Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  There was a call to arms, though: at a meeting at one o’clock in Pittsburgh’s Old City Hall, one resident, Robert Pitcairn, implored the attendees, saying, “it is not tomorrow you want to act, but today; thousands of lives were lost in a moment and the living need immediate help.”7 In less than an hour, two men standing at the front of the hall collected over $48,000 (a staggering amount in the 1800s, when a steak dinner cost less than half a dollar). As one reporter put it, there was “no oratory but the eloquence of cash.”8 Pittsburghers then dispatched wagons throughout the city to collect food, blankets, clothing, and tools, depositing the goods at Union Station, which took on the look of a Civil War depot, swarming with people loading the trains. Boats were also ferried up the line, bringing refugees back from across the river where they had been stranded, along with the ever-present army of corpses. People sent anything and everything, and Johnstowners put it all to good use. A steady stream of volunteers arrived from out of town—over a thousand by Sunday night, including fifty undertakers. Pittsburgh sent members of its fire department (who put out the Stone Bridge fire), while the Pennsy ordered in railroad workers.

  Perhaps the first semblance of government on the scene came with the arrival of Daniel Hartman Hastings, the state’s adjutant general, who hitched up his wagon on Saturday and watched the developments all day Sunday before speaking to Moxham and the committeemen about calling out the Pennsylvania National Guard. But the Johnstowners thought it best for the residents (and volunteers) to handle their own problems. Moxham thought the work would help people get their minds off the disaster. So when the first troops arrived from Pittsburgh, Hastings instructed them to return home. Even so, everyone began to see the need for help, especially when rumors of looting and brawling spread. Indeed, the news that out-of-town construction workers (such as the Booth and Flinn Construction Company’s workers, who had a reputation for thuggery and theft) were on the way caused much anxiety. Thus, if only to keep order, the committeemen decided to draft a formal request to the governor. But this came only after the rescue and recovery operations had been going on for more than twenty-four hours.

  An outpouring of relief, both physical goods and labor, arrived at Johnstown. Clara Barton, who would later receive deserved credit for the young American Red Cross’s efforts to help, arrived three days after the flood ended and would prove invaluable. But the rescuers had already been there for days, and none was more prominent than Captain Bill Jones, Andrew Carnegie’s famous supervisor at the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, who brought three hundred steelmen from Pittsburgh to help in the effort. Jones began his career as a private in the Civil War, gaining promotion to the rank of captain by 1864. He had achieved notoriety when he rejected Carnegie’s standing offer to co-opt talented leaders by making them part owners of his steel company, saying that he was not ownership material. When Carnegie asked what it would take to keep Jones, Jones replied, “A hell of a big raise.”9 Carnegie asked him for a number, and after he gave it to him Carnegie thought the amount—$15,000—was too low. Instead, Carnegie paid him $25,000—the salary of the president of the United States—making Jones one of the most highly paid managers in America. A master motivator, Jones knew how to organize, and above all he knew how to work. He paid out of his own pocket to stock a relief train, then labored for four straight days without rest until he was on the point of collapse. Just after Barton and her Red Cross showed up, Jones, exhausted, returned to Pittsburgh for sleep, praising the men who worked with him (particularly a group of Hungarians, who had been accused of looting), saying they “worked like heroes.”10 Bill Jones died just a few months after the flood when a blast furnace exploded in the Carnegie Steel plant.

  By June 6 and 7, thousands of pounds of coffee, ham, cornmeal, soap, canned goods, cheese, biscuits, and candles were being unloaded by the hour from trains. Tar, pitch, building supplies of all sorts, furniture, and even embalming fluid and quicklime for the dead bodies all flowed into Johnstown. Cincinnati meat packers shipped 20,000 pounds of ham, and a single New York butcher sent 150 pounds of bologna; Pennsylvania prison inmates bagged 1,000 loaves of bread; Wheeling, West Virginia, residents shipped a boxcar-load of nails. Commissaries scattered around town were so well stocked that all fears of food shortages had vanished by midweek. Mattresses, cots, blankets, tents, pillows, coffeepots, pipes, and over 7,000 pairs of shoes arrived, piling so high on the platforms that they obscured the trains. Enough tools came in that no worker had a reason to sit idle. Animal carcasses were thrown onto any of a dozen bonfires; graves with quicklime consumed the human dead; live plow teams pulled away debris.

  Then there was the money, which was generated by newspaper accounts, pictures, and even songs of the tragedy. Pittsburgh raised $100,000 in a week, and over half a million dollars total over a few weeks. Philadelphia sent $600,000; New York, $160,000; Boston, $150,000. Boxer Jake Kilrain, scheduled to fight John L. Sullivan for the world championship a few weeks later, fought an exhibition to raise Johnstown relief funds. The New York Metropolitan Opera produced a relief performance of Othello, and Buffalo Bill Cody, in Paris at the time, donated the earnings from a special show attended by the Prince of Wales. Bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa staged a special relief concert in Washington, D.C. Money streamed into Johnstown from everywhere, including Tiffany’s and Macy’s in New York City, donors in Tombstone, Arizona, and the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles.

  President Benjamin Harrison kicked in $300 of his own money, but he also made an appeal at a meeting at the Willard Hotel that proved so emotional it raised $10,000. Pennsylvania Republican boss Simon Cameron, known for his corruption and his comment that an honest politician is one who “when he is bought, stays bought,” wrote a check for $1,000. Help came from abroad too. The Irish cities of Belfast and Dublin sent money, while German donations exceeded $30,000. (Funds came from a total of fourteen foreign countries.) Total monetary contributions exceeded $3.6 million.

  Others joined Jones on the scene, including H. C. Tarr of the Utopia Embalming Fluid Company, who rode two hundred miles on horseback to help take care of the bodies. Half a dozen Philadelphia churches organized wagons of medical supplies. Thousands of preachers, doctors, and, of course, the usual retinue of adventurers, thieves, and the unemployed also descended on the struggling town. Billy Flinn’s construction crews, totaling roughly 1,000 men (“very few Americans among them,” according to one reporter) marched in, accompanied by four more relief trains.11 More than 7,000 outsiders came to work in Johnstown, and indeed, the appearance of so many new faces and rough men began to frighten the residents, thus leading Moxham to request National Guard troops to keep order. On Wednesday, Hastings called for an additional 500 men from Pittsburgh’s Fourteenth Regiment, who were brought in strictly to act as security.

  This was no small point: private philanthropy and local citizens had dealt with the “relief” efforts without the intrusion of even the state—let alone the federal—government. But the constitutional duty to protect life and secure property from pillaging had forced the federal government to send national guardsmen, an act completely in its power under the “general welfare” clause. Even before the army showed up, however, according to McCullough, “things were exceptionally well organized.”12

  The Red Cross established its reputation at Johnstown, despite arriving late to the cleanup process. Barton, then sixty-seven years old, came from Washington with a delegation of fifty doctors and nurses. Perhaps because of her frail appearance, Barton got a lot of attention from reporters. She also realized the importance of publicity for her organization and recognized that, while the Red Cross had worked in Illinois after a tornado and in Florida after a yellow fever epidemic, Johnstown presented a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Yet Barton worked well with Hastings, who was taken aback by her aggressiveness (“the gallant soldier could not have been more courteous and kind,” she said, but “I could not have puzzled General Hastings more if I had addressed him in Chines
e”).13 She soon had six two-story Red Cross hospitals up and running, with volunteers working around the clock, and as one of the most recognizable figures in Johnstown, Barton served to rally the workers and encourage the victims.

  Less than two decades after the Johnstown Flood, Ohio’s Miami Valley experienced a similar, though much less disastrous, flood. The hero of this story, John H. Patterson, could not have had less in common with Captain Bill Jones. Patterson was an industrialist of the first order who headed the powerful National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton. Early in 1913, a federal judge had found Patterson and other company officers guilty of antitrust violations and sentenced most of them to prison time (Patterson was sentenced to a year in the hoosegow, although the sentences were overturned on appeal). Only a few months after the sentences were handed down, a massive rainstorm hit Ohio, and by March, the rainfall levels had eclipsed anything the Weather Bureau had recorded. It rained for forty-eight hours straight at heavy levels, with the water pouring into the Miami River, as well as the Mad River. Flooding began on the Monday after Easter in the northern towns around Dayton, and although the levees held for a time, the Mad River levee broke on Tuesday morning, March 25, sending its contents into the Miami and Erie Canal. Within minutes, the floods surged over the canal banks and covered Dayton’s streets with five feet of water.

  The deluge struck before businesses and schools had opened, but the floodwaters soon reached residential areas, speeding in at 250,000 feet per second and reaching a depth of up to 14 feet in some places.14 Compromised by the additional volume, other levees, including the town of Hamilton’s, failed. As it usually does, damage from the flood soon produced fires, and people who had scrambled into the upper stories of apartment houses found themselves trapped by flames. By the time snow and more rain fell that night and helped put out the fires, over three hundred Daytonians were dead and property damage was over $1 million.15 One Dayton resident watched “houses and barns . . . torn from their foundations and float[ing] down Vine Street,” and could only helplessly look on as an old man on a makeshift raft was swept away by the current.16 Historian Judith Sealander, who chronicled the event, noted, “that several hundred rather than several thousand died was something for which the city’s business community, led by John H. Patterson and the NCR, deserved a large measure of credit.”17 Patterson had written a pamphlet in 1896 called “What Dayton, Ohio, Should Do to Become a Model City,” incorporating typical progressive views of the day regarding the importation of “experts” to handle specific functions. But it also involved applying business methods and common sense to city problems.

  Governor (and future presidential candidate) James Cox placed the city under martial law on March 27, but by that time Patterson had already organized the relief, even taking command over elected leaders such as Mayor Edward Phillips. Part of local government’s problem consisted of the fact that city hall was under water almost immediately. Nevertheless, the successful, efficient, and relatively quick disaster response and crisis management by the private sector “set a pattern that was followed for years,” noted Sealander:Voluntary community organization, not reliance on government aid, dominated flood relief and recovery efforts. The Miami Valley business community, led by John H. Patterson, raised millions of dollars, devised new methods and associations to speed the area’s reconstruction and recovery efforts, and supported a challenging new plan for permanent flood prevention. Its members repeatedly warned against dependence on outside state and federal monies, and in the enormous work of flood relief and recovery the private sector always dominated.18

  By 1913, these business leaders, who had formed the “Committee of One Hundred” in 1889 to pave the streets, install sewers, and develop green spaces, consistently viewed the government as part of the problem. Whether federal or state, governments, they felt, imposed unnecessary delays, represented bottlenecks, and were consistently behind the curve. While the unelected Patterson organized the recovery, setting up NCR as an emergency headquarters, the mayor and the city council—none of whom were injured—meekly asked only to be notified of decisions. Indeed, many residents thought the mayor had drowned, so irrelevant was his role in the relief effort. Governor Cox’s role was hardly more impressive, limited mostly to calling for relief from the secretary of war. Woodrow Wilson asked people to donate to the Red Cross. The Navy managed to arrive in Dayton from Louisville, adding experienced sailors to the boat rescues, but not for days after local Daytonians had already pulled out most of the desperate cases.

  Indeed, Patterson had little time for updating the mayor because his cash register company had suddenly become a rowboat manufacturing business, replete with an army of shipbuilders who turned out a rowboat every five minutes. Three days after the flood, NCR workers had churned out 276 flat-bottomed boats and delivered them to flooded districts to rescue people who had been stranded on rooftops or clinging to light poles, augmenting the 150 private boat owners who had already started rescue efforts on their own.19 One dynamic duo of canoeists, J. Bob Fries and Fred Nitzel, were credited with rescuing 135 persons.20 Patterson’s improvised boat-works, however, built boats capable of carrying six people plus the rower, and NCR’s carpenters made two of these vessels every fifteen minutes, allowing for much more widespread rescues. NCR’s Fred Oates used one of the boats not only to bring in ten to twelve people himself, but, after everyone in his zone was safe, went back out to deliver food to families holed up in upper stories of flooded districts.

  After turning NCR headquarters into a housing and medical station, Patterson allowed the Dayton Daily News to operate there until its own offices had been cleared of mud. An entire floor was converted into a dining room, complete with waitresses (normally company secretaries or clerks) in uniforms. NCR’s commissary served 2,700 meals a day, and all of NCR’s staff members were tasked with some type of emergency work, including sorting and “fumigating great piles of clothing,” while other NCR teams canvassed the city to seek donations.21 Patterson even cleared out a few offices to make room for pianos and solicited musicians from among the refugees to organize hymns or play ragtime. The company paid for an entire relief train stocked with medicine, then another, then still another. NCR even handled basic law enforcement functions before the National Guard arrived, with the full acquiescence of local authorities. Suddenly the private police, who had been the bane of unions, were welcome, and the tycoons who had “oppressed” average citizens with their wealth and power became indispensable in their moment of generosity and efficiency. Motorcyclists and boaters patrolled the city, deterring vandals and delivering supplies. Yet when the National Guard arrived, it was criticized by locals for its heavy-handedness, and as one reporter noted, guardsmen “forced in some instances at the points of bayonets [sightseers] to assist in the removal of carcasses.”22

  A publication called the Outlook reported that “No novelist or play-wright . . . ever devised anything more ingeniously dramatic—this heroic use of efficiency.”23 The St. Louis Star chimed in with praise of Patterson: “Patterson is the man, more than any other, who brought cosmos out of chaos,” and noted that if the U.S. government had had its way, Patterson would have been entirely out of the picture.24 For all his contributions, however, Patterson was certainly not alone in his efforts. Residents of North Dayton, Riverdale, and Dayton View all commenced their own rescue and relief plans in a short time. The isolated and wealthy Dayton View formed an association of seventy-five residents the next morning and allocated food, boats, and automobiles and dealt with sanitation issues.25 Riverdale, the Dayton Daily News reported, had a “first class [organization] from the start,” dispatching automobiles and wagons to the countryside to collect food and clothing immediately.26 At the same time, both NCR and, later, R. H. Grant (who oversaw the relief effort), kept close track of what provisions were given out and watched for abuse. Grant found that money “had been carefully accounted for,” and that even ruined clothing was turned over to rag dealers.27


  The business community and individual citizens, using their own initiative, had saved the city, while government contributed little. When Army doctors arrived, they expressed stunned amazement at the “business ability . . . reflected throughout the entire community.”28 When R. H. Grant took over on March 30, he found relief networks already in place, complete with geographic delineations used by churches and schools as relief stations, leaving little for government officials to do. If anything, Maj. Thomas Rhoads of the Army’s Medical Corps criticized the city government for encouraging unsanitary practices and turning “the Board of Health into just another patronage post, [whose] unqualified appointees had allowed all kinds of health dangers to persist.”29 Without question, Rhoads, who was placed in charge of sanitizing Dayton, did much to clean up the Gem City, building ten cleaning stations that offered lime and other chemicals, along with proper instructions on how to use them. Rhoads, however, did not always employ volunteer labor and sometimes ordered cleanups at bayonet point. At the same time, the private sector did not sit back: the Dayton Bicycle Club removed 2,000 dead horses and other small animals using 150 trucks.