The Johnstown Flood (31 page)

As might be expected, the Pittsburgh papers were extremely cautious about printing anything untoward about the club, or, in some cases, were outright sympathetic toward the renowned members. The Pittsburgh
Press,
for example, took the position that too much scorn was being heaped on the club, since the dam had been built a long time back and the disaster, therefore, could as easily have happened at some earlier time. The
Post-Gazette
also felt the clubmen were being unfairly chastised. And Connelly and Jenks, authors of the so-called
Official History
of the flood, which was being written in Pittsburgh about that time, went out of their way to counteract popular images of opulent splendor at the lake. It was no center of pagan pleasure seeking or vulgar display, they wrote, but a place where the members of the club with their families and friends could “rough it” throughout the summer months. It was, they said, a comfortable, homelike place and as different from the “ordinary fashionable summer resort” as could be imagined. As for stories of any highhanded ways with the local people, well, “The place was exclusive only in the sense that a private house or garden is of that character. There was no lofty disregard of other people’s rights, nor any desire on the part of the members to set themselves above those around them. The club was a happy family party, and nothing more.”

Forest and Stream,
a national fishing and hunting magazine, took strong objection to the “paragraphs hot with indignation” that were being published. Such stuff was easy to write, said the magazine’s editors, who rose to the defense of the club largely on the grounds that its members were sportsmen who appreciated the beauties of the natural world and so, therefore, were essentially good men. Also, in the opinion of the editors, it was nonsense to condemn the clubmen because their lake was meant for pleasure. “To maintain a dam to form a lake for pleasure purposes is,” they argued, “an enterprise no less legitimate than to build a dam for running a mill wheel.” If the warnings about the stability of the dam had gone unheeded, perhaps that had been because the members were so preoccupied with the joys of life in the out of doors. And, concluded
Forest and Stream
there ought to be some compassion for the members, who in their hearts must surely be suffering terribly.

There were many, too, who looked upon the disaster as a time of the apocalypse. Countless sermons on “The Meaning of the Johnstown Flood” were delivered in every part of the land for many Sundays running. One Pittsburgh preacher compared the “wolf cry” about the dam breaking to those in his congregation who tired of hearing him on the admonitions of the Lord. Another said that the lesson was to be ever prepared to meet thy Maker.

In New York the illustrious Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage, using the 93rd Psalm as his text (“The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice;…”), told an audience of some 5,000 that what the voice of the flood had to say was that nature was merciless and that any sort of religious attitude toward nature meant emptiness. “There are those who tell us they want only the religion of sunshine, art, blue sky and beautiful grass,” said Talmage. “The book of nature must be their book. Let me ask such persons what they make out of the floods in Pennsylvania.”

Not a few ministers chose to talk about the spirit of sympathy that was sweeping the country. The New York
Witness,
a religious newspaper, went so far as to say there was a “loving purpose of God hidden in the Flood,” which turned a great many stomachs in Johnstown.

But the theme that set the most heads nodding in agreement was the old, old theme of punishment from on high. The story of Noah was read from thousands of pulpits. (“And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;…And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;…”) This was The Great American Flood; it had been a sign unto all men, the preachers said, and woe unto the land if it were not heeded. The steel town had been a sin town and so the Lord had destroyed it; for surely only a vile and wicked place would have been visited by so hideous a calamity.

It was a line of reasoning which many people were quick to accept, for at least it made some sense of the disaster. But it was a line of reasoning which met with much amusement in Johnstown, where, as anyone who knew his way about could readily see, Lizzie Thompson’s house and several rival establishments on Green Hill had not only survived the disaster, but were going stronger than ever before. “If punishment was God’s purpose,” said one survivor, “He sure had bad aim.”

There really was never much mystery in anyone’s mind in Johnstown about the cause of the flood. George Swank spoke for just about everyone when he wrote, “We think we know what struck us, and it was not the hand of Providence. Our misery is the work of man.”

The
Tribune
had started publishing again on the 15th. Swank referred to the Pittsburgh men as “the dudes” and said that they wanted “an exclusive resort where, in all their spotlessness and glory, they might idle away the summer days.” The people of Johnstown, he said, had never had a chance. “A rat caught in a trap and placed in a bucket would not be more helpless than we were.”

Dozens of Johnstown people spoke out against the dam, telling the out-of-town newspapermen what an awful menace it had been and describing the dread shadow of fear it had cast over their lives, and nearly every last one of them refused to give his name. The one outstanding exception was Cyrus Elder, Johnstown’s only member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, who said that he had never considered the dam structurally faulty and, contrary to what John Fulton was saying, that he knew of no serious concern about the dam among the Cambria Iron people.

Having lost his wife and one daughter, his home and just about everything he owned but the clothes on his back, Elder had as much cause as anyone to lash out at the club, and certainly not to do so was to go against the temper of the entire town. But he stuck to his position. He admitted that Johnstown people had long been edgy about the dam and said, “Therefore, if anybody be to blame I suppose we ourselves are among them, for we have indeed been very careless in this most important matter and most of us have paid the penalty of our neglect.” It was a brave and most unpopular thing to be saying in Johnstown. The statement was picked up immediately by the newspapers. But his line of reasoning was never given any serious consideration by the popular press, though
Engineering and Building Record
registered surprise that the men responsible for Johnstown’s welfare, not to mention the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad, with all that they had at stake, had not made sure that the lake over their heads was carefully built in the first place and properly maintained thereafter.

The railroad, for its part, remained quiet about any involvement it might have had in the dam’s past, taking the position, no doubt, that its actions in bringing relief to Johnstown would speak a great deal louder and more favorably than any words—which indeed they did. And once the engineering journals had established that the so-called engineers from the railroad who, according to statements made by Pitcairn, had kept a watch on the dam were in no way qualified to make any sort of intelligent judgment, then there was really very little more that the railroad could say.

But if the club’s guilt had been established as far as the newspapers were concerned, there still remained the matter of paying the penalty, and that such a penalty should be paid seemed self-evident.

One newspaper after another said that the club should have to make amends for what had happened. Not a little facetiously,
The New York Times
wrote, “Justice is inevitable even though the horror is attributable to men of wealth and station, and the majority of the victims the most downtrodden workers in any industry in the country.”

Even the Boston Post, which except for the Pittsburgh papers was about as conciliatory toward the club as any paper, said that the members had better be prepared to pay up. The Post, quite generously, stressed that the members must have acted as most men would have under the circumstances, “trusting, perhaps not unjustifiably, to others” with no thought of imperiling the lives of anyone. “Even if all that is reported as to the construction of the dam proves true, there is the possibility that personally the owners were not guilty of the reckless parsimony attributed to them.” Still, added the
Post,
“If they were unable or failed to cope with forces of nature which they called into action, the responsibility is theirs, and as they have sown so must they reap, even if the harvest is the whirlwind.”

And behind every editorial was the suggestion of what the
Sun
said outright: “If they [the club members] should be held liable in civil suits for damages it is probable that many, if not all of them, will be financially ruined.”

The Pittsburgh men had by now given some $6,000 to the relief fund, in addition to the 1,000 blankets, but that did not seem to help their cause much. “As they are almost all millionaires,” wrote the New York
Daily Graphic,
“the sum is not staggering, but shows that, while they were negligent, they are not heartless…. Yet they should do more than they have for the sufferers. It was through their indifference that this great disaster was precipitated upon the residents of the peaceful valley. Remorse, if nothing else, should lead them to alleviate to the fullest extent of their wealth the suffering they have caused.”

Very shortly thereafter several club members did, in fact, give generously; but, needless to say, it was far from the “fullest extent of their wealth.”

Henry Clay Frick, through H. C. Frick Coke Company, gave $5,000. The Mellon family, through T. Mellon & Sons, gave $1,000. The Carnegie Company gave $10,000. There were several gifts of $1,000, $500, and $100. There was also one member who gave $15, and there were about thirty of them who never gave anything.

The members did suggest that the clubhouse could be used as a home for Johnstown orphans, but the offer was turned down with the excuse that the location was too inconvenient. There was also one member, S. S. Marvin, who actually went to Johnstown to see what he could do to help, and contrary to the many warnings published, he suffered no injuries, or even insults, from the people in the valley. Marvin had been appointed to one of the committees organized by the governor. He was in the baking business in Pittsburgh and had already contributed great quantities of bread. At Johnstown he looked about with absolute dismay and said, “Johnstown is a funeral,” an expression the newsmen were quick to pick up.

As for the other members, they grew increasingly cautious about saying anything. Phipps, Mellon, and Knox said nothing at all. Unger, who was staying with his daughter in Pittsburgh, tried hard to play down the importance of the fish guards, saying that they were only a few feet high. He also reminded the reporters that the dam had been originally built by the state, thus implying that the matter of responsibility, if pursued, might become a very complicated piece of business.

Frick refused to see anyone from the press. Except for Carngie, Frick was, of course, the best-known and most powerful of the members, and unlike Carnegie, Frick had already had his name published in the papers as one of the members. Moreover, he was, after Ruff, the ranking stockholder in the original organization and one of the few founding members still in the organization. In other words, he was one of the few people who had been involved in the club at the time Ruff made his renovation of the dam. So anything he might have to say would be of great interest, and possibly of great importance to how things might go for the club in the courts.

But Frick was not talking, and it was probably not so much that he was fearful of saying anything at that particular time as it was that he simply did not talk to the press ever, at any time. It was his standing policy. He was a highly uncommunicative sort anyway and, by nature, abhorred all forms of notoriety. He had no trust in newspapers, no liking for reporters, and talking to them, he was convinced, was bad for business. Only once in his life did he break his rule and speak freely to a reporter, but it was with the understanding that he could edit the copy, which he did, reducing a full column to exactly ten lines.

In the weeks following the disaster Frick made no public statements, nor did he ever in later years.

Carnegie, on the other hand, had much to say, but never anything to suggest that he had had any connection with the club, and almost no one was ever the wiser, since it would not be for another year or more, when the story had been largely forgotten, that a complete membership list was divulged. Carnegie was in Paris attending the World’s Fair at the time the disaster occurred. When a meeting of Americans had been called at the United States Legation, by the American Minister to France, Whitelaw Reid, it had been Carnegie who put forth the resolutions quickly adopted by the assembly. The people of Johnstown were to receive “profound and heartfelt sympathy” from their brethren across the Atlantic; they were also to be congratulated for their “numerous acts of noble heroism” and especially were they to be admired for the way they had “preserved order during chaos” through their own local self-government. How much Carnegie then contributed to the 40,000-odd francs that were pledged is not known.

But as for the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and any thoughts or feelings he may have had concerning its part in what had happened, Carnegie made no mention of that, and there would be none forthcoming. Carnegie wound up his affairs in Paris shortly thereafter, then left for his castle in Scotland, stopping off long enough in London to visit with the American Minister there, Robert Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln.

Reporters in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, had been looking into the financial status of the South Fork sportsmen’s association and had found, much to their dismay, that, for all the colossal wealth of the men who belonged to it, the club itself was capitalized for a mere $35,000 and there was a $20,000 mortgage still outstanding on the clubhouse. Since any future lawsuits would most likely be brought against the club, and not individual members, the chances for anyone collecting very much appeared to have diminished drastically. And just to be sure that no one missed this particular point, on June 12 James Reed once again granted the press an interview. Reed was a tall, sharp-faced man, quiet-spoken and scholarly looking. His practice included several of Pittsburgh’s biggest concerns, as well as the Carnegie interests. His professional prestige was very high. What he had to say, therefore, was carefully taken down and later read with special interest.