Volume #30, Issue #1, October, 1997
SERAPHINE PISKO
AT DENVER'S
NATIONAL JEWISH HOSPITAL:
GENDER AND THE ORIGINS OF PHILANTHROPIC PROFESSIONALISM
by William Toll
Introduction:
This essay explores the career of a pioneer, Mrs. Seraphine Pisko, who as
secretary of the National Jewish Hospital in Denver was the first woman to serve
as the chief executive of a national Jewish institution. Toll explores a number
of facets of Mrs. Pisko's tenure as the hospital's principal administrator: how
she restored confidence after the Muller scandal; her efforts to increase the
efficiency of daily operations; and her supervision of the young women who
travelled the country as fundraisers.
Toll also sketches the conflict between spokespersons for
the emergent professionalized and national Jewish leadership, who sought to
centralize fundraising and agency administration in the name of efficiency, and
local figures, including Mrs. Pisko, who argued that their traditions of
personalized leadership had served the Denver Jewish community well. Most
importantly, Toll offers a complex picture of the historical context and the
strategies that Mrs. Pisko employed as she successfully moved into a position
previously reserved for males.
—John Livingston, Editor Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Notes
I.
In early 1911, Mrs. Seraphine Pisko, a widow and supervisor
of fundraising at Denver's National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, was
appointed its new secretary. Her position required her to supervise all of the
hospital's daily operations except medical services. The board of directors, led
by the hospital's founder and president, the merchant Samuel Grabfelder, chose
her to replace Alfred Muller, a local Jewish attorney, who had died suddenly.1
Mrs. Pisko thus seems to have become the first woman to
assume primary responsibility for the administration of a major Jewish hospital,
though other women already headed smaller Jewish welfare agencies in Denver and
many of the volunteer tuberculosis agencies around the country.2
Her skills in managing her new position were immediately
tested, however, when auditors discovered that Muller, aided by his elderly
assistant, Bruno Grosser, had stolen over $73,000 from the hospital.
Furthermore, the system of fiscal management had not only abetted the theft, but
failed the larger test of "efficiency" which progressive men and women advocated
as necessary to run any institution successfully.3
Mrs. Pisko immediately sought to restore public confidence
by reforming the administrative procedures, but in a world whose rules were set
by men. Her appointment and subsequent response to crisis thus raised a number
of questions about the gendered organization of Jewish philanthropy, and
especially the peculiar status of the sanatorium, in an era when the meaning of
medical services was undergoing enormous redefinition.
Indeed, precisely the archaic character of the sanatorium,4
its methods of fundraising and its network of female-dominated support services
enabled Mrs. Pisko to move easily into her new position. And her sense of gender
enabled her to project an image of assurance, integrity and self-sacrifice so
that a male role could be rehabilitated through feminine virtues.
Mrs. Pisko came to her initial position as field secretary,
or traveling fundraiser, for the National Jewish Hospital from a background of
civic activism in the middle-class Jewish women's enclave that clustered within
the local section of the Council of Jewish Women. The Council nationally grew
out of the Jewish Women's Congress at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, when its
conveners like Hannah Solomon and Sadie American encouraged Jewish women to
organize local sections to promote the study of Jewish history and culture, so
that the American-born generation would not lose touch with its cultural past.
Denver had been prominently represented at the Chicago
Congress by Mrs. Carrie Shevelson Benjamin, who, in a flowery speech evoking
biblical imagery and a divinely ordained nurturant role for women, emphasized
not cultural study, but a conservative form of social activism.
Drawing on a natural division of labor between men and
women that ultimately rested on the security of the middle-class family, she
argued that within their "separate spheres," Jewish women must nevertheless
adopt modern forms of philanthropy to prevent, rather than merely alleviate
poverty Pointing in the direction that Council sections throughout the West
would soon take, Mrs. Benjamin told women of leisure to render service to the
poor by visiting day nurseries, kindergartens, hospitals, and especially the
homes of the poor, to provide not relief, but advice on self-improvement,
employment, and to become role models.5
Back in Denver she gathered women from established families
into a local section, which held by 1898 more than 250 members. An examination
of an early membership list reveals the familial character of recruitment. In
addition to many Appels, Blocks, Wiles, and Dreyfusses, were two Shevelsons, as
well as Mrs. Pisko, her mother, Mrs. Max Eppstein, and perhaps an unmarried
sister living at the same address. 6
By 1900, Mrs. Benjamin's role within the Council had
diminished, and by 1910 her family seems to have left town, while Mrs. Pisko's
role greatly expanded. She was by 1898 a member of the Board of Directors, and
served on the Religious Committee and on the Reciprocity Committee that
maintained contact with other sections.
In addition, she seems to have taken the lead in initiating
contacts with non-Jewish organizations that hoped to have a civic impact. She
served, along with Mrs. Benjamin and Mrs. Charles Spivak, the wife of a future
founder and secretary of the rival Jewish Consumptives' Relief Hospital, on a
committee cooperating with the Denver Education Club, and on another committee
that cooperated with the Newsboys' Committee of the Women's Club of Denver.
Seraphine Pisko
By then, Mrs. Pisko must have been prominent in Denver club
work, because in May 1899, she represented not only the Council and the local
Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society, but also the Women's Club of Denver at the
National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Cincinnati.7 Her
interest in the development of modem social work remained strong, because even
in her years as secretary of the hospital she would find time to attend their
conventions.8
Within the context of Denver's Jewish community, her views
on the relationship between American-born Jews and the East European immigrants
represented a modest advance over the Victorian moral preaching of Mrs. Benjamin
and reflected her own experience with settlement work. While continuing to
advocate personal service as a supplement to the work of formal institutions
like the public school, she recognized and hoped to eliminate the condescension
that had marked these relationships in the past.
Mrs. Pisko respected especially the cultural traditions
brought to America by the Orthodox, because they represented the roots of her
own religious identity. Addressing the immigrant community, she wrote, "And you,
our brothers on Colfax, do not meet us with distrust. We would not take from you
one of your traditions we, too, value them as our highest heritage and if we
differ in the minutiae of ceremonial still we may each be tolerant of the
other."9
Later, as director of the hospital, she did not promote a
Yiddish cultural presence as did Dr. Spivak at the Jewish Consumptives' Relief
Hospital, but she did plan Passover Seders for the patients as a reflection of
her own religious priorities.
Through her own Council work, Mrs. Pisko was drawn closer
to the National Jewish Hospital during the years around 1900, when it opened its
doors. She came to know Mrs. Alfred Muller, who in 1899 became Council
president, just as Mrs. Pisko became its new vice-president.
As an active member of the board in 1899, she promoted
Alfred Muller's proposal to have the Council endow a bed at the hospital, and
by September 1900, she had resigned her vice-presidency, perhaps in conjunction
with her assumption of duties as the field secretary for the hospital.10
She no doubt appealed to Muller, Grabfelder and especially local founders
because of her exceptional public speaking skills, which she exercised in the
Council's behalf.11
Mrs. Pisko remained an active member of the Council,
occasionally still serving on its local board into the 1920s, and several times
served as a Denver section delegate to the National Council's triennial
convention.12 By the 1920s, when her national reputation had come to
rest on her position at the hospital, she served on the Council's national
board. For her, women's social service, civic activism, and professional
administration grew out of the same personal network.
II.
While Mrs. Pisko in a different setting might have become a
fundraiser and administrator for a very different agency, the archaic character
of the sanatoria, within the changing context of medical services, eased her way
into its inner circles. Hospitals in the early twentieth century were changing
from charitable agencies providing custodial care for the indigent, to centers
that provided specific treatments to all patients with acute needs.
General hospitals were developing a new sense of
professional purpose based on the germ theory of disease and new treatments,
often surgical, that derived from specialized research. With the new prominence
of specialized medical expertise, staffs expanded and authority within hospitals
shifted from lay trustees to the doctors.l3
In most of these developments sanatoria lagged far behind,
in part because tuberculosis, though having a known bacteriological cause, had
no known cure. Surgeons could not operate to heal a patient, expensive equipment
was not needed, and medical schools placed no pressure on sanatoria to become
teaching centers. Sanatoria doctors, therefore, had only limited grounds for
asserting their professional expertise as exclusive criteria for admissions and
other hospital policies.14
Furthermore, with only modest funds demanded for research,
sanatoria could operate on modest budgets. Institutions like the National Jewish
Hospital or the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society hospital could continue to
see themselves as charitable institutions that did not have to supplement
donations by charging fees to patients. They remained supported by wealthy
patrons, fraternal orders, and fundraising stimulated by itinerant young women.15
Even public health efforts to combat tuberculosis consisted largely of
educational campaigns in the slums that attracted female volunteers like those
who joined the Council of Jewish Women.
In addition, while superintendents of both general
hospitals and sanatoria had become fiscal officers who hired assistants to
oversee housekeeping functions, there were, as yet, no training programs to
certify a professional status.16 All of these circumstances enabled a
sanatorium like the National Jewish Hospital to remain through the 1920s under
the control of lay trustees, who might appoint a chief administrator on the
basis of personal friendship as well as a general sense of competence.
As Jeanne Abrams has pointed out for the Jewish
Consumptives' Relief Society, sanatoria viewed as one of their primary goals
the creation of a home-like atmosphere, where the environment and the patient's
daily routine could be manipulated, so that a homeopathic cure might take
effect.17
While the sanatoria relied on its medical staff for
treatments and consulted local specialists for acute ancillary conditions, the
chief administrator need have no medical training or even higher education,18
but must be reputed primarily for fiscal skills, a nurturing personality, and
the capacity to charm the trustees.
As Mrs. Pisko settled in as secretary of the National
Jewish Hospital in the wake of the Muller defalcation, she exhibited a blend of
nurturance and business efficiency. As the only officer of the hospital (apart
from a local building committee) then residing in Denver, she had continuously
to reassure Grabfelder that the routine of the hospital was not disrupted,
patients were properly attended and content, and that the bills were being paid
despite the bad publicity.
Mrs. Pisko had also to reestablish the secretary's office,
which had been in Muller's law office, at the hospital; gradually to discharge
his large staff, most of whom had been male; find competent female assistants;
get herself and staff bonded; and develop a new liaison between her office and
that of the medical superintendent, Dr. Moses Collins. She continually told
Grabfelder that "all was running smooth," while implementing the advice of the
auditors and creating a means of coordinating her-expenditures with the
collections paid into the treasurer, Benjamin Altheimer, who resided in St.
Louis.l9
This continual circulation of checks and vouchers through
the mails between Denver, St. Louis and Grabfelder, who then resided in
Philadelphia, certainly illustrates the volunteer character of the
administration, the ease with which Muller could manipulate the situation, and
the struggles Mrs. Pisko had to establish an orderly procedure that might assume
future donors.
From the moment of her appointment, Grabfelder trusted her
administrative judgment more than that of Dr. Collins, and he continually
expressed this view to her. She reinforced his trust by supporting the
suggestions he made after his visit to Denver in October 1911, and by
emphasizing how contributions to the endowment and pledges from federations and
lodges continued to arrive.20
As Grabfelder inundated her with information about various
hospital investments and the details for validating vouchers, she seemed easily
to master the details and obtain the information he needed. Indeed, to
demonstrate her own commitment to business efficiency, she even admonished him
for failing to follow established procedures in his dealings with Altheimer and
herself.21
In conjunction with Rabbi William S. Friedman, a founder
and member of the executive board and Denver's leading voice of Reform Judaism,
and David Lehman, on whom Grabfelder now relied implicitly to invest the
endowment, Mrs. Pisko worked to recoup the hospital's integrity in Denver. Until
Lehman' s death in April, 1915, the three provided mutual council on public
relations, political influence, and all phases of financial administration.
In September and October, 1911, Friedman came by almost
every day, and Mrs. Pisko assured Grabfelder that "Dr. Friedman, Mr. Lehman, and
I are in consultation daily and you can depend upon it that there will be
nothing left undone to make this hospital everything that it should be." After
congratulating Grabfelder for his ability to induce new people to contribute
despite the Muller scandal, she asked him to "take a good rest and don't worry
about the hospital."22
In conjunction with Lehman and Friedman, she pursued the
channels of personal political influence to which nineteenth century
philanthropic officers, including officers of the Council of Jewish Women, had
long been accustomed. By 1912 she was on the board of the City Charities, where
she could exercise some influence on the mayor, who, she told Grabfelder, "would
do anything for me."23
The year before, Lehman and Friedman had persuaded the
mayor to use his influence to have the city deduct interest on many years of
unpaid taxes for sewers and paving. This alone, Lehman confirmed, was worth
thousands of dollars to the hospital. Subsequently, as the city expanded, Mrs.
Pisko was again able to intervene with city hall to block the extension of
streets through the hospital's grounds.24
As her command of the hospital's physical needs and its
expenses increased, Mrs. Pisko also began to feel free to give Grabfelder
advice. Accepting the growing view in medicine that professional expertise
should determine admissions, she had Grabfelder sign blank forms and deposit
them with her so that Dr. Collins could use them as he saw fit.
Since the hospital was supported in part by B'nai B'rith
lodges, and also received subventions from many local Jewish federations, the
officers of those organizations occasionally approached Grabfelder to admit
patients without Collins' approval. Grabfelder had usually resisted these
requests, but had not thought of this stratagem for tactfully relinquishing
responsibility to medical authority until Mrs. Pisko suggested it.25
When Dr Collins later urged the hospital to spend more
money on research, she offered him encouragement in the face of Grabfelder' s
opposition. For him, research must be left to facilities endowed by
multi-million dollar foundations like those sponored by Carnegie or Phipps.
Though mindful of the long-term value of research, he responded "the National
Jewish Hospital was put up, not for the purpose of doing research work, but for
the purpose of taking care of, and trying to cure poor consumptives."26
Lacking the funds to initiate serious new projects, they should stick to their
homeopathic task.
Aware of the hospital's financial limitations, Mrs. Pisko
made many practical suggestions to save on operating expenses and to insure
long-term stability As endowment money came in, she suggested the establishment
of a sinking fund, while to save on the water bill, she suggested that an
artesian well be sunk on the hospital's grounds. She not only curtailed the
expenses of her own office, but saw many duplications in the work of her own
office and that of Dr Collins.
Womans' Pavilion, built in 1906,
was later named the Pisko Building.
As Grabfelder planned to erect a new administration
building, Mrs. Pisko recommended that by placing the two offices adjacent to one
another, further savings could be realized. Grabfelder agreed, despite Collins'
objections, and assured Mrs. Pisko that the new building would be positioned on
the grounds to best facilitate communications between departments.27
As a special task, Mrs. Pisko constantly assured Grabfelder
that the home-like atmosphere of the sanatorium was being sustained, and that
patients, confined for months to rest and boredom, should nevertheless seem
happy. She flattered his view, then passing into disfavor among doctors, that
heavy meals enhanced the cure by reporting often on patient satisfaction with
"the table."
She noted that the farm was supplying sufficient dairy
products, even though both agreed its expenses seemed high. She initiated some
vocational training, as much to keep patients active as to impart useful skills,
and she felt that some form of paid labor might boost morale and create a small
fund that patients could use when they were discharged.28
Like most successful administrators, Mrs. Pisko kept the
trustees at bay by demonstrating a mastery of details that also minimized
expenses. In March, 1913, for example, Grabfelder learned that a former field
secretary had switched her allegiance to the Jewish Consumptives' Relief
Society, and was soliciting funds in the same territory she had formerly covered
for the National Jewish Hospital. Indignant, he insisted that Mrs. Pisko send
letters to all prospective donors in the region informing them of the young
woman's switch in affiliations.
Mrs. Pisko, after consulting with David Lehman, reluctantly
complied. Grabfelder, though, became aghast when he learned that the mailing
cost was over $100, and he accused Mrs. Pisko of extravagantly employing
additional clerical help, something which Muller had liberally done.29
Her lengthy, detailed, and sardonic response illustrated not only her careful
judgment and prudent management, but her superiority to her male predecessor.
"I am sorry that the price of the Abrahamson letter seemed
too great to you," she began, "but you will really have to take this up with the
Government instead of with me. I know of no way we could send out five thousand
letters for less than two cents postage for each letter, which makes One Hundred
Dollars. I counted Ten dollars for the stationery, which really does not even
cover the cost of it."
Noting that she had agreed to send the letter only at
Lehman' s insistence, she then lectured Grabfelder on the pressures of running
her office. "I am really surprised that after your long connection with the
Hospital, you would have an idea that it would be possible to get out five
thousand letters in a very great hurry with the small office force that I have.
Fourteen patients helped us with this work, even giving up their rest hour for
two days so that the letter could be expedited."
After describing how the patients and her small staff
coordinated their efforts, she described the general work load, which also had
to be completed despite the extra work the letter entailed. "To do all of this I
have one bookkeeper, one stenographer, and Miss Breger, who is now working half
a day in the office. As you no doubt know, she has been ill."
Reminding Grabfelder of the increased efficiency in her
office, despite running it with a staff less than half of that which Muller had
employed, she emphasized the personal benefits he then enjoyed. "You will
remember also, that neither you nor the Executive Board ever received your
reports on time, and I believe that everything is done very promptly in the
office. For this reason I cannot understand your criticism."
Properly chastised, Grabfelder briefly responded that, "I
was under the impression we did not send out more than 1000 or 1500 letters. As
I was mistaken, I wish to apologize."30
To reinforce the view that she fully controlled office
affairs, Mrs. Pisko kept Grabfelder informed of the stringencies the small size
of her staff created, yet her skill in completing tasks accurately and on time.
Noting how summer vacations had further depleted her staff, she added, with some
irony, that "The law of Colorado does not permit any woman to work in an office
longer than eight hours a day. Any infringement on this law is punishable by
fine or imprisonment or both."
Some months later she put an end to this topic, which had
clearly rankled as an infringement on her authority, by telling Grabfelder, "We
always have things in `Apple Pie' order in the office. There is never a time
when you or anyone else could not come into the office and find everything
absolutely ready and up to date. I must confess that I pride myself on this."31
The one area of administration where Mrs. Pisko excelled
prior to becoming secretary was what the officers called " propaganda work," or
promotion for fundraising. Here she designed the strategies and freely
criticized the contingent of young women who circulated in the sanatorium's
behalf.
Grabfelder, as a successful liquor wholesaler, had
supervised traveling salesmen all of his working life, and assumed that raising
money for a hospital required the same persistence as selling wine. He wanted an
army of fundraisers to rival that of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society,
whose larger contingent of field secretaries always seemed to get to remote
towns more quickly than did Mrs. Pisko's protégés.
Grabfelder was willing to employ any fundraiser who was
recommended to the hospital.32 She, however, saw her smaller group as
an extension of the genteel, yet carefully organized charity work to which she
had grown accustomed in the Council of Jewish Women. She was reluctant to take
on new people unless they had recommendations from individuals like Jacob
Billikopf of Kansas City, whom she greatly respected.
As secretary she continued to visit wealthy donors to
solicit funds, and she became annoyed when other board members or field
secretaries did not pursue potential donors with equal zeal. While most of her
"propaganda" after 1911 consisted of speeches to large gatherings, like B'nai
B'rith Grand District lodge meetings, or the preparation of reports,33
she coached her field secretaries in the proper methods for approaching wealthy
men and women.
One young woman who covered the Far West between September
7 and December 1, 1911, collecting small amounts (except for almost $3,000 in
San Francisco), often sat in waiting rooms for appointments with merchants and
professional men who might donate anywhere from $5 to $ 100 or more.34
To succeed, such a young woman had to project a genteel demeanor, while
embodying the energy and persistence to persuade would-be donors to increase
their contributions.
Over the years the propaganda work gradually followed lines
Grabfelder suggested, in part because the hospital's clientele changed in
response to changing views of a proper cure for tuberculosis. As doctors
questioned the significance of climate in the scheme of treatment, eastern
cities began to build their own sanatoria, a departure which Grabfelder clearly
understood.35
While one-third of the hospital's patients in the early
years had come from New York City, by 1921 none did, and very few were still
coming from Chicago. Mrs. Pisko then hired a publicity consultant who had worked
for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and for the National Council of
Jewish Women, to design a campaign to reacquaint the Lower East Side with the
hospital, so that patients would be sent to justify the contributions that were
being solicited in the city.36
In addition, more young women were hired to solicit a more
middle-class pool of donors. Mindful of the sensibilities of donors who might
feel solicitors became aggressive to increase their own income, Mrs. Pisko even
sought ways to disguise the commission component of a field secretary's
compensation package.
In individual cases she, in consultation with Grabfelder,
raised salaries while juggling commission rates or the proportion of the funds
subject to commission. Her evaluation of her field secretaries remained detailed
and exacting, and her critical judgments were hedged only by the possible
political consequences of replacing a local fundraiser.37
Nevertheless, as part of the familial nature of such a
woman's network as sustained a charitable institution, Mrs. Pisko was solicitous
of the health and changing family situations of her field secretaries, and she
rarely forced any to resign, despite her remarks about the inefficiency of their
work. Referring to one woman who had worked as field secretary for ten years,
despite Mrs. Pisko's constant criticism, she noted, "it would be very difficult
to discharge her."
"Mr. Flesher suggests that we should suggest to her that
she should lay off for six months or a year, as she is having a great deal of
trouble with her feet and can't get around properly and has had to lay off from
time to time to rest."38 Mrs. Pisko was quite relieved when the woman
accepted this advice.
While Mrs. Pisko' s skill at fundraising led Grabfelder to
promote her to hospital secretary, she demonstrated her stature for the larger
job in her response to two attacks on the hospital's policies, in the continuing
wake of the Muller ordeal. Here her grounding in Denver's circle of Jewish women
civic activists reinforced her authority, justified her policies, and assured
her success.
Her responses suggest how the network of support services,
staffed mainly by women, that had grown up around the hospital might defend its
blend of nurturance and efficiency in the face of strategies for communal
organization which claimed to be more efficient because they were more
comprehensive in scope.
Both attacks on the hospital came from professionally
trained social investigators sent to evaluate the status of the hospital, and
also that of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society in conjunction with the
general question of Jewish poverty and dependence in Denver.
The first investigator came directly after the Muller
defalcation, when Dr. Lee K. Frankel, president of the National Conference of
Jewish Charities and recently employed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company to combat tuberculosis, thought that the national Jewish community
needed to be assured of the professional management of the National Jewish
Hospital.
In the spring of 1912, he sent Garfield Berlinsky to study
the activities of the hospital, not only its ability to cure patients, but the
effect of its presence on the Jewish community.39 At that time, only
the National Jewish Hospital provided follow-up work for ex-patients and their
families. It had for years employed Mrs. Ray David to help ex-patients find
lodgings and employment and to dispense some relief funds for those who were
unable to find work. In addition, it had just hired a visiting nurse and a
doctor to treat convalescents. It had also subsidized the Denver Sheltering
Home, headed by Mrs. Fannie Lorber, that accommodated about two dozen children
of patients.40
The institutions in place had not only grown to meet
patient needs, but had grown from the network of female volunteers, a few of
whom like Mrs. Pisko and Mrs. David now received salaries. Berlinsky, however,
concluded that support for ex-patients was highly unsystematic. Furthermore,
since many had come to Denver to enter the hospital, which had in turn failed to
train them for employment after discharge, their subsequent indigence placed
the Denver Jewish community under an undue burden. Only a reorganization of
local philanthropy and a new national fundraising effort could alleviate it.41
When Grabfelder heard that Berlinsky's report would further
criticize his hospital for alleged inefficiencies, he got Mrs. Pisko and David
Lehman to prepare a counter-report emphasizing its achievements. Mrs. Pisko
remained far more confident, because she knew that Berlinsky was focusing on
ex-patients. Though she did not anticipate the broader implications of
Berlinsky's criticism, she felt justified that her hospital was constantly
developing a larger program for ex-patients.
Apparently through the influence of Grabfelder on Judge
Julian Mack, who had visited the hospital and now chaired the special committee
appointed to "adjust" the matter, the Berlinsky report was never issued.42
However, Berlinsky soon returned to Denver, ostensibly to review the facts on
which his allegations rested with the responsible heads of the sanatoria. He
remained to organize the various Jewish charitable institutions into a
federation of the sort that had come to supervise Jewish charitable giving in
many other cities. Its intent was to rationalize fundraising by conducting one
annual campaign, and to distribute funds to member agencies according to their
needs.
The concept of a federation had the support of Judge Mack,
primarily on the basis of its efficiency in fundraising in other cities. The
Denver community paper, The Jewish Outlook, also supported it, as did
representatives of many local Jewish charitable agencies.43 While
the details are not clear, because the sanatoria were national agencies that had
to raise funds beyond Denver, both hospitals saw this scheme as an encroachment
on their ability to raise funds through the highly personalized networks they
had already in place. Berlinsky, nevertheless, gained some support for his ideas
and began to solicit funds nationally.
The Berlinsky federation managed to exist for almost three
years, though records are unavailable to validate its work. When Berlinsky moved
to reorganize the federation in late 1915, the heads of the sanatoria, including
Rabbi Friedman and Mrs. Pisko, the president of the local section of the
National Council of Jewish Women, and other Jewish philanthropic officials
issued a formal letter of protest. They denied that a "pauper problem" existed
among Denver's Jews and asserted that their own charitable institutions already
met Denver's needs.
In a follow-up letter to her trustees, Mrs. Pisko
reiterated these views, adding that, "You as a director of the National Jewish
Hospital for Consumptives, are fully aware that this institution, as well as the
Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society, is providing for those poor consumptives
who need sanatorium care and treatment."
While Mrs. Pisko continually reassured Grabfelder that the
hospital was meeting the needs of ex-patients effectively, Lee Frankel, who was
just launching a new educational campaign for the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company, remained skeptical. And Berlinsky' s new effort to raise funds
nationally led the sanatoria themselves to ask for a new investigation. Through
the suggestion of Jacob Billikopf, Chester J. Teller of the New York Bureau of
Municipal Research was appointed by a committee of the National Conference of
Jewish Charities. He arrived in Denver in late March 1916.44
Teller, like Berlinsky, tried to see a "larger picture," of
which the conditions of ex-patients from the sanatoria were simply symptoms. He
believed that the sanatoria focused only on the patient's medical problems and
paid little attention either to long-term support after discharge, or to the
effects of a pool of indigent ex-patients on the larger community.
He listed over a dozen practical recommendations to remedy
the situation, the most important of which was the creation of a central
administrative agency that would take applications for admission, keep all
records, plan fundraising and allocate budgets, impose a standardized system of
reporting work at the sanatoria and other agencies, and do research on the
overall needs of the community because of the presence of indigent consumptives.45
In effect, he wished to preempt the administrative work of the sanatoria,
because he felt they lacked a comprehensive, modern view of how to attack a
persistent public health problem.
From their perspective, Mrs. Pisko and Dr. Spivak at the
JCRS, both saw their institutions as "homes" that did care for the whole
patient. Indeed, their homeopathic treatment embodied a variety of techniques to
heal the body and engage the mind of patients. They both introduced some
vocational training and some paid work for patients to bolster self-esteem. And
the National Jewish Sheltering Home did address the needs of the discharged
patient and his or her family.
But Mrs. Pisko saw neither a need nor the desirability to
educate the general community, to become involved in settlement clinics, or to
initiate other outpatient services.46 Her sense of efficiency
required that she manage her institution economically so that more funds would
be available for treatment. And underlying her obvious pique at this effort to
question her definition of responsibility and of proper nurture was a practical
observation which she shared with Mrs. Ray David, that Denver was not overrun
with tubercular paupers.47
In conflict here were a new ideology of social welfare,
expressed by Berlinsky and Teller, versus a set of interests expressed by Mrs.
Pisko and her associates which had grown from social networks that sustained a
nurturant charity. The dialogue was hardly clear-cut, because each side in a
different way combined a regard for what each considered the whole person with
an efficient management of charitable affairs.
But Mrs. Pisko and her colleagues prevailed because the
network on which they depended had created institutions strong enough to resist
the criticism of newcomers. In addition, the extension of services by both
sanatoria, as well as the diminution of migrants seeking the cure in Denver,
undercut the practical grounds on which criticism of their work rested.
In the end Teller and Berlinsky encountered a network of
prominent men and especially women like Mrs. Pisko, Mrs. David and Mrs. Lorber,
connected through membership in the Council of Jewish Women, responsible for
running their own agencies that assisted the sick and indigent, and finding
local validation for their administrative skills from voluntary associations and
government agencies.
Under the circumstances in Denver, the ideology promoted by
Berlinsky and Teller represented, not so much a more efficient approach to a
problem, as a bureaucratic design to undermine existent efforts at treatment. In
response, women like Mrs. Pisko could argue that their vision was effective and
sufficient. And as long as the sanatoria retained their measure of medical
expertise, they would be correct. Like the Berlinsky report, the Teller report
was apparently never published, and women like Mrs. Pisko and Mrs. Lorber became
icons in Denver's philanthropic community.
About the Author:
Professor Toll is a major historian of Western Jewry with a most important
bibliography of peer-approved and highly readable scholarship.
Photo Credits:
Seraphine Pisko is from the Beck Archives of Rocky Mountain
Jewish History, University of Denver.
Pisko Building from A Place to Heal published by National
Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, 1989.
Endnotes:
1. Samuel Grabfelder, telegram, August 9, 1911, Seraphine
Pisko file, National Jewish Hospital Papers, Ira M. Beck Archives of Rocky
Mountain Jewish History, University of Denver, Denver, CO [All letters cited
will be from this collection unless otherwise noted.)
2. Michael E. Teller, The Tuberculosis Movement, A Public
Health Campaign in the Progressive Era (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1988),
42.
3. Seraphine Pisko to Samuel Grabfelder, September 19,
September 27, 1911.
4. Mark Caldwell, The Last Crusade, the War on Consumption,
1862-1954 (Atheneum, New York, 1988), 97.
5. See Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Notes
(Winter/Spring, 1990) for a reprint of Mrs. Benjamin's speech, biographical
details on her life in Denver, and background on the Jewish Woman's Congress.
6. Denver Section, Council of Jewish Women. 1898-1899
(Denver, 1898), pamphlet in Council of Jewish Women Papers, Ira M. Beck Archives
of Rocky Mountain Jewish History, University of Denver, Denver, CO.
7. Minutes, Denver Section, CJW, May 10, 1899, CJW Papers.
8. Pisko to Grabfelder, April 28, 1913.
9. Seraphine Pisko, "Denver Jewish Settlement Work," The
Jewish Outlook (Denver, CO), January 5, 1906, pg.3.
10. Minutes, Denver section, CJW, January 20, September 22,
1899, September 21, November 14, 1900.
11. Minutes, Denver section, CJW,
December 14, 1898.
12. Minutes, Denver section, CJW,
December 19, 1917, March 3, 1919.
13. Charles Rosenberg, The Care of
Strangers, The Rise of the American Hospital System (Basic Books, New York,
1987), 157; Morris J. Vogel, The Invention of the Modern Hospital, Boston,
1870-1930 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980), 93; David Rosner, A Once
Charitable Enterprise, Hospitals and Health Care in Brooklyn and New York,
1885-1915 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982), 2.
14. Caldwell, Last Crusade, 97.
15. Teller, Tuberculosis Movement, 36-37.
16. Rosenberg, Care of Strangers,
279-280.
17. Jeanne Abrams, "Chasing the Cure: A
History of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society of Denver," Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (1984), 7, 79-80.
18. Mary Ann Fitzharris, A Place to Heal,
The History of the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory
Medicine (National Jewish Center, 1989), 6.
19. Grabfelder to Dr. Moses Collins,
August 25, 1911; Pisko to Grabfelder, September 12, October 16, 1911.
20. Grabfelder to Pisko, October 23,
1911.
21. Pisko to Grabfelder, September 20,
1913.
22. Pisko to Grabfelder, October 16,
1911.
23. Pisko to Grabfelder, October 25,
1912.
24. David Lehman to Grabfelder, November
27, 1911; Pisko to Grabfelder, October 5, 1912; Rosner, Once a Charitable
Enterprise, 124.
25. Grabfelder to Alfred Muller, October
21, 1910; Grabfelder to Dr. Moses Collins, September 7, 1911; Pisko to
Grabfelder, July 16, 1912; Rosenberg, Care of Strangers, 263, 274; Vogel,
Invention of Modern Hospital, 68-69.
26. Grabfelder to Pisko, July 22, 1913.
27. Pisko to Grabfelder, July 16, 19, 20,
1912, July 18, 1913; Grabfelder to Pisko, July 22, 1913.
28. Pisko to Grabfelder, May 29, 1912,
March 30, 1913, April 25, 1913.
29. Grabfelder to Pisko, March 15, 1913.
30. Pisko to Grabfelder, March 19, 1913;
Grabfelder to Pisko, March 24, 1913.
31. Pisko to Grabfelder, June 7, 1913,
December, 12, 1913.
32. Grabfelder to Pisko, July 22, 1913.
33. Pisko to Grabfelder, May 29, July 20,
October 5, 1912, July 18, 1913, January 19, 1914.
34. Sippie Davidson to Pisko, October 8,
1911.
35. Teller, Tuberculosis Movement, 24,
27; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of
Health Reform (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1982), 202. Pisko to
Grabfelder, May 14, 1915.
36. Fitzharris, A Place to Heal, 14;
Pisko to Nathan Dauby, April 14, 1921.
37. Pisko to Dauby, July 22, August 6,
1921; Dauby to Pisko, August 11, 1921.
38. Pisko to Dauby, April 14, 1921.
39. Chester Jacob Teller, "Report on the
Problem of Combined Poverty and Tuberculosis Among Jews in Denver, Colorado,"
["Teller Report"] (June, 1916), 6-7, manuscript in the Ira M. Beck Archives of
Rocky Mountain Jewish History, University of Denver, Denver, CO.
40. Grabfelder to Pisko, May 4, 1912;
Pisko to Grabfelder, October 5, 1912; Fitzharris, A Place to Heal, 17, 21-24.
41. "Teller Report," 8-9; Pisko to
Grabfelder, March 30. 1913.
42. Pisko to Grabfelder, October 5, 1912.
43. John Livingston, untitled manuscript
on organizing a Jewish federation in Denver, 15-17, manuscript in possession of
author.
44. "Teller Report," 12-13.
45. "Interview with Seraphine Pisko"
(April 15, 1916), "Teller Report," 268-273.
46. "Interview with Mrs. Ray David,"
(April 3, 1916), "Teller Report," 279-289.
47. Council of Jewish Women (Denver) Year
Book, 1921-1922 (Denver,1921), membership list includes Mrs. Ray David, Mrs.
Seraphine Pisko and Mrs. J. Lorber.
