, which led to a community
lonm Heritage Illustrated
riot in 1860. In 1858 the Bixbys gave 
Frances harbor in their home, em­
ployed her as a maid, and began to 
school her.
Frances proved to be an eager 
and fast learner. This prompted the 
Bixbys to seek her enrollment in the 
public school, which she attended 
without incident as long as she was 
the only black student. However, 
when another abolitionist at­
tempted to enroll four more fugitive 
slaves, all young men, mounting 
tension in the community escalated 
to open hostilities, and the school 
directors closed the school before 
the end of the term in order to avert 
bloodshed. Fearing that the incident 
would attract slave catchers, the 
abolitionists moved Frances and the 
four male fugitives from Grinnell to 
an unspecified Quaker settlement 
about fifty miles away, possibly near 
Oskaloosa, where evangelical 
Quakers resided.
Primary documents such as 
Bixby's letter open our senses to the 
past because they communicate 
human thoughts and emotions 
across time and space. But they 
must be examined as pieces of a 
complex historical puzzle and as 
creations tied to particular moments 
in time. In this case, Bixby's pater­
nalistic tone hints at the subtle as 
well as the overt racism that contin­
ued to circumscribe Frances Over­
ton's life once she had achieved 
quasi freedom. Equally important, 
Bixby's account of events that hap­
pened 30 years earlier reveals the 
urge among those who had been 
active in the abolitionist movement 
to create a legacy by documenting 
their participation in the great, noble 
cause of the antebellum period.
Here is Amos Bixby's letter.
Rebecca Conard is professor of history at 
Middle Tennessee State Universih/, where 
she codirects the Public History Program. 
She has written extensively on iorwa history.
Boulder, Colorado, May 16,1887.
Prof. Leonard F. Parker.
My dear friend:
Your letter, full of remembrances, and 
inclosing historical sketch, is rec'd, and the 
manuscript herewith returned. In the main 
I remember the incidents as related, but, 
with the aid of Mrs. Bixby's recollections, 
could be a little more specific respecting 
the history of the runaway slave girl called 
Eliza in Miss Kellogg's account. She came 
to us, by the underground line, as Fannie 
Overton, taking her master's name of 
Overton. But as we had a Fannie in our 
family, by consent of all her name was 
changed to Frances Overton—and she was 
always after known as Frances. She was 
then 16 years old, and Mrs. Bixby says that 
she had, previously, no conception of how 
blank and benighted a human mind could 
be. Seeing a picture of the crucifixion, she 
exclaimed, "What dey doing to dat man up 
dare?" Any idea of Christ was as new to 
her as to any heathen. Being told that the 
world is round, she regarded herself as an 
eye-witness to the contrary — having trav­
eled from Missouri to Kansas, and from 
Kansas to Grinnell, and found it all a plain. 
"But," said she, "if you tell me, Mrs. Bixby, 
that a man can stand with his feet on the 
ceiling, and his head down, I will believe 
you, and that the earth is round, — and 
that men can walk on the other side, with 
their heads down.["] She would take on 
faith anything that her new mistress told 
her.
She was so eager to learn that she did
Winter 2004 1 57
not have to be taught — she'd follow on 
as fast as Mrs. Bixby could talk to her. Not 
knowing the alphabet when she came, 
three months afterwards she took the 
Sunday School prize offered for the 
scholar who could repeat the greatest 
number of Scripture verses. This caused 
offence to some white competitors.
During her stay with us, two slave 
girls ran away from their master in West­
ern Nebraska, and were pursued by a 
professional slave hunter through Iowa. 
Capt. Clark was reported to have met him 
at Sugar Grove, the stage station a little 
way south of Grinnell, to inform that a 
nice piece of property known as Frances, 
was unlawfully harbored in Grinnell. He 
also wrote, or was supposed to have 
written, to her old master, Mr. Overton. 
These things gave us all many a touch of 
trepidation — not knowing what day she 
might be demanded for return to slavery, 
under the fugitive slave law. The penal­
ties for aiding, or for harboring fugitive 
slaves were so severe that one might well 
dread them.
She made a fortress of our garret, 
reached by a small aperture through the 
ceiling, where she could pull the ladder 
up after her, and where she kept a store of 
weapons of defence. It was thought if the 
slave hunters came, and discovered her 
hiding place, she could keep them at bay 
until the Abolition town was aroused. We 
depended on such men as Harvey Bliss to 
rescue her. At length the danger was so 
imminent that it was thought best to find 
for her a more secure retreat, and you
were the man to direct her to a Quaker 
neighborhood, about 50 miles distant.
A few years years [sic] after our arrival 
in this country, word came that Frances 
had not turned out very well, and that 
some of those who thought it wrong for us 
to harbor her as we did, said, "See how the 
wench who took the Sunday School prize 
has turned out, after all." But — I say this 
to you in confidence — there is a bit of 
history connected with her child-slave life 
that may account for her fall. She said that 
her master's sons, the Overton boys, used 
to misread the Bible to her — that is make 
it read that the sin to which their young 
lusts inclined them, was not only not a sin, 
but was actually commanded by the Word. 
It is, therefore, presumable that Heaven did 
not stoop to save the virtue of the poor, 
deluded, defenceless slave girl — Her's 
was but the unhappy lot of slave girls since 
the world began.
I think it was in the spring preceding 
the Harpers Ferry raid that John Brown 
visited Grinnell. I remember that the roads 
were very muddy when it was announced 
that he, and his boys, and train of fugitives, 
were approaching the town on foot. Mr. 
Phelps, and a few others, as I remember, 
went out to meet them. There was quite a 
gathering to greet them at the hotel, on 
south side of the town. It was late in the 
cool morning, and John Brown being asked 
if he was not tired and hungry, having had 
no breakfast, he replied that he was not — 
that by extreme temperance, and by train­
158 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
t
ing in enduring hardships, he could go 24 
hours without food, and not suffer hunger.
It being suggested to him that as he was 
getting old, it was hoped by his friends, 
who recognized his great and fearless 
service in the cause of Kansas, and for the 
abolition party, — that he would take a rest 
at his home in New York, and let younger 
men fight it out, he made a very brief, 
evasive answer, but I remember that the 
look on his face was as much as to say, "I 
am ready to be offered. Without the shed­
ding of blood there can be no remission of 
the sin of American Slavery/' At the eve­
ning meeting in the church, he spoke with 
others, briefly, but feelingly. He repeated 
the passage from Job in which occur the 
words, The cause which I knew not I 
searched out. It has been said that voice is 
soul, and certainly is put into his voice the 
expression of the soul that still goes march­
ing on, as he slowly repeated the words.
... So much of reminiscence — and 
now let me say that we hope you will 
make us another visit, when you want 
recreation — you and your family. Mrs. 
Parker is one of the best remembered of all 
the early inhabitants of Grinnell. It is 
doubtful if ever we visit eastward again — 
but, if I live, may go to California, where 
all my brothers and sisters are. We have 
had one life in Maine, another in Iowa, a 
third in Colorado, now whether we have a 
fourth in California — we are quite sub­
missive to the Providence that has guided 
us in all our journeying. Good bye — for 
the present — dear friend.
Yours most Truly, 
Amos Bixby.
The Amos Bixby letter is published here with the permis­
sion of the Grinnell College Archives, which holds the origi­
nal. A copy of the letter is in the Leonard F. Parker Papers, 
MS 44, box 1, folder "Schroeder's research files," Special 
Collections, State Historical Socie hj of Iowa, Iowa City. Bio­
graphical material used for the introduction was found in 
the Leonard F. Parker Papers and Benjamin F. Gue's 
History of Iowa from the Earliest Times... voi. 4 (New 
York: Century Histon/ Co., 2 903), and provided by Grinnell 
College archivist Kathryn Rod.
F u rth e r Reading on the  U nde rg round  Railroad
Thomas A. Lucas, "Men Were Too Fiery for Much Talk 
The Grinnell Anti-Abolitionist Riot o f 1860," Palimpsest 68 
(Spring 1987), pp. 12-21.
Leola Nelson Bergmann, The Negro in Iowa, with editorial 
addendum by William J. Petersen, Studies in Iowa History 
(Iowa City: State Historical Society o f Iowa, 1969).
G. Galin Berrier,"The Underground Railroad in Iowa,” in 
Outside In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838-2000, ed. 
Bill Silag, Susan Koch-Bridgford, and Hal Chase (Des Moines: 
State Historical Society of Iowa, 2001 ), pp. 44-59.
Eugene H. Berwanger The Frontier Against Slavery: West­
ern Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension (Urbana: 
University o f Illinois Press, 1967).
David W. Blight, ed., Passages to Freedom:The Underground 
Railroad in H istory and M em ory  (Washington, D.C.: 
Smithsonian Books, 2004).
Merton Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their 
Allies, 1619-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 
Press, 1990).
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology o f 
the Republican Party Before the Civil War ( 1970; reprint, New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, Jr., From Slavery to 
Freedom: A History o f African Americans, 7th ed. (New York 
McGraw Hill, 1994).
Larry Gara, The Liberty Line:The Legend o f the Underground 
Railroad (1961; reprint, Lexington: University Press of Ken­
tucky, 1996).
Leon Litwack, North o f Slavery.The Negro in the Free States, 
1790-1860 (1961; reprint, Chicago: University o f Chicago 
Press, 1998).
National Park Service, History Office, Exploring a Com­
mon Past: Researching and Interpreting the Underground Rail­
road (Washington, D.C.: Dept, o f the Interior; National Park 
Service, 1998).
Wilbur Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to 
Freedom (New York Macmillan, 1898).
James Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and Ameri­
can Slavery (New York Hill and Wang, 1976).
William Still, The Underground Railroad ( 1872; reprint, New 
York Arno Press, 1968).
Winter 2004 159


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Tuberculosis: The White Plague in Iowa

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.86 no.3, Fall 2005

Healthy Homes: Mothers, Children, and Nurses

People and Pigs: Iowa's Role in 20th-Century Influenza History

Lorenzo Coffin and Railroad Safety

Every Building in its Best Form

A Gamble for Freedom: Frances Overton and the Underground Railroad in Grinnell

Suffragists, Free Love, and the Woman Question

It's Not Every Day You Get to Call the Son of a Soviet Leader

The Larrabees of Montauk

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