The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-10-04

Certainly St. Paul fingers unpleasantly
near the primitive and filthy man when
it steadily refuses to enforce any ar
with the first law of decency. 1t is
great pity that there is not some su-
periOr health officer or a relief society
to look after this community until 1T
gets sufficiently developed to take care
of itself.
THE DISSIPATION OF SYMPATHY.
1t is not entirely due to the concen-
tration of public thought upon matters
political at this time that the great
calamity which has fallen upon so
many parts of our southern coast Sc
cures only a passing notice. Under
a catastrophe like this, which has wiped
out. f1ourishing towns, inflicted incalcu-
liable damage on great cities, destroyed
hundreds Of lives and made many peo-
pie homeless, would be subject of ma
tional moment and would be met with
the ready outpouring of national SYM
pathy Subscription lists would be
opened everywhere, sermons would be
preached upon the topic, public meet
ings would be called to depict the
wretched condition Of these helpless
people, and from all portions of our
own country and even from abroad
would come the ready tribute of man
to man when that touch of nature
makes the whole world kin. We do not
believe that the apparent indifference
with which, on the contrary, the news
of the hurricanes work along our coast
has been received is attributable Who'll
ly to our absorption, as nation, in
the campaign.
1t has been evident in it's degree, on
other occasions than this. There is a
wide difference between the way in
which the public responds to a calam-
ity that falls in concentrated fury upon
a single community of restricted area,
and one that devastates a great stretch
of country. There seems to be some
thing which appeals to the imagination
more powerfully and touches the emo
lions more closely in single deadly
blow than in the wide volleying of ar
tillery that includes an empire in it's
sweep. Take, for example, not merely
such existing instances as the great
fires of Chicago and Boston, but take
the Johnstown disaster as an Illustra-
ton. Johnstown is a small Pennsyl-
vania town. and the bursting of res
ervoir above it swept it out Of exist
ence. The horror of the thing, COM
pressed as it was within narrow limits,
touched men and women far more
deeply than events of greater magni-
tude. The storms and tidal waves
that swept the sea islands along the
Carolina coast a short time ago were
UNNECESSARILY more dreadful in their
consequences. Yet, while the response
to Johnstowns need was instantaneous
and almost excessive in it's generosity,
it took appeal after appeal to the peo-
L
sufferers, and it was weeks before re-
lief had reached them ALL
Again and again we have observed
the same curious phenomenon. If tor
nado strikes a prairie town with pop
ulation Of 800 souls, reduces every
building to splinters or powder and
brushes the life out of $50 people, the
newspapers of two continents will ring
with 1t, and contributions will be fur
nished with the utmost liberality But
If a similar storm, whose gyrations
cover hundreds of miles, moves along
the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, the
Atlantic or the Great Lakes, destroy
ing a few buildings here and there and
sacrificing human life, although the ag-
gregate of it's work may be the death
of 500 people, 1t will be but a twenty
four hours talk. There seems to be
something in the nature of human SYM
pathy which requires concentration
upon particular object, and which
needs the dramatic force of an exhibit
ton upon a limited stage to call it out
in its full intensity. Certain 1t is that
if any visitation of the wrath of man
or of nature had gathered into a focus
all the fearful ravages recorded from
Cedar Keys to New York city by last
weeks storm, we would have dropped,
temporarily, our political discussions,
and ceased political contributions, in
order that hearts and purses might be
opened to the unfortunates who are
put off now, by the dissipation of SYM
pathy, with the gift of only moments
passing pity.
THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT SYM
BOLISM.
The decadent spirit of the age, say
the Paris correspondents. has acquired
a new habitation. Literature and art
were not sufficiently Intimate exnreS