History Snoopin': Banishment of the hated mask

Banishment of the hated mask

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 20th 2020

“We’re trying to save human lives here,” said Councilman John Carkin. “This council should be commended instead of getting senseless opposition.”

The crowd of at least 40 masked men hooted and booed. “It’s a highhanded outrage,” said a furious Councilman James Keene. “It smacks of the Bolsheviks.”

Medford City Council had just voted 4-3 to leave the decision of whether to abolish the mask requirement to the best judgment of the city’s board of health, a board composed of the four council members who voted in favor of keeping the masks.

It was December 1918. Jackson County was still fighting against the threat of the 1918 flu pandemic that was racing around the world and had already brought death to at least two county residents.

Mayor Charles Gates fired back at the agitators, reminding them that the flu epidemic had steadily decreased since the mandated wearing of masks had begun just three week earlier.

“There are only two classes of people opposing the masks,” he said, “those too dignified to wear them, and those who place the almighty dollar above human life.”

It had begun in early October, when Mayor Gates received a letter from Medford Dr. Elias Porter, who was studying in a Massachusetts hospital when the pandemic struck with a vengeance.

“It is the most terrible epidemic ever visiting America,” he warned, “and is very fatal. The disease appeared in Boston early in September. On the 14th of that month there were 21 deaths, and from that date until noon, Oct. 5, there have been over 80,000 cases and 2,270 deaths.”

Mayor Gates announced that starting Oct. 14, 1918, “We have decided to close all places of amusements, theaters, moving pictures, churches, lodges, schools and all public meetings of every description where people congregate, until the epidemic has subsided.”

Within days, William Barnum, one time boy-conductor on the Rogue River Valley Railway, was dead, and residents were getting sick.

Gates ordered a mandatory quarantine of anyone suffering from the flu and required a sign be posted on their door to warn the public.

By November, with 50 cases known in the county, the upper floor of Medford’s Sacred Heart Hospital was turned into an influenza ward.

Red Cross women began sewing flu masks, selling them to local stores and the public for 15 cents each.

On Nov. 24, when new cases had slowed, merchants who had lost most of their customers were delighted when the bans on gathering groups and closures were lifted.

However, two weeks later, with four deaths in four days and 150 cases of influenza, the council reinstated the gathering ban and the closures.

Also, everyone was now required to wear a mask everywhere they went, even inside where they worked. Violating the mask requirement meant a $5 fine for each offense, and over 20 men eventually were cited.

A Mail Tribune editorial supported the move. “The flu mask has been proved the best preventative, and while it entails considerable inconvenience, it is a question of safety first.”

Some merchants circulated a petition asking that the mask measure be repealed.

“The businessmen,” said City Health Officer Dr. Elijah Pickel, “are injuring their own cause. With flu masks, the individual can shop downtown without danger. Without them there would be danger on every side.”

On Jan. 4, 1919, the ban on gatherings and the mask requirement were lifted.

From the beginning, there had been 531 cases in the county, two confirmed deaths, and 26 deaths from pneumonia brought on by the flu. Sixteen deaths were in the county, outside of the cities.

“The schools reopen and all social activities will be on in full swing,” said a Tribune columnist. “It is expected that churches will be crowded again. 

Lovers of moving pictures will now be able to enjoy a show in comfort, thanks to the banishment of the hated mask.”

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/banishment-of-the-hated-mask

History Snoopin': The rationing of panic

The rationing of panic

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 6th 2020

It was the middle of March, just a few weeks ago, when panic struck.

A long line of shopping carts twisted around a corner at Costco and ended somewhere back in the middle of the meat cases. A frazzled two or three employees were tossing jumbo packs of toilet paper into each basket; baskets pushed by equally frazzled and even more frightened customers.

Panic and hoarding are nothing new in times of stress and emergency; however, toilet paper, as important as it certainly is, certainly seems like an unusual choice in the grand scheme of things.

Then again, I’d bet you couldn’t tell me the very first item customers cleared from the grocery shelves when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the country went to war.

Waiting for it—sugar!

Within a week of the bombing, the government began its first rationing order. Because rubber was a

war necessity, purchasing new tires for the old jalopy was virtually banned, and just forget about riding home in a brand new 1942 automobile. Unless you were in one of 12 employment categories beginning with physicians, nurses and veterinarians, and ending with my favorite, “persons delivering newspapers,” you were out of luck. The serious joke that was going around said, “Be careful with your tires when you’re driving around, Bob, cause you ain’t gonna get no more.”

 Now, let’s get back to sugar.

Rumblings of a sweet ban started right around New Year’s and, boy, did those rumblings get serious attention from the panicky portion of the Greatest Generation. Store shelves were as bare as — dare we say it? — an empty toilet paper roll.

It was hoarding in the extreme. There was plenty of sugar produced in the county, yet officials reported many consumers were “buying in excess of need” and storing the extra sugar in case of a future shortage or price increase.

On May 5, 1942, when sugar became the first rationed item after cars and tires, it was apparent that those panicky sugar folk were actually on to something.

Sugar was also a critical war necessity. Experts said over a million tons of sugar would be diverted from consumers each year to make industrial alcohol, a material needed in the manufacture of explosives. “This is the sugar that can mean more fire power for our fighting men,” said one sugar company. “So long as we need sugar to get enough explosives, every American man, woman and child will cheerfully and gladly accept the sugar ration.”

In addition, there really was a shortage. Sugar production in the Philippines and Hawaii dried up, and Cuban and Puerto Rico sugar was shared with the war allies, Great Britain, Russia and China.

Ration stamps were issued, with each civilian adult allowed 1 pound of sugar per week and children a 1/2 pound. Anyone found hoarding could face a fine of up to $10,000.

There would be more rationing during the duration of the war, including shoes, butter and meat. Even coffee was rationed in November 1942 to just 1 pound per person every five weeks — about a cup a day. That’s a thought that still panics the heck out of us who wake up and just can’t wait to smell the coffee.

Gas rationing began Dec. 1, 1942, allowing four gallons a week. The day before it went into effect, gas stations across Jackson County reported “a heavy run on gasoline in order to start the rationing period with a full tank.”

Not until the end of the war in 1945 did rationing begin to fade away.

Gas rationing ended Aug. 15, and everything except tires and sugar ended Nov. 25. Tire rationing ended Jan. 1, 1946.

Because of a world shortage of sugar, it took until June 11, 1947, before the Mail Tribune could print above the page one masthead, a large, warlike headline, “Sugar Rationing Ends Tonight.”

Here’s hoping toilet paper doesn’t take that long.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/the-rationing-of-panic

History Snoopin': The Pandemic of the Spanish Lady

The pandemic of the Spanish Lady

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Tuesday, March 9, 2020

They called the pandemic of 1918 the attack of the Spanish Lady, an influenza outbreak that raced from human to human and continent to continent with such incredible speed that many people feared they were watching the end of the world — and rightly so.

Not since the Black Plague had so many people around the world died in such a short period of time. Over 2,000 victims in Oregon, over a half-million in the U.S., and perhaps 30 to 100 million people died worldwide.

Ironically, Spanish Influenza didn’t start in Spain, but rather in America’s heartland — Kansas.

One March morning, a Fort Riley Army private skipped breakfast and reported to sickbay, complaining of a sore throat, headache and fever. By noon, 100 soldiers with the same symptoms joined him. In just four days, patients at the post hospital overflowed into tents

, and doctors were treating over 500 men.

Then, soldiers began to die.

Disease spreading within groups of men living in close quarters was common and didn’t worry public health officials, and so, when civilians began to get sick, no one noticed and no one sounded the alarm. Besides, Americans were getting used to soldiers dying.

For nearly a year, WWI had transformed high school students into “doughboys,” marching off to France with rifles on their shoulders, unknowingly carrying the most deadly weapon of all, the flu.

Rogue Valley residents read newspapers and watched the death toll set new records. In just one day, Boston recorded 202 victims, then

Philadelphia followed with 289, then New York City surpassed them all with 851 in a single day.

Medford physician Elias Porter, while studying at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote home about the “horror” he saw each day. “Patients have been ill just a few hours,” he said, “and within a few hours more they are dead.”

The plague had stayed away from the Northwest, and everyone was sure there was nothing to fear. They ignored the Mail Tribune editorial that warned, “The epidemic is sweeping westward rapidly. Its presence here is only a question of a few days.”

In September 1918, an army troop train arrived from Boston at Ft. Lewis, Washington. Within a week, the invisible virus hitchhiked by rail and highway down the coast and into the Rogue Valley.

The Spanish Lady now began knocking on valley doors. Over 200 confirmed cases in less than a week, and at least 12 of those died.

Washington state resident Bill Bezold was hoping to beat the snows in the Siskiyou Pass. With wife, Edna, two children and everything they owned stuffed into their car, the family was moving to Arizona.

They stopped in Ashland to eat. Bill began to sweat and needed medical attention. By the time they reached the hospital, Edna and an infant son showed the same symptoms.

All three died within hours and were buried in Ashland’s Mountain View Cemetery. Only their orphaned 4-year-old son miraculously survived and returned to his grandmother’s Washington home.

There never was an accurate count of the valley dead, but newspaper reports indicate that in just a three-month period, somewhere between 200 and 400 valley residents died from the influenza virus.

The “Lady” disappeared almost as quickly as she arrived, but the swift and painful deaths she left and the panic she provoked are still a part of our fading memory.

And every few years we have to wonder. Could it ever happen again?

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

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