New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-11-18
DLSASTERS NEY IND OLD.

That the sum of human misery has been
diminished by the t-iumphs of civilization, few
will deny; and yet the recurrence of great
disasters like that which Boston has suffered
seems to give q mOmentary advantage to
those who doubt the progress of the race
who think that the great inventions of the age
have brought with them dangers more than
compensating for their value, and who sigh
for the good old days when locomotives
and electric telcGTaphs and American Mansard
roofs were unknown. No sooner have we
gained an advantage, the doubters assert, than
some great danger hitherto unknown is de-
yeloped, and on the whole we are as badly
Off if not worse, than before. Did Davy in
vent the safety lampf Straightway the miner
works in galleries hitherto inaccessible the
warning given by the increasing flame of his
lamp, fed by the explosive gas, is disregarded;
q mesh of the encircling wire gauze gives
way, and the safety lamp fires an explosion
by so much the moro destructive because so
many moro lives than otherwise would be are
exposed to this particular form of danger.
A month rarely passes, year never,
in which some dreadful disaster does
not overtako mass of Inflated travel
ers by land or water, and bring
home to hundred hearths the sad question
whether the comforts and conveniences of
travel which steam affords are not more than
counterbalanced by its dangers. AT the present
hour, there are some who are asking whether
the modern methods of doing business-which
crowd the wealth and the markets of the
country in our large cities, and concentrate in
few blocks of buildings the fabrics of a
H. Itofa 1T col. 10
pastures, the rich freights that carried by o
thousand keels have escaped the perils Of The
way to perish in the haven-may not be great
and improbable mistakes, or at least no inn
provement upon the ways of the olden time.
We may as well cOnccde that the time when
no great disasters shall be possible is not
heralded by what we see around US. But
though the progress we have made does not
to any great extent avert disasters, II unques-
tionably modifc5 them, and it is only because
we have fed ourselves with hopes that they
were done away with, that we feel so acutely
the disappointment which their recurrence
occasions Between each of her great wars
there are sanguine people in Europe who hope
there will never be another, and before our
late war three-fOurths of us deemed internecine
war in this country impossible. But these
disasters eliminated, on the whole, with less
of human suffering than the previous great
wars of history, and the recovery from them
has been marvellous in its rapidity. Famines
and pcstilences in civilized lands, though not
unknown, have certainly been reduced by inn
proved sanitary science and the succOr which
steam communication can promptly afford, so
that their advent is rarely marked by Excess
sive mortality. Even the regularly recurring
homeopathic has diminished in severity; we
hope never again to be visited by such uni
versal commercial ruin as that Of 1884, and in
more recent reyeTses have shown a recupera-
tive power then unknown.
The causes of this modification are bound
ND with the disasters themselves. 1t is be-
cause we have railroads, steamers, telegraphs
that we can so rapidly recover from the shock
of the destruction of property they have con-
centrated. Not only is the world of finance
kept from panic by promptly knowing the
worst and being prepared thus to meet the
consequences, but in every home where
the newspaper penetrates throughout the
land there are the swift tidings that
circumscribe the loss almost as soon as
they announce il, and substitute knowledge
for weeks Of weary fOrebOding. These same
facilities of intercourse and Of commerce re-
store with unwOnted celebrity of construction
the palaces of trade; the new Chicago rises
hour by hour. built literally by steam, and
Boston merchants already say they have con-