The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 36

"All right, thank G.o.d."

Then came another man bolder than all and apparently a general favorite.

He rushed forward and shook Mr. Smith's hand. "Mr. Smith," he exclaimed, "good morning, good morning."

"So you got out of it, did you, after all?" asked Mr. Smith.

"Indeed I did, but Lord bless my soul, I thought the wife and babies were gone." The man gave his name and hurried away, brus.h.i.+ng a tear from his eye.

Mr. Sh.e.l.lenberger, one of the foremen, brought up the rear of the next platoon to enter. He caught sight of Mr. Smith and shouted: "Oh, Mr.

Smith: good for you. I'm glad to see you safe."

"Here to you, my hearty," was the answer. "Did you all get off?"

"Every blessed one of us," with a bright smile. "We were too high on the hill."

He was Tired of Johnstown.

A little bit later another man came in. He looked as if he had been weeping. He hesitated in front of the desk. "I am a Gautier employee,"

he said, speaking slowly, "and I have reported according to orders."

"Well, give us your name and go to work down at the lower works,"

suggested Mr. Smith.

"No, sir, I think not," he muttered, after a pause. "I am not staying in this town any longer than I can help, I guess. I've lost two children and they will be buried to-day."

"All right, my man, but if you want work we have plenty of it for you."

The reporting of names and these quiet mutual congratulations of the men went on rapidly, but expected faces did not appear. This led Mr. Smith to ask, "How about George Thompson? Is he alive?"

"I do not know," answered the man addressed. "I do not think so."

"Who do you know are alive?" asked Mr. Smith, turning to another man.

Mr. Smith never once asked who was dead.

"Well," answered the man speaking reflectively, "I'm pretty sure Frank Smith is alive. John Dagdale is alive. Tom Sweet is alive, and I don't know any more, for I've been away--at Nineveh." The speaker had been at Nineveh looking for the body of his son. Not another word was said to him.

"Say, boys," exclaimed Mr. Smith suddenly, a few minutes after he had looked over the list, "Pullman hasn't reported yet."

"But Pullman's all right," said a man quickly, "I was up at his sister's house last night and he was there. That's more than I can say of the other men in Pullman's s.h.i.+ft though," added the speaker in a low tone.

Mr. Short took this man aside, "That is a fact," said he, "yesterday I knew of a family in which five out of six were lost. To-day I find out there were twenty people in the house mostly our men and only three escaped."

Each Thought the Other Dead.

Just then two men met at the door and fairly fell on each other's necks.

One wore a Grand Army badge and the other was a young fellow of twenty-three or thereabouts. They had been fast friends in the same department, and each thought the other dead. They knew no better till they met at the office door. "Well, I heard your body had been found at Nineveh," said the old man.

"And I was told you had been burned to death at the bridge," answered the other. Then the two men solemnly shook hands and walked away together.

A pale-faced woman with a shawl over her shoulders entered and stood at the table. "My husband cannot report," she said simply, in almost a whisper. "He worked for the Gautier Mill?" she was asked. She nodded, bent forward and murmured something. The man at the desk said: "Make a note of that; so-and-so's wife reports him as gone, and his wages due are to be paid to her."

The work of recording the men went on until nearly one o'clock. Then, after waiting for a long time, Mr. Smith said, "Out of 1400 men we now have 487. It may be there are 200 who either did not see the notice or who are too busy to come. Anyway, I hope so--my G.o.d, I hope so." All afternoon the greater part of the 487 men were swinging pickaxes and shovels, clearing the way for the railroad leading up to the Gautier Steel Works of the future.

The Morbidly Curious.

To-day the order "Halt!" rang out in earnest at the footbridge over the rus.h.i.+ng river into Johnstown. It was the result of a cry as early as the reveille, that came from among the ruins and from the hoa.r.s.e throats of the contractors--"For G.o.d's sake, keep the morbid people out of here; they're in the way!"

General Hastings ordered the picket out on the high embankment east of the freight depot, where every man, woman and child must pa.s.s to reach the bridge. Colonel Perchment detailed Captain Hamilton, of G Company, there with an ample guard, and all who came without General Hastings'

pa.s.s in the morning were turned aside. This afternoon a new difficulty was encountered. When you flashed your military pa.s.s on the sentinel who cried "Halt!" he would throw his gun slantwise across your body, so that the b.u.t.t grazed your right hip and the bayonet your left ear and say: "No good unless signed by the sheriff." The civil authorities had taken the bridge out of the hands of the militia, and the sheriff sat on a camp stool overlooking the desolate city all the forenoon making out pa.s.ses and approving the General's.

No Conflict of Authority.

The military men say there was no conflict of authority, and it was deemed proper that the civil authorities should still control the pa.s.s there. The sheriff came near getting shot in Cambria City this morning during a clash with one of his deputies over a buggy. Yet he looked calm and serene. Some beg him for pa.s.ses to hunt for their dead. One man cried: "I've just gotten here, and my wife and children are in that town;" another said, "I belong in Conemaugh and was carried off by the flood," while an aged, trembling man behind him whispered, "Sheriff, I just wanted to look where the old home stood." When four peaceful faced sisters in convent garb, on their mission of mercy, came that way the sentinels stood back a pace and no voice ordered "Halt!"

At noon the crane belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad was taken away from the debris at the bridge, and Mr. Kirk had to depend on dynamite alone. Later it was ordered back, and after that the work went on rapidly. An opening 400 feet long, which runs back in some places fifty feet, was made during the afternoon. A relief party yesterday found a ladies' hand satchel containing $91 in cash, deeds for $26,000 in property and about $10,000 in insurance policies. Mrs. Lizzie Dignom was the owner, and both she and her husband perished in the flood.

Remembering the Orphans.

Miss H.W. Hinckley and Miss E. Hanover, agent of the Children's Aid Society and Bureau of Information of Philadelphia, arrived here this morning, and in twenty minutes had established a transfer agency. Miss Hinckley said:

"There are hundreds of children here who are apparently without parents.

We want all of them given to us, and we will send them to the various homes and orphanages of the State, where they shall be maintained for several months to await the possibility of the reappearance of their parents when they will be returned to them. If after the lapse of a month they do not reclaim their little ones, we shall do more than we ordinarily do in the way of providing good homes for children in their cases. Think of it, in the house adjoining us are seven orphans, all of one family. We have been here only a half hour, but we have already found scores. We shall stay right here till every child has been provided for."

There is no denying that a great deal of ill-feeling is breeding here between the survivors of the flood over the distribution of the relief supplies. The supplies are spread along the railroad track down as far as Morrellville in great stacks; provisions, clothing, shoes, and everything else. The people come for them in swarms with baskets and other means of conveyance. Lines are drawn, which are kept in trim by the pickets, and in this way they pa.s.s along in turn to the point where the stock is distributed.

It was not unusual yesterday to hear women's tongues las.h.i.+ng each other and complaining that the real sufferers were being robbed and turned away, while those who had not fared badly by flood or fire were getting lots of everything from the committee. One woman made this complaint to a corporal.

"Prove it; prove it," he said, and walked away. She cried after him, "The pretty women are getting more than they can carry."

Twice the line of basket-carriers was broken by the guard to put out wranglers, and all through the streets of Cambria City could be heard murmurs of dissension. There is no doubt but that a strong guard will be kept in the town day and night, for in their deplorable condition the husbands may take up the quarrel of their wives.

Danger of Insanity.

The _Medical News_, of Philadelphia, with rare enterprise, despatched a member of its staff to Johnstown, and he telegraphed as follows for the next issue of that paper:

"The mental condition of almost every former resident of Johnstown is one of the gravest character, and the reaction which will set in when the reality of the whole affair is fully comprehended can scarcely fail to produce many cases of permanent or temporary insanity. Most of the faces that one meets, both male and female, are those of the most profound melancholia, a.s.sociated with an almost absolute disregard of the future. The nervous system shows the strain it has borne by a tremulousness of the hand and of the lip, in man as well as in woman.

This nervous state is further evidenced by a peculiar intonation of words, the persons speaking mechanically, while the voices of many rough-looking men are changed into such tremulous notes of so high a pitch, as to make one imagine that a child, on the verge of tears, is speaking. Crying is so rare that your correspondent saw not a tear on any face in Johnstown, but the women that are left are haggard, with pinched features and heavy, dark lines under their eyes.

"The State Board of Health should warn the people of the portions of the country supplied by the Conemaugh of the danger of drinking its waters for weeks to come."

The Women and Children.