Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Joseph Medill About this episode Joseph Medill was a powerhouse in 19th century journalism who made no attempt to conceal his bias when it came to political writing. He also had a fascinating second career due to a tragedy, when he became a politician.
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1:33 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:06 Holly Frey? Hey everybody, Holly here. I wanted to let you in on a little something before we get started today. We have been talking about our Morocco trip a lot lately because it was amazing. And if it sounds to you like something you might want to do, like you might want to join us for a little adventure, I have great news. We are already set up and starting to take bookings for next year's big adventure. This is going to be Oktoberfest in the Alps, but not just Oktoberfest. We're going to visit Germany and the Czech Republic. The pacing is going to be a little less intense than our Morocco trip, so it will have some time that's a little more like downtime where you can really explore on your own. Some of
2:49 Holly Frey? these places are going to be big cities, some of them are going to be small, storybook, really picturesque villages, and some of it will be out in the countryside. So we're going to do three nights in Garmisch, which is outside of Munich, so we can go to Munich and experience Oktoberfest, but then have this really quiet, beautiful village up in the mountains to really just enjoy the picturesque views. We are also going to visit Czech Republic, which is, we're going to be right in the center of town on these cobblestone streets. It's going to be so incredibly sweet and charming. I cannot wait. And then we are
3:30 Holly Frey? going to spend time several nights in Prague, which is going to be absolutely beautiful. These are not places that you just kind of like go to and, you know, spend the night and roll out. These are really going to be some picturesque surroundings, really, really beautiful things. So you're going to get some of the busy, fast-paced stuff like Oktoberfest, which is a very energetic time, but we're also going to have some quieter, really kind of just more casual, slower, more relaxed things while also still taking in a whole lot of history. So if that sounds really, really good to you, get on over to defineddestinations.com
4:09 Holly Frey? and they are going to have the trip link right there, ready for you on the homepage. It's going to be one of the tours that's listed and we hope that you will join us. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
4:34 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
4:38 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
4:40 Holly Frey? I, like many of us, have been thinking about the wild times we're living through. I don't know how you don't, but I have specifically been thinking about how it's discussed in the press because that's often a matter of consternation. But that made me think about Joseph Medill because he was a powerhouse in 19th century journalism, and he made no attempt to conceal his bias when it came to political writing. Medill also had this really fascinating second career due to a big and famous tragedy. So in addition to journalism, he was also a politician. We're going to get into all of that today because we're going to talk about Joseph Medill.
5:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Joseph Medill was born on April 6, 1823, in New Brunswick, Canada, just outside the town of St. John. The Medill family was traced as far back as the 16th century French Huguenots who left France for Ireland. Joseph's parents, William and Margaret, moved from Ulster to Canada in 1819 as newlyweds, and Joseph was their first child. In 1832, the family moved to Massillon, Ohio. They had been planning to move to St. Louis, Missouri, but a cholera epidemic halted that journey in Ohio, and they just decided to stay there. They lived in Massillon for several years and then moved to Pike Township.
6:03 Holly Frey? William and Margaret Medill had five kids after Joseph, two girls and three boys. And as William's health began to fail, Joseph became the family patriarch. But he also wanted an education. So while he worked in various jobs to bring in money, one day a week, he walked nine miles to Canton, Ohio to meet up with basically any teacher there who would help him, leading to this sort of patchwork, haphazard, but surprisingly thorough education. He did a lot of reading and study on his own. He was truly an autodidact. And so then he would use these occasions where he had a teacher in front of him to get clarity on any of the concepts that he struggled with. He had hoped that he could eventually go to college,
6:48 Holly Frey? but the family's home burned down in 1844 and all of their savings with it. So that was not going to happen. But he did gain enough knowledge through his own self-study to get a teaching job at a country school. But it turned out he hated teaching. The wages were low and the demands were high.
7:08 Tracy V. Wilson? I don't know why that really made me laugh because I read this already. I knew that was what you were going to say.
7:13 Holly Frey? He wrote about it and he says some very slurry and pejorative things about it, about how wages are calculated. But he basically lists out all the things he's expected to do in a day and all the students he's supposed to deal with and all of their like things that he's supposed to do one-on-one with them in a classroom that is already la- he just hated it and cataloged everything about it he didn't like.
7:37 Tracy V. Wilson? During this time, in addition to all that, Joseph met a young woman named Catherine Patrick, who went by Kitty. Kitty's father, James, was Irish and her mother was also named Catherine and she was descended from some of North America's early European colonists. Kitty's father was a county judge, but he also served as editor of the local paper, the Tuscarawas Chronicle. And Joseph started spending time in the paper's offices. He picked up various skills there, including the mechanical part of running a paper, like typesetting and running a press. But he also got his earliest taste of journalism writing there. Still, it doesn't seem like anything more than a fun hobby, a way to stay close to
8:22 Tracy V. Wilson? the Patrick family. And soon Joseph got an apprenticeship with a lawyer.
8:28 Holly Frey? After two years as an apprentice, Joseph passed the bar and was ready to practice law. And he was able to start a practice with a man named George McElveen. This was a really important time in Medill's life because he made a lot of professional connections that would be integral to his career down the road. Two of the lawyers he became friends with in his early law career were Salmon Chase and Edwin Stanton. Keep those names in mind, they're going to come up again later. And if you know about presidential history, you might already have done the math there. But though these connections were important to him, it also turned out that he didn't really like practicing law very much either.
9:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Journalism did still appeal to him, though. In 1849, he quit law and he purchased a newspaper in Koshakton, Ohio called the Koshakton Whig, which he renamed the Koshakton Republican. Medill positioned the paper's content as constantly touting that the Whig Party was on its way out, and the then third-party Republicans were the ones to get behind for anybody who supported anti-slavery legislation. I feel like this is a lot of what we talked about with Charles Sumner, but in a different part of the country.
9:41 Holly Frey? Yes.
9:42 Tracy V. Wilson? And this strategy worked. Soon, not many people in Koshakton identified as Whigs, and they had switched over to the Republican Party.
9:51 Holly Frey? After Koshakton, Medill decided to move to a bigger city to try his hand at another paper, and, if he could, bending the political views of the area to match his own. In 1851, Medill made the move to Cleveland, Ohio, to publish a paper there. And this effort lasted longer than Koshakton did. He was there for four years. One of his first moves politically was to back a Whig candidate named Winfield Scott for president. So while he did think the Whigs were on the way out, he also knew that they had the candidates that he was most interested in. Scott performed very poorly in that presidential election, and the outcome led Medill to conclude that the Whig Party had truly no chance, and that
10:33 Holly Frey? it should be disbanded completely. It was during this time that he met another influential person in his life and a podcast frequent flyer, it's Horace Greeley, who was helming the New York Tribune.
10:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Greeley hired Medill to write for him as a correspondent, sending mostly political news from Cleveland to be printed in the New York Tribune. Greeley wanted the new Republican Party to once again organize. It had existed during the 1830s, but had disbanded.
11:03 Tracy V. Wilson? After debates among the people interested in the new party, it was decided that they would simply go with a Republican, a name that Madel claimed credit for. He was definitely a key player in Ohio in the effort to form a new party that aligned with the anti-slavery ideology that could replace the flailing Whigs, and he had very vehemently campaigned for the adoption of the Republican label for the party.
11:30 Holly Frey? Joseph married Kitty Patrick on September 2nd, 1852, and she became his partner in business to some degree, as well as in life. Because she had grown up in a journalism family, she knew how to set type, and she often did so for Joseph's paper, The Cleveland Leader. The couple welcomed their first daughter, Catherine, in the summer of 1853.
11:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Coming up, we will talk about a big move for Madel. And before we do, we will pause for a sponsor break.
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12:29 Speaker 07 This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. Que tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be, breathe. Estas haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.
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13:17 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
14:01 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:12 Speaker 08 Hey, I'm Nile Rodgers, producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of the group Sheik. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between.
14:29 Speaker 08 This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel...
14:46 Speaker 09 That last year, finishing that record, was the hardest experience of my life, regardless of how everyone else buys into this. I believe in this, and I'm gonna push.
14:58 Speaker 08 To rising stars like Alex Warren.
15:01 Speaker 10 You know, a song is a story, and the verse is setting the scene. And for me, at least, it's allowing me to be personal and vulnerable with the audience, whether it's about my wife and I'm being vulnerable about her, or it's about, you know, my parents and I'm being vulnerable to them. And it's almost like a cinematic piece in a way where each song tells that beautiful story.
15:19 Speaker 08 It's gonna be one hell of a trip. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:38 Holly Frey? After several years in Cleveland and with a new family, Medill felt ready to take on an even bigger challenge as a newspaper man. Horace Greeley had encouraged him in this idea, and Medill set his sights on Chicago, although it actually took some coaxing to get him interested in the city. At the time, Chicago was still very young and it was finding its identity. Chicago was founded in 1837, and then just 10 years later, in 1847, the Chicago Tribune was founded by James Kelly, Joseph Casey Forrest, and John E. Wheeler. But the paper didn't do especially well, and eight years into its run, it was really close to declaring bankruptcy.
16:20 Holly Frey? The Tribune had changed hands a number of times, and one of its owners in the 1850s, J.D. Webster, extended an invitation to Medill to visit Chicago. That invitation was followed by an offer to become the struggling paper's editor.
16:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Initially, Medill did not want this job. He was busy with his work at home in Cleveland, and his family was growing. But Greeley really nudged him and also introduced him to somebody who would be part of his business going forward. That was former physician Charles Ray, who had quit medical practice to promote anti-slavery messaging through his own paper. Greeley thought that together, these two men could really do great things in Chicago. And after meeting, so did Medill and Ray. Medill did not take the offer of editor, though. He and Ray joined forces and purchased a controlling interest in the Chicago Tribune. They were not the sole owners.
17:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Two of Medill's Cleveland associates, Alfred Cows and John Vaughn, also bought in. And two existing owners, Webster and Timothy Wright, also stayed. They were part of this new purchase deal. In the new arrangement, Medill owned a third of the paper, and which is the largest share, and Ray owned a quarter.
17:39 Holly Frey? Yeah, he still did become editor, but not an editor for hire. He wanted to work for himself. And with Medill at the helm, the Chicago Tribune turned around, and it did so really rapidly. Within months, subscriber numbers had doubled, and it was due to the very decisive editorial leadership that he provided. He drove the tone of the writing for the Tribune, and the paper increasingly featured hard news with a political bent. Medill was able to pour all of his time and energy into the paper because Kitty and the children were back in Cleveland initially. They didn't join Joseph until after his first year, when the family moved to Washington Boulevard near Union Park.
18:19 Tracy V. Wilson? And as the paper was growing, one specific person walked into the paper's offices to subscribe, and that person would change Joseph Medill's life forever. That person was Abraham Lincoln. At that point, Lincoln was practicing law in Springfield after having finished his term in the US House of Representatives. He stated, while at the Tribune's office, that he was subscribing because of the paper's changed leadership. Medill and Lincoln struck up a friendship, and the lawyer stopped by the paper's offices to chat anytime he was in the city.
18:54 Holly Frey? This friendship also became a political alliance, as Medill backed Abraham Lincoln as a politician in his paper. Medill had become even more interested in politics as he matured, and rather than hire a new reporter or trust a member of his staff, he became the Chicago Tribune's Washington correspondent, traveling to the Capitol to dig up any story he could. But he didn't only travel to the Capitol.
19:22 Tracy V. Wilson? He was also present at the first Illinois State Republican Convention. The convention was held in Bloomington, Illinois, which was about 135 miles southwest of Chicago. This convention was the site of Lincoln's famous "lost" speech, which was said to have been so compelling that all of the reporters in attendance failed to take notes on it. Medill himself admitted to being carried away by Lincoln's anti-slavery address.
19:52 Tracy V. Wilson? The speech is often described as having been radical, so radical that Medill believed that the statesman was glad that it had not been recorded by any of the attending journalists. Medill wrote of it, quote, "He got up," as his name was called, "and came forward with a giraffe-like lope. He never walked straight like other men and stood in front of the pulpit. And after he had spoken a few sentences, the delegates shouted to him to get into the pulpit. He did so and there finished his speech. It is the regret of my life that this speech of Lincoln's was not preserved. It was easily his greatest and very likely it was the first of the series of events which made him president.
20:35 Tracy V. Wilson? I have often tried to reproduce it from memory." Incidentally, there is a version of the lost speech that was published in McClure's magazine in 1896, using the notes that were made by Henry Clay Whitney. And while there have been some debates about its accuracy in the century-plus since then, it's mostly chalked up to having the spirit of Lincoln's words, but not really being accurate as to how he conveyed that message.
21:04 Holly Frey? Yeah, and there's been back and forth. Allegedly, and I didn't find if there was a letter to back this up, but allegedly at one point, Medill was like, yes, this was the speech as I remember it. And then later was like, not really. So if you, if you happen upon that, know that it's not considered the, the true version of Lincoln's speech. When Lincoln decided to run for US Senate in 1858, Medill used the Tribune to support that run. But there was also a crisis at the Tribune during that time, when its finances faltered in the wake of an economic panic. To save the paper, Medill agreed to merge it with another paper, known as the Democratic Press, which was run by John L. Scripps, Barton Spears, and William Bross.
21:49 Holly Frey? The paper ran as the Chicago Press and Tribune before going through a couple more name changes and then landing, once again, at being the Chicago Tribune.
21:58 Tracy V. Wilson? When Lincoln ran for president, the Tribune again backed him, even going so far as to keep him in the loop on information they got as the campaign played out so that he could address that information if needed. Medill was also very active in the Republican Party and used his influence to help Lincoln's run, starting with the nomination and going right through to Election Day. There was no way to claim the Tribune was unbiased in the news coverage. The coverage of political events and editorials were always slanted very heavily in favor of a Lincoln presidency. Modern scholars have underlined the importance of Medill's efforts as a powerful publisher
22:40 Tracy V. Wilson? in the outcome of the November 1860 election.
22:44 Holly Frey? But as the US was a powder keg of division, even after Lincoln handily won that election, Medill was back to Washington to cover the ongoing conflict. He didn't especially like being in DC, but the Tribune had a policy that if the nation was in crisis, there would always be a correspondent in the Capitol. As the Confederate states announced their secession, Medill reported on it. We mentioned earlier that Salmon Chase and Edwin Stanton had become friends with Medill when they were all young lawyers. Salmon Chase, who had hoped to win the party nomination that Lincoln received, was tapped by the new administration to be Secretary of Treasury, and Edwin Stanton became Secretary of War.
23:27 Holly Frey? So in addition to being friends with the president, Medill also had other contacts high in the government to get information when the commander in chief was busy.
23:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Though Medill and Lincoln sometimes had disagreements about how the president was handling aspects of the war, Medill never wavered publicly, and the Tribune always backed Lincoln. One point of contention was the president asking the paper to be vocal in calling for volunteers for military service. According to Medill, when he pushed back at the president, Lincoln told him, quote, "You called for war until we had it. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for men, which I have made to carry out the war you have demanded, and you, Medill, are acting like a coward."
24:16 Tracy V. Wilson? The president reminded Medill of how much influence his paper had in creating the division that had led to the war. Medill backed off and did as he was asked. Men from Medill's family and employees of the paper volunteered and were killed in action. When Lincoln was assassinated so shortly after the South's surrender, Medill was emotionally shell shocked. The nation had lost its president, but he had also lost a close friend as well as a political collaborator.
24:46 Holly Frey? In the mid 1860s, after the war, Medill found himself doing well financially. War had actually been great for the newspaper industry, but he had lost some of his power at the paper as various alliances had formed in its leadership structure that kind of left Joseph Medill on the outside. He had ruled the paper with a very firm hand, and the pressure he applied had eventually fractured things among the staff and the leadership. While he still held 20% of the paper at this point after its various reorgs, he decided to focus on politics instead of journalism, and he stepped down from the editor position. He did continue to write articles for publication, though, but he became more deeply involved in the Republican Party,
25:30 Holly Frey? and he became part of the Illinois Constitutional Committee.
25:34 Tracy V. Wilson? We are about to get into the catastrophic event that has led historians to describe Madill as a phoenix, but first, we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
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26:16 Speaker 07 This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. ¿Cómo te siente tu corazón hoy? Si está un poco cansado, un poco de dudas, no estás solo. ¿Has comido algo rico? ¿Has tomado un respiro profundo? ¿Al menos has apagado tu teléfono por cinco minutitos? Te prometo, los memes todavía estarán ahí. A veces, el cuidado personal no es como las candelas y la meditación. Es solo decir no. Está bebiendo un poco de agua. Está dejando a usted a su lado sin pena. No tienes que probar nada hoy. Solo sea, respira. Estás haciendo lo mejor que puedes. Y sí, eso es suficiente.
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27:04 Holly Frey? Una rara diagnóstico de enfermedad puede cambiar tu vida, pero no tiene que definir tu futuro. Únete a la temporada 7 de "Las historias sin contar", "La vida con una condición inmunológica severa", una producción de Ruby Studio en colaboración con Argenix. Hostada por el experto en salud pública y política Dr. Martine Hackett, "Las historias sin contar: la vida con una condición inmunológica severa", pone en marcha la conversación en la comunidad de enfermedades raras hacia adelante. Con invitados que viven con MG, CIDP, miocidemia, SMA y otras enfermedades inmunológicas raras, cada episodio explora esperanza, progreso y conexión. ¿Cómo se crea nuevas oportunidades? ¿Cómo ayudan las experiencias compartidas a iluminar el camino hacia adelante? ¿Cómo nos mostramos mejor entre nosotros?
27:48 Holly Frey? Únete a descubrirlo. Escúchalo en la aplicación de iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts o donde sea que obtengas tus podcasts.
27:59 Speaker 08 Hey, soy Nile Rodgers, productor, songwriter, guitarrista y cofundador del grupo Chic. Una gran canción tiene una forma de definir un momento, un momento de alegría, desesperación o cualquier cosa en medio.
28:16 Speaker 08 This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel.
28:33 Speaker 09 That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. Regardless of how everyone else buys into this, I believe in this and I'm gonna push.
28:45 Speaker 08 To rising stars like Alex Warren.
28:48 Speaker 10 You know, a song is a story and the verse is setting the scene. And for me at least, it's allowing me to be personal and vulnerable with the audience, whether it's about my wife and I'm being vulnerable about her, or it's about, you know, my parents, I'm being vulnerable to them. And it's almost like a cinematic piece in a way where each song tells that beautiful story.
29:06 Speaker 08 It's gonna be one hell of a trip. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
29:25 Holly Frey? On October 9th, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire devastated the city. When Medill awoke around midnight, the fire was blazing and he immediately went to the Tribune's offices. He went out on the roof with some of the men from the paper with a telescope to watch the blaze spread, only to discover that their building was catching sparks. All of the men on the roof hustled to stamp out the flames when the sparks hit the roof and caught fire in the very dry night. Medill also made sure they ran an account of that harrowing night of trying to keep the building safe. But then the ground floor started to catch, and despite trying to continue working, that staff, sounds like
30:06 Holly Frey? they stayed till the very bitter end. But eventually, the entire staff did have to evacuate.
30:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Medill was still deeply dedicated to the paper that he loved. He immediately started to rebuild and rented offices and with scrounged printing equipment.
30:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Medill wrote two editorials that ran on October 11th and 12th that were both very moving and took a positive tone. The second began, quote, "All is not lost. Though $400 million worth of property has been destroyed, Chicago still exists. She was not a mere collection of stone and bricks and lumber. Those were but evidence of the power which produced these things. They were but the external proof of the high courage, unconquerable energy, strong faith, and relentless perseverance which have built up here a commercial metropolis."
31:00 Holly Frey? The fire created a whole new chapter of Medill's life. He became an iconic figure of the city around the globe as his words were reprinted, and soon a new political party called the Union Fireproof Party formed and nominated him as their candidate for mayor of Chicago in an election that was scheduled to directly follow the tragedy. So four weeks after the fire, Joseph Medill was elected mayor of Chicago while the city was still reeling from the blaze and its aftermath.
31:30 Tracy V. Wilson? His inaugural speech was quite something, and we're going to quote a lot of it. Unsurprisingly, he talked about the fire a lot, outlining just how devastating it had been to the city. Quote, "I have been called to the head of the city government under extraordinary circumstances. A few weeks ago, our fair city, reposing in fancied security, received a fearfully tragic visitation from fire, which in a few brief but awful hours, reduced a large portion thereof to ashes, cinders, and smoke, consuming one grand division, leaving but a fragment of another, and inflicting an ugly wound on the third.
32:10 Tracy V. Wilson? In a single night and day, 125,000 of our people were expelled from their homes and compelled to flee for their lives into the streets, commons, or lake to avoid perishing in the flames." Many lost their lives from heat, suffocation, or falling walls. How many may never be known, and the multitudes who escaped were fain to seek shelter and food at the hand of charity. The greater part of our citizens not burned out of their homes, lost their stores, shops, offices, stocks of goods, implements, books, accounts, papers, vouchers, business, or situations.
32:50 Tracy V. Wilson? And it is difficult to find any citizen who has not suffered directly by that fearful conflagration. Of the total property in Chicago created by labor and capital existing on the 8th of October, more than half perished on the 9th. The money value of the property thus suddenly annihilated is impossible accurately to ascertain, but it can hardly fall short of $150 millions, a comparatively small part of which will be reimbursed by insurance companies. Such a tremendous loss cannot befall the people at large without seriously affecting their municipal affairs.
33:33 Holly Frey? In a move that was unusual and surprisingly transparent, as his inauguration speech continued, he listed out the hard numbers of the city's debt. And it almost starts to read like a meeting agenda for a corporation rather than a mayoral inauguration address. He stated that as of December 1, 1871, the city had $14,103,000 in bonded debt. And then he broke that down by line item, and then he added in the city's floating debt. And he stated that the expenses for the city to run for the rest of the year were going to be about $1,141,000. And sharing all of these numbers was a way to establish an expectations management for
34:18 Holly Frey? the city. Medill really wanted his constituents to understand what their taxes were going to, particularly at a time when so much recovery had to be done following the fire.
34:29 Tracy V. Wilson? He was particularly troubled by the way city expenses were handled even in good times, and he said so. Quote, "From time immemorial, it has been the practice of the municipal government to anticipate its revenues from nine to 12 months before they are received. A practice which I unqualifiedly condemn as imprudent and improper, and which I trust will be reformed at an early date. The city taxes are collected in the spring, but as fast as they are paid in, they are needed for the liquidation of floating debt and accumulated claims. And when these are settled and receded for, the year's taxes are exhausted. And for the residue of the fiscal year, the government is supported by borrowing from
35:14 Tracy V. Wilson? special funds, or the banks, by issuing certificates of indebtedness, or resorting to other financial devices. This is all wrong. There should always be in the treasury a sufficiently large balance to meet current expenses." He explained that this practice didn't account for disasters, and that it was what put the city in a very bad financial position following the fire, noting that if the state had not given them assistance, the next two years of city expenses would be impossible to fund. He also included the hard numbers regarding the state's relief and where that was going.
35:53 Holly Frey? This was a very long speech. Medill was really trying to be straight with the city about what was going to happen in the following years. And to that end, he was comprehensive. He noted that things like adding, widening, or extending streets were just not going to happen for a while, telling those assembled, quote, "There are no funds in the treasury now, nor likely to be for a long time, with which to pay for street extensions, or widenings, or pavings. And the city is prohibited from borrowing money and adding to the municipal debt for these or any other purposes. It will be all the city can possibly do to keep the present improved streets in repair and clean all the streets in this widespread city."
36:36 Tracy V. Wilson? His plan to aid the city financially was retrenchment, cutting back on expenditures wherever possible. In his words, quote, "There is nothing that will afford such financial relief to the city at this time as retrenchment." It is our surest resource and better than any credit, we can draw upon it to a remarkable extent. When we borrow, we must repay with interest, but when we save an expense, there is no debt created and neither principal or interest to provide for. The fire fiend came like a thief in the night and caught our municipal government living in excess of its income with a loose discipline in some departments, inefficiency in others, and extravagance in all.
37:21 Tracy V. Wilson? He mentioned that every city department needed to be assessed and overhauled to see where the money was being spent unnecessarily. And he said that he felt, quote, "A multitude of expenses can be lopped off without detriment to the public interests."
37:36 Holly Frey? That included cutting city employees that were in roles where there just wasn't enough work to keep them busy, and he thought that would save half a million dollars right off the top. And some of this waste within departments, he was confident, was tied to corruption as, quote, "The disparate vicious and criminal classes were placed on the city payrolls and sinecure offices for satellites were created by the thousand." But he also thought that it was going to be easy to identify these corrupt players in government because, quote, "Rascality sooner or later oversteps all bounds of shame, neglects to cover its tracks, and suddenly stands exposed and confounded by an indignant and plundered community."
38:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Toward the end of the speech, he talked about taking steps to ensure that a fire like the one they had just experienced couldn't happen again. He attributed the disaster to the fact that Chicago sits, quote, "On the lake border of a boundless prairie, swept continually by high winds." He mentioned that while only a few thousand brick and stone structures stood in the city at the time, there were more than 60,000 built out of pine and stated that, quote, "For miles square, there was little but pine structures, pine sidewalks, pine planing mills, manufacturers of pine, and pine lumberyards." He very clearly wanted to reform the city's construction methods to brick, stone, iron,
39:03 Tracy V. Wilson? concrete, and slate and away from pine, telling his listeners, quote, "If we rebuild the city with this dangerous material, we have a moral certainty at no distant day of a recurrence of the late catastrophe." He proposed that there should be no wooden building erected in Chicago going forward with the exception of very temporary structures and that the city's elected officials needed to develop a well thought out fire ordinance and to develop a robust system of supplying water to fires.
39:37 Holly Frey? Yeah, not too long before all of this, the city of Chicago had actually raised itself up to make space for things like sewage lines and other infrastructure items. And in doing so, they had used a lot of pine. So in addition to the buildings, there was just like a lot of infrastructure that depended on a very flammable wood. And all of this proposed reform, he believed was what the voters wanted, saying, quote, "If I comprehend the meaning of the recent municipal election, one of its chief purposes was to secure the reforms and economies which I have named, and the people will be bitterly disappointed and indignant if they are not fairly carried out."
40:17 Tracy V. Wilson? He wanted to talk about more things, but recognized he had already talked too long, stating, quote, "There are other important subjects to which I would call your attention were this communication not already too long. But I found it impossible to discuss the extraordinary condition of things in which the fire has placed the city government in the brief space usually occupied by a mayor's inaugural."
40:41 Holly Frey? That speech, as you just heard, noted a lot of things that Medill wanted to happen. And he ended up taking emergency powers to enact most of it. He had basically kind of done some wheeling and dealing in government for the mayor's role to be expanded. And in the early part of his term, for roughly the first year, he was able to use those expanded powers to enact a lot of financial reform with no real resistance. He made a lot of improvements to the city, and he's credited with the speed with which it bounced back after the fire. He raised an estimated $5 million for Chicago's rebuilding efforts, including $1,000 that came directly from President
41:21 Holly Frey? Grant's personal fund. In 1872, Medill turned his energies to the establishment of a public library for Chicago's citizens.
41:30 Tracy V. Wilson? But as his term continued, conflicts arose. One problem was that he tended to appoint his friends from his vast network of political connections to various roles in the government. While these men were usually experienced, they were probably capable, they often did not come from or represent the people of the districts where they weren't. They were all white Protestants. That meant that a lot of people in the city were being represented by people who just didn't understand their lives and were making decisions about their neighborhoods. Immigrants got very little representation in the government.
42:11 Tracy V. Wilson? If you remember any of our other episodes about 19th century Chicago, it had a very large immigrant population, a lot of racial diversity as people moved north from the South, freed people moving north. And that just was not what the city government looked like at all.
42:29 Holly Frey? Yeah, none of those people had anyone to really represent them. The stress of the job of mayor as people shifted from unilateral support to challenging his decisions took a toll on Medill's health. The final three and a half months of his mayoral term were served by Chicago City Council Member Lester Legrand Bond, who was appointed by Medill. Joseph went on a trip to Europe to rest at the behest of his doctor. Although he finished on a leave of absence, and at that point, not everybody was a fan, Medill was still offered a lot of high-profile positions within the US government in the years following his trip, but he wanted to go back to journalism.
43:10 Tracy V. Wilson? When Medill and his family got back to the US after a full year abroad, Joseph was a man with a mission, and that mission was to get his paper back. He had acquired some additional stock here and there, but not enough to get a controlling interest. He borrowed a staggering $300,000 from Marshall Field to purchase 600 additional shares of stock, which tipped him over 1,000 shares total, which was enough to control the publication. He reinstalled himself as editor, and he stayed in that job until the day he died.
43:45 Holly Frey? This also marks a shift in his political use of the paper. While he had taken a fairly progressive and liberal stance when it came to Lincoln's presidency, and specifically the issue of slavery, when it came to labor and government management in these later years, he was a lot more conservative after his time in office. Just as he had used the paper to promote Lincoln's agenda, he started using it as an anti-union outlet once he was the controlling shareholder.
44:14 Tracy V. Wilson? In late 1898, Medill's doctor told him he needed to spend winters in a drier climate than could happen in Chicago, so he traveled to San Antonio, Texas. It was there that he died on March 16th, 1899. Kitty had died five years earlier. Medill's doctor released a statement that ran in the papers, saying that he had been in good health overall until near the very end. His cause of death was heart failure. He was reportedly awake and lucid until the very end of his life, and his last words have been reported as, "What's the news this morning?"
44:53 Holly Frey? Medill's journalism legacy continued in his family. Three of his grandchildren, Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Patterson, and Eleanor Patterson, all became publishers of high-profile newspapers. Robert worked in the same role as his grandfather at the helm of the Chicago Tribune. He might be a future episode. The Tribune got much more conservative under his leadership. And in 1921, the Medill School of Journalism was dedicated at Northwestern University.
45:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Do you have some listener mail before we close out the episode?
45:27 Holly Frey? Oh, I do, and it delights me utterly. This is from our listener Catherine. I feel like this is a day of Catherine's in this episode. Catherine writes, "Hi Holly and Tracy. After the episode featuring Rebecca Raccoon, I wanted to write in with this story. I work at an animal shelter, and many years ago, we were able to move operations to a beautiful new building." Shortly after we opened our new building to the public, I was walking through the lobby and saw a woman looking lost and confused. When I approached her to ask if I could help her find something, she very excitedly asked me, yes, where are your raccoons? I was so confused that I was completely silent for about 30 seconds, and then it finally clicked.
46:07 Holly Frey? And I asked her if she was looking for a raccoon to adopt. She told me yes, and I informed her that that is not legal in our state. She was so sad. I felt a little bad for spoiling her dreams of raccoon ownership, although I do love that she wanted to go the adopt, don't shop route. Uh, thank you so much for the wonderful podcast. I love learning new things every week. For pet tax, I have attached a photo of my two cats, both adopted from my work. Sputnik is the big gray boy, and the tortie is Pocket, who is actually a rare male tortie. Thanks again for the wonderful episode, Catherine. Um, these babies are so cute. I love a, I love a solid gray cat. That's like one of the many cats of my heart.
46:49 Holly Frey? Um, and yes, male torties very rare. If you have a male tortie, I think they are always, um, sterile, like they could never have offspring, but they are both utterly gorgeous creatures. They're so pretty. Oh, my goodness. I want to kiss those faces. I love them so much. Um, thank you so much for this note, Catherine. I appreciate that people want to rat, want raccoons. They're cute. I feel like, uh, after Guardians of the Galaxy, a lot of people wanted a pet raccoon, but, um, they usually can't talk, just FYI. Uh, if you would like to write to us and share your stories of odd animal adoption dreams, or whatever it is you'd like to talk
47:30 Holly Frey? about, you can do so at [email protected] . You can also subscribe on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
47:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
47:59 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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