USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, (Vol. 1) > Part 64
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A pleasant fact to record in the history of the medical profession of Cleveland is that of an arrangement agreed upon and carried out during the World war. A committee of the Academy of Medicine visited the office of every doctor who had gone to the war and posted a notice asking each caller to notify the physician whom they finally employed of this fact, to the end that the family of the soldier physician should get 40 per cent of the fees collected for medical service.
As we close this chapter in outline of our subject we are conscious that to quite an extent in these latter days the individual is lost in the larger survey of the whole. There are many young physicians who, today, have performed and are performing operations in surgery and successfully treating ailments, that in pioneer days would have made them famous. Dr. Harry C. Barr, on the staff of Grace Hospital, is one who is from a family of physicians and who comes within the knowledge of the writer as deserving special mention; also Dr. L. Moore, chief of staff of the same hospital. We have not mentioned among the earlier physicians Dr. Charles F. Dutton, who was a surgeon in the Union army and for seventeen years professor of medicine and surgery in the Cleveland Medical College. Dr. Alexander W. Wheeler, son of Dr. John Wheeler, who came to Cleve- land in 1846, was particularly prominent in his day. He was president of the Homeopathic College, was wealthy and aristocratic, and his practice among the cultured and prominent people of the city at one time was almost exclusive.
Cleveland has never been a good field for the so-called "quacks." In 1835 the Cleveland Herald published a notice that Dr. Samuel Underhill and Dr. W. F. Otis had associated themselves in business and were pre- pared to do marvelous things. These practitioners did not attract patients, and they turned their attention to the publication of a Socialist newspaper, which did not long endure.
Two notices appeared in the newspapers of the city that deserve a place in this history. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer of May 5, 1924, occurs this article :
"LAKESIDE TO MARK PLACE WHERE UNIT LANDED
"May 14th will see the marking of another historic spot in Rouen, France, the town where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. A tablet will be erected on the stone quay where the Lakeside Hospital Unit of Cleveland, first United States Army detachment to arrive in France, landed seven years ago.
Dr. George W. Crile of the Cleveland Clinic, who organized the unit and served as its surgical director, sails for Rouen, Wednesday, to help the mayor arrange the memorial dedication. Dr. William E. Lower, also of
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the clinic, Dr. Henry L. Sanford, Cleveland physician, and United States Ambassador Myron T. Herrick are to participate in the ceremony. Doc- tor Lower was one of the unit's commanders, and Doctor Sanford was a captain. The occasion will be a reunion for both the Clevelanders and townspeople, for when the unit arrived an association of Rouen home owners was formed to make homes for the Lakeside physicians and nurses. Doctor Crile and his party will present the tablet to Rouen on behalf of Base Hospital No. 4, as the Lakeside organization was known in army rec- ords. The memorial was designed by William J. Brownlow, staff artist of the unit, who is now photographer and surgical draftsman for the Cleveland Clinic. The 200 officers, men, and nurses of the Lakeside unit had been in army training hardly more than twenty days when they landed in Rouen May 25, 1917.
"The mobilization order brought the personnel to the Union Station in Cleveland, May 6th, eight days after the order was issued. Many of the enlistment papers were filled out on the train enroute to New York. Not a uniform had been issued or a drill command shouted when the volunteers sailed on the British steamer Orduna May 8th. Uniforms were passed out on ship, only to be repacked, and drill begun, only to be discontinued, when the danger of submarines made it imperative that the ship continue with as little sign of military activity as possible. King George and Queen Mary welcomed the Americans before they went to France, most of them to serve until the end of the war. Letter files of the Cleveland Clinic show that Doctor Crile was not only the organizer of the first surgical unit to reach France as a part of the United States Army, but that he organized the Lakeside Hospital Unit of Western Reserve, the first American uni- versity hospital corps to reach France after the outbreak of the war in 1914. It sailed December 28, 1914. Doctor Crile, according to his file of correspondence with Surgeon General W. C. Gorgas, also organized the first base hospital unit to be given trial mobilization in the United States before her entry into the war."
From the Cleveland News, May 5, 1924, we quote :
"WILL OBSERVE HOSPITAL DAY
"The birthday of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, will be observed May 12th by Cleveland hospitals, which will unite in cele- bration of National Hospital Day.
"P. J. McMillan, superintendent of the City Hospital, said Hospital Day is an innovation, inasmuch as the operation of a modern hospital has always been more or less of a mystery to the public. Hospitals have stocks of groceries more plentiful than the average grocery store. They also have kitchens and dining rooms that serve more persons than the aver- age hotel, and dry goods and household supplies of which a moderately large department store might well be proud. Hospitals are finishing schools for young practitioners who are compelled by law to serve a period of interneship before becoming physicians. They are also advanced educa- tional institutions for nurses and experimental stations for the advancement of medical science."
CHAPTER XXXII
CLEVELAND NEWSPAPERS AND WRITERS
"The despot in his cabinet, engaged in forging new fetters for his subjects-the military chief, who dares contemplate employing the arms of his soldiery for the subversion of his country's liberties-the demagogue in the midst of his cabal, who, while fawning on and caressing the dear people, is seeking to abuse their confidence to the gratification of his own base ambition, or baser rapacity-all alike with the humbler enemies of social order and the supremacy of law, have an instinctive terror of a free, virtuous, able, and independent press."-Horace Greeley.
The fact that so many citizens are obsessed with the idea that they know just how a newspaper should be managed, and the fact that few do know the secret of successful journalism must account for the multitude of failures. It has been said that in the historic field the newspaper graveyard covers a tremendous area. Their history is hard to follow because the departed left no assets with which to raise tombstones giving the dates of the birth and death of the deceased. Cleveland has a large historical news- paper graveyard but probably not in excess of other localities. A news- paper reporter turned in an item about a man who had exceeded Doctor Tanner, who lived forty days without food. This man succeeded in living some forty-eight days without eating and in concluding the article the writer said : "We have been unable to learn what paper he was on, or running." There was in the early days a particularly strong craze for starting papers, but it is of those that live that history is most concerned.
Andrew Logan came to Cleveland and started the first paper. It was called the Cleveland Gazette and Commercial Register. The "plant" was a one-story cabin at the foot of Superior Street. The first number came out July 31, 1818. It was a weekly if circumstances permitted, otherwise it was a bi-monthly. It worried along for fifteen months. Eben D. Howe, a New Englander, started the Cleveland Herald as a weekly paper in 1819. He had the local field all to himself for thirteen years, then others came, but this paper had a history covering sixty-nine years. It was rather independent in politics at first but it soon veered toward Jacksonian and Jeffersonian democracy. Then the leading whigs induced Madison Kelley to start a rival, the Advertiser, which espoused the cause of the whigs. John W. Allen wrote the salutatory editorial. In 1832 this paper was sold to two men from Chagrin Falls, Horace Canfield and T. P. Spencer, who changed it into a strong democratic paper. Canfield and Spencer con- tinued to publish this paper until 1841, when it was sold to Admiral N. and J. W. Gray. The Grays were Vermonters, neither one was a news- paper man. J. W. Gray was a lawyer, but he had the New England grit, was a hard worker, "clever and canny." In the meantime the Cleveland Herald had changed to be the champion organ of the whigs. The Grays changed the name of their paper to the Plain Dealer, or rather it was J. W. Gray, for in 1845 A. N. Gray withdrew and J. W. Gray was sole proprietor. He said he gave it the name of Plain Dealer as that was a simple, straightforward title and warranted not to frighten the ladies.
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THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
The rivalry between the Plain Dealer and the Herald became very bitter. O. J. Hodge relates that, back in the '50s, there was a strife as to which paper should first print the President's message. During a whig administration J. A. Harris, editor and manager of the Herald, got per- mission from the postoffice department to open a mail bag in transit some distance from Cleveland and take out the message. This was done and a
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swift horse brought it to town and the Herald thus published the message before the Plain Dealer got its copy. This led to an angry discussion between the two papers. The Plain Dealer charged the editors of the Herald with rifling the mails, with filing off the lock on the mail pouch with a "rat-tail" file. As a result the Herald brought a libel suit against the Plain Dealer. Mr. Gray asserted in the columns of the Plain Dealer that he could prove all he said, except the matter of the "rat-tail" file, sug-
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CUYAHOGA COUNTY AND
gesting that a three-cornered file may have been used, but that if anyone would send him a rat with a three-cornered tail his defense would be complete. During the controversy the word "liar" was frequently used. While this crossfire was under way in the two papers the Plain Dealer published a local item saying that Mr. Richard Hilliard, a prominent Cleveland merchant, had gone to New York. Soon after the article came out Gray met Hilliard on the street and said: "Why, Dick, in my paper today I have stated that you had gone to New York, as you told me you were going. For Gods sake don't let Harris see you here. If he does 1 am undone, he will prove me a liar." Hilliard's reply was that he had expected to go but was unable to get away. He said that from what he had read in the papers he considered them both liars, but agreed to go home and hide until morning. It is related that Hilliard got away in the morning and carried with him a bottle of good old port furnished at the expense of the Plain Dealer editor.
August 20, 1833, the Cleveland Whig was started as a weekly paper by Rice and Penniman. It lasted two years and was followed to the news- paper graveyard by the Cleveland Messenger, which was founded by Beck and Tuttle in May, 1836, and survived less than a year. The same year the Ohio City Argus was founded as a West Side paper by T. H. Smead and Lyman W. Hall, both conservative whigs. The first number was issued May 30, 1836. In the course of the first year Hall withdrew and Smead was the sole proprietor. In 1838 the name was changed to the Ohio City Transcript. A Mr. Hill was editor until 1839. In the summer of 1836 the Cleveland Daily Gazette was founded by Col. Charles Whittle- sey. This paper did not die but was married. So much of the vigorous ability of Colonel Whittlesey had been woven into its make up that it survived. It was united with the Cleveland Herald that had then been running several years. The name of the consolidated enterprise was the Daily Herald and Gazette.
The Cleveland Liberalist was started by Dr. Samuel Underhill as a small weekly. Its first number was issued September 10, 1836. It lasted just a year. As early as 1836 the Cleveland Journal, a religious journal of Presbyterian affiliation, was published by John M. Sterling, Samuel C. Aikin and A. Penfield. The editor was Rev. O. P. Hoyt. It was united with the Observer, published at Hudson, Ohio. The consolidated paper was called the Cleveland Observer and was published in Cleveland. In 1840 it was moved back to Hudson and was published under the name of the Ohio Observer. The Daily Commercial Intelligencer was founded by Benjamin Andrews in 1838 and soon found its way to an unmarked grave. The Axe, a whig journal, published from April 23rd until after election in the Harrison campaign of 1840, was of vigorous but short life. It was supported by the leading whigs and carried at the masthead a picture of a log cabin with a "shake" roof. But the shortest lived paper that enters into the history of Cleveland was the Christian Statesman, founded by a Quaker whig in 1840. Only one number was issued. The Cleveland Agitator, a weekly anti-slavery paper, came into being and died the same year.
In 1841 four Cleveland newspapers passed from the cradle to the grave, the Daily Morning News, founded by George M. Shippen; the Palladium of Liberty, anti-slavery, founded by Rev. Mr. Butts, and of which it has been said that when it ceased to function, liberty was left without a palladium; the Eagle Eyed News Catcher, which caught more news than money, and the Daily Morning Mercury. In the same year the Mothers' and Young Ladies' Guide, a monthly, was born and died.
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In 1842 E. B. Fisher founded the Cleveland Gatherer, a weekly, which lasted two years. The following year F. H. Smead began the publication of the Second Adventist, which adopted the views of Father Miller that the world was to end in 1844. It is a matter of history that the world stayed on but the paper ended. An anti-slavery paper called the Declara- tion of Independence was published by T. H. or F. H. Smead in 1845.
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The editor was Quintus F. Atkins. It was short lived. The Ohio American published in Ohio City on the West Side in 1844 and continued for a time (four years) finally became one of the elements that entered into the making of the Cleveland Leader. In 1847 an anti-slavery whig paper, which had been published about a year in Olmsted Falls, was moved to Cleveland and changed from a weekly to a daily, retaining its original name of the True Democrat. The next year it was consolidated
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with the Ohio American, of which paper Edwin Cowles, then eighteen years of age, was part owner. The consolidated paper was given the name of the first mentioned, the True Democrat. In 1853 this was con- solidated with the Daily Forest City, the first morning paper in Cleveland, which had been founded a year before by Joseph Medill, afterwards famous as the editor of the Chicago Tribune. Both of these papers had been losing ventures. The consolidated paper was published under the name of the Daily Forest City Democrat. Edwin Cowles came into the firm and in 1854 the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. Cowles
EDWIN COWLES
bought out Medill and a third partner, John C. Vaughn, and became sole owner.
Mr. Cowles was born in Ashtabula County, Ohio, September 19, 1825. His ancestors were Puritan except one line, which was Huguenot. He was a direct descendant of Peregrine White of the early Pilgrims. He spent his boyhood in Cleveland and learned the printers' trade under Josiah A. Harris of the Cleveland Herald. His school education was obtained at Grand River Institute. At the age of eighteen he went into the printing business in partnership with T. H. Smead under the firm name of Sinead and Cowles. This firm was dissolved when he formed the partnership with Medill and Vaughn as publishers as stated. Mr. Cowles suffered from birth having a defect in his hearing, which also affected his speech. As a manager and editor he had remarkable capacity. In the early days of trial in building up the Leader to a paying basis he exercised the qualities of a military commander, which meant attention to every detail. It is said that when sending out men with wagons to advertise the Leader throughout the Reserve, by posting notices, taking supscrip-
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THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
tions, etc., he would call them in a body to his office and give them in- structions. He would inquire if any were too modest to ride through the country with the Cleveland Leader sign displayed on the wagon top. He would tell them how to make the paste and to be sure and put in a little salt to keep it from becoming mouldy.
Previous to his taking over the paper it had sunk $30,000 and in the first nine months of his management it sank $40,000 more. Now we can understand the wherefore of the newspaper graveyard and the survival of the few. In a short time Mr. Cowles got the paper on a basis of paying expenses and it soon paid off all indebtedness and became a good paying venture. In the early '80s it had the largest circulation of any paper in the United States west of the Alleghanies, except one in Cincin- nati, two in Chicago and one in Saint Louis. It had more than double the circulation of all the other Cleveland papers combined.
The first movement which led to the formation of the republican party was started in the Leader editorial rooms in 1855. At this meeting there were besides Mr. Cowles, John C. Vaughan, or Vaughn, Joseph Medill, J. F. Keeler, R. C. Parsons and R. P. Spalding. The conference re- sulted in the issuing of a call for a convention to be held at Pittsburg. This convention was held February 22, 1856. No nominations were made but it succeeded in uniting the whig, the free soil, and the know-nothing parties into one, to be known as the republican party. This was the first republican convention ever held. The convention which nominated John C. Fremont for President met in Philadelphia on the 17th of June.
Cowles carried on the paper alone until 1866, when the Leader com- pany was formed, he holding a controlling interest. He was business manager until 1860, when he became editor in chief. He rose to promi- nence in this capacity from the strength and boldness of his utterances and his decided and progressive views. He drew the fire but he made the Leader one of the most powerful papers in the West. When secession loomed he took firm stand in favor of suppressing it, unequivocal and un- qualified. In 1861 he was appointed postmaster of Cleveland by President Lincoln. Here his great executive abilities came into play. He established and perfected the free delivery of mail by carriers. A republican, and editor in chief of a republican paper, he first suggested in a strong editorial in 1861 the nomination and election of David Tod, a war democrat, for governor of Ohio as a means of uniting the loyal Union element of the state. After the battle of Bull Run he came out in an editorial saying "now is the time to abolish slavery," arguing that the South by being in rebellion had forfeited the right to their property, that the Government had the same right to abolish slavery and thus weaken the resources of the Southern Confederacy by liberating a producing class from which the South mainly derived the sinews of war, as it had to capture and destroy property as a military necessity. This editorial was severely criticised by portions of the republican press saying the Leader was aiding the South by creating dissatisfaction among democrats of the North, but when the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued by Lincoln, less than a year after, precisely the same arguments were used in its support.
In 1863 Cowles advocated the election of John Brough, another war democrat, as a candidate against Vallandingham.
Cowles made his paper a leader in local affairs. In 1870 he wrote and published an elaborate editorial in favor of the building of the Superior Viaduct. The idea was opposed by the other papers, who characterized it as a utopian scheme because of the great expense. The estimated cost
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was $3,000,000. The proposition was submitted to a vote of the people and it carried. The actual cost was $2,225,000.
In 1869 an afternoon edition was issued under the name of the Evening News. In 1885 after the purchase of the Cleveland Herald the name of this edition was changed to the News and Herald. In 1905 it was changed to the Cleveland World. The Leader had been publishing a tri-weekly and weekly edition in addition to its daily evening edition and in 1877 it began the publication of a Sunday edition, the first published by any daily paper in the city. The Cleveland Voice, published by O. J. Hodge, had preceded it by six years. The Cleveland Voice was the first Sunday paper in the city and the second in Ohio, the Columbus Post being the first. After the daily papers took up in earnest the publication of a Sunday edition the Voice 'went to sleep," having been published in Cleveland seven years.
Edwin Cowles died in 1890 and the Leader editorial management went into the hands of John C. Covert. In 1905 the estate sold the controlling interest to Charles A. Otis, who in turn sold it to Medill McCormick of Chicago. The publication office and plant that had been for so long a time on Superior, west of West Sixth Street, was moved to Superior and East Sixth. In 1910 the entire property was sold to Dan R. Hanna, who two years later bought from Charles A. Otis the Cleveland World, which had been running for some years. Thus the Cleveland News of today is the successor of the evening edition of the Leader under Cowles, and the World. The World began as an afternoon paper in August, 1889, and it passed into the hands of B. F. Bower, an experienced newspaper man from Detroit, and George A. Robertson of Cleveland. In April of 1895 it was sold to Robert P. Porter, who had before been director of the United States Census. His venture failed and Mr. Bower came into control again. In 1895 Charles A. Otis, who had bought the World, bought also the News and Herald and the evening edition of the Plain Dealer, which were all consolidated under the name of the Cleveland News, and this was the paper which he sold to Dan R. Hanna. Mr. Hanna announced at the outset that the policies of the papers under his direction would be to "present a true and accurate picture of the day's events in Cleveland, in the United States and the world." He said: "These papers have no masters to serve, no enemies to punish. They cater to no special interests ; they are chained to no party."
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