The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-07-20
DEFYING THE POWERS OF NATURE

In his primeva state man feared and Wor-
shipped the uncomfortable powers and forces
of nature The storm, the lightning, the
thunder, the volcano, the earthquake to him
were merely the expressions of the things
he did not understand, and as his mental
process developed he imagined that unseen
gods were behind these demonstrations and
so developed fear of both the god and the
manifestation of that god. In modern times
man defies the uncomfortable forces of ma
ture and goes calmly about his work regard
less of what her great commissions do to de-
feat his feeble defiance.
Los Angeles has become city Of more
than half million people. 1t has been de-
veloped from a struggling small city to its
present size in defiance of the dangers Of the
earthquake which lies ever in wait to de-
stroy the structures Of man as though they
were the playhouses of children. While the
city was yet celebrating the report of its
population by the current census suburb
was nearly destroyed by an earthquake which,
had it's circle of destruction been ten or fiji
teen miles nearer the center of Los Angeles,
would have brought to that city a possible
repetition of the San Francisco disaster Of
1906, when 452 persons lost their-lives and
property damage estimated at $2OOOOO,OOO
was done. True, the area of the San Fran
cisco shock was greater than that of the re-
cent Los Angeles one. But the point is that
with the destruction of two-thirds of San
Francisco fresh in mind and the knowledge
that a like occurrence is possible in any part
f,sOY1
city of 319,198 in 1910 to 575,480 in 1920.
Man defes the commissions of nature and
builds his structures to tottering heights
above the moving shell of earth which slides
like a Missouri river bank in flood times.
The defiance of man in modern times is not
unusual The people of the island of Martl-
nioue refused to heed the eruptions of Mt.
Pelee from May to August 80, when the
awful CONFUSION buried 10000 inhabitants OF
St. Pierre beneath its descending flood OF
boiling mud and red hot ashes. 1t was the
same with the people who lived about the
foot of Mt Aetna in 1859, when the noun
tains belched forth it's stream of death ano
buried alive under its surging waves OF liquid
lava the Is 900 inhabitants of Catana, which
Law at it's base 1t was the same with the
people of Pompeii and Herculaneum in ~
when they danced and made merry as the
mud and ashes which in day buried their
cities thirty feet deep rushed down upon them
It was the same when in 1906 this same
volcano poured out rivers of death-deallng
lava and destroyed every yestige OF life II
it's path, converting the olive orchards ano
vineyards into barren wastes of blackenec
scoria, though within the previous thirty-foul
years four other eruptions of nearly as great
devastating force had taken place.
People will go on flOcking to Los Angeles
and other California cities, building costly
structures and living in constant dread OF
the calamity they fear yet hope they may
escape when it comes. 1t is the nature OF
man to become indifferent to danger by con-
slant association with danger. That is why
Los Angeles develops in spite Of its con-
slant danger Of destruction.