I will answer the question posed above very simply, yes. I speak from personal experience, sort of.
Let me introduce you to Andrew Jackson Johnson. My Great Grandfather. He died 100 years ago at the age of 55 of the side effects of tuberculosis. The death certificate also lists “mistrial stenosis” as a contributing factor:
We can glean some other interesting hints about the drama surrounding his death. My Great Grandfather was not a professional man. He was a “day laborer.” He was a man living on the economic edge. How can you cut grass, haul bricks or load trucks if your lungs are ravaged by TB?
We can also see that my Great Grandfather was survived by his wife, my Great Grandmother, Lillie Belle Lewis Johnson. I would like to tell you that she was a remarkable lady noted for her compassion and character. That she embodies Ma Joad of Grapes of Wrath fame. But I don’t think so. The term, “selfish bitch” comes to mind.
Why so harsh?
Lillie Belle and Andrew Jackson had a total of eleven children–four perished before reaching the age of three while the other seven survived to be adults.
The survivors:
Mary Florence Johnson
1885 – 1979 (age at death, 94)
Christopher Riley Johnson
1887 – 1933 (beaten to death in a bar fight at the age of 36).
Fred Johnson
1890 – 1951 (age at death, 61)
Harvey David Johnson
1895 – 1960 (age at death, 65)
Charles Earle Johnson
1900 – 1988 (age at death, 88)
Floyd Johnson
1904 – 1939 (age at death, 35)
Calvin Johnson
1907 – 1987 (age at death, 80)
Died as children:
Helen Johnson
1895 – 1896
Claude Johnson
1898 – 1899
Bessie Johnson
1903 – 1904
Clyde Johnson
1907 – 1910
The raw statistics only give us clues to some enormous human pain. My Grandfather, Calvin Johnson was a twin. He and his brother, Clyde, entered the world in 1907. Three years later, his brother died before reaching his third birthday. The toddler, my Great Uncle, died of measles with pyemia listed as the “contributing factor.” What is pyemia?
Pyaemia (or pyemia) is a type of septicaemia that leads to widespread abscesses of a metastatic nature. It is usually caused by the staphylococcus bacteria by pus-forming organisms in the blood. Apart from the distinctive abscesses, pyaemia exhibits the same symptoms as other forms of septicaemia. It was almost universally fatal before the introduction of antibiotics.
That baby died because the family lived in fairly squalid conditions that made cleanliness a real challenge. I am pretty sure that losing four out of eleven children was not an uncommon experience in America in the early 1900s.
There is a mystery still unsolved in my family’s history and it was ignited by the death of Andrew Jackson Johnson. Sometime after his death, my Grandma Lillie Belle put her son, Calvin (my Grandfather) and two of his brothers, Charles and Floyd , into the McCune Home for Boys.
The McCune home was not Boys Town:
Judge Henry McCune was the first juvenile court judge in Jackson County. He felt that jailing boys had a demoralizing effect on them and set out to establish a “parental home” where delinquent, neglected and orphaned boys, aged 8 to 18, could live in a family atmosphere while learning useful life skills. In 1905, the county court was given the authority to open an institution of this nature; in 1907 they paid $9000 for a 100-acre tract that was part of the Winslow-Rogers farm east of Independence.
The original plan was for boys who were sent to the farm to stay with the headmaster for a 30-day orientation period or “until the rough edges were rounded off.”They would then be integrated into a home on the farm that would have a housemother, housefather and nine other boys. They would live like a family, with the mothers cooking and doing the housework. The fathers would work around the farm doing various jobs, and the boys would attend school on the farm. Judge McCune’s vision was for the boys to be reared on the farm by the house parents as if they were the sons of wealthy farmers. They were to receive an education, religious instruction and discipline. They would wear their own clothes, and there would be no guards on this farm. The boys were not to feel like prisoners.
The home opened on April 16, 1908, under the supervision of Professor James M. Taylor. In the beginning, the program operated in the original farm buildings. It was soon decided that they needed a school building, so the court built a temporary one. The Kansas City School District sent four teachers and many supplies to the farm. McCune’s first day of school was October 15, 1908. . . .
All construction, farming and repairs at the home were done by the residents of the home. By 1916, the boys had built two houses and an electrical power plant with service lines to each building. They did all of the excavation work, the store work, the carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, and painting, and made all the furniture. In their free time the boys swam, fished, played basketball, boxed, played softball, played indoor games and had song fests.
In 1917, James M. Taylor resigned his position as superintendent of the home, citing the county court’s interference as reason for his inability to continue to perform his duties effectively, specifically citing the hiring of DeVigne. The Kansas City School Board was upset that the court was interfering with a system that had run successfully for nine years. The Board pulled its support of the home, allowing the court to exercise singular control over the institution and leaving the court to hire and pay teachers, as well as pay for supplies themselves.
H. G. Kemper was named as Taylor’s successor. During Kemper’s tenure, the home did away with the vocational program and the county sold much of the equipment. Kemper also adopted a corporal punishment and “prison silence” system. By 1918, the conditions at McCune had deteriorated to the point that the Jackson County grand jury stepped in to take control of the institution. They called for Kemper’s resignation and appointed Clarence Blocher in his place.
While doing research on Ancestry.com, I stumbled across an entry from the 1920 census. It listed my Grandfather as, “an inmate.” My grandfather never discussed his childhood with me. No stories whatsoever. But he did talk to my uncle. And the picture painted is dark. He described getting the job of feeding the dogs everyday because it gave him the chance to steal food to satisfy his own hunger. And there was sexual abuse. No gory details, but some terrible things happened.
Sorry to bore you with all of the minutiae of my family history, but I do so in order to raise some uncomfortable questions:
1. Why did my Grandfather’s extended family not help?
On my Great Grandmother’s side of the family, she had four living brothers and sisters. None apparently were able to provide any kind of support or assistance. The same can be said for my Grandfather’s four older siblings. Although they were young men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 28, none apparently were in a position to help their mother and their younger brothers. A similar picture emerges on my Great Grandfather’s side of the family. He had three other living siblings, but none of them stepped forward to help. Unlike the stereotype in Asian families, where the brothers and sisters accept the obligation to care for other family members, this group of caucasians apparently went their separate ways. It was everyman for themselves.
2. Did circumstances compel my Great Grandmother to place three of her young sons in the equivalent of a youth prison or did she choose to dump them and move on with her life?
Per my uncle, the latter appears to be the case. Lillie Belle, who my uncle met as a young man, was a severe, unaffectionate woman. She had the looks of Ma Joad and the demeanor of Cruella Deville. I do not know if this is a fair portrait or not.
Here we are 100 years later. Most communities in the United States offer an array of social services and support to help a family facing a disaster like the one that befell my Grandfather and his parents. I am in favor of such programs. In the case of my Great Grandfather, it was not his fault that he caught tuberculosis. Unable to breathe easily and wracked by coughs and fatigue, he was not able to earn much money as a day laborer. That meant that his wife and children routinely dealt with lack of food, lack of medicine and lack of creature comforts. What we call poor in 2013–having a tv, basic cable and maybe a cell phone–is upper middle class compared to the lives of the poor 100 years ago.
But having Government step in to do what individuals and families cannot do (or refuse to do) is no guarantee that things will turn out swell and the problems solved. The McCune home was created with the best of intentions, but became a nightmare for my Grandfather. Somehow, my Grandfather survived that experience and ended up being able to pursue the American dream. He worked as a type fitter (i.e., ran printing presses), bought a small two bedroom house in the suburbs of Kansas City and died with no significant debt.
We continue to wrestle as a society over the issue of how much power to give the Government to help the person. As I have written before, the fundamental principle for me is that the individual is or great worth. I reject the political philosophies that want to treat the person as an oddity that must be cast aside in order to serve the welfare of the whole. The mythical community always has been used to justify actions that serve the interests of totalitarian and authoritarian governments. I prefer limiting what a government can do to a person. That’s the genius of Jefferson’s writing:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Putting in place safety nets to assist families that are struck by tragedy is not antithetical to the principles and values articulated by Jefferson. These kinds of issues are at the heart of the debate now surrounding Obamacare. Most of us, I suspect, want people to have the opportunity to have basic health care without having to pass an economic test. Basic health care should not be a survival of the fittest model. But that does not mean that the Government should be able to take whatever resources it wants from the citizens to fund every health care practice.
Perhaps the key phrase in the Declaration of Independence is “consent of the governed.” The furor erupting as folks are dumped off of existing insurance plans and others are faced with having to pay more for insurance they do not need is creating a form of a revolt. The “governed” are not consenting to what the Government has done. This battle is only getting started.
As the fight over Obamacare escalates, I return to where I started this piece–I believe in and welcome social safety nets. I do believe that we, as a community of patriots, have an obligation to care for one another and help those who cannot help themselves. Rather than rely on a Federal bureaucrat, to provide the service or determine what is an appropriate level of service, I believe we need to depend more on services provided at the local community level. But, as was the case with the McCune home, not even those solutions are panaceas. I can reach only one conclusion–helping people in need is simple on the surface but, once you are in the trenches, in becomes very messy and very complicated.
What do you think?