End of the Dream

by Wylie, Philip;

  “They’ve panicked!” Nora said quietly but bitterly.

  “It’s inevitable.” I showed them why this sudden rush to evacuate the building had occurred: the irregular stream of flame had heated and splintered windows as it coursed downward, and then fired draperies and curtains. The wind had fanned those blazes into apartments on a dozen floors, setting them afire. From them, heat and smoke were rapidly filling the colossal tower.

  Soon that opening in the storm either closed up or was carried away and the gale resumed, skidding and twisting where the skyscrapers shunted it and bringing back the white, high impenetrability of snow.

  Later that night the blizzard ceased. Early in the dark of February 14 a warm wind rose and carried rain to the area in torrents. It put the fires out.

  3. Comment

  The estimated death toll for Greater New York was one million one hundred thousand. For the area from Maine to North Carolina and west to Ohio the estimate was five million. About one fourth were burned. Approximately half the victims froze to death. When traffic and transportation ceased to move people perished where they were or in search of some heated place. Homes and apartments dependent on electricity for heat became the tombs of myriads. Rich and poor, adults and children, they perished on the drifted highways, in halls, in neighbors’ homes, in churches and schools they became ice blocks.

  This Black Valentine’s Day calamity has been given detailed attention and chronologically displaced for cause. One obvious reason is that I experienced the event. But there are better reasons.

  The combined blizzard and blackout was the first blow to strike a great number of American cities. There had been shocking one-city calamities in the previous decade (1960–70) as will be shown here. But none was so massive, so lethal to so many and so costly in property. None, in sum, had been so absolute a proof of man’s dependence on technology and his consequent vulnerability. That Black Valentine’s Day inflicted a psychological wound that did not heal.

  An immense but incalculable toll of injuries occurred. Its final total has been variously estimated. Conservative figures state that some thirty million people of all ages were injured or became ill owing to the blackout, the very low temperatures and the blizzard.

  Another reason for giving the disaster special attention will be obvious. It was caused by a single man of mediocre intelligence, a victim of an undiagnosed paranoia. If that fact had been known at the time or in the months following, it might well have had a different effect on the public psyche. If one man could slaughter millions and put a third of his fellow citizens out of action for a time, that flaw in the system might have been inferred and acted on. The one-man cause might even have suggested what harm a single microbe, at its mutant appearance, could do, or one anything else, one more gadget or one more technical “breakthrough.”

  No such reaction occurred because no such information existed. In the end, it was acknowledged by the spokesmen for the power industry that the failure was due, in so far as it could humanly be traced, to a combination of human errors, human carelessness, oversight, possibly even some malicious tinkering, together with an incredible flaw in the transmission system—“the best extant.” The grid had not reacted as its designers expected when the evening’s local failures began to multiply—in micro-seconds. Somewhere there had to be an overlooked bug in the grid.

  The experts were going back to their drawing boards, as always, in such cases.

  For the next example of the innumerable events that led to civilized disintegration, a seemingly minor and local dilemma has been chosen. It occurred in the summer of 1976.

  The account that follows has been taken from the pages of the Olean (N.Y.) Times-Harbinger, an excellent small-city (or, nearly, big-town) newspaper. The Times-Harbinger energetically supported progress of the western New York area but it also undertook bold and well-informed crusades for improvements and attacked without fear those situations and activities in the area that its editors regarded as unprincipled, deleterious, dangerous, foolish or the like.

  Had it not been for the effort of members of the staff, made after the blight was history, to find out how many sorts of similar but smaller-scaled happenings had previously occurred in the area but without public notice, the initial and dramatic failure of one crop would never have led, as it did, to a national scandal.

  For three summer days a bluish haze accumulated over a part of the historic Genesee River Valley in western New York State, acrid-smelling, eye-smarting, nauseating where most dense. Superb journalism led to the unmasking of “blue-haze equivalents” in great numbers, all thitherto kept secret by big business pressures. There were many consequences of the exposé. For one, scores of top industrial executives went to prison, a minor result.

  Between the 1976 episode and 1979 more than twelve billion dollars were spent by industry and government to curtail those “blue-haze type” situations. But it wasn’t enough money. A new Administration soon pardoned the imprisoned executives. And the billions hastily spent on averting similar disasters in the future merely served to postpone them and make them ultimately more formidable.

  Another result of the “Olean indictment” may best be stated here and now. When the nationwide menace was uncovered it became necessary to halt more than two thousand industrial plants and facilities in USA for periods of a year or more while their waste-disposal methods were revised. This meant that American consumers went on short rations for that length of time. Steel manufacturing was gravely curtailed. Automobile production was stopped entirely. Building construction was severely limited. Petrochemical plants were forced to cut down many processes to a small fraction of normal production and to stop many others. There were other reasons for the industrial “recess.”

  The world situation in 1976, ’77 and ’78 was alarming, especially in the Near East. War was feared at any time and only desperate efforts of statesmen and leaders managed to stave off for years the expected conflict that became the Desert War. The claims of the Defense Department in the stoppage period on the Gross National Product had a compelling priority.

  A society that still saw itself as affluent and still looked toward “abundance forever” was deprived, in peacetime, for a year or more, of new cars, any right to build a new home, all highway extensions, all new household equipment—and a host of other common possessions it had taken for granted. Bitterness boiled up against the measures then taken, as mandatory for saving the environment.

  The Genesee Valley crop blight did not lead to national surveys and reports until early in the following year. The nation spent 1976 celebrating its two hundredth anniversary. That festival was a multibillion-dollar paean, in all fifty states, to what America had done, was doing and would do, with emphasis on technical marvels, the GNP, and marvels to come. But since, by ’76, people had frankly acknowledged that their “blessings” were accompanied by environmental curses, a secondary “theme” was set forth for the two hundredth anniversary of independence and progress. That was the promise of an all-out assault by science, industry and government on the causes of fear and wrath.

  That secondary theme was a public relations fraud. But its massive presentation in all media and by brilliant audiovisual exhibits was telling. Even well-informed and highly skeptical environmentalists and other concerned persons were deluded. Only the coolest, most knowledgeable and stubborn citizens resisted the ubiquitous displays of the American future as purged of pollution. Thus 1976 ended on a note of national expectations vastly greater and more confident than any in the recent past—and utterly without substance in one main part.

  For the second theme did not say or much reveal how the “glory of natural America” would be recovered, or who would do it, where the money would come from or what sacrifices and hardships would accrue to any such attempt. It merely displayed the faits accomplis, everywhere, clear air, clean rivers and deserts made green, with the endlessly hammered slogan, “America can! America will!”

  Soon after the
inauguration of the new President, what the staff of a newspaper in a small western New York City was uncovering and reporting began to be uncovered and reported in other regions, in parallel if not identical forms. The next few months brought forth suppressed information which obliged the President and Congress to devise laws that, by the following spring, had brought to a halt a vast amount of consumer goods production.

  Massive unemployment followed, as industry shut down to reconstruct itself. Federal funds were appropriated to meet such job loss but they met it only on a level of basic needs.

  The nation became angry, then hysterical. The behavior of the frustrated consumers became so appalling that, in June 1978, Congress and the President repealed the laws so that the forbidden goods would begin to flow sooner than planned and, in consequence, well before many of the major alterations in manufacturing practices had been completed. Haste and miscalculation, as has been noted, robbed even the finished work of final efficacy.

  What is important to know about America and Americans at this time should now be manifest. It was politically impossible in the late 1970s to compel even part of industry to suspend production for a mere twelve to eighteen months to make essential changes in techniques. The American citizenry revealed in its great majority that it was addicted to consumerism, in effect, and the projected period of goods withdrawal resulted in mass symptoms not unlike those of a drug-deprived addict.

  What seems strange and very sad to some of us in the Foundation was noted by Miles at about the time discussed here.

  The Industrial Revolution enabled most men in many lands to enjoy benefits that no man had ever known before, and to have other comforts, conveniences and luxuries that only kings and courts and feudal lords had previously possessed. For three generations the rise of technology increasingly provided that gigantic boon to most citizens in technologically advanced nations. The change in life was that sudden; the cornucopia exploded that abruptly; human hell was replaced by the new heaven of modern living that quickly. There was no time for men to adapt. There were not even enough data about the growing cost of this machine-made bounty until the machinery was in place and vastly producing. Man had too little warning of the self-limiting nature of his materialistic “spree,” and that little came so late, and was so complex, man in general could hardly be expected to understand and act properly—halting work on what he believed the most glorious and rightful page he’d written in all history.

  He blew himself up not by his explosion of knowledge but by the way he used it.

  Man was still, then, a child.

  Perhaps he can now achieve maturity.

  And now, to the blighted potatoes. . . .

  4. A Small Mistake

  POTATO CHIP CROP RUINED

  LOSS IN MILLIONS

  Gainesville, N.Y. July 7, 1976. Yesterday’s sudden alarm at the wilt of the main crop in this “potato capital” has overnight become a sad acceptance of disaster. The acrid haze noted in the area for the past days has completed its lethal work although traced to its source, distant industrial disposal wells. The famed Genesee River Valley annually produced a multimillion-dollar harvest of potatoes especially bred for size, texture and flavor to suit the requirements of the potato chip factories located nearby. But there will be no chips from this main source in the coming year.

  “It’s a total loss for everybody,” declared Theodore Jedlovski, one of the leading growers, “and the fault isn’t ours or nature’s but Buffalo’s and Lackawanna’s. Whoever is to blame is going to pay!” “Ted” Jedlovski, a leading figure in Grange activities, was referring to the cause of the calamity, underground seepage from some of the many waste disposal wells serving industries in and around the manufacturing city on Lake Erie. It is now clear that a number of these deep bores were not “secure” as assumed.

  Hundreds of them were used for the containment of industrial wastes after federal and state pollution laws prohibited their disposition in Lake Erie. Contrary to expert opinion, the liquids have seeped into underground strata and flowed long distances to form toxic gases which erupted in this region.

  Assistant State Geologist Ormitt Calliday issued the following explanation at noon today:

  “There is no longer any question about the cause. Toxic and corrosive wastes of many kinds have been pumped into such wells for more than a decade and even in the past there have been incidents of this sort on a minor scale. Areas distant from such dumpage have been plagued by venting of gases and noxious liquids due to thermal overflow or seepage through rock strata to points of issue.

  “Heavy industry in the area, denied lake and stream disposal, has been forced to turn to wells as the only alternative economically feasible. It has been a calculated risk and while other somewhat similar problems have been encountered, nothing of the present scale or distance from the probable points of origin seemed likely.

  “When yesterday’s potato wilting was observed,” the Assistant State Geologist went on, “an analysis of the haze was immediately begun. Preliminary reports, while not quantitative, show traces of a dozen possible plant toxins including arsenicals, chromates, fluorine compounds, cadmium and various particular and other substances. Many of the last are in complex chemical combinations which will require lengthy investigation before their molecular structure can be determined. The causal agent acts selectively on the potato and allied species such as ‘deadly nightshade’—plants in the solanum family which have shown similar distress. This is seen as suggestive by the chemists and botanists now working in teams on the problem and may furnish a lead.”

  Asked, later, by a band of angry farmers informally gathered in the local inn who was to blame, the expert’s answers did little to lessen the hostile mood. In effect, Calliday tried to explain that the “blue haze” resulted from an underground seepage from wells fifty miles or more distant which moved in a deep stratum combining with each other and with underground, natural materials on the way, so that their original sources would almost surely not be traceable.

  Only one solid fact arises in the mass of mixed reports and of suspicion and efforts to evade blame: the great potato chip crop is ruined. Somehow, from somewhere, a highly selective but completely destructive chemical gas, fog or mist has issued from the ground in an area slightly more extensive than that in which specialized farmers raise the bulk of those potatoes that are made into the popular “chips,” thin-sliced, fried, salted and packaged under a dozen brand names.

  That industry is responsible is almost certain. No natural phenomenon on record has produced such a grim effect. All species in a great genus, including tomatoes, are completely ruined by exposure.

  The Times-Harbinger is going to follow this story until the people and corporations guilty are located and named, or until it can be shown that the strange plague was not avoidable and that no human agent or agencies were the cause. If the Buffalo industrial complex is responsible for the extermination of a highly profitable food crop in the Genesee River Valley, the processes producing that kill must be learned and changed. The valley is an agricultural treasure of long-time renown. Industry must not and will not be permitted to devastate that rich, beautiful and productive freehold—or any other!

  Olean, September 3, 1976. The Times-Harbinger’s pledge, following the potato crop loss of last July, to pursue every angle of that catastrophe led to a frighteningly frustrating effort. The editors have been promising a report ever since, and until last Wednesday, the first, there has not been sufficient material with adequate proof to justify such a report.

  Today, there is plenty.

  In a series of features the Times-Harbinger will run during the next six weeks these findings will be published.

  As has been made clear by several interim editorials, both the minor earlier rumors and the recent, preliminary, scientific findings have been suppressed by means and in ways utterly unacceptable and shocking in a supposedly free and open democratic nation. It is, then, with a sense of deep shame that the Ti
mes-Harbinger opens its exposé with accounts of events prior to the Genesee blight which, in every case, have been thoroughly documented and proven but were kept from general knowledge. No means of silencing those who had the facts seems to have been too cunning, illegal or unethical, even criminal in many cases, for the “interests” and “authorities” determined to repress the truth.

  In mid-January 1974, during a thaw, a toxic flood burst into the cellars of a block of newly built homes in the Wiggins-Heath development east of Clarence, N.Y. The flood carried unidentified but nauseous wastes which forced the occupants of sixteen houses to evacuate them and they were not able to return to their homes until a team from a major industrial plant had “volunteered” as a “public service” to “decontaminate” the homes.

  No compensation was offered, though householders tried to bring suit against the county, as it was believed the toxic or nauseous matter came from a leak in the brand-new sewers in the development. How such a bizarre substance got into the sewer lines was not investigated, nor was the motive that led an industrial team to decontaminate the homes ever questioned.

  In March of that year a storm sewer in Depew “erupted” and overflowed sidewalks with a greenish and viscous liquid at a bus stop where about a dozen grade school students were waiting. Ten of these children soaked their feet in boarding the bus. All ten suffered delayed but severe burns. Some sustained crippling injuries. Angry parents made a very extensive effort to place the blame for the tragedy and to gain redress. They were not wholly successful. They failed to get the news of the severe harm to their children aired in any medium. It soon proved that radio, TV and the press had been warned by the Department of Defense (as the parents were also soon warned) to keep quiet about the burns suffered by the children. The families were promised modest sums in redress and these sums were paid after all parties concerned had signed pledges of secrecy.