The Panic of 1893.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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The Panic of 1893 was a national economic crisis set off by the collapse of two of the country's largest employers, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company. Following the failure of these two companies, a panic erupted in the stock market.

The financial panic lasted from May of 1893 through November of 1893, with a run on currency and the banks closing. Businesses and manufacturers did not open because they needed more cash to pay workers or buy materials.

The panic included precipitous declines in the stock market, which caused the failure of Wall Street brokerage houses and the failure of 158 national banks in 1893, mainly in the South and the Western United States. Other bank failures included 172 state and 177 private banks, 47 savings banks, 13 loan and trust companies, and 16 mortgage companies. The panic started in New York and spread like wildfire to the rest of the country.

In a nutshell, people attempted to redeem silver notes for gold; ultimately, the statutory limit for the minimum amount of gold in federal reserves was reached, and U.S. Notes could no longer be successfully redeemed for gold.

In July of 1893, for the first time, Chicago banks approved the issuance of clearinghouse loan certificates, foreshadowing the eventual suspension of cash payments, and the price of silver fell. The panic of 1893 was followed by an economic depression in employment and prices, which lasted until 1897. The panic could have been averted if the United States Federal Reserve Bank system had existed. 

Immediately following the economic downturn, people sought relief through their elected federal government. Just as quickly, they learned what farmers had been taught in the preceding decades: A weak, inefficient government interested solely in patronage and the spoils system to maintain its power was in no position to help the American people face this challenge. The federal government had little in place to support those looking for work or to provide direct aid to those in need. Of course, to be fair, the government had seldom faced these questions before. Americans had to look elsewhere.

The financial doom happened during the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. The Fair opened on May 1, 1893, and claimed 27,300,000 visitors (paying and non-paying) after closing on October 30, 1893. Forty-six countries participated in the World's Fair. The shock of the financial failure came to Chicago a week after the Exposition opened. Despite the depression, the World's Columbian Exposition was immensely successful financially. Admission to the Fair costs 50¢ for adults and 25¢ for children. October attendance had reached over 6.8 million paid visitors - doubling August's 3.5 million. Chicago Day (October 9) alone sold 713,646 tickets. The concession stands brought in over $4 million, and the Ferris wheel (50¢ admission for two rotations) turned a profit. When all the calculations were complete, the Exposition itself more than broke even, with a $1 million surplus to be returned to its 30,000 stockholders. 

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Click to watch a One Minute Lumière Film of the Ferris Wheel Running in 1896, along with other types of street traffic.

During the summer of 1893, commercial, industrial and manufacturing depression accompanied financial panic. Businesses failed, and several major railroads, with Chicago as their transportation hub, went into receivership with control handed over to the state and federal courts in bankruptcy. For the year ending in June 1894, over 125 railroads went into receivership.

The year also saw prosecutions under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 [1], which outlawed monopolistic business practices. By July and August of 1893, unemployment in factories was severe, and wage reductions were widespread. Many banks reported declines in their gold reserves; the United States' debt increased, and money and gold flowed out of the country. The depression reached its low point in July of 1894. About 20%-25% of the United States workforce was unemployed at the panic's peak. 

The economic misery was exacerbated by an extraordinarily harsh winter in 1893. Coxey's army of unemployed marched to Washington, D.C., in 1894, and in April of 1894, more than 40,000 workers were reportedly involved in over thirty national strikes. The most dramatic and important of all of these strikes was the Pullman Strike, which started in May of 1894 and tied up 50,000 miles of rail on July 26. Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and many others at Hull House spoke out and wrote about the circumstances and conditions of the strike. 

There were international roots and ramifications as with many former and subsequent financial crises. 

President Grover Cleveland was blamed for the depression. Gold reserves stored in the U.S. Treasury fell to a dangerously low level. In the depths of the panic in 1895, Wall Street banker J.P. Morgan demanded a meeting with President Grover Cleveland and was granted one. In this meeting, Morgan planned for the United States to sell 3.5 million ounces of gold to the British. This forced President Cleveland to borrow $65 million in gold from J.P. Morgan and the Rothschild banking family of England. J.P. Morgan's plan was successful, and the 30-year bonds were sent to England with no problem. This was the first time Morgan used his keen business knowledge for the good of the country. 

President Cleveland's Republican party suffered enormous losses in the 1894 elections, mainly being blamed for the downward spiral in the economy and the brutal crushing of the Pullman Strike. At one point, 5,000 Federal troops, called in by Grover Cleveland over the objection of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, were camped alongside the Lake in downtown Chicago.

The United States tariff policy played a role, as did the political stalemate over taxes and whether United States currency should be backed by gold alone or gold and silver. These issues remained central to the hotly contested presidential campaign of 1896 when the Democrat William Jennings Bryan was defeated.

The financial crisis was precipitated by an unexpected event when Baring Brothers, a financial house in London, defaulted on 21 million English pounds of debt collateralized by its heavy investment in Argentina. To cover the default, the Bank of England borrowed from the Bank of France, which borrowed from the Bank of Imperial Russia, and in November of 1890, there were numerous bank failures and run-on currency in Europe.

The financial crash of 1893 would have come sooner to America had there not been a bumper crop of wheat in the face of European famine, and thus, gold temporarily poured into the coffers of United States banks. Then, there was a political revolution in Brazil, followed by a banking crisis in Australia. The economic depression in France and Germany depressed the price of silver. This further increased immigration to the United States and to Chicago.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts. It was named for Senator John Sherman of Ohio, a chairman of the Senate finance committee and the Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes. Several states had passed similar laws but were limited to intrastate businesses. The Sherman Anti-trust Act was based on the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. (For more background, see previous milestone documents: the Constitution, Gibbons v. Ogden, and the Interstate Commerce Act.) The Sherman Anti-Trust Act passed the Senate by a vote of 51–1 on April 8, 1890, and the House by a unanimous vote of 242–0 on June 20, 1890. President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill into law on July 2, 1890.

A trust was an arrangement by which stockholders in several companies transferred their shares to a single set of trustees. In exchange, the stockholders received a certificate entitling them to a specified share (percentage) of the consolidated earnings of the jointly managed companies. The trusts came to dominate several major industries, destroying competition. For example, on January 2, 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was formed. Attorney Samuel Dodd of Standard Oil first had the idea of a trust. A board of trustees was set up, and all the Standard properties were placed in its hands. Every stockholder received 20 trust certificates for each share of Standard Oil stock. All the profits of the component companies were sent to the nine trustees, who determined the dividends. The nine trustees elected the directors and officers of all the component companies. This allowed Standard Oil to function as a monopoly since the nine trustees ran all the component companies.

The Sherman Act authorized the Federal Government to institute proceedings against trusts to dissolve them. Any combination "in the form of trust or otherwise that was in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations" was declared illegal. Persons forming such combinations were subject to fines of $5,000 and a year in jail. Individuals and companies suffering losses because of trusts were permitted to sue in Federal court for triple damages. The Sherman Act was designed to restore competition but was loosely worded and failed to define such critical terms as "trust," "combination," "conspiracy," and "monopoly." Five years later, the Supreme Court dismantled the Sherman Act in United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895). The Court ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company, one of the other defendants in the case, had not violated the law even though the company controlled about 98 percent of all sugar refining in the United States. The Court's opinion reasoned that the company's control of manufacture did not constitute control of trade. 

The Court's ruling in E. C. Knight seemed to end any government regulation of trusts. Despite this, during President Theodore Roosevelt's "trust-busting" campaigns at the turn of the century, the Sherman Act was used with considerable success. In 1904, the Court upheld the government's suit to dissolve the Northern Securities Company in the State of Minnesota v. Northern Securities Company. By 1911, President Taft had used the act against the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company. In the late 1990s, in another effort to ensure a competitive free market system, the Federal Government used the Sherman Act, which was over 100 years old, against the giant Microsoft computer software company.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Chicago Day, October 9, 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

Chicago Day commemorated the 22nd anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 at the World's Columbian Exposition.

Unused Adult Chicago Day Ticket.

Extensive planning was needed for this special day. Train fares to Chicago were reduced. Major companies bought thousands of complimentary tickets for their employees. Most businesses closed for the day so their workers could take their families to the Fair.

Illinois Central Van Buren Terminal on Chicago Day.

The Cottage Grove Streetcar Station.

Officials had known pickpockets arrested to boost public confidence. The tremendous crowds, fabulous parades, special ceremonies, and breathtaking fireworks all helped make Chicago Day the greatest day of the Columbian Exposition and one of the proudest days for the city of Chicago.

The Grand Plaza in front of the Administration Building on Chicago Day.

Massive Crowds Gather to Hear the Chicago Day Speeches.

Mass Crowds on Chicago Day. The Palace of Fine Arts is in the Background.

Chicago Day was the most attended of any day in its 6-month operation and was the largest single day attendance of any World's Fair up to that time. The final tally including paid admissions and free passes was 761,942 attendees which included staff and exhibitors. The largest attendance day up to this point at the World's Fair was 283,273 on the 4th of July. The Exposition Universelle of 1889 held in Paris France, the prior World's Fair, roughly 397,000 was their highest day of attendance.

Despite the Panic of 1893, a worldwide depression, the Fair profited $1 million dollars.

ACTUAL FILM FOOTAGE

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This amazing footage of the Ferris Wheel running in 1896 at Ferris Wheel Park, Clark, and Wrightwood in Lincoln Park, Chicago. The vantage point here is looking from the southwest corner of Wrightwood, northeast across Clark Street. Filmed by the Lumiere Brothers and is one of the first films ever shot in Chicago.

READ: Ferris Wheel Park at 1288 North Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. (1896-1903)

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The admission to the Fair costs 50¢ for adults and 25¢ for children.
Tickets sold per ticket office on October 9th:

The ninety-five ticket sellers had been too busy all day to accurately report their numbers of sold tickets. The men at the gates had the same situation with no time to report how many people actually entered the Fair. At 5 o’clock Superintendent Tucker dispatched dozens of mounted inspectors and they brought back the following returns from the ticket offices:

Alley 'L' Station, 75,000
Baltimore and Ohio railroad (sold on trains), 1,750
Cornell Avenue, 21,000
Cottage Grove (west end of Midway), 75,000
Fifty-Ninth Street, 10,400
Fifty-Ninth Street (Midway), 12,500
Fifty-Seventh Street, 62,850
Madison Avenue south, 18,000
Madison Street north, 15,146
Sixtieth and Illinois Central platform, 32,800
Sixtieth Street, 23,000
Sixty-Fourth Street, 78,200
Sixty-Second Street, 31,000
Terminal Station, 38,500
Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth streets (new offices opened for Chicago Day), 40,000
Van Buren Street, 41,000
Woodlawn North, 10,000
Woodlawn South, 7,500
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TOTAL: 593,646

Advance sales estimated at: 120,000
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GRAND TOTAL: 713,646

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Chicago Day Broadside (advertising poster).

Chicago Day Official Souvenir Programme.

Chicago Day Edition of the Inter Ocean Newspaper.

The Chicago Daily Tribune, October 10, 1893 - The Day After Closing.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Towns of Illinois – The Cass and Lace Communities.

Thomas Andrus and his wife, Melissa, were the first to arrive in what would become Darien.  They traveled from Vermont by boat through the Great Lakes to Chicago and came here in horse drawn wagons. The Andrus farm was on the west side of present-day Lemont Road and the I55 North Frontage Road. Once an Indian Trail, the North Frontage Road was the route of the Frink & Walker’s General Stage Coach line between Chicago and Ottawa.

The Stagecoach wasn't as glamorous as the movies made them out to be.

The Andrus farm house served as an inn for stagecoach travelers. Thomas also kept horses for the stagecoach line. The families of brothers, William and Elisha Smart, and John Oldfield joined the Andrus family in establishing the community of Cass.

The Andrus Farm.

The Lace community grew north of the Cass community. It was centered at the intersection of present-day Cass Avenue and 75th Street. Among the first families of Lace, were the Andermanns and the Buschmanns who had emigrated from Germany. Joining these families in Lace were the Wehrmeisters and Warkentiens.

Bordered by Plainfield Road, Cass Avenue, and 75th Street, “The Point,” was the center of community life in Lace. “The Point” included a general store and blacksmith shop, St. John Lutheran School, and the church parsonage. Directly east of "The Point" stood Conrad Buschmann's creamery where farmers brought their milk to be processed into dairy products. Just north of "The Point" was Lace Hall where dances were held.

Both Cass and Lace established churches that served as the anchor of not only religious life, but social life as well. The Cass community established the Cass Methodist Episcopal Church that no longer exits. The Lace community established the St. John Lutheran Church.  The Cass cemetery and the St. John Lutheran Church cemetery each contain the graves of the first families and also include the graves of Civil War veterans. Both Cass and Lace established their own schools. The first Lace School was built in 1856. It burned and was replaced with the second Lace School built in 1925. Today, the 1925 building is known as Old Lace Schoolhouse and Museum and is the home of the Darien Historical Society. It stands at its original location, the northwest corner of the intersection of 75th Street and Cass Avenue.

The Old Lace School.

Martin Barnaby Madden's family emigrated to Lemont from England in 1869. A barge accident on the Illinois and Michigan Canal led to him being employed at the Western Stone Company. He rose to become its president. Madden married Josephine Smart, the daughter of Elisha Smart. In 1903, Madden built a summer home on the Smart family property. His home, which he called Castle Eden, was built to be a replica of the White House in Washington, DC. but at 1/10th scale model. Madden had an illustrious political career culminating in his election to the United States House of Representatives where he served from 1905 until his death in 1928. When route 66 was built, there was easy access to Castle Eden.

The White House - It was converted into a restaurant about 1938 until 1942 named Castle Eden on Route 66.

Cass and Lace were close knit farming communities. People living here grew up, married, raised their children, and lived out their days in familiar surroundings, embraced and supported by their extended families. The late 1940s, following the end of World War II, saw an increase in the affordability of automobiles and better roads. Better transportation led to people moving out of Chicago and the establishment of suburbs.  

Fields of wild asparagus were paved over and orchards were felled as farmers sold their land to developers and subdivisions began to emerge where farmers had once raised crops and livestock. As the population increased, the need for increased services such as police and fire protection became apparent. Deciding that these concerns could best be addressed by becoming a city, four subdivisions, Marion Hills, Hinsbrook, Brookhaven, and Clarefield, formed the “Combined Homeowners Committee for Incorporation.” In order for the issue to be voted on by the residents, the proposed city had to have a name. A member of the committee, Sam Kelley, having recently enjoyed a visit to Darien, Connecticut, suggested the name Darien. The vote on incorporation was held on December 13, 1969. It passed by less than 50 votes.

By The Darien Historical Society.
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Dr. A. Louise Klehm: Niles Centre (Skokie) Illinois' First Lady of Family Practice.

Amelia Louise Klehm was born November 23, 1870 at the height of the Victorian age, fifty years before American women earned the right to vote. Yet never did she expect to be supported by a father or a husband, as was the case with many other Victorian women. Instead, she set ambitious goals for herself, becoming first a nurse and later a country doctor serving the people of her hometown, a little farming community called Niles Centre (Niles Centre, Incorporated 1888; Americanized to Niles Center1910; Renamed to Skokie 1940), just north of Chicago.

Klehm entered the University of Illinois Medical School in 1898, just as anti-female hostility reached its peak in the male-dominated medical profession. Determined to succeed, she remained undeterred by such distractions, and had the sweet satisfaction of graduating in 1902. An added pleasure was her father's admiration. Originally dubious about the wisdom of this undertaking, he was so proud of her achievement that he called her "doctor" for the rest of his life.

Actually, George Klehm inflamed his daughter's determination to succeed. He was the quintessential self-made man, hard-working and persistent since his arrival in America at age twelve, when he immediately began laying the staircase of his own success with a bricklayer's trowel. Reaching for a higher stair as a young man, he used his trade as a stepping stone to a career in education, but soon realized he would never earn enough to support a family in comfort. Nevertheless, Klehm kept his job until early 1864, when he learned that fellow-immigrant Henry Harms wanted to sell his general store. Then, within a matter of months, he became both a fulltime store owner and a husband to Eliza Harms, Henry Harms' sister.

By 1870, when the Klehms welcomed their fourth child, Amelia Louise, George was a prosperous merchant. He was also town treasurer of Niles Center and a pillar of the proud new St. Peter's United Church of Christ, which he had volunteered to help build. Klehm, in short, was living what later generations would call the American Dream.

It did not last. Three weeks after the Klehms celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary, the dream became a nightmare. A bleak note in George's Bible tells the story: "Luise (Elisa) Harms Klehm, wife of George C. Klehm died of a heart attack on August 26th, 1878, shortly before midnight. She left behind a brokenhearted husband and six children."

Brokenhearted or not, George Klehm had six mouths to feed. So it wasn't long before he lifted his chin, found someone to care for his children, and went back to work.

Louise Klehm (or A. Louise, as she preferred) was nine years old when her mother died; her sister Alma, the baby of the family, was a toddler of nearly three. Alma needed a constant watchful eye and big sister Louise was there to provide it; such compassionate vigilance could well have been a major factor when it was time for the elder sister to start thinking about earning a living.

In the early 1890s Louise set her sights on becoming a nurse. It was a sound decision, considering the expanding medical field. New discoveries in both medicine and surgery, and most especially in the realm of antisepsis, made hospital hygiene impossible to maintain at home. As a consequence, many patients opted for hospital stays, thus sending admission rates soaring. The end result seemed to benefit every-one: patients enjoyed the best health care available, and nurses, ostensibly, enjoyed a seemingly limitless wealth of opportunity.

Louise Klehm found these prospects so exciting that she entered the Chicago Baptist Hospital's three-year nursing program in 1893. Alas, disillusionment set in before graduation day, for Klehm was only one of thousands of young women with the same notion.

Still, though the market was glutted with newly-qualified nurses, Klehm was a mature and intelligent student, and she graduated in 1896 with two offers of employment in hand - one from with a physician in Minneapolis, the other as assistant head of nursing at the hospital where she had studied. There was just one problem. Neither choice offered enough money to live on. Contemplating both with equally lukewarm enthusiasm, she turned to her usual source of wisdom and strength: her father, back home in Niles Center.

George Klehm did not let her down. He gave careful thought to the question of his daughter's career before writing to her on September 18, 1896, at the Chicago Baptist Hospital.

"The position of nurse for some eminent physician, would perhaps be all right, but... this doctor is at Minneapolis." A true father of the late Victorian Age, George pounced on this distance on the grounds that she would be away from all her relatives. "It would be rather dangerous," continued George, "to trust your fate to a strange man in a strange city, away from all relatives and before you make a move in that direction, you should have positive evidence as regards the moral character and standing of this physician." Far better, George declared, to accept the assistant head nurse position at the college, even though the salary was small.

Dr. Klehm on a call with her sister, Alma. Pulling the buggy is
"Colonel," who carted Dr. Klehm to many a patient's bedside.

Dr. Klehm in a horse drawn buggy on the Klehm driveway. Floral Avenue can be seen in the background with the Busscher home (left) and the Lies home (right). The horse's name was "Colonel." 

Louise accepted her father's advice, but she was not in her hospital position for long. In April 1898, President William McKinley declared war on Spain soon after the mysterious explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor. In company with nearly 1,600 other nurses, Louise enlisted in the Army Medical Corps and was sent to Miami to care for wounded soldiers in a new but unfinished hospital. But rigid standards of hospital hygiene not withstanding, the medical corps had reckoned without the patients themselves, who insisted on drinking polluted well water in preference to the boiled water provided especially for them. The result, predictably, was a raging typhoid epidemic. Plans for the hospital were hastily scrapped, and the 154 wounded from Illinois, with Nurse Louise Klehm in attendance, were sent back home to convalesce at Fort Sheridan, about fifty miles north of Chicago.

Neither the Illinois nurses nor the soldiers missed much in the way of action. The Cuban battlefronts were silent by summer's end, and the Spanish-American War was over before the year was out.

For Klehm, the time was ripe for a new challenge: medical school. She'd asked her father for advice about this some time earlier, but the letter he sent to her at the Baptist Hospital was discouraging. "The study of medicine would consume about four years of your life and the results would give you a chance to bury yourself in some charitable institution for the rest of your lifetime," he wrote, expecting the matter to be closed. But he had not reckoned with his daughter's determination. Louise had made up her mind to go to medical school, and medical school it would be.

It was a difficult time for a woman to aim for a medical career. Across the nation the medical profession, a traditionally masculine stronghold, had cautiously welcomed the first 200 women into the fraternity by 1860. By 1880, 2,423 female colleagues had filled the ranks. But by 1900 more than 7,000 female physicians were clamoring for full acceptance.

The patriarchy resisted. Women physicians, the besieged men blustered, were too unreliable. Matters such as chemistry and anatomy were subjects too taxing for the feminine brain. As if all this were not enough, cartoons supporting the medical establishment took delight in depicting women doctors daring to chart the profession's future course, and - worst of all - besting their male colleagues for the patient's dollar!

Persistent hostility often drains the joy from ambition, but the twenty-eight-year-old Louise was not to go down in defeat. In 1898, with eyes focused firmly on her goal, she entered Chicago based University of Illinois, a coeducational medical school then accepting women for the second year in a row.

She made a wise choice. Northwestern University, also Chicago-based, would soon bow to establishment pressure, abruptly closing its Women's Medical School just two months short of graduation. In contrast, students at the University of Illinois were secure in the firm support of their dean, William E. Quine, a man who was impressed by the dedication and hard work of his female students. In this serene atmosphere, Louise and her fourteen female classmates were able to do their best work, graduating together without incident in 1902.

Once graduation was over, however, Dean Quine's support could not force hospitals to accept his female graduates as interns, even though a scant two years later an estimated 50 percent of all medical graduates went on to voluntary further training. In Boston, only the New England Hospital accepted women for internships, and only six other American hospitals, the Chicago-based Women's and Children's Hospital among them, regularly accepted women interns. Few of these newly-trained doctors were able to find placement for further training anywhere in the country; most were forced to turn to more liberal hospitals in Europe

Klehm was lucky. One of her medical school instructors was Rachelle Yarros, M.D., a passionate supporter of both birth-control and adequate medical care for the poor. At the time of Louise's graduation, Yarros happened to be living and working at Hull House, Jane Addams' settlement house for Chicago's inner-city poor immigrants. Overworked herself, she gladly accepted the newly qualified physician for a three-month internship.

Louise Klehm's nursing class on the steps of Chicago Baptist Hospital. Klehm is seated at the far left in the next-to-last row.

Brief as it was, this internship taught Klehm a great deal. She saw poverty so intense and painful - babies were born into the world without even a rag to wrap them in - that thereafter, she would always set aside food and clothing for the less fortunate. Likewise, Louise learned about the social and medical issues surrounding the prevention of "involuntary motherhood," and she delivered seventy babies, honing her skills so they were equal to any emergency. It was all very exhilarating, but it was also exhausting, and it took her into places of unbelievable filth. Characteristically, she tried to shield her family from the worst of it, but didn't always succeed.

"When she would come home at night from delivering a baby or saving a dying man from pneumonia, she would stand in the bathtub and undress to shake the vermin from her clothing," her sister Alma later recalled.

But three months of hands-on experience were not enough for Klehm: she decided to hone her surgical skills in Europe, specifically in Berlin and Vienna, where women doctors were more accepted.

Dr. Klehm's first office was in Klehm Bros. General Store building at the southwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street.

By the time she went into family practice in her hometown, A. Louise Klehm, M.D., was a highly-educated and poised woman in her mid- thirties. A portrait photograph taken at this time shows a calm, assured face with deeply chiseled bone structure and steady, self-confident gaze. The confidence was fully justified, buttressed as it was by knowledge of the latest techniques, and underlined by her two constant companions: the first, a case full of necessities for any needy families she might encounter; the second, a capacious black doctor's bag stocked with medications such as calomel (useful against for intestinal parasites), quinine, the emetic called ipecac, and aspirin, the latest wonder-drug. Sharing the bag were her instruments: stethoscope, thermometer, opthalmoscope and sphygmograph, plus scissors, needles and catgut for stitching, various scalpels and other cones for surgical use, and, of course, obstetrical forceps in case of difficult deliveries.

Her first transportation was a two-wheeled buggy drawn by sleek little pony named "Billy." the little two-wheeler gave way to a more elaborate buggy and "Billy" yielded to "Dan," who in turn was peplaced by "Colonel."

Dr. Klehm's 1912 Ford Model T.

When Dr. Klehm purchased a Ford Model T automobile in 1912, "Colonel" and the buggy were used only in bad weather when roads were impassable. While cranking the car one day, the engine backfired, breaking her right arm at the wrist. Three weeks later, her arm in splints, Dr. Klehm delivered a baby in neighboring Park Ridge.

Surgical Kit with medical instruments used by Dr. A. Louise Klehm. Small brown leather surgical case snaps closed and folds open to reveal metal medical instruments and two pockets. The front is monogrammed in gold with "A. Louise Klehm, M.D." Instruments include: 5 blades (scalpels) of varying size and shape, 1 surgical hook, 2 probes (picks) of varying shape and size, 1 with a scoop on one end, 1 hemostat (surgical clamp), and 2 curved urethral sounds with attaching screw-on handle. One scalpel is labeled Betz Company.

Everything came in handy, for she never knew what she might find once she arrived at a patient's bedside. Sometimes there was a well lighted bedroom, clean and conveniently close to St. Francis Hospital in neighboring Evanston, where she was on staff. More often she found herself delivering a baby, or setting a broken bone in a lonely farmhouse lit by guttering oil lamps, with only a trembling member of the patient's family to assist. Despite the hours of travel and the long nights at a patient's bedside, however, the fees suggested by the American Medical Association Bluebook of 1892 do not suggest that Klehm ever became wealthy: Fairly standard fee for a delivery, fifteen dollars; emergency house-call, five to twenty-five dollars; fine dressing of superficial wounds e.g. sprains, five to twenty-five dollars.

By 1918, Niles Center, soon to be renamed Skokie, was becoming more suburban than rural. Peaceful and productive, the little town boasted an auto dealership, a painter, and a photographer, as well as a butchery, a dairy, and even an insurance office run by Dr. Klehm's brother, George. There were also paved roads, so the doctor was able to see her homebound patients far faster than she had ever done before.

This stood her in good stead that year, when the worldwide influenza epidemic struck. Dr. Klehm spent many frantic hours making rounds - fifty-one on one record day, according to her faithful sister and sometimes driver, Alma, an indispensable companion at such times.

There came a time in the mid 1930s when advancing years caught up with Dr. Klehm. The finale to her working years announced itself with cancer of the eye, which forced her to sell her practice to a female colleague in 1939. A methodical woman to the last, she left explicit instructions on her retirement that all outstanding patients' bills were to be torn up. That way, she said, nobody would owe her anything....

Louise Klehm, M.D., died in St. Francis Hospital from cancer on February 22, 1941, just months before the United States entered World War II. "Doc" known to countless old-timers who recalled her as she dashed madly up Lincoln avenue in her horse and buggy on her way to emergency calls.

Saint Peters United Church of Christ Cemetery, Skokie, Illinois.

Her funeral service, held on the afternoon of February 24th at the Haben Funeral Home, was attended by so many people that they overflowed into the upstairs living quarters of the Haben family. It was a fitting tribute to the Skokie's first lady of family practice.

Further Reading: Skokie (Niles Centre), Illinois - Old businesses within a block radius from downtown Skokie's center.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The State Street and Van Buren Street station as it looked when it opened in 1897.

The State Street-Van Buren station as it looked when it opened in 1897. The station, built in the Colonial Revival style, was standard for the stations of the Van Buren leg of the elevated Loop. Notice the open "porches" on the corners of the station house. These were enclosed by mid-century. (circa 1899)

Also relevant is that State Street is paved with Chicago street paver bricks, not cobblestone, as some suggest. Read about the history of Chicago street paver bricks in my Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™