The General Situation.
Under the blue haze of smoke that for a week has hung over this valley of the shadow of death the work which is to resurrect this stricken city has gone steadily forward. Here and there over the waste where Johnstown stood in its pride black smoke arises from the bonfires on which shattered house-walls, rafters, doors, broken furniture and all the flotsam and jetsam of the great flood is cast.
Adjutant General Hastings, who believes in heroic measures, has been quietly trying to persuade the "Dictator"—that is, the would-be "Dictator"—to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the débris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piecemeal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruction by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildings reached by the flood have been examined, found unsafe and condemned. Can the job be done safely and successfully wholesale or not? That is the real question for the powers that be to answer, and no sentiment should enter into it.
Four thousand workmen are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the cleaning of the Augean stables.
"To clean up this town properly," said General Hastings to-day, "we shall need twenty thousand workmen for three months."
The force of the swollen river upturned the town in a half hour. These same timorous managers weakened to-day, after having the facts before their eyes brought home to their understanding by constant iteration. They have found out that they have, vulgarly speaking, bitten off more than they can chew. Poisons of the foulest kind pollute the water which flows down the turgid Conemaugh into the Allegheny River, whence is Pittsburgh's water-supply, and thence into the Ohio, the water-supply of many cities and towns. Fears of a pestilence are not to be pooh-poohed into the background. It is very serious, so long as the river flows through the clogged and matted mass of the bridge so long it will threaten the people along its course with pestilence. The committee confess their inability to do this needed work, and to-day voted to ask the Governors of the several States to co-operate in the establishment of a national relief committee to grapple with the situation. Action cannot and must not be delayed.
Hope Out of Despair.
The fears of an outbreak of fever or other zymotic diseases appear to be based on the alleged presence of decomposed animal matter, human and of lower type, concealed amid the débris. The alleged odor of burnt flesh coming from the enormous mass of conglomerated timber and iron lodged in the cul-de-sac formed by the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge is extremely mythical. There is an unmistakable scent of burnt wood. It would not be strange if the carcasses of domestic animals, which must be hidden in the enormous mass, were finally to be realized by the olfactory organs of the bystanders.