Dr. Noah Smernoff

Dr. Noah Smernoff (1904-2006) began his career in industrial medicine during a one-month assignment at Bingham Canyon Hospital in Utah, which serviced the workers from five underground mines in the area. He went on to practice in the mining communities of White Pine County, Nevada, from 1929 to 1953, witnessing both the dangers of mining and the environment created by a “company town”. Smernoff was interviewed by R. T. King in 1989 to 1990.

     I arrived in McGill the afternoon of the fifteenth of November, 1929, and met the man who was to be my senior—Dr. Hovenden, who was a typical Western-style doctor, rough and brusque. McGill at that time was the second largest city in the state of Nevada. Reno had about twelve or thirteen thousand people, and McGill had about seven thousand. It was a very nicely kept town: the streets, sidewalks and curbings were immaculately clean, and people seemed very happy there. The company was like a family to them. The company owned its own power plant, and the electric power was sold to citizens at minimal rates. They had their own dairy, and, as I recall it now, milk and cream were about five cents a bottle, and the cream was the kind that you had to spoon out of the bottle; it didn't pour.
     The only private establishments in McGill at that time were a dry goods and grocery store, a little restaurant, a drug store, a garage, and a little clothing store. The rest of it was all company owned. The company ran a big commissary where the people bought most of their food, and at that store the food was sold to them at 10 percent over cost. Of course, they didn't accept hard currency in the store—they used coupons. The wives or the husbands would buy coupons from the cashier, and they would use that in the company commissary.

     All of the houses were owned by the company, and the rent was three dollars per room per month. The company would give all their employees paint, and they would have to paint their houses. Soil was hauled in for yards, and the residents would have to take care of them, but the higher officials had all of this done for them. Their houses were painted, all repairs were done, all the gardening was done for the executives—typical army stratification of the people. Yet, it was good.

     There were a few little ranches around McGill, and a few other little mines in the area, but the backbone of the whole Ely District was the copper company. In Ruth and McGill and East Ely the company had complete control over schools and libraries and everything else, but we had good libraries, and we had a good school system. The company treated the schools very well; they thought the children should get a good education, and they saw to it that they did. They also furnished a nurse at each school in the copper towns to see to the children's needs. In fact, every child was given a complete physical at the beginning of every school year, and we immunized all of the school children every year at no cost to their families. A sick child was seen almost immediately at school, and there was no hassle about who was going to see them.
     There was a school board, but in the company towns the trustees were all people who worked for the company The trustees were not elected—they were appointed by the general manager—but they were always really good people from the management class. Consolidated Copper Company at Kimberly ran a very similar operation. Now, Ely was a private town. It had its own county hospital, the White Pine County Hospital. They had their own private physicians who were not involved with the company, and Ely was not a company town in any respect.

     McGill was quite a segregated town. The Circle, which was the center of activity, was where the officials lived—the general manager, the assistant general manager, and some of the superintendents. Next was Middle Town, in which lived all of the mechanics and engineers, then there was Upper Town where less-trained people lived. Lower Town was where the laborers lived, and it was divided into ethnic neighborhoods: Greek Town was where all the Greeks lived; Austrian Town was for the Austrians; and there was Jap Town, where the Japanese people lived. Steptoe was an area above the pipeline which did not have any running water and where common laborers and off-and-on help lived. Then there was Ragtown, which had been an old house of prostitution, and people were living there.
     This was the configuration of the area in which we practiced medicine at that time. It was a big area, and we had probably about 15,000 people living in the whole area. McGill was, of course, entirely a company town, and employees could only rent through the company housing office, so the pattern of segregation by nationality may have been partially imposed by the company, but it was assumed that this was the way it should be. There was no formal declaration; this was just the way it was. The arrangement by ethnic neighborhoods was in effect long before I got there, and it never changed in the twelve years that I was there. Everybody was happy with it that way.
     There were definitely material differences among the neighborhoods. The Circle got everything that a home needed without any question. Their yards were taken care of, sidewalks were cleaned of snow in the winter, lawns were cut and manicured. In Middle Town (with some exceptions) and the rest of the town, if you needed to paint your house you had to get an OK, and they furnished the paint but you furnished the labor. The privileged hierarchy included the doctors and the superintendents and the foremen, all of whom were taken care of—our homes were painted, and any needed repairs were done free. Our heat and electricity cost us nothing, and we had someone to tend the yard. The remaining neighborhoods—Austrian Town, Greek Town, Ragtown, Steptoe, and so on—were furnished with house paint and all of them were given major repairs, but anything that was not a major repair was taken care of by the renter. Social events were segregated. If the general manager's family had a party, only certain higher-ups were invited, but the doctors usually got invited to everything. We went to all of the christenings and all of the church things for the families. Of course, the Austrians and the Greeks were great celebrators of birthdays and holidays, and we were always invited to those celebrations, but the upper echelon very seldom went to those things. It was segregated just about the way the army is—the commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers, and then the privates. They are all separated in the army, and so were the people in McGill.
     There were occasionally dances to which everybody was invited. There was a club called the Stray Antlers, which was a branch of the Elks. It had a nice dance floor, and there were a lot of parties and dinners there to which everybody was invited.

     Company houses rented at that time for three dollars a month per room, so that a four-room house would rent for twelve dollars a month when I first went there. Eventually that was raised to five dollars a month per room. During the Depression our production of copper was lowered, and we were only working part-time. Then the men were charged for rent, electricity, and dairy products only for the days they worked. On the days that the company didn't need them, they paid no rent, electricity or milk bill. I thought that was an unusual way to help them weather the Depression, and really a very fatherly way of doing it. But even during the Depression, Kennecott made money selling copper for five cents a pound. The reason was that they got enough gold, silver, and platinum out of the ore to pay for all of their operating costs. We were known as a copper mine, but we did extract a lot of rare metals also, so that it made the cost of our copper very low and we could compete in world markets.

     Medical care was very cheap for the workers because the men were totally taken care of by the company. All medical care, all medicines, all hospitalizations, surgery, or repair of any hernias or fractures cost the company men not a thing, even when they weren't working, as long as they were on the payroll and listed as a company employee. The families were given free ordinary medical care. They were charged only for obstetrical deliveries, surgery, fractures, and x-rays and laboratory work. Even house calls were free, and office visits cost them nothing. They did have to buy their own medicines, and for that, the men paid a dollar a month for the entire family, which was really quite a reasonable thing.
     The health of the community was pretty stable, level, and consistent across all ethnic lines. And as far as I was concerned, every patient that came in—from the general manager to the lowest man on the rung—was the same. But I can't say that my associate took the same approach. Dr. Hovenden was a real brusque, rough guy, and he would sometimes give an ethnic patient a bad time . . . not physically, but verbally abusing them. Austrians, Greeks, Japanese, all of them. I heard it many times, and I thought it was certainly unfair. He would ride roughshod over them sometimes, depending upon his mood. The quality of medical care that Dr. Hovenden provided them was good, but he just didn't like the way they acted, so he would chew them out for reasons I never could figure out most of the time.