USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume II pt 1 > Part 12
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During the first session of the fifty-first congress (in June, 1890) the republicans passed through the house a bill to regulate elections for rep- resentatives in congress. It had been prepared by John I. Davenport of New York, an "election expert," so entitled because of his adeptness in the use of judicial process for partisan purposes. The complicated machinery provided for in the bill was cunningly contrived to give the party in power the largest possible control over these elections. The army was to be placed back of this machinery; hence, it was denominated the force bill. Of course all democrats opposed it. But the republican leaders having it in charge. even after the people had pronounced over- whelmingly against it in the congressional elections of 1890. made a des- perate effort to push it through the senate during the short session. which began in December after the elections, A few republican senators, however, voted with the democrats of that body, and the bill was laid aside. The passage and successful enforcement of such a measure as the "force bill" would have been a deadly blow at local self-government.
'Next in pressing importance to the force bill. and the great issue upon which the democracy has fought so many battles with its antagonists, is the tariff. The tariff issue was made in the national democratic platforms of 1868. 1872. and especially in 1876, but in all these campaigns the para- mount question had been the ill-treatment of the south by the republican party-reconstruction and its results. But when 1880 had come, Federal bayonets no longer glittered in the sonthern states. The democracy claimed a "solid south," and now the platform, upon which Hancock was nominated by the democratic party, bristled with the pointed declaration, "a tariff for revenue only."
But the time had not yet come when the democracy could be thor- oughly united on so bold a proposition. As the canvass progressed Gen. Hancock became frightened at the dissatisfaction in certain manufactur- ing districts, that on the paramount question of fair treatment of the south were democratic. and he was said to have declared that tariff was a "local question." The expression has been much ridiculed, but, though it may not have been statesmanlike or philosophical, it was nevertheless a statement of fact. In many localities, otherwise democratic. large industries had grown up under the existing laws, and many democrats interested in these industries had become protectionists. Indeed, in the
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forty-fifth and iorty-sixth congresses. 1877-1881. the speaker of the demo- cratic house of representatives. Samuel J. Randall, was a protectionist. It was quite remarkable that democrats, more than four-fifths of whom were opposed to protection, should have chosen a presiding officer who was a supporter of that theory. But the tariff was then in the back- ground; local self-government was. or had been until quite recently, the one matter of supreme concern in the southern states. Democrats every where admired, and southern democrats especially were grateful to that born leader of men. Mr. Randall. for the gallant fight he made in 1873, against a bill to authorise the president to suspend the writ of habeus corpus in the reconstructed states. Thus it was that Mr. Randall was not only elected to fill out the term of Speaker Kerr, who had died during the forty-fourth congress. but was also chosen for the full terms begin- ning in December, 1877, and in December, 1879.
It really was not strange that Gen. Hancock, standing on an anti- protection platform, should be defeated, as he was in 1880, when the influence of the official leader of the party had been for more than three years exerted in the other direction. Not only did the democrats lose the presidency in that election, but they also lost the control of the house of representatives. But in the forty-eighth congress, elected in 1882, the house was again democratic. and leading democrats of that body, now fully alive to the importance of tariff reform, elected Mr. Carlisle over Mr. Randall on that issue and they re-elected Mr. Carlisle in the forty-ninth congress. Of course it was not to be expected that any tariff- reform bill could go through the house when Mr. Randall had the appointment of the committees; but it now appeared that he even had, atter he had been defeated for speaker on this very issue, enough protec- tionist democrats at his back to enable him to hold the balance of power and defeat every attempt to pass a general tariff reform bill through that body. Such was the condition of the national democratic party when Grover Cleveland was elected president over James G. Blaine in 1884.
The platform upon which Mr. Cleveland had been nominated did not declare so sharply in favor of tariff reform as that upon which Gen. Hancock had been placed in 1884. It favored taxation limited to the requirements of the government, and the necessary reduction of taxation without depriving the American laborer of the ability to compete success- fully with foreign labor. and without the imposition of rates of duty which would invite foreign immigration in consequence of the higher rates of wages prevailing in this country.
But President Cleveland was himself a most ardent tariff reformer. During the first two years of his administration he had become a great popular favorite. His broad national policies, his economies, in which there was never a suspicion of the art of the demagogue, the utter absence of sectionalism from his councils, all these had endeared him to the people. Above all. his impartial sense of justice, his independence, his phenome-
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nal courage and utter abnegation of the ordinary arts of the politician- these were a revelation. People began to compare him to Jackson and to Jefferson. But there was this difference. Jackson and Jefferson each took sides with the masses against the classes. President Cleveland was neither for nor against any class or faction or any segment of the people. He acquired within the first two years of his administration the confidence of all classes to an extent never surpassed by any president since the days of Washington. He had now concluded that the democratic party. held together, as it had been before. largely by its opposition to republican rule, and not thoroughly united in congress on any one question. except upon the proper treatment of the southern states, ought to be brought together upon the question of revenue reform. The consequence was his celebrated message of December, 1887, in which he dis- cussed the principles underlying tariff taxation from an advanced demo- cratic standpoint. The message startied the country. It alarmed politi- cians. Many leading men in Mr. Cleveland's own party looked upon it as suicidal. It was jeopardizing democratic success and Mr. Cleveland's own chances of re-election. which seemed otherwise assured. The result was the passage by the democratic house at that session of a bill reducing tariff taxation-the Mills bill. This bill failed in the republican senate, and Mr. Cleveland, the democratic nominee, was defeated in the election that fall by Benjamin Harrison, republican. But the defeated democrats were now united on tariff reform.
It must not be supposed, however, that its position on the tariff was the only cause of the defeat of the democratic party in 1858. It is true that the immense sums of money contributed by the protected interests, as well as a real fear on the part of many that the success of the dem- ocracy would retard the industrial progress of the country. contributed in a greater degree than any other single cause to bring about the result, but there were other factors in this election. The republicans appealed again throughout the north to the animosities engendered by the war. Long lists of prominent ex-Confederates, who had been appointed to office by Mr. Cleveland, were exhibited in the north. Con- federate "free trade policies" were being commended to the north, it was said, by "southern brigadiers." and the fact was triumphantly pointed to that the constitution of the Confederate States forbade all tariffs except for revenue.
Great as Mr. Cleveland's tariff message of 1887 was. there was noth- ing in it that was new. The principles of political economy upon which it was founded had been discussed for more than a century. Discussions of the existing tariff system had been going on in the house of represent- atives and in the senate for more than ten years. not only under Carlisle as speaker, but also when Mr. Randall was presiding. Morrison, Carlisle, Springer. Blount, Blackburn. Bland. Lamar, Vest. Beck, and Morgan, Pugh, Wheeler and other Alabamaians, had made speeches that, widely
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circulated, had done much to educate the people on this question long before Mr. Cleveland's message of 1887 was written.
During all' this agitation every Alabama democrat in congress favored the lowest tariff rates with the exception of Messrs. Hewitt. Shelly and Martin. These gentlemen, being believers ju a modified form of protec- tion, sometimes voted against the measures proposed for the reduction of rates. The discussions of the tariff in congress have always been more or less interesting. The protectionists argued that our country was the most prosperous in the world. that it was advancing more rapidly in wealth and population than any other. paying higher wages, and that all the while the prices of manufactured goods had been falling. It was never possible to deny these general statements of fact. The difficulty has been to demonstrate to the people that the conclusion sought to be deduced was fallacious. viz .. that all these results were attributable to our tariff system. The protectionists further argued that the system benefited the farmer because it enlarged his home market
It is not possible to give in detail the arguments used in reply. The general trend of the democratic answer may be judged of by the follow- ing extract from a speech made in the house of representatives on the 12th day of October. 1888, by the writer, which outlines in part the dem- ocratic line of reply. After giving the figures showing that our exports of cotton were annually increasing. he said:
"On what principle of right can it be that the makers of this cotton shall be prohibited by law from buying cheaply of that world which they supply so liberally with cheap cotton. These figures show that we are successfully competing in the production of raw cotton with the pauper labor of India. We shall probably continue to do so. In India. which is our principal competitor. the average product per acre, from 1879 to 1886. of raw cotton was about 50 pounds: the average product of cotton per acre during the same period in the United States was about 170 pounds. But other countries still compete. Competition with ourselves is becoming serious. Mark how we ran up in twenty years from 2.230, 000 to 7.450,000 bales of 400 pounds each. There seems to be absolutely no bounds to the amount of cotton we can make.
"This continued increase must continue to result in cheapening the price.
"The case of the western farmer is precisely the same. He supplies fully half the wheat imported into other countries. It is the foreign mar- ket that regulates the prices of his breadstuffs and his meats.
"But the case of the cotton producer or of the producer of timber or wheat or other provisions will not be so hard if his supplies, too, are cheapened as they ought to be all along the line. The tendency of the world is in that direction. Farmers' products continue to fall: so ought manufactures, and they do. Improved machinery. improved processes of manufacture everywhere, bring down prices, in America and Europe alike. The hand-loom, the country blacksmith shop. the small private manufac- tories, carried on by hand. that formerly dotted our whole country, and especially New England, are things of the past. Cloth, shoes, hats, clothing, nails, agricultural implements-everything is made by machin- ery; everything necessarily becomes cheaper.
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"It is the crowning blessing of civilization that the necessaries and even the comforts of life are being brought within the reach of the laboring man. The world over. where the laws allow him a fair chance, his condition is improving. He produces more than the laboring man could in past ages. and he ought to be allowed to enjoy more. By right he is entitled to a fair share of the triumphs of civilization, including the benefits resulting from the wonderful development of transportation by steam, on land and at sea, bringing so cheaply to be exchanged one for another the products of all peoples and all nations.
"But our republican friends point to the cheapening of goods among us and to the progress we are making. and attribute all to what they call our American system. If gentlemen really believe this they ought to lift up their eyes and look abroad. England has taken from us almost the last vestige of the large share that once was ours in the carrying trade of the world. Great Britain, France, Belgium. all Europe, is grid- ironed by railroads. London in thirty years has increased her popula- tion by a million. Berlin in forty, years has more than trebled her population. New towns have sprung up all over Europe. old cities have taken on new growth, new factories have been built, new mines developed. The impulse of modern civilization is felt everywhere, even in Italy, sitting so long inert amid the crumbling ruins of the past.
"The spirit of progress is there as well as here; and there, too, as well as here are witnessed the triumphs of invention. If we have devel- oped more rapidly, it is because of our free government and because of our vast resources of field and forest and mine and waterfall, answering like magic to the touch of enterprise and energy.
"It is for these reasons. sir. and because also of the fact that we come of the most enterprising of human races. that we have progressed; not by reason of. but in spite of, the gyves and shackles that our republican friends have placed upon labor. If we wish to decide how much of our present prosperity is due to our tariff system. let us compare ourselves with ourselves. Look at this table, not made by a democrat, but taken from the second volume of the census of 1850, compiled by republican authorities. It shows. first. that from 1860 to 1870 manufactures ad- vanced more rapidly than during any previous decade. It shows. sec- ondly, they advanced more than at any subsequent decade. The per cent. of increase in the gross value of manufactured products in the United States for the decade from 1850 to 1860. the first of these decades, was 85 per cent .; in the second, from 1860 to 1870, it was 79; and in the third, from 1870 to 1880, it was 58 only. The percentage of increase in the net values of manufactured products in the first decade was 84, in the second 63. and in the third 41 per cent. The capital invested and wages paid increased in a somewhat like proportion, though the number of hands fell off as machinery improved and increased in value. But the advance of wages during that first decade. according to this table, was greater than it was in either of the two following decades."
The canvass preceding the presidential election of 1958 was said to bo a campaign of education. And such it was. There were many changes among the voters, some of them going in one direction, and some in the other; but that which benefited the democratic party most was the spirit of inquiry that was aroused. Voters began to think and to realize that the system of high tariffs adopted during the civil war with the express promise that it was to be temporary, was continued after the close of the
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war for the benefit of the manufacturers as a class, and that the time had now come when it did not benefit even these, except in so far as they kept down competition among themselves and kept up prices by success- ful trusts and combinations. But the process of education was not com- pletel by the canvass of 1888. A few more object lessons were needed, and fortunately for the party of "tariff reform" they were forthcoming.
The republicans not only passed the force bill through the house of representatives in 1890, but also enacted into law the Mckinley bill. This law was a general revision of the tariff for the purpose of reducing revenues by "checking" importations. Sugar was inade free, but duties on very many articles were increased, with the visible result of at once raising prices.
The force bill and the McKinley act were the issues in the congres- sional campaign of 1890. and the democrats carried the country by an immense majority. In the presidential election of 1892, Grover Cleve- land, who had not changed his views on the silver question, but had emphasized them by a letter in 1890. was again nominated by the demo- crats for president. and Adlai Stevenson for vice-president. The repub- licans had re-nominated Benjamin Harrison. who had approved the Mckinley act and had favored the election or force bill, and had chosen ' as their candidate for the vice-presidency, Whitelaw Reid, who also sup- ported these measures. These issues were fairly before the people, and Cleveland and Stevenson were chosen by a very large majority. The result of the election is also accepted as a decisive verdict, not only in favor of tariff reform and against the force bill, but, also, against all attempts at Federal interference in elections for representatives in congress.
The tariff will continue to be in the future, as it has been in the past, a party question. What shall be the money of the people will also, for many years, at least. be a problem in Federal politics, During the civil war, the Federal government not only authorized national banks, taxing at the same time state banks out of existence in order to aid the circula- tion of its own institutions, but it issued United States treasury notes, which it declared to be legal tender for all dues, except upon imports. These "greenbacks." although, at one time, they were at a large dis- count, $1.00 in gold being equivalent to more than $2.50 in this national currency, answered the purpose for which they were issued.
Almost immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the government, in order to reach specie payments. which it did not succeed in doing un- til 1879, entered upon the policy of contracting the currency. Continued contraction produced depression of prices, aud a loud demand for more money, especially in the west. Based on this demand a new political or- ganization was formed, calling itself the greenback party. Its demand was for a new issue of legal tender greenbacks, to be issued by the gov- ernment in large amounts without any provisions for redemption. Indeed
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redemption was not anticipated. This money was to be floated by force of law and was denominated by the adversaries of the scheme, "fiat money," "rag money.".etc. The new party entered three candidates for the presidency. Peter Cooper, in 1876, who received 81.740 votes out of a total of 8,412,733: James B. Weaver, in 1880, who received 306, 887 votes out of 9,204. 428. and Benjamin F. Butler, who in 1884 received 133,825 votes out of 10,056,347. This party had at one time eleven members of the national house of representatives, but in 1890 it had passed gradually out of existence. Now, however, arose another new party, calling itself 'in its first national platform, issued at St. Louis. Mo., December 6, 1889. "the national farmers' alliance and industrial union." It demanded "legal tender treasury notes issued in sufficient volume to do the business of the country on a cash basis," calculating the amount needed on a per capita basis, the control of railroads by the government, etc. .
Afterward it took the name of the "people's party, "and in its platform promulgated at Omaha, Neb., on July 4, 1892, added, to its previous de. mands, the loan of legal tender money directly to the people. at two per cent. interest per annum. And not stopping now at the control by the government of railroads, it insisted also upon taking in telegraphs and ' telephones. J. B. Weaver, who had been the greenback candidate for president in 1880, was nominated as candidate of the new party in 1892, with James G. Field for vice-president. The "people's party" now has in the United States senate two members, and in the house of representa- tives, nine. In the election of 1892, it carried three states and elected eight members of the house of representaives. Whether this new party is to speedily pass away, as did its prototype, remains to be seen.
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THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
CHAPTER II. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
BY JEROME COCHRAN, M. D., MONTGOMERY .*
ENDEMIC AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES - MEDICAL LEGISLATION - STATE MED- ICAL ASSOCIATION - THE ASSOCIATION AFTER TIIE WAR - CONSTITU- TION OF 1573 - MEDICAL LAW OF 1877 - HEALTH SYSTEM - HISTORI- CAL SKETCH - COMMENTARY - PHARMACY LAWS - PHARMACEUTI . CAL LAWS - DENTISTRY - STATE DENTAL ASSOCIATION - MEDICAL SCHOOLS - INSANE HOSPITAL - MEDICAL CLUB - MEDICAL PERIOD- ICALS.
E have no record of the diseases that prevailed amongst the Indians in Alabama before its settlement by the whites; nor have we any record of the diseases which prevailed amongst these aborignes while they still divided the territory of the state with the early white settlers. Our knowledge of the diseases that prevailed amongst the early white settlers them- selves is fragmentary and imperfect. The only systematic treatise known to the writer, treating of the diseases of these early days. is the Medical History of Alabama. by Dr. P. H. Lewis, of Mobile. This
* I have undertaken to write a sketch of the medical history of Alabama. The first problem that presents itself for solution is to determine what things fall properly under the designation of medical history. Does it mean an account of the diseases, endemic and epidemic, which have afflicted the good people of the state since its foundation? Or does it mean a history of the medical profession of the state and of the great doctors who have made that profession illustrious? Or does it mean a history of the medical organi- zation and the medical institutions. In the sketch that I have written I have construed it to mean all of these things: and accordingly all of them. under appropriate sub-heads. have been treated of as thoroughly as the time and space at my disposal would warrant. It has not been an easy thing to write this sketch, because it was very difficult to obtain the facts for the periods antedating the war. My medical brethren have been perfectly willing to help me; but their memories fail to reach back so far; and of printed records there are very few extant. I have done the best I could under the circumstances; and have packed the pages assigned me as full of facts as possible. It would have been very much easier to have filled them with fine writing flatteries, compliments, panegyries-after the fashion of complaisant reporters for the daily press; but I think it will be admitted generally, or by judicious crities at any rate. that I have pursued the wiser course. [ have used a great deal of care in the verification of the facts and details that I have made use of, and I am satisfied that almost without exception their accuracy may be depended upon.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the history of any profession is to be found in the study of the lives of its eminent men. I have therefore added to the formal accounts referred to above, biographical sketches of some of the leading members of the medical profession of Alabama, confining myself entirely to those who are no longer living. Many r chly worthy of commemoration I have had to pass without mention, because I could not for them obtain the necessary materials for even short notices.
[The sketches alluded to will be found in the "Personal Memoirs" of this work .- PUBS.
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was a prize essay and was awarded a silver cup by the Alabama Medical society, of Selma, in 1846. It was subsequently, 1847, published in pam- phlet form. It contains a great deal of abstract speculation, not now of much interest. It also contains some facts in regard to the early diseases of Alabama, and chiefly in connection with the southern and central parts of the state. These facts will be used freely, so far as they fall within the scope of this historical sketch.
We know. in a general way, that the hunters and trappers and the explorers who first penetrated into the territory now constituting the state of Alabama, found the country as a rule salubrious and healthy. This statement applies not only to the Alabama territory, but to all the states of the southwest at the corresponding periods of their history. With the coming of permanent settlers, and the clearing and cultivation of the land, intermittent and remittent fevers, of comparatively mild type, and other malarial diseases. made their appearance. The whole state, however, was not settled and cleared up at once; and consequently the prevalence of these malarial diseases amongst the pioneer settlers cannot be referred to any special period, but was of earlier date in such sec- tions as were of earlier settlement, and later in such sections as were brought under cultivation at later times.
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