Archive for August 5th, 2011

5
Aug

The Mumps Make Trouble For Girls

   Posted by: admin    in Disease

The Fort Dodge Messenger: Aug. 5, 1905

The Mumps Make Trouble For Girls

Shoe Factory Girls Are Having an Epidemic of the Disease

Started About a Week Ago

One Girl Gets Sick and Oothers (sic) Follow – Were Unable to Think for a Time What Was Causing Trouble – Laid it to Toothache.

Few people believe that the disease called the mumps could interfere with the shoe industry, but such has come to be the case.

About a week ago a girl at the local shoe factory was interested in the peculiar appearance of a fellow worker. “Why Lizzie,” she said, “what is the matter with you today? You look so cross your cheeks hang down a foot.”

“They are swollen, you goose,” answered her friend with the abnormal features. I think I must have the toothache, though not a tooth seems to feel bad. I guess it is down in the roots of the tooth and that is what makes the swelling.”

“But what makes both sides of your face swell that way, you look like a pocket gopher?”

“It’s sympathy,” answered another girl, who had stepped up at this moment. “One side hurts and the other side swells for sympathy.”

The talk ceased for a time and nothing was thought about the affair until the girl with the swollen features did not come down to work the next morning and a couple of the others, the ones who had talked with her the day before found themselves with jaws of unusual proportions.

“Now that can’t be sympathy for Lizzie that makes us get that kind of a swelling,” said they. “We must have caught it from her and we had better see a doctor.” A doctor told them that they were suffering from mumps and then everything was clear.

Since that time several more girls have been taken sick and there bids fair to be a temporary shortage of employes (sic) unless the ravages of the disease are stopped.

(Editor’s note: The first conversation quoted was all in one paragraph with quote marks scattered liberally throughout, but not all in the right places. I attempted to make sense of the conversation by splitting it up into separate paragraphs and placing quote marks where they seemed to make sense. Spelling is as it was in the original article.)

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5
Aug

Tells the Mayor What to Do

   Posted by: admin    in People

The Fort Dodge Messenger: Aug. 5, 1905

Tells the Mayor What to Do

Mayor Bennett Receives Communication With Instructions

Regulate Speed of Autos

No Name is Signed But Writer Says Autos Are Running About City Like Wild – Letter is An Insult – Will Be Disregarded.

You may think some farmer wrote this Mr. B., but never mind. It is time for you or some of your policemen to do something and control some of these autos that are running around  here like wild ACT SEE?

The above communication was received by Mayor Bennett this morning, scrawled on the back of a postal card. No name was signed to it and nothing to indicate the person who wrote it was evident about it.

The communication is an insult in every way. The person whoever he is did not dare sign his name or come out in an honest and honorable manner and ask or even demand that the speed of autos in this city be regulated, but instead took for his means of bringing the matter to the attention of the mayor the low, underhanded method of writing an insulting anonymous letter, demanding with unparalleled arrogance that the mayor and policement (sic) act, and at once.

Mayor Bennett stated to a Messenger reporter this morning that he intended to pay no attention whatever to the demand. He said he had no knowledge of autos being run in a careless manner and until a complaint was filed in an honest and honorable manner by some person who takes exception to their operation, would take no action regarding them.

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