USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 19
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The farm's livestock products consumed during the year were valued as follows: milk from Toggenburg goats, $4,030; poultry and eggs, $7,231; butchered hogs, $30,584, and slaughtered sheep, $553. (In later years, bees were added for the production of honey.)
Thus the inmates who could work, even if for only short periods, were performing a valuable service, both for them- selves, and for others. Their work in the fields, in the vegetable patches, in the flower gardens and greenhouse, and in institu- tion's shops would have been therapeutic and soul satisfying.
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Cook county, for over 100 years, operated a poor farm, with able-bodied paupers doing most of the work. Pictured (top) are an attractive display of vegetables grown on the farm, and (lower) Dunning inmates, including mental patients, working in cabbage field, about 1900.
Oak Forest was their home and they were helping maintain it, even as they had done in their own homes thruout most of a lifetime.
A Decade Of Retrenchment
The depression years of the 1930's were trying times for Oak Forest, as well as for all other operations of county gov-
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ernment. Tax monies were hard to come by, no new construc- tion could be undertaken, and it indeed was a task just trying to keep the county's institutional buildings in a condition of fair repair. Retrenchment was the order of the decade.
Meanwhile, Oak Forest's population of inmates continued at a high level. There was continuous overcrowding, and never enough room to admit all who were in need of infirmary care.
Dunning, like its successor, Oak Forest, produced many chickens, shown here (top), with home for mentally ill male workers appearing in background. Lower-meat hogs, at Cook county's Dunning poor farm, feed at trough. Pictures believed taken about 1900.
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Inmates enjoy friendly little game of stud poker at Oak Forest, about 1911.
A table showing the average daily population at the Oak Forest infirmary and tuberculosis hospital during the worst years of the depression is enlightening. It follows:
Average Daily Populations
Year
Infirmafy
Tuberculosis Hospital
Total
1930
3,419
499
3,918
1931
3,555
573
4,128
1932
3,626
548
4,174
1933
3,599
535
4,134
1934
3,509
498
4,007
1935
3,461
459
3,929
What is believed to have been the peak load of all times was reached on Jan. 25, 1932, when the institution was caring for 4,292 inmates.
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Top: By standards of time, Oak Forest's kitchen in 1912 was model of per- fection. Male helpers wore long-sleeved, white shirts with stiff collars, also vests. (Unless, of course, they had been tipped-off that their "pitchers" would be "tuck.") Female helpers presumably had ankles !
Lower: Portion of 1959 kitchen, showing steam pressure cookers and ovens.
The population of able-bodied inmates dwindled during the late 1930's and the 1940's due to welcomed pensions, other forms of aid, and better chances for obtaining jobs, all of which permitted many of the aged to remain in their own homes, as has been pointed out.
Yet the facilities at Oak Forest remained over-crowded at all times, this particularly because, in the gradual conversion to a geriatrics hospital for the ailing aged, more space, under hospital regulations, was demanded for each bed.
There were valid reasons, however, for a lag in expansion.
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Dr. E. J. Chesrow, medical director, visits patients at Oak Forest hospital, 1958.
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Pride of Oak Forest hospital are its aged, numbered among whom, in 1959, was Mrs. Charlotte Bonner, age 109 on April 25. Mrs. Bonner remembers that as a child, living within downtown Chicago, she scrambled for pennies tossed by Abraham Lincoln. Above, she is being helped to a piece of her birthday cake bv Superintendent Carl K. Schmidt, Jr. Mrs. Bonner died Sept. 8, 1959.
Eldest patient at Oak Forest hospital, Mrs. Sally Powell celebrated 115th birthday anniversary Feb. 10, 1959. Born into slav- ery, she outlived husband and their seven sons. Ad- mitted to Oak Forest in 1951, she now is bedfast. Proof of age is contained in family Bible. Here hos- pital officials and nurses present her with birthday cake. Inset, lower left, is another picture of Mrs. Powell.
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First, there was the depression, as previously pointed out, and immediately after came the threat of war, then World War II. All building materials were needed for the war effort. Even the obtaining of materials for proper building maintenance was a serious problem.
The period from 1930 until almost 1948 was one that taxed the ingenuity of county officials and the county's maintenance workers. It was a time of patch-as-patch-can to keep the county's several institutions in functional order.
Institutional Improvements Resumed
With the war over and building materials again available, the county set out upon a rehabilitation and improvement pro- gram for all of its institutions, including Oak Forest, County hospital, the Arthur J. Audy Home for Children (juvenile home), the Family Court building, the county jail, and even the County building, itself.
Relative to Oak Forest, the county board succeeded in obtain- ing approval by public referendum of three improvement bond issues totaling $17,280,000. (The first issue, for $3,500,000, was approved in 1947; the second, for $4,000,000, in 1951; and the third, for $9,580,000, in 1957.)
Much of the rehabilitation and improvement work was started at a time when William N. Erickson, a Republican, was board president (1946 to 1954), but the program had the full support of the ten Democratic commissioners from Chicago, including Daniel Ryan, then finance committee chairman and now president. The Democrats, at the time, constituted a two-thirds majority of the 15-member board. (Erickson, inci- dentally, has been a board member continuously since 1934. He resides in Evanston.)
Among the post-World War II projects at Oak Forest have been the following:
1. Completed in 1950 the $950,000 residence for nurses. This six-story brick building contains 150 sleeping rooms.
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Figures important in Cook county's history are pictured here. Occasion is Feb. 4, 1957, when county board named a forest preserve area in honor of Commissioner Elizabeth A. Conkey, board member since 1934 and long-time leader in county welfare activities. Congratulating Mrs. Conkey are, left to right, Commissioner Clayton F. Smith, former board president; Commissioner William N. Erickson, also a former board president, and Daniel Ryan, current board president. Wooded tract named after Mrs. Conkey lies along Tinley creek, in Worth township, south of Chicago.
2. Completed in 1953 a new $850,000 recreation and physi- cal medicine building. In one portion of the building is an assembly hall that seats 600 patients. The hall's balcony is so designed that bed-ridden patients, without having to be re- moved from their beds, can be brought up to the balcony by use of an especially designed elevator and then propped up so they can see the stage.
The hall is used for the showing of movies twice weekly and for assemblies upon other occasions. Its use relieved congestion in the main dining room where assemblies formerly were held.
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On the same floor with the hall are the patients' library and a cafeteria for employes. In the English basement are the rooms which are equipped for hobby workshops and physi- cal therapy. This latter involves work in which patients, in- cluding spastics, are retaught control of muscles, the use of which had been lost thru illness.
3. Completed in 1954 was a new receiving and discharge building, costing $350,000, which facilitated the processing and examining of patients who are entering or leaving the chronic disease hospital. Medical equipment in the examining rooms of this building is the latest known to science.
4. As a supplement and ally to the work in medicine, a hospital solarium that accommodates up to 100 patients was built and opened in 1952. Altho completed first, it was to and does adjoin the new receiving and discharge building. Its cost is included in the $350,000 total for the combined project.
This elongated, sun-lit building, with its ceiling-high win- dows that give it the appearance of a botanical conservatory, is very popular with ambulatory and wheel-chair patients. There, even on winter days, the patients can enjoy one-another's company while absorbing the beneficial rays of the sun.
5. The water supply, which at times in the past had run low at the institution, was made adequate in 1953 thru the construction of a new reservoir which holds three million gallons - enough for a four-weeks supply. Its cost was $300,000.
6. Completed in 1955 was a new laboratory and mortuary building, long needed, at a cost of $225,000.
7. During the period from 1953 to 1955 the church facili- ties at Oak Forest underwent extensive remodeling. This in- cluded the Catholic and Protestant chapels and the Jewish Synagog. A Christian Science reading room also was added.
8. The old building which formerly housed the nurses was extensively remodeled in 1954 and is used as living quarters for
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12 resident doctors and their families.
9. The Tuberculosis hospital underwent extensive remodel- ing during 1954 and 1955. Included was the addition of a rehabilitation department where patients can learn new voca- tions, or improve themselves in the crafts they already know.
There both men and women can learn typing and other forms of office work; men can learn trades, such as woodwork and various types of factory work that will help them in earn- ing a living after they are discharged as cured. Women patients can attend sewing and cooking schools. Any patient who would like to improve his English, including those of foreign birth, may attend English classes.
Patients who are unable to leave their beds have occupa- tional therapy work brought to them. These patients do leather
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There is nothing like a trip to the hair dresser to perk up a lady, regardless of age. At Oak Forest hospital volunteer beauticians from the outside come to the institution one day a year and give free beauty treatments to patients.
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work, knitting, weaving and the like. Those who like to paint are encouraged to do so. The able director of the rehabilitation services in the Tuberculosis hospital is Stanley F. Doenecke.
Also added to the Tuberculosis hospital was a new X-Ray department, a new operating room, new supply department, and two new, enclosed porches for convalescing patients. Wards were remodeled and the six patient cottages (these had been an outgrowth of the original "tent colony" which proved impractical) were remodeled to accommodate an addi- tional 120 tubercular patients.
10. Important but less spectacular work of rehabilitation during this period included the replacing of steps with concrete ramps which make it easier for the crippled and the wheel- chair patients to move about. The institution's electric system also was converted from direct to alternating current.
In 1958, with its newly-acquired bond money, the county set about with further major improvements, including the remodel- ing of the large wards in the chronic disease unit.
And on the drawing boards shortly before this history went to press were plans, according to President Ryan, for the early construction of a highly functional building which, in some respects, could be termed the "pulse" of the great institution.
The proposed structure will adjoin the receiving building. Its first floor will contain the offices of the chronic disease unit doctors, the second floor will be given over to operating rooms, and on upper floors sufficient space will be created for the addition of from 200 to 300 beds. The plans were being drawn by Richard W. Prendergast, county architect, and his assistant, L. F. Wysockey.
Everyone knows that a potter's field is a burial place for paupers and unknown persons. Cook county's is on the Oak Forest property, not because Oak Forest hospital contributes any great number of dead, for it does not, but because such a burial place must be located somewhere,, and .he county does
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own great acreage at Oak Forest.
Burials, averaging 265 a year, are mostly for unclaimed bodies that police originally had taken to the county morgue. Oak Forest hospital buries not more than one or two in the field each year, nearly all deceased patients being claimed by relatives for decent burial in family plots.
In a gesture of respect for the pauper dead, the county late in 1958, partly at the suggestion of Superintendent Carl K. Schmidt, Jr., created a new 25-acre burial ground, to be known as the Cook County cemetery, next to the old pauper's field.
Beginning with 1960, paupers were to be buried in separate graves, marked with concrete headstones. Heretofore, the wood- en boxes containing the bodies were laid end to end in trenches eight feet deep, each marked with a wooden slab bearing a number. The new cemetery will provide for 12,000 graves.
The Farm Had To Go
Discontinuation of all farm operations at Oak Forest, which occurred in February of 1954, came as a surprise to many.
For more than a hundred years1 Cook county had operated a highly productive farm in conjunction with its poorhouse, a practice generally followed by other counties in other states thruout America.
A dictionary definition of poor farm is: "A farm maintained at public expense for the support and employment of paupers."
At Cook county's poor farm the livestock, principally meat hogs and chickens, and the tons of vegetables that were grown, helped feed not only the inmates but enough surplus often was produced to supply, in part, the needs at County hospital and the county jail.
But time was running out for the county's poor farm. The character of the institution was changing, as noted elsewhere. Its gradual conversion to a geriatrics hospital for the financially
1. In 1851 the county had purchased 160 acres of land near Dunning for poor- house and farming purposes, as explained elsewhere.
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Some 60 teen-age volunteers, known as Volunteens, come to Oak Forest hospital on certain nights each week. They wheel patients to balcony of audi- torium on "show" nights, help stage "game" nights for patients, and in summer help with patients in the yards. Selected from nearby high schools, the Volun- teens here are being honored on stage by Supt. Carl K. Schmidt, Jr.
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A picnic under the shade trees on spacious grounds of Oak Forest hospital is enjoyed by patients.
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distressed left it with fewer and fewer able-bodied men and women who could help with the farming and canning. By April of 1946 only 150 of the 2,213 infirmary inmates were able to do even light work. (Now, of course, all are medical patients at Oak Forest and are incapable of farm work.)
As this lack of inmate help developed, the county had to hire more and more outside workers to keep up production. In time, there came a point of diminishing returns. Hired laborers worked but eight hours per day, 40 hours per week, and no one could blame them. Yet there was developing the lack of love for the farm that keeps a farmer and his wife and his children toiling for long hours to make their farm a success.
Responsibility for successful management of the farm had become a continuous headache to the members of the county board. True, they could and did relegate management to others, but the responsibility, as in all other county matters, still was theirs.
The late Frank Venecek, superintendent at Oak Forest from 1923 to 1949, had his hands full with the management of the huge institution that fast was becoming a complete hospital. His chief interest necessarily had to be the welfare of the patients, and in that he excelled.
(The writer of this history has walked thru the wards at Oak Forest with Superintendent Venecek and has heard the bed-ridden aged, both men and women, welcome him with such heart-warming expressions as: "God bless you, Mr. Vene- cek." They would clutch at his clothing and he would stop to say a cheery word that left them smiling. His was a decency to mankind that was life-giving.)
Superintendent Venecek also loved the farm side of his position, but with the farm problems mounting, it became in- creasingly difficult to keep a tight rein on the situation. The farm foremen under him, competent in their own right, were having difficulty making the farm pay for itself.
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County Acquired Negri
At this point we wish to bring into the picture the county's efficiency expert, the late Anton C. Negri, who eventually was to play an important role in the welfare of Oak Forest.
Negri was retained by the county board on Feb. 16, 1937 for a year's work at County hospital at a salary of $25,000, from which he was to pay for his own staff of four or five assistants.
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A trip to the "country store" is fun the world over. Here is the store, prior to remodeling, at Oak Forest hospital. Ambulatory patients come with their pennies to buy such things as greeting cards, "goodies," and, sometimes, a 'chaw of terbaccer." For bed-ridden patients, "store" carts are wheeled to bedsides.
His was the job of eliminating wasteful buying of foodstuffs and other hospital supplies, in working out procedures that would eliminate waste of manpower and duplication of effort, in instituting improvements that would contribute to the wel- fare of hospital patients, and, in general, operating with a free hand in bettering whatever conditions he would find at such a huge institution.
That Negri got the job was largely due to the fact that for the previous one and one-half years he had worked for the
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county on a voluntary basis in helping the late John Toman, then sheriff, in improving conditions at the county jail, par- ticularly in the kitchens.
Toman was lavish in his praise of Negri's work, pointing out that because of it, the prisoners were being fed better at much lower costs to the county. Civic organizations backed Negri. And the county board, of which Clayton F. Smith then was president, was eager to obtain Negri's services for County hospital.
(Smith was first elected as president and board member in 1934, served as president the following 12 years, and still is a member, having been re-elected Nov. 4, 1958 for his seventh consecutive four-year term.)
Negri, of course, was well qualified for his work. Swiss born, he had come to America as a youth and had distinguished him- self both as a business man and as a business consultant.
He had successfully managed large hotels in both New York City and Chicago, was a specialist in mass buying and mass cooking, knew how to efficiently employ workers, could detect and rectify management errors, and insisted upon the employment of modern, efficient business methods and the use of up-to-date equipment.
Not only had he been able to manage successfully for others, but Negri had built up and become president of his own successful dairy products company in Chicago. He was financially independent and had gone into virtual retirement prior to his employment by the county. But the restless drive within him prompted Negri to want to continue management work, particularly when he saw that public institutions were in need of improvements.
Setting one's self up as an efficiency expert or engineer is to invite having fun poked at you, whether you are J. L. Jacobs (a highly efficient tax and management expert who did meritorious work for the county in the late 1920's and early
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1930's), Anton C. Negri, or any other worthy management consultant.
By the very nature of the efficiency expert's title and work, he is a game bird for which there is no closed season. It is high sport for friends and supporters of the poor man to question his judgment, hoping here and there to find a chink in his armor about which they can "rib" him. The expert, of course, can minimize this by retaining a goodly sense of humor.
An efficiency expert, of course, continuously must run into the problem of having workers and even department heads and sub-heads throwing obstacles into his path, hoping to de- feat his purpose, tho they may not understand exactly what it is.
Such obstructionists and distrusting persons often are moti- vated by fear of the unknown. They speculate, generally with- out reason, that the expert will cause them to lose their jobs. Nor do they want the status quo of their familiar routine disturbed, no matter how awkward or even senseless it may be.
Efficiency experts, however, are there to help people, much the same as are policemen and family doctors. Often they can lighten one's load while at the same time bringing about a more efficient and more economical operation.
"Any person not giving Mr. Negri full cooperation will find himself without a job," declared President Smith.
Onions With Whiskers
Before leaving the county board meeting at which Negri was hired, let us allude to the lighter side. When a commis- sioner asked Negri to cite an example of what he would do if he were to be retained as efficiency expert for County hospital, Negri said:
"Well, when I visited the hospital the other day, I observed that onions were being purchased in wasteful fashion. They had been bought in such overly large amounts that many were sprouting and even growing roots before they could be used.
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I would have them purchased in smaller amounts."
With that, another commissioner, George A. Miller, chal- lenged Negri in friendly banter, saying:
"I can produce you doctors who will testify that green onions are even more healthful than dried onions."
. Newspaper reporters, of whom this writer was one, enjoyed the little by-play and cheerfully reported the onion angle. The Chicago Daily Tribune even carried an animated cartoon of an onion, showing it with grinning face, sprouts for ears and hair, and bearing a luxurious growth of chin whiskers.
Negri did not always maintain a ready sense of humor. But on the other hand, he would not grow irritable at such mild jibes. If he caught the purport of their meaning, he just let them pass.
It goes without saying that he received the full support of the board and the public in general, including the newspapers, notwithstanding the occasional fun the latter group poked at him. At the end of the year, it was said that Negri had saved the county $100,000, nor did anyone challenge the statement.
The board, in fact, was so pleased with his work at County hospital that it retained him for another year, adding to his duties the same type of work at Oak Forest Institutions, as Oak Forest hospital then was called.
No job was too big for Negri to tackle. He and his staff pitched into the Oak Forest situation with glee. They observed, made reports of 10,000 words or longer, and instituted hun- dreds of changes, both major and minor. The amount they saved the taxpayers thru efficient management at both Oak Forest and County hospital in 1938 was estimated at upwards of $200,000.
Soon thereafter the board named Negri to a post created expressly for him-that of coordinator of all county institu- tions. This embraced County hospital, Oak Forest Institutions, the juvenile home, Family Court, and county jail. His good
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work continued unabated.
Negri strongly and repeatedly criticized the operations of the Oak Forest farm. An owner of farms, himself (there were many facets to the almost incredible Negri's life), he found fault with methods, men and machinery.
We remember once, during the early years of World War II, how Negri came to a county board meeting, loaded down with copies of a voluminous, type-written report on conditions at Oak Forest. The report was a most forbidding maze of figures and assorted statistics, possibly 20,000 words long, with no summarizations.
"Mr. Negri, could you kindly point out a few highlights in this lengthy report?" we asked upon receiving one of the extra copies he had brought along for the press.
"Oh, Mr. Smith," he said with a smile, "this is so good that you must read every word of it."
The fact that he always called us "Smith" never bothered this writer. Originally we had tried to set him straight, but after a few years gave up. (Let us add that being called Smith was no affront to our dignity. In fact the Good Lord has seen fit to create even more Smiths than He has Ryans, Ericksons, Chaplins, Bobrytzkes, Duffies or Johnsons, to name only a few.)
But we were slightly aggravated for another reason. Busy newspapermen, covering a beat where a half-dozen stories may be breaking at once, often have but minutes, not hours, in which to digest lengthy reports. In such cases, reporters appre- ciate helpful guidance, else anything short of a Wickersham or Kinsey report is likely to find its way into the waste basket.
Finding no summarizations at either the beginning or end of the Negri report, we began in the middle, thumbing pages both ways at once, a confusion not unlike that of Stephen Leacock's armored knight who "flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."
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Our slight pique had not worn itself out an hour or so later when we phoned Superintendent Venecek to recount that Negri, in his report to the board, had declared that instead of the farm's having 697 hogs and pigs, as Venecek claimed, it had but 694; also that under the Venecek management, the weeds in the beet field had grown taller than the beets.
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