The World Not So Heartless as Supposed—People Give Generously to Aid the Suffering—A Social Phenomenon—Value of United States Weather Bureau.
The World Not So Heartless as Supposed—People Give Generously to Aid the Suffering—A Social Phenomenon—Value of United States Weather Bureau.
Perhaps the world is not so bad as it has been painted, or so heartless and indifferent as some pessimists would have us believe. Ordinarily men and women have enough to do in attending to their own affairs, expecting others, of course, to do the same, and consequently they pay small attention to what is going on around them; but when their hearts are really touched they drop everything and rush to the rescue of the afflicted.
So it was in the case of Galveston.
The catastrophe at Galveston served to bring conspicuously into notice the best and worst sides of human nature, which is always the common result of all appalling disasters.
The people of that afflicted city were suddenly overwhelmed by the almost unprecedented fury of the elements. Thousands were killed and injured. Thousands more lost their homes and places of business. They were suffering with hunger and menaced with pestilence. All were brought to a common level by dangers of every description, death in its most awful forms, and an outlook of terrible uncertainty.
And yet in the midst of all this ruin and suffering they were harassed by thugs and thieves and ghouls in human shape, who looted property, assaulted citizens who resisted them, and despoiled and disfigured the dead in a shockingly savage manner to secure rings and other jewels. Devoid of any feeling of sympathy or pity, theyseized upon this awful disaster as an opportunity to enrich themselves. As soon, however, as the authorities could recover from the first shock of the disaster the city was placed under martial law, and the troops patrolling the island did not hesitate to kill every one of the vandals caught in the commission of his infamous work. Public opinion sustained this prompt style of punishment. It was a species of Southern lynching to which no objection was ever raised.
The disaster also brought into prominence the greed and mercenary passion of human nature. A clique of ravenous wretches, taking advantage of the fact that the city of Galveston was cut off from bridge communication with the mainland, conspired to secure control of the transportation facilities by water, and charged extortionate prices even to those who were seeking to carry relief to the suffering people.
Never was a more inhuman trust organized.
Again, all the fresh provisions in the city were ruined, leaving only a few canned and dried articles which were available for food. The owners of these, bent upon making personal profit out of the necessities of their fellow-citizens, pushed up the prices, raising bread to 60 cents a loaf and bacon to 50 cents a pound.
The mayor of Galveston, however, proved himself equal to the emergency, confiscated the food supply, reduced the prices to a reasonable rate, and compelled the owners of schooners and small craft to put down their prices also.
This was the dark side of human nature, but the picture had its bright side also. The news of the awful disaster had hardly appeared in the public prints before tens of thousands of helping hands were busy collecting relief. The Chief Executive of the nation, the Governors of States, and the mayors of cities issued their appeals tothe people, whose sympathies were already aroused and whose hearts and hands were enlisted generously and enthusiastically in the work of relief.
Far-off countries sent their offerings; every city and town in the world where Americans live contributed; and crowned heads hastened to cable sympathy, together with more substantial evidences of their kindly feeling.
Without delay of any kind, instantly and spontaneously, the machinery of charity began its work. The people of the North might differ radically from the people of the South in many ways, but in the presence of such a dreadful visitation of nature, involving suffering and death, the brotherhood of man asserted itself and all things else were forgotten. Only the higher and nobler attributes of human nature assert themselves.
Private individuals, business houses, great corporations, municipal, state and national government vied with each other, as they did when fire swept over Chicago and the flood overwhelmed Johnstown, in expediting relief to the storm-ruined people of Texas.
Day by day trains sped to Galveston from every part of the country, loaded with supplies, and the telegraph wires carried orders for money, testifying to the unanimity of the great work of relief, and to the higher and nobler instincts of human nature when it is appealed to by the claims of humanity.
The ghouls of Galveston were comparatively few in number. Its generous sympathizers were to be counted by scores of millions.
The convicts in the Texas state penitentiary at Rusk were moved by the sufferings of the Galveston victims to contribute $40 to the relief fund.
Are men who go to prison totally bad?
The scope and rapidity of the Galveston relief workall over the country afforded a spectacle at once gratifying and noteworthy. Trains laden with food and comforts for the sufferers were rushed towards the stricken city from every quarter of the United States.
From Boston to San Francisco nearly every city, regardless of size, contributed its quota to the generous cause. Even from across the Atlantic the Liverpool and Paris funds came, being on the list for $10,000 each. Within a week after the disaster Galveston was in possession of a magnificent relief fund that went far toward alleviating the physical sufferings of its homeless thousands.
Here is a social phenomenon that may well give pause to all critics who are wont to inveigh against our commercial and industrial age. These exhibitions of liberality are not rare in the United States. A long series of them might be compiled within the period between the Chicago fire and the Porto Rican hurricane.
Singly and in the aggregate they are a striking negative to the charge of sordid commercialism in our individual and national life. The modern American is making more money than ever before, but he has a heart as well as a business head, and he is giving larger sums to noble causes than were ever given before.
Probably the increased willingness of the people to help stricken communities like Galveston is due more to the railroads and telegraph lines than to anything else. Modern charity is the child of modern conditions. These indispensable adjuncts to commercial enterprise alone make widespread relief work possible.
If the telegraph and the newspaper had not placed the sad picture of Galveston’s misfortunes at once before the eyes of Americans from ocean to ocean there could have been no such national impulse of generosity.
About ninety years ago an earthquake in Southern Missouri brought calamity to many settlers, but it was a month before the news reached the East, and another month would have had to elapse before relief could have been carried to the sufferers. The impulse to give cannot thrive under such circumstances.
There have been tender hearts in all ages, but only in our time have the means of quick communication made human sympathy effective across continents. The railroad, the telegraph and the newspaper have lengthened the arm of charity quite as much as that of business.
The Galveston incident is also a fine example of the way in which these agencies bind all sections of the nation together in increasing solidarity.
GREAT VALUE OF THE UNITED STATES WEATHER BUREAU.
The great value of the United States Weather Bureau and the remarkable correctness of its observations, all things considered, was demonstrated by the events preceding and succeeding the West Indian hurricane. It gave warning of the hurricane days before it manifested itself on the Texas coast. It anticipated its course from the vicinity of San Domingo until it reached Cuban waters, where it made a deflection no human skill could have foreseen.
The bureau was not caught napping, however. It sent out its hurricane signals both for the Atlantic coast and the gulf coast, and when the storm turned from the north of Cuba westward the bureau turned its attention to Texas, and on the morning of September 7, nearly thirty-six hours before the disaster, warned the people of Galveston of its coming, and during that day extended itssignals all along the Texas coast, thus preventing vessels from leaving.
Of course the observers could not know what terrible energy it would gain crossing the Gulf of Mexico.
Perhaps still greater accuracy in forecasting was displayed by the bureau in the warnings given out to mariners on the Great Lakes on Tuesday morning, September 11. Though nearly all lines of communication in Texas were cut off, the bureau kept track of the storm as it swept through Oklahoma into Kansas, and gave timely warning that it would turn northeast, moving across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and thence across Lake Michigan and the northern end of the southern peninsula of Michigan to Canada.
It further predicted the furious winds which prevailed the next day, their maximum velocity, the change caused by the northwest current from Lake Superior, and the fall of temperature yesterday to the nicety of a degree. Every vessel captain on the lakes had ample warning given him.
In times gone by it was the habit to jeer at Old Probabilities, and whenever a prediction failed of verification to condemn the Weather Bureau as unreliable and not worth the expense of its maintenance.
During the last few years, however, its operators have gained in skill and its record now is of a character of which its officials have every reason to be proud and which amply justifies whatever expense it may entail by its great saving of life and property.
WHY SHOULD NOT GALVESTON BE REBUILT?
The appalling nature of the wreck to which Galveston was reduced naturally led to some talk of abandoning the old site altogether and rebuilding the city somewhereon the mainland. An army officer concluded his report to Washington headquarters by expressing the opinion that Galveston was destroyed beyond the ability to recover, and the Southern Pacific railway was said to be in favor of leaving the flat island to the sport of the treacherous waves and heading a movement to rebuild the city at the mouth of the Brazos river.
It is natural that non-residents of Galveston should consider the advisability of abandoning such a perilous site, especially as there can never be any complete security against a disaster like that of Saturday, September 8. But it is safe to say that Galveston will be rebuilt on its sand island. Mankind is not wont to desert any spot of the earth’s surface because of a sudden and rare convulsion of nature.
Lisbon was not abandoned because of the disastrous earthquake that killed 50,000 people in 1755.
Similar earthquake disasters in Central and South America have not induced the survivors to abandon a single city.
When 100,000 Chinamen were swallowed up at Peking in the last century it did not change the site of the city, nor have the still more disastrous floods along the Yellow river ever caused the survivors to change their habitat.
History shows Europeans and Americans to be quite as tenacious in this regard as any other races.
Italian peasants continue to cultivate the slopes of Vesuvius in spite of all past disasters, and the inhabitants of the Sea Islands along the Carolina coast were not disheartened when the elements committed fearful ravages.
The leading business men of Galveston emphasized a point when they began to talk of rebuilding which had escaped general attention until that time. They were exceedingly anxious that commercial bodies, steamshipowners, brokers and those interested in the commerce of Galveston should be as considerate as possible in their treatment of the city, that is to say, there should be liberality in the commercial relations. These men urged that the extent of the calamity should be taken into account when adjustment of contracts took place and in all business arrangements until the city could regain its footing. Charters provide by special mention for “Visitations of Providence,” for the “Acts of God.”
The Galveston business men hoped that their business connections would apply a like spirit to all commerce affected by the storm.
They were not disappointed, as the result showed.
Galveston was just entering upon the busy season. There were from 200 to 300 ships under sailing contracts with that port for the months of September, November and December. Some of these ships were, when the storm came, on the high seas. Even a temporary paralysis of thirty days meant much loss and the derangement of many contracts.
It was a time which called for the generous policy, not for strict enforcements of the letter of agreements. Galveston only asked what her business men thought was just, that thereby the shock to commerce might be mitigated. When the time came Galveston found that she had not asked too much, as she received all the consideration she could wish.
Representatives of the railroad systems which connected Galveston with the outside world before the occurrence of the disaster agreed in saying, in a meeting held at New York, that her residents would rebuild on the same sand island in spite of the terrible experiences. They believed that Galveston, injured financially though hercitizens had been, would be rebuilt by her citizens without the aid of outside capital.
A. F. Walker, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, said he felt certain that Galveston would be rebuilt.
The new energy and courage displayed by the people of Galveston is what was to be expected in a city so full of American pluck. Though stunned and prostrate under the most fatal disaster that had ever overtaken an American community, Galveston took only a few days to regain its breath. It has simply reasserted the same indomitable courage and will power by which Americans in times past built up a great nation where there was a wilderness a century ago.
The terse motto stuck up on every street corner of the wrecked city is “Clean Up.” Behind its grim humor there lies a stern determination that is one of the proudest attributes of our race.
There is no reason why a greater Galveston, should not speedily rise on the site of the present ruins.
The report of an army officer that the city was ruined beyond recovery and the suggestions of other persons that Galveston should be rebuilt on another site find no sympathy among the citizens. Galveston will be rebuilt upon its former site.
Carpenters, masons and artisans are being called for by thousands, and, with the generous aid contributed by people all over the country, there will be a rapid transformation. The city has thrust its sorrow behind it and has its face set toward the future.
Since the danger of flood cannot be removed so long as the city stands at its present level, it is to be hoped its builders will begin a new era of security by raising the grade of the streets.
A few feet will materially decrease the danger from tidal waves. It will also be wise to construct the foundations of all permanent large buildings of stone to a height above the level reached by the recent inundation. In resolving to defy an untoward fate Galveston should begin by adopting all practical means for defying wind and waves.
Even though the expense and delay will be greater, it will pay to give the new buildings all possible safeguards of solidity.
Galveston will be rebuilt, as it was after the disaster of fourteen years previously. Its inhabitants will reason that the city had existed for two-thirds of a century in comparative safety, and that such a tidal wave is not likely to be repeated in a hundred years. The same commercial advantages that first tempted settlers to the island, and that made Galveston one of the most thriving cities on the gulf coast, are still present.
Men who own real estate on the island will not abandon it, even though the improvements thereon have been reduced to a wreck. They know that even if they did abandon it there would be plenty of others to take it—risks and all—and rebuild the city.
The federal government may hesitate about rebuilding its structures on so precarious a site, but private interests are not likely to abandon a city even for so terrible a disaster as that at Galveston.
Galveston Island Directly in the Path of Storms, with No Way of Escape—What Is the City’s Future—All Coast Cities in Danger—New York Will Be Flooded—Hurricane Foretold—Galveston’s Settlement—Storm Will Recur.
Galveston Island Directly in the Path of Storms, with No Way of Escape—What Is the City’s Future—All Coast Cities in Danger—New York Will Be Flooded—Hurricane Foretold—Galveston’s Settlement—Storm Will Recur.
Galveston Island, with a stretch of thirty-five miles, rises only five feet above the level of high tide. To the south is an unbroken sweep of sea for 800 miles. Twelve hundred miles away is the nesting place of storms—storms that rise out of the dead calm of the doldrums and sweep northward, sometimes with a fury that nothing can withstand. Most of these storms describe a parabola, with the westward arch touching the Atlantic coast, after which the track is northeastward, finally disappearing with the storm itself in the north Atlantic.
But every little while one of these West Indian hurricanes starts northwestward from its island nest, moving steadily on its course and entering the gulf itself.
September and October are the months of these storms, and of the two months September is worse. In the ten years between 1878 and 1887, inclusive, fifty-seven hurricanes arose in the warm, moist conditions of the West Indian doldrums. Most of these passed out to sea and to the St. Lawrence River country, where they disappeared. But the hurricane of October 11, 1887, came ashore at New Orleans on October 17, and wrought havoc as it passed up the Eastern States to New Brunswick. The storm of October 8, 1886, reached Louisiana on the 12th, curving again toward Galveston on the Texas coast. It was in this storm that Galveston was flooded with loss of life and property while Indianola was destroyed beyond recovery.
With these non-recurring storms two conditions favor their passage into the gulf. A high barometric area lies over the Atlantic coast States, while a trough of low pressure leads into the gulf and northward into the region of the Dakotas. The hurricane takes the path of least resistance always, and it must pass far northward before it can work its natural way around the tardy high area that hangs over the central coast States. It was this condition exactly which diverted the recent storm to Galveston and the Texas coast.
The origin of a hurricane is not fully settled. Its accompanying phenomena, however, are significant to even the casual observer. A long swell on the ocean usually precedes it. This swell may be forced to great distances in advance of the storm and be observed two or three days before the storm strikes. A faint rise in the barometer may be noticed before the sharp fall follows. Wisps of thin, cirrus cloud float for 200 miles around the storm center. The air is calm and sultry until a gentle breeze springs from the southeast. This breeze becomes a wind, a gale, and, finally, a tempest, with matted clouds overhead, precipitating rain and a churning sea below throwing clouds of spume into the air.
Here are all the terrible phenomena of the West Indian hurricane—the tremendous wind, the thrashing sea, the lightning, the bellowing thunder, and the drowning rain that seems to be dashed from mighty tanks with the force of Titans.
But almost in an instant all these may cease. The wind dies, the lightning goes out, the rain ceases, and the thunder bellows only in the distance. The core of the storm is overhead. Only the waves of the sea are churning. There may be twenty miles of this central core, a diameter of only one-thirtieth that of the storm. It passes quickly,and with as little warning as preceded its stoppage the storm closes in again, but with the wind from the opposite direction, and the whole phenomena suggesting a reversal of all that has gone before.
No storm possible in the elements presents the terrors that accompany the hurricane. The twisting tornado is confined to a narrow track and it has no long-drawn-out horrors. Its climax is reached in a moment. The hurricane, however, grows and grows, and when it has reached to 100 or 120 miles an hour nothing can withstand it.
It is this terrible besom of the Southern seas that so nearly has taken Galveston off the map. The great storm of 1875 frightened the city. The fate of Indianola in 1886 and the loss of ten lives and $200,000 worth of property on Galveston Island has kept Galveston uneasy ever since. To-day, for it to suggest rebuilding, will meet with the disapprobation of many of the sympathizing Americans who are giving freely to the stricken people.
But the abandonment of Galveston could not be without a struggle. For fourteen years its old citizens had been admitting that twice in their memory the sea had come in on the island, causing death and destruction, but as sturdily as their conservatism prompted they had insisted that it never could do so again. They gave no consistent reason for their belief. The island was no higher; the force of the sea was as boundless as before; the doldrums of the West Indies still hung over the archipelago in storm-brooding calm. But their belief spread and the island city grew and developed as the old settler never had hoped to see it grow when he squatted there in the sand more than sixty years ago.
This settler stock of Galveston Island was of queer characteristics. The island settlement was of a sort of Captain Streeter origin. The only variation was that theColonel Menard who founded it bought the island and established a town-site company to attract immigration. The mainland, as flat and desolate almost as the island, was three miles away. But deep water was there and to the north was an agricultural country that one day would have cotton to export. So the settlers waited. They held to their sand lots and traded with the “mosquito fleet” which sailed up and down the coast from Corpus Christi to New Orleans. This mosquito fleet was the only means for bringing outside traders to the town. As it grew it developed that the city’s export trade was all it had. It did a wholesale business that was to its retail business in the proportion of 100 to 1!
In this way Galveston developed in-growing propensities. It scoffed at the mainland for years after the gulf shore began to be peopled. It was satisfied with its railroad “bridges,” which were mere trestlework mounted on piling driven into the shallow water of the bay. If the mainland wished to reach the city let it row out or sail out; the city would not go to the expense of a wagon bridge.
As a result, Galveston was the most somnolent city in Texas, save on the wharves where tramp and coastwise ships and steamers loaded. When the market house closed by law at 10 o’clock in the morning, and when Galveston’s own local population had laid in its supplies for a midday dinner and for supper and breakfast, Strand street took a nap.
In the ’80s, however, a new element had been attracted, which was dissatisfied with the mossback order of things. It was not satisfied to make change with a stranger and give or take bits of yellow pasteboard, representing street car rides, in lieu of nickels.
But these young immigrants were frowned upon byGalveston conservatism. They were a disturbing element. They kept the staid, mossback citizen awake in the afternoons and he did not like it. They were clamoring for sewers and artesian water in mains, whereas the conservative was content to build his rain water cistern above ground out of doors and strain the baby mosquitoes out of the water through a cloth.
When a new waterworks and standpipe had been completed in 1889, and when some new mills had been established under difficulties, affairs had come to a pass when the new Galvestonian and the old found a great gap between. The visiting stranger was the confidant of both sides.
“This town isn’t what it used to be,” sighed the conservative.
“As a matter of fact,” the young business man would say, “Galveston needs to bury about 150 of its ‘old citizens’ before it can get awake.”
This was the situation when the government began to expend money upon the harbor.
This was the situation, slightly altered by time, when the wagon bridge was built to the main land, when the government appropriated $6,200,000 for the deepening of the harbor, and when export trade from Galveston approached the mark of $100,000,000 annually. And this, virtually, was the Galveston now in ruins.
In rebuilding Galveston, it has been suggested that the bay be dredged of sand and the island raised to a uniform level of fifteen feet above the tide. The plan is feasible in every sense, and it is contended that the value of the city as a port would more than justify the cost.
However the island city may decide, it will have departed from several notable instances of water-swept cities in rebuilding. In addition to the abandonment ofIndianola, on the mainland of Texas, are the stories of Last Island in the Gulf of Mexico and of Cobb’s Island, a great fishing resort in Chesapeake Bay.
Last Island was overwhelmed in 1856. Three hundred lives were lost in the hurricane. Lafcadio Hearn has put the legend of “L’Isle Derniere” into print and his description of the hurricane that swept in upon it is a description of the storm that has laid Galveston waste:
“One great noon, when the blue abyss of day seemed to yawn over the world more deeply than ever before, a sudden change touched the quicksilver smoothness of the waters—the swaying shadow of a vast motion. First the whole sea circle appeared to rise up bodily at the sky; the horizon curve lifted to a straight line; the line darkened and approached—a monstrous wrinkle, an immeasurable fold of green water moving swift as a cloud shadow pursued by sunlight. But it had looked formidable only by startling contrast with the previous placidity of the open; it was scarcely two feet high; it curled slowly as it neared the beach and combed itself out in sheets of woolly foam with a low, rich roll of thunder. Swift in pursuit another followed—a third, a feebler fourth; then the sea only swayed a little and stilled again.
“Irregularly the phenomenon continued to repeat itself, each time with heavier billowings and briefer intervals of quiet, until at last the whole sea grew restless and shifted color and flickered green—the swells became shorter and changed form. * * *
“The pleasure-seekers of Last Island knew there must have been a ‘great blow’ somewhere that day. Still the sea swelled, and a splendid surf made the evening bath delightful. Then just at sundown a beautiful cloud bridge grew up and arched the sky with a single span of cottony, pink vapor that changed and deepened colorwith the dying of the iridescent day. And the cloud bridge approached, strained and swung round at last to make way for the coming of the gale—even as the light bridges that traverse the dreamy Teche swing open when the luggermen sound through their conch shells the long, bellowing signal of approach.
“Then the wind began to blow from the northeast, clear, cool. * * * Clouds came, flew as in a panic against the face of the sun, and passed. All that day, through the night, and into the morning again the breeze continued from the northeast, blowing like an equinoctial gale. * * *
“Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props upon which they rested. A chimney tumbled. Shutters were wrenched off; verandas demolished. Light roofs lifted, dropped again, and flapped into ruin. Trees bent their heads to earth. And still the storm grew louder and blacker with every passing hour. * * *
WORK OF THE STORM.
“So the hurricane passed, tearing off the heads of prodigious waves to hurl them a hundred feet in air—heaping up the ocean against the land—upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollen to abysses; rivers regorged; the sea marshes changed to roaring wastes of water. Before New Orleans the flood of the mile-broad Mississippi rose six feet above highest water mark. One hundred and ten miles away Donaldsonville trembled at the towering tide of the Lafourche. Lakes strove to burst their boundaries. Far-off river steamers tugged wildly at their cables—shivering like tethered creatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers. * * *
“And swift in the wake of gull and frigate bird the wreckers come, the spoilers of the dead—savage skimmersof the sea—hurricane-riders wont to spread their canvas pinions in the face of storms. * * * There is plunder for all—birds and men. * * * Her betrothal ring will not come off, Guiseppe; but the delicate bone snaps easily; your oyster-knife can sever the tendon. * * * Over her heart you will find it, Valentio—the locket held by that fine, Swiss chain of woven hair * * * Juan, the fastenings of those diamond eardrops are much too complicated for your peon fingers; tear them out. * * *
“Suddenly a long, mighty silver trilling fills the ears of all; there is a wild hurrying and scurrying; swiftly, one after another, the overburdened luggers spread wings and flutter away. Thrice the great cry rings through the gray air and over the green sea, and over the far-flooded shell reefs where the huge white flashes are—sheet lightning of breakers—and over the weird wash of corpses coming in.
“It is the steam-call of the relief boat, hastening to rescue the living, to gather in the dead.
“The tremendous tragedy is over.”
GALVESTON BUILT UPON THE SAND.
Galveston is built upon the sand. According to Professor Willis L. Moore, Chief of the United States Weather Bureau at Washington, not only Galveston was insecurely built upon the flat sands of the island, but other cities on the gulf and Atlantic coasts, lying at tide, are subject to the same dangers. The West Indian hurricane may strike almost anywhere from the southern line of North Carolina, on down the coast, around the peninsula of Florida, and anywhere within the great arc described by the western shores of the Gulf of Mexico. These storms, perhaps 600 miles wide, have a vortex of twenty to thirtymiles in diameter. It is in this vortex that the land is laid waste.
It is this fact that will lead more strongly than any other to the rebuilding of Galveston. With an export business of $100,000,000 annually, the great West will bring pressure to bear upon the maintenance of the port. There is an island type of man in its population that will not be driven from that little ridge of sand three miles out in the gulf. There are 1,500 miles of gulf coast on which the vortex of such a storm may waste itself without touching Galveston, and both conservatism and commercialism will take the risk that a score of other cities at the tide level are taking.
At the same time there are those who see for Galveston only a commercial existence. It never can grow as it has grown; it never can be the home of people whose fortunes are not tied up in the island.
For fourteen years the city has had to contend with the fears of the incomer. The growth between 1890 and 1900 shows that these fears had been allayed in great measure, following the destruction in 1886. But years will not wipe out the black record of the last week. Hundreds will leave the island as a place of residence; thousands have been killed there and cremated in the sands or buried in the treacherous sea. A death rate of 200 in a population of 1,000 drove Indianola from the map of Texas. Five thousand or more deaths of the 35,000 population of Galveston must have its influence upon the living.
For with the assurances of the United States Weather Bureau, it is recognized that in natural phenomena there are cycle periods in which extremes are repeated from nature’s great laboratory. Observation has put this period of repetition at twenty years. According to this, in thecase of hurricanes, the range of maximum and minimum will be within such a period. Without question Galveston is in the track of a certain abnormal but not infrequent West Indian hurricane which fails to be deflected from the Georgia and Florida coasts. It keeps to its northwestward course and strikes the Louisiana, Texas or Mexico coasts, according to its impulse. In the Galveston storm a new maximum seems to have been established,yetits repetition may be looked for within the next twenty-year period. As a matter of fact, indeed, the average period between the recurrence of these maximum storms has been less than fifteen years.
Lyman E. Cooley, one of the original engineers in marking the route of the drainage canal, is an observer of periodic natural phenomena, and his theory holds in great measure with the observations of the United States weather service.
“It is a general proposition,” said Mr. Cooley. “It means just this much: Suppose that Chicago has a snow storm on June 15. Within a twenty-year period we may expect another phenomenon of the kind in the same calendar month. It may not snow in Chicago itself; the storm may be ten, twenty or thirty miles away, on any side of it. But in the same general territory, about the same time of the phenomenon, it will be repeated.
“Suppose a terrible rain or wind storm develops, its repetition may be looked for in the same period. So with extremes of temperature, influences on lake levels, and all the other phenomena of nature’s forces. They have their cycles, and the twenty-year period covers most of them.”
But in the case of Galveston, one of its great hurricanes was experienced in 1875, another in 1886, and the last only fourteen years later. These historic facts tend to confirm Mr. Cooley’s observations.
Galveston’s destruction and that of other towns similarly situated had been predicted. Writing in the Arena in 1890, Professor Joseph Rodes Buchanan said:
“Every seaboard city south of New England that is not more than fifty feet above the sea level of the Atlantic coast is destined to a destructive convulsion. Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, St. Augustine, Savannah and Charleston are doomed. Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, Newark, Jersey City and New York will suffer in various degrees in proportion as they approximate the sea level. Brooklyn will suffer less, but the destruction at New York and Jersey City will be the grandest horror.
“The convulsion will probably begin on the Pacific coast, and perhaps extend in the Pacific toward the Sandwich Islands. The shock will be terrible, with great loss of life, extending from British Columbia down along the coast of Mexico, but the conformation of the Pacific coast will make its grand tidal wave far less destructive than on the Atlantic shore. Nevertheless, it will be calamitous. Lower California will suffer severely along the coast. San Diego and Coronado will suffer severely, especially the latter.
“It may seem rash to anticipate the limits of the destructive force of a foreseen earthquake, but there is no harm in testing the prophetic power of science in the complex relations of nature and man.
“The destruction of cities which I anticipate will be twenty-four years ahead—it may be twenty-three. It will be sudden and brief—all within an hour and not far from noon. Starting from the Pacific coast, as already described, it will strike southward—a mighty tidal wave and earthquake shock that will develop in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. It will strike the westerncoast of Cuba and severely injure Havana. Our sister republic, Venezuela, bound to us in destiny, by the law of periodicity will be assailed by the encroaching waves and terribly shaken by the earthquake. The destruction of her chief city, Caraccas, will be greater than in 1812, when 12,000 were said to be destroyed. The coming shock will be near total destruction.
“From South America back to the United States, all Central America and Mexico are severely shaken; Vera Cruz suffers with great severity, but the City of Mexico realizes only a severe shock. Tampico and Matamoras suffer severely; Galveston is overwhelmed; New Orleans is in a dangerous condition—the question arises between total and partial destruction. I will only say it will be an awful calamity. If the tidal wave runs southward New Orleans may have only its rebound. The shock and flood pass up the Mississippi from 100 to 150 miles and strike Baton Rouge with destructive force.
“As it travels along the gulf shore Mobile will probably suffer most severely and be more than half destroyed; Pensacola somewhat less. Southern Florida is probably entirely submerged and lost; St. Augustine severely injured; Charleston will probably be half submerged, and Newbern suffer more severely; Port Royal will probably be wiped out; Norfolk will suffer about as much as Pensacola; Petersburg and Richmond will suffer, but not disastrously; Washington will suffer in its low grounds, Baltimore and Annapolis much more severely on its water front, its spires will topple, and its large buildings be injured, but I do not think its grand city hall will be destroyed. Probably the injury will not affect more than one-fourth. But along the New Jersey coast the damage will be great. Atlantic City and Cape May may be destroyed, but Long Branch will be protected by its blufffrom any severe calamity. The rising waters will affect Newark, and Jersey City will be the most unfortunate of large cities, everything below its heights being overwhelmed. New York below the postoffice and Trinity Church will be flooded and all its water margins will suffer.”
Comparisons Between the Galveston and Johnstown Disasters—The Latter Not So Horrible in Its Features—Frightful Plight of the Texas Victims.
Comparisons Between the Galveston and Johnstown Disasters—The Latter Not So Horrible in Its Features—Frightful Plight of the Texas Victims.
Until the elements wreaked their vengeance upon the fair City of Galveston and vented their wrath upon its unoffending population, the awful disaster at Johnstown, Pa., which occurred on the 31st of May, 1889, was the most frightful calamity known in the history of the United States. Johnstown was almost literally wiped from the face of the earth, the suddenness of the flood which created the havoc precluding the escape of anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path.
Unlike the Galveston catastrophe, the flood at Johnstown poured its waters upon the devoted inhabitants without warning and the slaughter was over within the space of a comparatively few minutes. The victims, that is to say, the majority of them, were drowned or dashed to pieces before they had time to realize the horror of it all.
At Galveston the people knew for hours before the angry waters submerged the island and the resistless gale tore the business buildings and residences to pieces what their fate was to be. They looked death squarely in the face hour after hour, suffering all the terrors dire certainty could inflict, their knowledge that they were absolutely powerless and beyond the reach of aid adding to their agonies.
Death was merciful to the people of Johnstown; he was cruel to his prey at Galveston, and delighted in the tortures he was enabled to impose before he placed his icy hand upon them and bade them come.
Perhaps the only parallel in history to the Galveston visitation was the destruction, in 79 A. D., of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The frightened pleasure-seekers of those doomed cities could see the red lava stream bearing down upon them as it was vomited up from the bowels of Vesuvius and thrown out from the mighty maw of the crater, but even then they were mercifully stifled by the tremendous, never-ending shower of ashes which soon enveloped them and completely covered their homes.
They did not stand for hours, with the blackness of the night around them, listening to the roar of the volcano’s eruption and hear their death knell sounded long before they were compelled to undergo the actual pain of an awful death; they were caught as they sought safety in flight and stricken down while endeavoring to get beyond the reach of the sickle of the grim reaper; they could move and act in accordance with their impulses which prompted them to make a flight for life, and they succumbed only after a desperate struggle.
It was different at Galveston. The men, women and children were not permitted even the small but precious boon of falling while battling with the grim destroyer; they were caught and imprisoned, even as those who were done to death during the time when the Inquisition reigned, and, on the way to execution, were, it might be said, compelled to bear the very cross upon which they were to be impaled.
There is no record since time began of such a long-drawn-out agony as that which the devoted people of Galveston endured during the period intervening between the advent of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and the final imposition of the death penalty.
Fathers saw their wives and babes crushed by the wreckage flung aloft and around by the fury of the gale,or drowned in the swift running current; wives saw their husbands and children torn from them and swept from their sight forever; children saw their parents disappear in the murky, turbid waters of the flood.
Men saw the dead faces of their loved ones they would have deemed it a joy to save as they were borne along upon the bosom of the waters. Men invited destruction in their efforts at rescue, only to realize how weak and utterly futile was their strength in comparison to the irresistible power of the enraged elements. Men died desponding because they could not save those they had cherished and heretofore protected, and went down in despair and gloom.
At Johnstown the released waters tore their way through the beautiful valley of the Conemagh with the rush and speed of a giant avalanche and enfolded their victims in their merciless embrace; the inhabitants were, in the twinkling of an eye, borne from the sunshine of life to the gloom of the valley of the shadow; they may have felt a momentary terror before they succumbed, but it was all over in an instant.
At Galveston, the condemned simply waited for the inevitable; they clung to the brief remaining supports and died a thousand deaths before death claimed them; they stood upon the brink of eternity and cried in vain for the succor they well knew would not come; they prayed for mercy, but there was none.
When the waters of the gulf leaped upon the island where the beautiful city sat in all her glory the people fled to the high places and saw the flood creep higher and higher until it overcame them. Although it was not until the darkness of the night had long since settled upon them they had known in the afternoon that Galveston was doomed. The hurricane would not permit them toescape, but sundered all communication with the mainland and then laughed at their puny efforts at preservation.
The death roster in and around Galveston was fully 8,000; at Johnstown the known number of victims was a score less than 2,300. Many died at Johnstown of whom nothing was ever heard, and there were possibly 2,500 persons engulfed in the stream which all but destroyed the town, but at the same time the probabilities are that 10,000 people died at Galveston and in the immediate vicinity. Bodies were washed up and thrown upon the shore by hundreds for days after the disaster; how many were burned upon the many funeral pyres no accurate record was kept.
In one respect the two calamities were alike—the destruction of millions of dollars’ worth of property, but the losses were not so great at Johnstown during those fearful two minutes as those occasioned by the beating of the winds and waves which for hours had Galveston at their mercy.
Johnstown was a city of 30,000, teeming with the industry of a manufacturing town. With not even a warning shout to apprise the inhabitants the dam of a lake high above the town broke and the flood sweeping down the Conemagh Valley engulfed the city and its inhabitants before they even knew of the danger. The whole place was a mass of debris and dead when the deluge subsided.
Galveston was a city of nearly 40,000 people, and had within its gates hundreds of strangers, and the fact that telegrams of inquiry from all parts of the United States poured into the mayor’s office in a perfect stream for days after the flood indicated that scores were killed of whom the searchers knew nothing.
But Johnstown was not alone in its misery. In thesouthwest a tragedy was enacted a few years later which claimed hundreds of victims.
A tornado, immeasurable in its force and fury, blotted out a section of St. Louis late in the afternoon of May 22, 1896. Nearly a thousand lives and tens of millions in property were sacrificed.
Until the disaster at Galveston the St. Louis catastrophe was the second greatest disaster of its kind in the history of the nation.
The tornado destroyed dozens of the finest buildings in the city. It leveled massive structures to the ground. It tossed railroad locomotives about and crushed the eastern span of the Eads bridge, one of the strongest structures in the world.
It made St. Louis a city of mourning for weeks and impoverished numberless families.
Yet Galveston surpassed these cities in the frightful nature of its calamity. Hundreds of insane people are being cared for, their reason having been overthrown by their great sufferings. This was one of the saddest features of the shocking visitation. These poor creatures, first bereft of home, family and property, are now living legacies of the most stupendous catastrophe this country has ever known.