• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 339 0

supplied the pesthouse with $500 worth of food refused to provide any more until he was “satisfied of reimbursement.” While Wertenbaker traveled to Middlesboro, the last of the food had run out. Some guards now refused to work until they were properly paid. The strategy of the McCormacks, father and son, was to exploit the public embarrassment of the pesthouse crisis and the threat of a county-wide quarantine in order to finally squeeze an appropriation from the county government. It must have seemed a sensible strategy to the McCormacks; thanks to the wire reports coming out of the city, newspapers as far away as Grand Forks, North Dakota, and New York City were running stories on the “starving” pesthouse inmates of Middlesboro, Kentucky. But locals knew better than to underestimate the fiscal parsimony of Judge James Neal of the Bell County Fiscal Court, whom the Middlesboro Weekly Record described as “a little, one-horse, whipper-snapper of a judge with a brain about as big as a mustard seed and a soul infinitely smaller.” And so while government officials engaged in a standoff over funds, the pesthouse inmates went hungry. If more guards abandoned their posts, could anyone expect the inmates to stay in the pesthouse?51

That afternoon Wertenbaker and McCormack addressed a roomful of indignant local businessmen and political leaders at the Middlesborough Hotel. Speaking for the state board, McCormack told the assembly that national government aid was unnecessary, the epidemic was already under control, and the county “could and would be made to pay.” Wertenbaker told the men that he could not take control of the epidemic unless the state board of health appealed to the surgeon general for assistance. Upon hearing this, several of the locals constituted themselves as a Citizens’ Committee. They drafted a telegram to Governor W. O. Bradley and J. M. Mathews, president of the state board of health, asking them to call on the national government. The decision to appeal to Mathews, the political appointee who presided over the board, rather than J. N. McCormack, who actually ran it, no doubt stoked the indignation of both McCormacks.52

The Citizens’ Committee’s telegram was but the opening salvo in a war of the wires—a clash of rhetorical performances that would last three days and reverberate for months afterward. The entire discussion centered on cash, control, and, in an indirect way, the Constitution. The McCormacks blamed the episode on Wertenbaker, whom they came to see as an arrogant interloper who had usurped their authority by promising the citizens of Middlesboro a bag full of United States currency. As A. T. McCormack recalled bitterly, “A number of citizens who had given us little or no aid during our hard work consulted and reconsulted with the Service surgeon, and, inspired by either his talk or their dreams of government pelf, they kept the wires hot with messages appealing for government assistance.”53

J. M. Mathews wired back to the Citizens’ Committee that, after consulting with the governor, he would happily authorize Dr. Wertenbaker to take charge—“if the Federal Government will defray expenses. There is no money in our treasury and no law to appropriate any for this purpose.” Having no doubt received a copy of Mathews’s telegram, Secretary McCormack then wired to Chief Inspector McCormack and told him to gather his men and leave Middlesboro at once. Once J. N. McCormack recalled the state officers, Wertenbaker was eager to take control, wiring the surgeon general that the state withdrawal left Middlesboro “absolutely unprotected.” “If authority in Mathews’ telegram is sufficient, I recommend that I be authorized to take charge to-night.... Please authorize necessary immediate expenditures for provisions, guards, etc.”54

Walter Wyman was furious. He ordered Wertenbaker to notify both McCormacks that he had not been authorized to take control, and the state officers should not be recalled. “The [federal] government’s interest is in protecting other states,” he said, “and nowhere is the whole expense borne