Seven Events That Made America America (13 page)

Indeed, Patterson had little time for updating the mayor because his cash register company had suddenly become a rowboat manufacturing business, replete with an army of shipbuilders who turned out a rowboat every five minutes. Three days after the flood, NCR workers had churned out 276 flat-bottomed boats and delivered them to flooded districts to rescue people who had been stranded on rooftops or clinging to light poles, augmenting the 150 private boat owners who had already started rescue efforts on their own.
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One dynamic duo of canoeists, J. Bob Fries and Fred Nitzel, were credited with rescuing 135 persons.
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Patterson’s improvised boat-works, however, built boats capable of carrying six people plus the rower, and NCR’s carpenters made two of these vessels every fifteen minutes, allowing for much more widespread rescues. NCR’s Fred Oates used one of the boats not only to bring in ten to twelve people himself, but, after everyone in his zone was safe, went back out to deliver food to families holed up in upper stories of flooded districts.

After turning NCR headquarters into a housing and medical station, Patterson allowed the
Dayton Daily News
to operate there until its own offices had been cleared of mud. An entire floor was converted into a dining room, complete with waitresses (normally company secretaries or clerks) in uniforms. NCR’s commissary served 2,700 meals a day, and all of NCR’s staff members were tasked with some type of emergency work, including sorting and “fumigating great piles of clothing,” while other NCR teams canvassed the city to seek donations.
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Patterson even cleared out a few offices to make room for pianos and solicited musicians from among the refugees to organize hymns or play ragtime. The company paid for an entire relief train stocked with medicine, then another, then still another. NCR even handled basic law enforcement functions before the National Guard arrived, with the full acquiescence of local authorities. Suddenly the private police, who had been the bane of unions, were welcome, and the tycoons who had “oppressed” average citizens with their wealth and power became indispensable in their moment of generosity and efficiency. Motorcyclists and boaters patrolled the city, deterring vandals and delivering supplies. Yet when the National Guard arrived, it was criticized by locals for its heavy-handedness, and as one reporter noted, guardsmen “forced in some instances at the points of bayonets [sightseers] to assist in the removal of carcasses.”
²²

A publication called the
Outlook
reported that “No novelist or play-wright . . . ever devised anything more ingeniously dramatic—this heroic use of efficiency.”
²³
The
St. Louis Star
chimed in with praise of Patterson: “Patterson is the man, more than any other, who brought cosmos out of chaos,” and noted that if the U.S. government had had its way, Patterson would have been entirely out of the picture.
²⁴
For all his contributions, however, Patterson was certainly not alone in his efforts. Residents of North Dayton, Riverdale, and Dayton View all commenced their own rescue and relief plans in a short time. The isolated and wealthy Dayton View formed an association of seventy-five residents the next morning and allocated food, boats, and automobiles and dealt with sanitation issues.
²⁵
Riverdale, the
Dayton Daily News
reported, had a “first class [organization] from the start,” dispatching automobiles and wagons to the countryside to collect food and clothing immediately.
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At the same time, both NCR and, later, R. H. Grant (who oversaw the relief effort), kept close track of what provisions were given out and watched for abuse. Grant found that money “had been carefully accounted for,” and that even ruined clothing was turned over to rag dealers.
²⁷

The business community and individual citizens, using their own initiative, had saved the city, while government contributed little. When Army doctors arrived, they expressed stunned amazement at the “business ability . . . reflected throughout the entire community.”
²⁸
When R. H. Grant took over on March 30, he found relief networks already in place, complete with geographic delineations used by churches and schools as relief stations, leaving little for government officials to do. If anything, Maj. Thomas Rhoads of the Army’s Medical Corps criticized the city government for encouraging unsanitary practices and turning “the Board of Health into just another patronage post, [whose] unqualified appointees had allowed all kinds of health dangers to persist.”
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Without question, Rhoads, who was placed in charge of sanitizing Dayton, did much to clean up the Gem City, building ten cleaning stations that offered lime and other chemicals, along with proper instructions on how to use them. Rhoads, however, did not always employ volunteer labor and sometimes ordered cleanups at bayonet point. At the same time, the private sector did not sit back: the Dayton Bicycle Club removed 2,000 dead horses and other small animals using 150 trucks.

Meanwhile, as in Johnstown, nearby communities delivered bread, ham, eggs, butter, cheese, milk, and canoes and had begun collecting those items before the water even reached its full height.
³⁰
Preble County began relief efforts a mere two hours after the reports reached officials, and nearby towns reacted nearly as quickly by forming relief committees in Troy, Greenville, Tippecanoe, and many other communities. NCR acted as a clearinghouse for refugees, but every day citizens from Oakwood, Lebanon, Xenia, and elsewhere took in families. The Pennsylvania Railroad shipped goods free of charge, sending its own supply train of carpenters, machinists, tradesmen, and wiremen. Tracks cleared by Wednesday, when the trains began to arrive. Auto companies sent fleets of rescue trucks and cars.
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Perhaps not ironically, the mayor of Johnstown sent a note to Patterson with “four cars of provisions and clocthing [sic] accompanied by our chief of police who is at your command,” and further promised money “collected for your relief.”
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Sealander concluded that “business planning, not luck” (nor, it should be added, government) saved the city from an epidemic that threatened to engulf a population exposed to raw sewage and freezing temperatures.
³³
A weekly newspaper writer gushed with admiration for Patterson’s operation: “this polished organism was turned in a twinkling without discord or hitch, into a vast smoothly working executive headquarters, hotel, hospital, and relief station.”
³⁴
Except for one political appointee, everyone on the Citizens’ Relief Committee was a Dayton businessman. Members included Frank T. Huffman of the Davis Sewing Machine Company; Adam Schantz, the head of a large local brewery; John R. Flotron of the John Rouzer Company; and Patterson. Not only did Patterson and the citizens ignore government, but they used the Relief Committee to abrogate the city’s health powers and assumed the duties themselves, overseeing inspections of every house in the city and isolating those with communicable diseases. Committee members inspected every grocery, bakery, restaurant, and school and disinfected them before permitting them to reopen. NCR’s tent city had electric lights, sewer lines, flush toilets, and showers, and the committee provided flooded regions of Dayton with lime and disinfectant chemicals. The Dayton Bicycle Club handled the removal of animal carcasses (they carted off more than two thousand large animals and three thousand cats, dogs, and birds, often pulling them from rooftops or flooded basements).
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Once again, the Red Cross got involved, donating almost $1 million for Dayton flood relief, while local Ohio contributions exceeded half a million dollars. Naturally, the Red Cross set up its local headquarters in the NCR building, where officials “became the company’s pupils and used lessons learned during national disasters for decades to come.”
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Patterson set up officers to review the relief requests and process them for the Red Cross, although most assistance came in the form not of cash, but of “sweat equity,” in which teams of burly men arrived to rebuild a house. If citizens owned their residence, the Relief Committee provided bridge loans until the banks could reopen to more than one thousand families. In addition, the Relief Committee created a department specifically to help reopen businesses, and within a year, more than five hundred firms received basic assistance grants to help them get started. Bakers used the funds to buy new ovens, seamstresses and tailors new sewing machines, and so on.

Patterson paid some seven thousand NCR employees their full salary for two weeks in April while they did absolutely no business at all for the company. His managers worked fourteen-hour days arranging, procuring, and organizing everything from the placement of latrines to the qualifications for cash assistance. All their contributions were made at a time when neither U.S. tax law nor Ohio’s tax code rewarded them with deductions for such philanthropy. Nor did it end when the floodwaters receded and Dayton returned to “normalcy.” Those same business leaders joined in development of the Miami Conservancy District, a massive effort at water control and flood relief undertaken on a topography only slightly less daunting than that of the Panama Canal. The Miami Conservancy District purchased thirty thousand acres of farmland spread over nine counties using eminent domain, but also employing their own cash. As Sealander pointed out, “the Flood Prevention Committee and the Finance committee . . . would waste little time begging either the federal or the state government for financial assistance for flood control.”
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Not only would it take too long, but the businessmen wanted no restrictions on their planning. Raising their own financing—Patterson directed a subscription campaign that raised $2 million in a month, using NCR employees, again, to solicit contributions—involved ribbons, rallies, slide and movie shows, all generating enthusiasm for the “Two Million Dollar Fund.”

At that point, Patterson gained the assistance of another Dayton businessman, Arthur Morgan, who ran a local engineering business and had worked as a drainage engineer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Morgan was self-taught and did not have a formal engineering degree. Just like noneconomist George Gilder, who, in the 1980s, would be able to reshape economic thinking away from Keynesianism because he was not tied to existing “monetarist” schools, Morgan was “a man interested in untried methods, in unconventional techniques. . . .”
³⁸
Like Patterson and another Dayton legend, Colonel Edward Deeds, who had worked at NCR and who built the Shredded Wheat factory, Morgan wanted to avoid a quick fix and create a plan for the district that would endure for hundreds of years. They all recognized that the trouble was not in local bridges or canals, but higher up in the valley, and that a series of earthen dams—or, more appropriately, hills—would have to be erected to control flooding. The plan called for large retarding basins, four situated north of Dayton and one to the south, each allowing for normal water flow through canals, slowing down the torrent during storms. Ultimately, the system was built to sustain water at
double
the 1913 flood levels. Meanwhile, farmland within the thirty thousand acres would be leased in dry times. Overall, the plan protected everyone in the Miami Valley, not just Daytonians, and never again did a flood damage the valley. In 1937, a flood of nearly equal magnitude struck the Miami Valley and was easily controlled, even as other states in the Midwest and along the Atlantic coast were ravaged by the storm.

Of course, opponents railed against “big business,” Colonel Deeds, Patterson, and their friends. Despite the fact that there was virtually no money in the relief effort for any of the Dayton companies, critics complained that it was all a money-grab, and accused them of using the effort to set up large electric power plants. Morgan responded by organizing the support of academics and engineers who endorsed the plan, and who testified on its behalf in state hearings. When it was approved, and when construction started, the business leaders involved in the Conservancy District remained committed to humane working conditions, building camps for both single and married workers near the dam sites. They provided adult education, including industrial arithmetic, math, and English. From 1914 until 1922 when the system was completed, the district paid lower wages than most other sectors, but never wanted for employees because of the exceptional working conditions. Dayton’s business leaders weren’t perfect—they misjudged the total cost of the effort by about $11 million (the final price tag was $34 million)—but they protected the citizens and lived up to their promise that Dayton would never again suffer from a major flood. Looking back in his 1951 memoir, Morgan wrote that “the extremely small loss of life in proportion to the numbers caught in the flood did not mean that there was not a great danger, but rather that a practical-minded, competent, and resourceful people met an unprecedented situation with stamina, inventive genius, and a fine sense of mutual responsibility and neighborly sharing of tasks.”
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Morgan, of course, gave himself no credit even though he and fellow business leaders went above and beyond to save the city, then got it back on its feet. This has led one historian to complain that the Dayton planners accomplished their grand plans “ ‘for’ the people, not, by and large, ‘with’ them,” which, of course, would be a characterization of almost every “great man” in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, in that few consulted “the people” when they did anything. Nor should they have.
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When “the people” were sitting on rooftops or running from floodwaters, it wasn’t “the people” or “the government” who came to their rescue but
individuals
. In fact, the most effective relief efforts were conducted by units of heroes directed by one man (or, in the case of the Red Cross, one woman). Even government-sanctioned organizations originated in the will of the individual. For instance, the Miami Valley Conservation District was the embodiment of the intentions of Patterson, Morgan, and Deeds, not a government body created by elected officials. Throughout history, all inventions, all major decisions have come down to a single person, no matter how many outside pressures or “social factors” provided influence. The simple fact is, had Patterson’s NCR not existed, it would, in all likelihood, have taken Dayton years to recover, and the death toll and suffering would have been higher by several orders of magnitude.