St. Landry democrat., 1889-07-13
Suggested by the Great Floods.

|
that marvellous organization and utiliza-
ton of the resources of science by the
journalist which Mr.. Goschen eulogized at
Saturdays dinner of the Newspaper Press
Fund. 1t was only on Friday afternoon
that the disaster in the Conemaugh valley
happened; but by Monday morning
thanks to the telegraph and the skillful
pens OF the correspondents, everybody in
almost every corner of Great Britain knew
or could know, nearly all that was to be
known of the catastrophe which had hap
pened to their kinsmen three thousand
| miles away. We can create for ourselves
the picture of the doomed valley, with it's
active little towns, its factories, it's peace
full, busy life of well ordered industry, it's
fertile fields, it's bridges, and it's RAILWAYS,
and the great reservoir, with it's millions
of tons OF water, suspended as it were in
air, above the whole We can see how
the lake burst its bounds and swept down
upon Johnstown in one vast, solid, ire
sistable mass of waters, before which the
factory chimney5 fell like matchwood, and
houses were washed away as though they
had been children's toys; and we can
even family imagine the appalling scene
which followed when flood and fire com
bined their terrors, and the fugitives,
washed away from their homes, were
swept into the burning mass of debris
which lay across the way of the devastat
ing waters.
The calamity is but one more reminder
of the difficulties under which civilization
labors in America in the struggle against
the forces of nature. 1t is true that the
bursting of the Conemaugh lake was not,
properly speaking an operation of nature
q 1rn Ia I
never have existed but for the act and the
hand of man. But this consideration ap-
plies to most other accidents" and disas-
tiers. We use the powers of nature for
our own purposes, and turn them to our
through miscalculation or omission or
| neglect, we have to pay the penalty. The
slave becomes an uncomfortable tyrant
The imprisoned genii break from their
captivity and rend us to pieces. Their
captivity has increased their fury as well
as their potency for harm when they break
loose. The tempest might howl harm
lessly among the bare crags and yielding
pines of the natural sierras but when It
encounters the resistance of streets and
houses it bears death and destruction on
its wings. The flood, which we try to di,
vert from its natural course, may sweep
| away whole villages, as in America, or
whole provinces, as in China, when we
lose control of it. All this applies to
Britain and to the ether countries of the
temperate zone and the civilized European
world, as well as to America only in
America, while man is not appreciablv
stronger or more cunning, the elemental
forces are Infinitely more powerful. EveFs
few mouths we are startled by some ter
rlhc, and, as 1t seems to US, with our ideas
and traditions of Western Europe, some
abnormal manifestation of natural phe-
nomena. Now it is "cold snap" like
that which passed over Dakota couple of
years ago, leaving the cattle starved in the
fields and the people dead in their houses
now snowstorm of more than Arctic Sc
verify, like that which winter ago cut
OFT New York from the outer world for
some days as completely as If it had been
invested by besieging army ; now tenn
pest, which gathers irresistible impulse as
1t passes over that vast expanse of level |
continent, aud levels whole streets before
it like Titanic battering ram or prairie
lire extending over the area of a great
Kingdom or, again, freshet bearing with |
it such ruin and loss of life as we can
hardly appreciate in this country of smaller
rivers and milder rains. It's climate of
fierce heat and fierce cold, III which nature
tries the endurance of the human frame to
the utmost, as well as the energies and re-
sources of human ingenuity.
1t is the most energetic and resourceful
race In the world upon which this contest
has been forced but as yetit seems hardly
to realize how great is the task before it.
Americans boast of their ''bigness'-their
hoir IL
big rivers, and plains, and prairies, and
deserts and they even seem to feel
species of pride in their big accidents and
natural cataclysms and calamities. But it
remains to be seen whether these last are
NOT almost too magnificent for civilization
The progress of man, as the philosophical
historians of a former generation were
fond of pointing out, is largely due to the
fact that he has had to struggle with nature,
first for subsistence, then for comfort.
Out of that struggle the virtues and advan-
tages of thu superior races have developed
No people that has had but to lie on it's
back in the sun, or to tickle the earth with
a hoe till it laughs with harvest, has
done much in the world This is true
but on the other hand there is hardly
perhaps it be the Dutch
which has been able to attain the highest
under the stress of a struggle
against nature in its grimmest and most s
aspect. They have contrived
to live, but that is all 1t is one of the {
problems which the American people has
to solve-that of reconciling civilization {
higher than that which has never yet i
dourished save in climates as mild COM s
paratively as those of England, France, or +
Germany, with natural conditions which '
are as severe as those which kept t
5he Red Indian a savage. Indeed, we t
nay say they are more severe; for the r
habits, the customs, and the mode of dwell t
ing of temperate region, transferred to t
one that is terribly extreme, seem to have i
the dangers and Inconvenience. d
Al earthquake in Japan, where they live t
n low houses of wood, is no such calamity t
Is in a country of brick factories and tow /
'ring chimneys a flood, even in China, v
hough it may destroy more lives, is hard y
y so great blow as it is in Pennsylvania, \
where it can sweep away railway vladucts u
nd the accumulated result of years of in
ustrial activity. The future of America,
indeed, depends a good deal more than
Americans imagine on the way in which
hey will succeed in settling their quarrel Ii
With nature and adjusting their relations t,
o it, 1t is case of the adaptation of n
rganism to the environment )" and at d
resent the organism hardly seems to have h
egun the process, unless we can call the Fl
urious physical change in the Anglo-Sax h
n type since it settled in the South and T
be West sign of such beginning. ST. "
'anaes' England Budget. f,
A Last Resort.
Mr. Job Lott-'John, send me boy"