CHAP. XXXVII. A CONTRAST BETWEEN 1789 AND 1889.

1893

petroleum pipes, for there was no petroleum; no gas-pipes, for there was no gas-lighting even in Europe until later. Washington lived in an age of darkness; instead of the electric light, the millions had candles costing about two cents apiece. In all the departments and applications of chemistry the century has simply created a new world. American pressed glass, which has completely revolutionized the supply of table and house ware, is an invention of the last sixty years. The silk manufacture has not existed in this country half a century; the paper made a hundred years ago would hardly be thought fit for use since modern methods have been invented; the only use discovered for India-rubber then was to erase pencil-marks; and while the town of Lynn made one hundred thousand pairs of boots and shoes in 1788, they were not the shoes of to-day, and the manufacture by machinery is wholly due to inventions since 1800. Sewing machines for any purpose were unknown, and salt was made by boiling sea-water, though in 1787 it was first made from the springs near Syracuse at the rate of about ten bushels per day, and the cost soon fell to fifty cents per bushel.

“Farming in Washington's day knew nothing of machinery; even the first iron plough, patented in 1797, was a failure, for New Jersey farmers thought it poisoned the soil. Mowers, reapers, and harvesters began to be invented about the same time, and even the ordinary implements were such as it would not now be thought possible to use. The steamboat was practically unknown, and the railroad entirely until forty years later, and the cost of transportation by wagon confined the area of possible production with profit, as to most crops, to the margin of navigable waters. The whole Nation could not produce in Washington's day as much wheat as single Territories not yet States now export each year, and when the accounts of a century ago tell of vast quantities' exported, they really mean less in a year than the country has since moved in a single week.

"Volumes could be filled, and yet but a small part of the change in industry within the century could be mentioned. But the revolution in the condition of the laboring population has been the crowning result of all this progress. Of wages, it is enough to say that masons a century ago earned 67 cents per day in Massachusetts, carpenters 52 cents, blacksmiths 70 cents, and ordinary labor, 30 cents. Food near the farms was cheap, but pork is quoted in Massachusetts at 16 cents per pound, flour at $8.16 per barrel, corn at 76 cents per bushel, and ham at 20 cents per pound. Calico cost 58 cents per yard, broadcloth $2.70, buckram 22 cents, cotton cloth 88 cents, and tow-cloth 30 cents; hose cost $1.35 per pair, and 'corded Nankeen breeches' $5.50; buttons from 1 to 5 shillings per dozen, shoes of lasting 84 cents per pair, and sugar from 15 to 22 cents per pound. One does not

need to study such figures as these very long to discover that the world and the living of to-day were simply impossible for the working people of a century ago. The whole world has changed, but nowhere has the marvellous advance been greater than in these United States."

But as if to remind us that there are greater powers than those of man, and agencies against which all his skill, industry, and courage are impotent, the month that opened with such a jubilant celebration, and such a display of human achievements, ended in an appalling catastrophe. For some days heavy rains had been falling in the region of the Allegheny Mountains and swollen every stream. On the Conemaugh River, between Altoona and Pittsburgh, stood the town of Johnstown, the most populous in the county of Cambria, and the seat of extensive iron works, around which the 28,000 inhabitants dwelt. It had its rolling mills, steel works, and wire works; it had a freight station on the Pennsylvania Railroad, which corporation had also repairing shops in the town. It had churches of all denominations, daily and weekly newspapers, street cars, gas and electric lights, and was in every respect a thriving community. It lay, however, right under three hills several hundred feet high, from which the streams descended that formed Conemaugh Creek and River, and filled nearly the whole space between the two bluffs that formed the valley. Back in the hills at the head of Conemaugh Creek, three hundred feet higher than the town, was a huge dam that had originally been constructed for the old Pennsylvania Canal. When the canal was abandoned the lake and the dam became the property of a fishing club, and this society increased the size of the dam till it was over a hundred feet high, and held back a lake three miles in length and a mile and a quarter in width. Alarm about the stability of the dam had often been expressed; but, as no accident had happened, men thought little of the danger, or, at all events, thought that if it did break, it would only flood the lower parts of the town. The rains in the last week of May had been continuous and heavy, and on the 31st of the month, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the huge mound gave way, and the pent-up waters were precipitated on the doomed town.

Examination showed that the repairs and the heightening of the dam by the fishing club had been imperfectly done, and that adequate sluice-ways had not been provided. In addition to these defects of original construction, the top of the dam had sunk in the centre. The danger was seen by John G. Parke, Jr., a civil engineer engaged on the grounds of the club, and he succeeded in warning the inhabitants of South Fork. He stated: "By half-past eleven I had made up my mind that it was impossible to save the dam, and getting on my horse, I galloped down the road to South Fork to

CHAP. XXXVII.

JOHNSTOWN SWEPT AWAY.

1895

operator fainted when she had The people at South Fork had they were able to move their

warn the people of their danger. The telegraph tower is a mile from the town, and I sent two men there to have messages sent to Johnstown and other points below. I heard that the lady sent off the news, and had to be carried off. ample time to get to the high grounds, and furniture, too. In fact, only one person was drowned at South Fork, and he while attempting to fish something from the flood as it rolled by. It was just twelve o'clock when the telegraph messages were sent out, so that the people of Johnstown had over three hours' warning."

It was the lowering of the centre of the mound that immediately led to the disaster. The waters overflowed at that point, and their rush down the outer side of the embankment washed away rapidly the rip-rap and loose earth, cutting a deep channel right into the dam, till it could no longer contain the mass of waters behind it. An eye-witness who escaped from a train at Conemaugh and gained higher ground, thus writes of the force of the flood as it came thundering and foaming down: "The roundhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad had stalls for twenty-three locomotives. There were eighteen or twenty of these standing there at this time. There was an ominous crash, and the roundhouse and locomotives disappeared. Everything in the main track of the flood was first lifted in the air and then swallowed up by the waters. A hundred houses were swept away in a few minutes. These included the hotel, stores and saloons on the front street, and residences adjacent."

Another man, who stood on the bluff below Johnstown and saw the first wave of the flood come down the valley, tried to describe it. "I looked up up" he said, "and saw something that looked like a wall of houses and trees up the valley. The next moment Johnstown seemed coming toward me. It was lifted right up, and in a minute was smashing against the bridge, and the houses were flying in splinters across the top and into the water beyond." The wall of water had a front forty feet high and an eighth of a mile wide, and came on with the force of thirty Niagaras. In a few moments all was desolation, death, and agony in Johnstown. The only outlet for the torrent was over or under the railroad bridge, in part a solid stone structure, and up against it the houses, borne down in the torrent, were heaped in wild confusion. Above it for the space of sixty acres extended the pile of debris which, to add new horrors to the flood, soon took fire, and burned with a heavy, sickly odor, for numerous corpses were there imbedded. In this mass of ruin were the timbers of four square miles of houses, twenty-seven locomotives, Pullman cars and freight cars, fragments of the iron work of bridges, and no one knows how many dead. Strangely, the first reports from the disaster under

estimated the loss. It was said that two hundred had perished; then that two thousand; then, when the whole extent of the calamity was seen, it was stated that ten thousand to fifteen thousand lives had been lost. What befell Johnstown befell other villages in the valley; for fifteen miles all was swept away. The greatest loss of life was that of women and children, for in many cases they were incapable, through fear, of availing themselves of

means of escape, which involved letting go of the debris in which they were whirled along. By half-past five-that is, within two hours and a half from the bursting of the dam-the force of the flood was spent. Many heroic deeds were done, but none perhaps more worthy of record than that of Mrs. Ogle, a widow, who, with her daughter, managed the Western Union Telegraph Company's office. In spite of repeated notifications to get out of the reach of danger, she stood by her instrument with unflinching loyalty, sending warnings to points in the valley below. When every station in the path of the torrent had received its warning, she sent the words: "This is my

CHAP. XXXVII.

THE FLOODS AT JOHNSTOWN.

1897

last message." It was so, for she and her daughter both perished. Appeals for help were sent out in all quarters, for merely local generosity was entirely unequal to the task of housing, feeding, clothing, and tending so many homeless, starving, half-naked outcasts, much less to undertake the necessary task of removing the debris and burying the dead. The Governor of the State, James A. Beaver, simply told the tale in a few words: "The Valley of the Conemaugh, which is peculiar, has been swept from one end to the other as with the besom of destruction. It contained a population of forty thousand to fifty thousand people, living for the most part along the banks of a small river, confined within narrow limits. The most conservative estimates place the loss of life at five thousand human beings, and of property at twenty-five million dollars.

"Whole towns have been utterly destroyed; not a vestige remains. In the more substantial towns the better buildings, to a certain extent, remain, but in a damaged condition. Those who are least able to bear it have suffered the loss of everything," and he added that there had been no exaggeration in the newspaper reports as to the loss of life and property. He sent to the spot the Adjutant-General of the State, and placed the district under martial law, for all traces of self-government had ceased. The whole country nobly responded; the State of Pennsylvania advanced one million of dollars, New York gave nearly three-quarters of a million, and other cities in proportion. Relief trains, with goods and provisions, poured in as soon as the railroad tracks were passable, but the greatest difficulty was still to clear away the ruins, bury the dead, and prevent the outbreak of disease. As far as can be estimated, the total loss of life was about eight thousand or less. It can never be accurately known, as many unknown corpses were buried where they were hurled ashore, miles below the homes that knew them.

On the west branch of the Susquehanna the floods inflicted great loss. At Lewistown the water was four feet higher than ever known; at Williamsport and Lock Haven both booms were swept away, and nine-tenths of the sawed lumber was lost; at Milton the water was five feet high in the streets. In all directions bridges were carried down and the railroads rendered impassable. The Potomac rose till it spread from the highlands of Maryland to the highlands of Virginia, and the bridge at Harper's Ferry was only saved by the desperate expedient of loading it down with every locomotive that could be procured. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal received damage that it would take a million of dollars to repair. In Washington itself it was feared that the foundations of the Washington Monument were injured, and the Long Bridge was badly torn and strained; in fact, the whole country iri