The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South

276 Pages·1981·6.952 MB·English

by  John Ettling

The Germ of Laziness

THE GERM
OF
LAZINESS
Rockefeller Philanthropy
and Public Health
in the New South
John Ettling
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England
1981
Copyright © 1981 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ettling, John, 1944-
The germ of laziness.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Hookworm disease—Southern States-Prevention-History -
20th century. 2. Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradica-
tion of Hookworm Disease — History. 3. Public health— Southern
States — History — 20th century.
I. Title.
RA644.H65E88 362.Γ969654 81-4174
ISBN 0-674-34990-3 AACR2
For my parents,
Albert J. Ettling
Emily Tucker Ettling

Preface
In 1909, with the progressive movement at flood tide, John D.
Rockefeller, himself the object of so much reformist wrath, an-
nounced the creation of a comparatively modest and short-lived
organization to confront a disease few people had heard of.
Launched with a $1 million grant, the Rockefeller Sanitary Com-
mission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was certainly
not Rockefeller's first or his largest philanthropic enterprise.
Measured against the impressive dimensions of the University of
Chicago or the General Education Board, the Sanitary Commis-
sion was puny indeed. And unlike Rockefeller's loftier benefac-
tions, the Sanitary Commission was never intended to endure. In
fact, after a five-year campaign in eleven Southern states, the
Sanitary Commission passed out of existence, its remaining ob-
jectives and unexpended funds assimilated into the more recently
created and much more ambitious Rockefeller Foundation.
In view of its limited scope and duration, why go to such
lengths to study the Sanitary Commission? In the first place, its
creation in 1909 marks the convergence of two separate
tributaries of American philanthropy: scientific medicine and
public education. Each had benefited from Rockefeller's and other
men's benevolence in the past. But the special imperatives of the
campaign against hookworm disease brought about a marriage of
the two, required by the nature of hookworm disease and the fact
that so few people in the early twentieth century knew of its ex-
istence. The Sanitary Commission also contributed more to the
growth of the American public health movement and to the im-
provement of the quality of life in the rural South than its small
endowment and brief tenure might at first glance imply. In the
course of its five-year life, the Sanitary Commission awakened
Southerners to the widespread presence and detrimental impact
viii Preface
of this disease in their midst; it underwrote the first important
steps toward amelioration; it energized the moribund Southern
state boards of health; and it served as the immediate prototype
for the far more extensive early overseas work of the Rockefeller
Foundation.
The story of the Commission unfolds against the larger back-
drop of American reform in the early twentieth century. It is a
compelling story in its own right, self-contained, with an unusual
degree of dramatic unity. Scaled down without distortion to fit
the proportions of the Sanitary Commission and crowded into
this little diorama of scenes from Southern country life is a minia-
ture Augean stable of progressive chores. Within the context of
the hookworm campaign, in large part because its goals were so
limited and sharply defined, it is possible to consider one unified
set of working solutions to problems that bedeviled other, more
far-flung reformers in different fields. In order to carry out its
assignments, the Sanitary Commission had to forge ad hoc rela-
tionships between North and South, between city and country-
side, between private wealth and public agencies, between the ex-
pert and the mass of ordinary citizens.
A small but strategically important bivouac on the march
toward the conquest of dread disease and a laboratory for pro-
gressive era experimentation: were the Sanitary Commission
nothing more than this it might still command the attention of
scholars. But a study of the Sanitary Commission's personnel
and institutional predecessors also reveals oddly shaped pieces
that seem to fit larger historical puzzles. These pieces make little
sense unless one examines the lives of the men who ran the Com-
mission. No one connected with the Commission sprang to life in
1909, fully grown and fully armed to do battle with the hook-
worm. Led by Frederick T. Gates, the architect of Rockefeller's
early charitable programs, the handful of men who financed, or-
ganized, and directed the daily activities of the Sanitary Commis-
sion came to their tasks long after they had already become well
established in their respective fields. A scientist, a plutocrat, a
former minister, a professor of philosophy, a journalist: collec-
tively they brought a wealth of diverse experience to bear on their
mutual enterprise. Their careers had traced separate arcs before
converging on the Sanitary Commission, but years earlier those
careers had departed from a common point. All of the principal
actors in the story of the Sanitary Commission had grown up on
farms or in small towns. Evangelical religion had been the domi-
nant shaping force in their early lives. Most of them sincerely be-
Preface ix
lieved that they had shed the religious superstitions of their
childhoods somewhere along the way toward becoming twen-
tieth-century men of affairs—professionals, city-dwellers, and
reformers. Still, the evangelical habits of mind remained with
them in ways which they themselves could not see, but which
nevertheless caused them to act in accordance with patterns that
become clear in retrospect. Their agenda for reform may have re-
flected their acquired enthusiasm for the insights of scientific
medicine and the goals of the public health movement. Yet their
emotional response to the world of the early twentieth century - a
world they hoped in part of transform by the scrupulous applica-
tion of scientific principles - was decidedly evangelical.
In his book The New England Mind: From Colony to Province,
Perry Miller wrote of Cotton Mather's "curious way of backing in-
to modernity." Like Gates two centuries later, Mather had been
confronted with the problem of reconciling to his own satisfaction
the "philosophical and evangelical." "Yet the charting of
[Mather's] crablike progress," Miller decided, "is one of the best
methods for understanding how a middle-class, empirical, enter-
prising society could emerge out of an aristocratic, teleological
order." By the same token, the Sanitary Commission, created and
administered by Gates and his colleagues, can be seen as a kind of
halfway house between the evangelical, individualistic, small-
town worlds of their childhoods and our own urban, scientific,
bureaucratic age - some of whose familiar features they, as early
directors of the Rockefeller Foundation, had a hand in shaping.
Grants from the Charles Warren Center for Studies in Ameri-
can History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
the University of Houston Research Initiation Grant Program
have enabled me to meet expenses that arose in the course of my
research and writing.
I wish to thank Joseph W. Ernst, director, and J. William
Hess, associate director, of the Rockefeller Archive Center. They
and the members of their staff were of inestimable assistance on
my visits to New York City and Pocantico Hills. For their guid-
ance through the collections under their supervision, I am also in-
debted to the staffs of the Alderman Library at the University of
Virginia, Widener and Houghton Libraries at Harvard Univer-
sity, Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School, the New
York Public Library, Anderson Library at the University of
Houston, Fondren Library at Rice University, and the Texas
Medical Center Library.
χ Preface
Quotations from Frederick Taylor Gates's autobiography,
Chapters in My Life, are reprinted with permission of Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc.
This study has been enriched by the contributions of teachers,
colleagues, and friends. My greatest obligation is to Donald
Fleming, whose gracious but unwavering insistence on precision
of thought and elegance of expression has guided my work at
every point in the preparation of the manuscript. Paul M. Gaston
assisted my initial attempts to make sense of the material. After
reading a very early draft, Eric L. McKitrick encouraged me to
believe the subject worth pursuing in greater depth. John L.
Thomas commented on the first two chapters, and Walter Jack-
son spotted mistakes in a draft of chapter four. The perceptive
observations of David Herbert Donald prompted me to address
weaknesses in an early draft of the book. John Z. Bowers brought
his extensive knowledge of the early Rockefeller medical philan-
thropies to bear on a thorough reading of the manuscript in its en-
tirety. A timely suggestion from T. H. Breen led me to consider
more carefully my assumptions about the audience for which the
study is intended. Robert H. Wiebe rescued me from argumenta-
tive inconsistencies and sharpened my understanding of the re-
cent literature on progressive reform. The Harvard University
Press ensured that the manuscript was given a scrupulous
critical review, which brought forth several astute recommenda-
tions that I have gratefully incorporated into the final version.
Aida D. Donald and Anita Safran skillfully directed the prepara-
tion of the manuscript for press.
To acknowledge that Jennifer Ettling has been my closest col-
laborator in the production of this book should not implicate her
in its errors and infelicities, which are mine alone.
J.E.
Houston, Texas