Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  Meanwhile, as in Johnstown, nearby communities delivered bread, ham, eggs, butter, cheese, milk, and canoes and had begun collecting those items before the water even reached its full height.30 Preble County began relief efforts a mere two hours after the reports reached officials, and nearby towns reacted nearly as quickly by forming relief committees in Troy, Greenville, Tippecanoe, and many other communities. NCR acted as a clearinghouse for refugees, but every day citizens from Oakwood, Lebanon, Xenia, and elsewhere took in families. The Pennsylvania Railroad shipped goods free of charge, sending its own supply train of carpenters, machinists, tradesmen, and wiremen. Tracks cleared by Wednesday, when the trains began to arrive. Auto companies sent fleets of rescue trucks and cars.31 Perhaps not ironically, the mayor of Johnstown sent a note to Patterson with “four cars of provisions and clocthing [sic] accompanied by our chief of police who is at your command,” and further promised money “collected for your relief.”32

  Sealander concluded that “business planning, not luck” (nor, it should be added, government) saved the city from an epidemic that threatened to engulf a population exposed to raw sewage and freezing temperatures.33 A weekly newspaper writer gushed with admiration for Patterson’s operation: “this polished organism was turned in a twinkling without discord or hitch, into a vast smoothly working executive headquarters, hotel, hospital, and relief station.”34 Except for one political appointee, everyone on the Citizens’ Relief Committee was a Dayton businessman. Members included Frank T. Huffman of the Davis Sewing Machine Company; Adam Schantz, the head of a large local brewery; John R. Flotron of the John Rouzer Company; and Patterson. Not only did Patterson and the citizens ignore government, but they used the Relief Committee to abrogate the city’s health powers and assumed the duties themselves, overseeing inspections of every house in the city and isolating those with communicable diseases. Committee members inspected every grocery, bakery, restaurant, and school and disinfected them before permitting them to reopen. NCR’s tent city had electric lights, sewer lines, flush toilets, and showers, and the committee provided flooded regions of Dayton with lime and disinfectant chemicals. The Dayton Bicycle Club handled the removal of animal carcasses (they carted off more than two thousand large animals and three thousand cats, dogs, and birds, often pulling them from rooftops or flooded basements).35

  Once again, the Red Cross got involved, donating almost $1 million for Dayton flood relief, while local Ohio contributions exceeded half a million dollars. Naturally, the Red Cross set up its local headquarters in the NCR building, where officials “became the company’s pupils and used lessons learned during national disasters for decades to come.”36 Patterson set up officers to review the relief requests and process them for the Red Cross, although most assistance came in the form not of cash, but of “sweat equity,” in which teams of burly men arrived to rebuild a house. If citizens owned their residence, the Relief Committee provided bridge loans until the banks could reopen to more than one thousand families. In addition, the Relief Committee created a department specifically to help reopen businesses, and within a year, more than five hundred firms received basic assistance grants to help them get started. Bakers used the funds to buy new ovens, seamstresses and tailors new sewing machines, and so on.

  Patterson paid some seven thousand NCR employees their full salary for two weeks in April while they did absolutely no business at all for the company. His managers worked fourteen-hour days arranging, procuring, and organizing everything from the placement of latrines to the qualifications for cash assistance. All their contributions were made at a time when neither U.S. tax law nor Ohio’s tax code rewarded them with deductions for such philanthropy. Nor did it end when the floodwaters receded and Dayton returned to “normalcy.” Those same business leaders joined in development of the Miami Conservancy District, a massive effort at water control and flood relief undertaken on a topography only slightly less daunting than that of the Panama Canal. The Miami Conservancy District purchased thirty thousand acres of farmland spread over nine counties using eminent domain, but also employing their own cash. As Sealander pointed out, “the Flood Prevention Committee and the Finance committee . . . would waste little time begging either the federal or the state government for financial assistance for flood control.”37 Not only would it take too long, but the businessmen wanted no restrictions on their planning. Raising their own financing—Patterson directed a subscription campaign that raised $2 million in a month, using NCR employees, again, to solicit contributions—involved ribbons, rallies, slide and movie shows, all generating enthusiasm for the “Two Million Dollar Fund.”

  At that point, Patterson gained the assistance of another Dayton businessman, Arthur Morgan, who ran a local engineering business and had worked as a drainage engineer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Morgan was self-taught and did not have a formal engineering degree. Just like noneconomist George Gilder, who, in the 1980s, would be able to reshape economic thinking away from Keynesianism because he was not tied to existing “monetarist” schools, Morgan was “a man interested in untried methods, in unconventional techniques. . . .”38 Like Patterson and another Dayton legend, Colonel Edward Deeds, who had worked at NCR and who built the Shredded Wheat factory, Morgan wanted to avoid a quick fix and create a plan for the district that would endure for hundreds of years. They all recognized that the trouble was not in local bridges or canals, but higher up in the valley, and that a series of earthen dams—or, more appropriately, hills—would have to be erected to control flooding. The plan called for large retarding basins, four situated north of Dayton and one to the south, each allowing for normal water flow through canals, slowing down the torrent during storms. Ultimately, the system was built to sustain water at double the 1913 flood levels. Meanwhile, farmland within the thirty thousand acres would be leased in dry times. Overall, the plan protected everyone in the Miami Valley, not just Daytonians, and never again did a flood damage the valley. In 1937, a flood of nearly equal magnitude struck the Miami Valley and was easily controlled, even as other states in the Midwest and along the Atlantic coast were ravaged by the storm.

  Of course, opponents railed against “big business,” Colonel Deeds, Patterson, and their friends. Despite the fact that there was virtually no money in the relief effort for any of the Dayton companies, critics complained that it was all a money-grab, and accused them of using the effort to set up large electric power plants. Morgan responded by organizing the support of academics and engineers who endorsed the plan, and who testified on its behalf in state hearings. When it was approved, and when construction started, the business leaders involved in the Conservancy District remained committed to humane working conditions, building camps for both single and married workers near the dam sites. They provided adult education, including industrial arithmetic, math, and English. From 1914 until 1922 when the system was completed, the district paid lower wages than most other sectors, but never wanted for employees because of the exceptional working conditions. Dayton’s business leaders weren’t perfect—they misjudged the total cost of the effort by about $11 million (the final price tag was $34 million)—but they protected the citizens and lived up to their promise that Dayton would never again suffer from a major flood. Looking back in his 1951 memoir, Morgan wrote that “the extremely small loss of life in proportion to the numbers caught in the flood did not mean that there was not a great danger, but rather that a practical-minded, competent, and resourceful people met an unprecedented situation with stamina, inventive genius, and a fine sense of mutual responsibility and neighborly sharing of tasks.”39

  Morgan, of course, gave himself no credit even though he and fellow business leaders went above and beyond to save the city, then got it back on its feet. This has led one historian to complain that the Dayton planners accomplished their grand plans “ ‘for’ the people, not, by and large, ‘with’ them,” which, of course, would be a characterization of almost every “great man” in the nineteenth or early tw
entieth century, in that few consulted “the people” when they did anything. Nor should they have.40 When “the people” were sitting on rooftops or running from floodwaters, it wasn’t “the people” or “the government” who came to their rescue but individuals. In fact, the most effective relief efforts were conducted by units of heroes directed by one man (or, in the case of the Red Cross, one woman). Even government-sanctioned organizations originated in the will of the individual. For instance, the Miami Valley Conservation District was the embodiment of the intentions of Patterson, Morgan, and Deeds, not a government body created by elected officials. Throughout history, all inventions, all major decisions have come down to a single person, no matter how many outside pressures or “social factors” provided influence. The simple fact is, had Patterson’s NCR not existed, it would, in all likelihood, have taken Dayton years to recover, and the death toll and suffering would have been higher by several orders of magnitude.

  More important, however, the people of the Miami Valley, just like those in Johnstown, not only accepted private philanthropy, they accepted and welcomed the “strings” that accompanied it. It was understood that as soon as possible people had to pitch in and help other victims; that it was not permissible to take handouts without attempting to repay them, either directly to the giver, or indirectly by helping others in similar circumstances. No one expected government at any level to provide any amount of relief at all, save basic police protection. Everyone knew that if they had to rely on government, instead of friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, not only would relief take longer, it might never come at all.

  In 1900, when a massive hurricane slammed into Galveston Island, Texas, it put one-third of Galveston under water and killed six thousand. Although Mayor Walter C. Jones created the Citizens Relief Committee (CRC) to organize the short-run recovery, the committee members did all the work of setting up relief stations, acquiring goods, and enlisting local workers to clear wreckage and retrieve bodies.41 A building committee built 483 houses at a cost of only $350 each, while railroads gave free passes to those seeking to relocate. As in other disasters, money poured in, and, of course, the Red Cross arrived. Galveston’s consumer economy began to return in less than three weeks. Except for the involvement of Jones, the private sector had handled the recovery and cleanup.

  A disaster of a different sort—but met with quite similar public response—occurred seven years earlier on the other side of the United States. At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, the ground under San Francisco shook violently from a massive earthquake (today estimated to be in the range of 7.8 on the Richter scale). Its epicenter lay only two miles offshore, and as entire sections of city buildings collapsed, more than 3,000 people died. A quarter of a million people became homeless as 80 percent of the city was destroyed directly in the quake or shortly thereafter in the ensuing fires, which consumed 25,000 buildings and covered almost 500 city blocks. Unlike in Johnstown or Dayton, in San Francisco the U.S. Army under Maj. Gen. Adolphus Greely moved in rapidly and provided valuable services, guarding all the banks and city offices and helping to feed, clothe, and supply the thousands of victims. The Army also constructed over 5,500 relief houses, grouped in eleven camps and rented to the refugees for $2 a month until their homes were rebuilt.

  Perhaps the greatest story of San Francisco heroism, however, came in the form of an Italian banker, Amadeo Peter Giannini, who had founded the Bank of Italy two years earlier. Giannini, asleep in his home in San Mateo, was thrown out of bed by the force of the quake. He dressed, took a commuter train some of the distance to San Francisco, then “ran, walked and hitched the rest of the way.”42 An employee had opened for business as usual at 9:00, and the bank held $80,000 in gold, silver, coins, and paper National Bank notes when Giannini arrived there. He figured he had “about two hours to get out of there [and] no place in San Francisco could be a safe storage spot for the money.”43 The banker assembled two teams of horses and two wagons from his stepfather’s produce company that were loaded with orange crates, emptied the oranges and filled the boxes with gold, and waited until nightfall to attempt to leave. He found the streets clogged with refugees and firefighters, and expected to be robbed at any moment. Somehow, Giannini reached his home and stored the gold in the ash trap of his living room fireplace.

  When he returned to the city, much of it had burned down and the Italian residents of North Beach had been badly hit. There was no Bank of Italy building left, and all the assets that remained were the $80,000 Giannini had to cover deposits of over $840,000. Yet Giannini correctly perceived that it would be not only a bold statement of confidence, but also good business for the bank to reopen. Despite a government prohibition and bank holiday, Giannini stretched a banner across some barrels to create a makeshift sign and opened the Bank of Italy in a temporary headquarters before any other banks were doing business. Typically, the government stood in the way of progress, but Giannini would have none of it: he announced in a booming voice to anyone who would listen, “We’re going to rebuild San Francisco, and it will be greater than ever.”44 He placed a big bag of money conspicuously in the open and by his—and the bank’s—presence stated that he believed in San Francisco. Although he only gave depositors half of what they said they needed, he reckoned, correctly, that many people were hoarding gold and that his confidence would help bring that into circulation. In a mere six weeks after the earthquake and fire, deposits exceeded withdrawals. The North Beach Italians stunned the rest of the city by rebuilding faster than anyone else, and within two months, Giannini announced plans (plus a $500,000 stock offering) to build a new office.

  The larger story, of course, was that Giannini went on to reshape American banking with his massive system of branch banks and through his innovative approach to lending in which he focused on smaller borrowers. “A retail bank for the many,” he would later call the Bank of Italy. It never could have happened, though, without his daunting rescue of San Francisco when the government said “No!”

  Downtown, the city hall was in ruins after the earthquake, so Mayor E. E. Schmitz proceeded to the Hall of Justice. The earthquake rendered the jails unsafe, so Schmitz ordered the release of petty offenders and sent the serious felons to San Quentin State Prison. In the subsequent looting, police were so busy helping with the rescue of those crushed and wounded that they could do little. Other than that, and closing the saloons, the city government commandeered several ships in the harbor which had provisions. Yet Schmitz also quickly sent telegrams to architects, draftsmen, and builders in several major cities, causing an army of architects to arrive while the rubble was still smoldering. As the American Builder’s Review sarcastically noted:we are literally swamped with architects and draftsmen. Hundreds have come here and hundreds more are coming. In face of all this it is safe to say, and we know what we are talking about, that our architects are on the whole less busy than they were before the 18th of April.45

  One of the best memoirs of the San Francisco earthquake, “Man at His Best,” was written by Robin Lampson, who recalled his childhood experience of feeling the buildings shake in Geyserville, California, located in Sonoma County, some seventy-five miles north of San Francisco.46 As word spread farther south that survivors of the calamity needed food, Lampson recalled that a freight train shunted a boxcar onto a siding in Geyserville (as it did at every way station along the route). The town, with a population of four hundred, responded with remarkable generosity: within a couple of hours, “men, women, and children began coming to that boxcar with baskets and packages and armloads of food . . . [bringing] homemade bread, mason jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables, sacks of potatoes, bags of dry beans, rice and sugar, and jars of fresh milk and freshly churned butter.”47 Without radio or television—relying only on postal carriers and bicycles to carry information—people kept delivering food. Meats arrived later that day, Lampson recalled. Even though families traditionally put away most of their canned food for the winter, his parents q
uickly agreed to share half of what they had. But the most remarkable thing was what followed: “the next morning the northbound freight left another empty car on the siding—and the amazing spontaneous process of filling it began all over again. And from the report I remember hearing at the time, the same sort of response was happening at all the other stations of the railroad.”48 This went on, he wrote, for almost two weeks. None of the people in the community were wealthy, but all shared.

  In each of these cases, and others (such as nineteenth-century strikes), consistent with the Constitution, the federal government only became involved in disaster relief when there was a threat to public order that affected national interests. From 1886 to 1900, the “most deadly weather ever to hit the United States,” including six hurricanes, a flood, an earthquake, and wildfires, battered the country, but there was no federal response because in no case was the national security issue involved.49 When disaster relief was deemed of national import, the militia (later the National Guard) was the primary coordinator and source of manpower, since it was considered a security issue, not philanthropy. Hence, administrations used the 1807 Insurrection Act, which empowered the president to deploy troops to put down insurrection and rebellion and to crush strikes at steel plants.

  In 1917, the War Department’s Special Regulation Number 67 first federalized disaster coordination in its “Regulations Governing Flood Relief Work in the War Department.”50 Even then, and until the Cold War, citizens did not expect the U.S. government to contribute to relief efforts, and both Democratic and Republican administrations followed Article II, Section 2, clause 1 of the Constitution (i.e., the presidential “commander in chief” clause) to govern their responses to natural disasters.