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Chapter V

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Chapter VII

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CHAPTER VI

MORE CHIVALRY

My work in and around Charlotte was beginning to bring me tangible results, and early in '84 I received a letter from a citizen of Charlotte, offering to put money into the Remedy if I would form a co-partnership with him and establish my headquarters at Charlotte.

It had now been many years since my husband was paralyzed and our principal was slowly but surely going. I saw at a glance the advantages which would accrue from such a move, and I wrote a favorable reply. A few days after, he came to my home.

He offered to put in one thousand dollars in Cash, furnish all the capital, advertising, etc., to build up the business. In return I was to transfer to him a one-half interest in my Trademark, right to manufacture, etc.

We were to equally divide the profits, and the Company, composed of him and myself, was to pay me $75 a month and my expenses for my services to manufacture and sell the Remedy.

I signed the contract, and on the 31st day of January, 1884, I went to Charlotte to begin work.

It was a move of love and duty for my household idols, not of choice and preference. Somebody had to work and the place was mine.

I contracted with my married daughter to take my place by her father's side and look after my little children, so that I knew they were well cared for.

I went to work in earnest and put up 3000 bottles of Remedy, my partner furnishing all the material. I had 2000 bottles of my own in stock at my home in Franklin County, which the Company bought for actual cost. This gave us a stock of 5000 in February.

I went on the road advertising, selling, drumming, talking, doing everything in my power to force sales, sending in the orders to Charlotte where my Partner attended to the shipping, kept the books, collected and so on.

I went home in March on a visit, and left all well and happy, except that I was not there. In April, while I was at Monroe, I was recalled home by a dispatch. My husband had died suddenly of heart disease. Suddenly had the summons come, while he was sitting in the porch waiting for the mail, for the letter I sent him daily.

I hastened home and we will touch lightly upon this part of

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my life. I stayed there three days, at the old home, without him; three desolate, wretched, miserable days, and then I felt that any other place was preferable to me now. I could not stay and then there was no need. The living needed me.

Two of my daughters were married now, and they took charge of my youngest children. Leaving one of my sons in charge of the farm, I returned to my work the following Monday.

I went direct to Wilmington and from there to Fayetteville.

I went into Mr. E. J. Hale's office one morning to see him in regard to an advertisement and he asked me why was it that Dr. Yates had made the attack upon me that he had?

"An attack upon me? What have I done? I know nothing of it."

"Yes," he said, ''a most unprovoked and unwarranted attack, but one that cannot harm you", and he showed me the Raleigh Evening Visitor, and for the first time I read:

Raleigh Doctors.

Correspondence of the Evening Visitor.

Wilmington, N. C. April 17, 1884

Dear Visitor,

This seems to be a day of pretentious humbug, and, unfortunately the hum of the bug seems to be in the direction of the established order of the things that have been approved by the test of ages. There are certain great bulwarks of religion, civilization and liberty, finding their expression in the physician, minister of the gospel, lawyer and school teacher, against which the isms and humbugs of the day dash their waves. Society is especially interested in having these bulwarks properly supported. We may concede honesty to a man, and, at the same time condemn his reasoning, who, because he has run upon a small island, persists in his claim to have discovered a continent.

Yesterday, an advertising pamphlet was thrown into my yard. It contained a handbill stating that Mrs. Joe Person's medicine was extraordinarily good. I concluded to buy some; but looking at the pamphlet, I discovered a tirade of abuse of the Raleigh physicians. The effort seems to have been made to force the Raleigh physicians to notice the patent medicine mentioned above. They properly refused to do so, and hence their names are spread abroad in this pamphlet as deceivers, and if what this villainous pamphlet says be true, scoundrels!

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Who believes that Haywood, Hines, McKee, Royster, McGee and others are such men as this pamphlet makes them? And, if not, what shall be said of such attacks as these upon men, without whom, society would be poor indeed!

I determined not to buy the medicine, of course; for I saw there must be something rotten in Denmark. For why try to rise by pulling others down? Why force a great principle as maintained by physicians for the good of society to yield to the claims of a secret remedy, even if it was discovered by a woman. If it is good in itself, push it properly. Good is a unit. It is not divided against itself. There is no necessity for abusing physicians.

Besides, it shows the cloven foot at once, for that cannot be good that tries to force itself over the levees of civilization, and that would inundate society with free doctors, lynch law, free love, sans religion, sans virtue, sans everything.

Yours as ever,

E. A. Yates

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Speechless indignation expressed my feelings, but on my return home I replied:

Franklinton, N. C. April 29, 1884

Dr. E. A. Yates,

Minister of the Methodist Church,

Wilmington, N. C.

Dear Sir,

I have just seen the Raleigh Evening Visitor of April 17, in which appears your personal attack upon me.

1. Your attack was uncalled for - a copy of the "villainous pamphlet" was, weeks ago, mailed to each of the Doctors you go so far out of your way to defend. Months ago, they read the article to which you take such violent exception and they have always treated me with the respect and courtesy due a lady from a gentleman. I submitted the statement to the principal ones concerned--Dr. James McKee and Dr. McGee--for their correction and approval before it was sent to press, and I am at a loss to discover why you should have constituted yourself the champion and defender of the professional honor of the Raleigh Doctors, when they are all alive and so fully competent to take care of themselves. I DENY that I have ever uttered one word of abuse against the Raleigh Doctors, or any other member of the Medical

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Fraternity, and had I done so, the complaint should have come from them--not you.

2. Clothed in your ministerial garb, you have uttered a slander which, divested of it, you would never have dared to utter.

3. Your attack was upon one quietly pursuing the vocation which duty had assigned her--one who never did you a harm. You dealt a blow calculated to injure one you thought powerless to defend herself. Had you turned to the back of that same pamphlet, for references for my personal reliability, you would have found as high names as Carolina could afford. If they are unknown to you, let me ask you to write to Col. Thos. C. Fuller, of Raleigh, write to Dr. G. W. Blacknall, Mr. John Nichols, Gov. Jarvis, Dr. Eugene Grissom, Raleigh; write to my minister, Rev. R. B. Sutton, D.D. Kittrell; write to your brother, Mr. W. J. Yates, of Charlotte; nay more, write to the Raleigh Doctors; ask any or all of them if you had ANY RIGHT to use my name in connection with the closing clause of your attack, and I am confident a sense of honor and right will cause you to offer me the amende honorable, and to acknowledge through the columns in which your attack was made, that it was unjustifiable and wrong. I am,

Very truly,

Mrs. Joe Person.

The "amende honorable" never came.

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Letter from Mrs. Mary Bayard Clark and Dr. Yates' reply:

New Bern, N. C. June 3, 1884

Editors of Evening Visitor

Raleigh, N. C. Gentlemen:

Will you allow me space as a North Carolina woman, to enter my protest against the attack made in your paper on Mrs. Joe Person, by Rev. E. A. Yates, of Wilmington, N. C.

Admitting, which I by no means do, that Mrs. Person had attempted to force a secret remedy on the profession, or even more, (which again I do not do) that she did abuse the physicians of Raleigh, is that any reason why Dr. Yates, or anyone else, should accuse her of trying to "inundate society with free doctors, lynch law, free love, sans religion, sans virtue, sans everything"?

The charge is almost too ridiculous to be offensive!

So far from wishing to "force a secret remedy on the profession",

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Mrs. Person, in her "villainous pamphlet", offers "to give" the medical society her formula, only asking from them the acknowledged credit of the discovery.

Every woman, who, like Mrs. Person, is working for the support of her family, ought to rise, not in her defense, for she has, in her reply to Dr. Yates, shown herself quite equal to him and the occasion, but in self-defense. Dr. Yates has done her no harm in her business, on the contrary, his attack will doubtless benefit her pecuniarily; but he has needlessly wounded her feelings, for pursuing a legitimate business in an energetic manner. I have no personal acquaintance with Dr. Yates, but, from his reputation can but believe that he would never have written so harsh a letter about a lady, had he been in good health. It shows "bad blood", and, as Mrs. Person's Remedy is a well known blood purifier, I think if he were tried by a Jury of women, he would be sentenced to one year's use of it, to the great improvement both of health and temper.

Wishing him nothing worse, I am

Yours respectfully,

Mary Bayard Clarke

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Yates' reply:

Mr. Editor,

This excellent lady has wholly mistaken the animus of my article touching a certain publication connected with an advertisement of a patent medicine. The pamphlet was brought in and laid down in my piazza and I think, it was therefore, a lawful subject of criticism, whether written by a lady or gentleman. In point of fact, I did not think at the moment that it was the work of a lady; perhaps that fact might have caused me to be silent. Mrs. Clark will doubtless agree with me that there is a lamentable tendency to iconoclasm in much of the current thought of the day.

If the long established and fundamental principals that constitute the moorings of our splendid civilization are loosened, society must float out to unknown and stormy seas. A true philosophy concretes itself in the question: If the foundations be removed, what can the righteous do? My Scotch blood is ready to start up and antagonize every such attack. I do not say that the publication I criticized was necessarily such an attack, but to my eye, it had that complexion.

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I am glad my fair reviewer thinks I have done no harm to Mrs. Person's business. I assure her that such was not my object. In fact, I had about reached the conclusion that I was among the last men who would willingly hurt a lady, and I still so feel.

I would not only, Sir Walter Raleigh-like, lay down my cloak to keep her feet from the mud, but, if necessary, would put my hand beneath her foot.

A sharp argument is not suited to tender feelings and Paul was right, "It is good not to touch a woman". But, although, bee-like, they gather sweetness all the day, they can sometimes sting. And this is right; they ought to have the means of defense. Only in this case these excellent ladies are mistaken as to the object and animus of the attack.

I have not the pleasure of an acquaintance with either of these ladies. I have seen Mrs. Clark once or twice and that "divine brow and eye of infinite depth" misleads my judgment if, after mature thought, she does not agree with me as to the justness of my criticism. She kindly lays my supposed error to poor health. Thanks. But while I weigh l52 pounds and am able to be about a little, I am still much obliged for any means of escape. Indeed, I would ''give my kingdom for a horse".

Woman's genius for war is incomprehensible. Mahomet II could not have taken Constantinople had it not been for the women, who beat back his flying soldiers, their husbands and brothers, and compelled them to stand to their posts.

And it may; be doubted whether the genius of a Narses or a Bellisariess could make much headway against a Jeanne d'Arc.

Well, let it all go. These good ladies will please consider my hat off. "I take it all back'', and in the next war, the Raleigh doctors may shift for themselves.

E. A. Yates.

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The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse.

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