CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

Recapitulation 141

The various steps in the study presented in propositional form 142

The role of catastrophe 145

Index 147

"This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does

not end so. It is the way its chapters open."--_St. Augustine._

INTRODUCTION

The "catastrophe" in sociological literature--The "catastrophic view"

_vs._ progress in evolution--Factors in social change--The stimuli

factors--What crises mean--Communities and great vicissitudes--Causes of

immobility--Catastrophe and progress--Historic cases suggested for

study.

There are many virgin fields in Sociology. This is one of the

attractions the subject has for the scientific mind. But of all such

fields none is more interesting than the factor of catastrophe in social

change.

And strangely enough, if there are but few references to the problem in

all our rapidly-growing literature, it is not because catastrophies are

few. Indeed it would seem that with the advent of the industrial age,

disasters grow more frequent every year.[1] Many are small, no doubt,

touching but the life of a village or a borough--a broken dyke, a bridge

swept out by ice, a caved-in mine. Others again write themselves on the

pages of History--an Ohio flood, an Omaha tornado, a Chicago fire, a San

Francisco earthquake, a Halifax explosion. Each in its own way inscribes

its records of social change--some to be effaced in a twelve-month--some

to outlast a generation. Records they are, for the most part unread. How

to read them is the problem. And it may be that when readers have grown

in number and the script is better known, we shall be able to seize the

moment of catastrophe and multiply immeasurably its power for social

good.

[1] "Within a score of years disasters ... have cost thousands of

lives, have affected by personal injury, or destruction of property no

fewer than a million and a half persons and have laid waste property

valued at over a billion dollars ... the expectation based on past

experience is that each year no less than half a dozen such

catastrophies will occur." (Deacon J. Byron, _Disasters_, N. Y., 1918,

p. 7.) This quotation refers to the United States alone.

To define the term catastrophe is scarcely necessary. The dictionary

calls catastrophe "an event producing a subversion of the order or

system of things," and such as "may or may not be a cause of misery to

man."[2] It is desirable however to limit the use of the term, in

primary investigations at least, to those disasters which affect

communities rather than states or nations, for restricted areas are more

amenable to study. National cataclysms, such as war, famine, and

financial panic are too general in character, and function on too grand

a scale for satisfactory treatment, at least until the ground is

cleared. It is necessary also to limit this investigation to those

social changes which follow upon catastrophies, rather than precede

them. For there are social effects which result from living in

anticipation of disaster, such as are observable among communities in

volcanic areas. Interesting as a broad study might be, it would be

likely to lead the investigator too far afield into the realm of

speculation. Nevertheless a general point of view is necessary to give

meaning to even a limited treatment of the theme. For this purpose there

may be contrasted the catastrophic view of history, as illustrated by

that of the Hebrew peoples, and the modern conception of progress

through evolution. The former looks upon history as a series of

vicissitudes mercifully ending one day in final cataclysm. The spirit of

apocalyptic expectancy prevails. Social conditions rest hopelessly

static. Faith is pinned to a spiritual kingdom which can grow and can

endure. Against this has been set an optimistic evolution, pictured like

an escalade with resident forces lifting the world to better days.

Progress becomes a smooth continuous growth. On the other hand the newer

philosophy sees in history not necessarily the operation of progressive

evolution but also of retrogressive evolution and cataclysm.[3] There

are great stretches of smooth and even current in the stream, but always

along the course are seen the rapid and the water-fall, the eddy and

reversing tide. The latter is the general subject of this dissertation,

and its thesis is the place of the water-fall. Only a very small, and

specialized treatment is attempted; the great Niagaras must be left to

abler hands.

[2] Catastrophies are those unforeseen events which the Wells-Fargo

express receipts used to call quaintly "Acts of God, Indians and other

public enemies of the government."

[3] If nature abhors a vacuum, she also abhors stagnation. Is there

not reason behind all this action and reaction, these cycles and

short-time changes which her observers note? May it not well be that

the ever-swinging pendulum has a stir-up function to perform and that

the miniature daily catastrophies of life are the things which keep it

wholesome and sweet?

"The old order changeth yielding place to the new.

And God fulfils Himself in many ways

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

--Tennyson, Alfred, _The Passing of Arthur_.

The conception of social change as used in this monograph also needs

definition. By social change is meant those rapid mutations which

accompany sudden interferences with the equilibrium of society, break up

the _status-quo_, dissipate mental inertia and overturn other tendencies

resistant to structural modification. The various forces which initiate

such disturbances are factors in social change. These factors may be

intra-social,--within the group--such factors as operate in the regular

social process, imitation and adaptation, for example; or they may be

extra-social, "stimuli" factors--from without the group--such as,

accidental, extraneous or dramatic events. Of the latter conquest may be

one, or the sudden intrusion of a foreign element, or rapid changes of

environment.[4]

[4] Ross, Edward A., _Foundations of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1905),

ch. viii, p. 189.

These sudden changes are fully worthy of careful study by scientific

method. However important the accumulation of impulses toward social

transformation may be, there is often a single "precipitating factor"

which acts as the "igniting spark" or "the knocking away of the

stay-block," or "the turning of a lever."[5] It is among such

extra-social or "stimuli" factors that catastrophe falls as a

precipitating agent in social change.

[5] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 198.

The significance of crisis in social change likewise requires attention,

and it will be clarifying to our thought at this point to distinguish

carefully between crisis and catastrophe, and to inquire what the nature

of the former really is. The word "crisis" is of Greek origin, meaning a

point of culmination and separation, an instant when change one way or

another is impending. Crises are those critical moments which are, as we

say, big with destiny. Battles have crisis-hours when the tide of

victory turns. Diseases have them--the seventh day in pneumonia, or the

fourteenth day in typhoid fever. Social institutions afford numerous

illustrations, such as the eighth year of marriage.[6] There are

critical years of stress and strain--the ages of fourteen and forty in

life-histories, the latter being according to Sir Robertson Nicoll the

most dangerous hour of existence. Other crises are "hours of insight" in

the world of thought, and hours of opportunity in the world of

action,--that "tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood

leads on to fortune," hours of doubt in religion "when all the gods are

dead." "Crisis," Professor Shailer Mathews observes, "is something more

than a relative term. It describes a situation which is no ordinary

member of a line of antecedents and consequents, but one that assures

radical change in the immediate future." He distinguishes between a

crisis and a revolution. "The difference between a revolution and a

crisis is the difference between the fire and the moment when someone

with a lighted match in hand pauses to decide whether a fire shall be

lighted." The term covers the situation preceding change, whether this

situation be the culmination of a process or the result of some

particular stimulus. "It is not necessarily precipitated by great

issues. Quite as often it is occasioned by events .... which are so

related to a new situation as to set in motion an entire group of forces

as a match kindles a huge bonfire when once the fuel is laid."[7] The

failure to distinguish between that which occasions the crisis and the

crisis itself has been the source of some confusion in thinking. "Defeat

in battle, floods, drought, pestilence and famine," are not strictly

crises, but they super-induce the crisis-situation, as does anything

which brings about "a disturbance of habit," though it be simply "an

incident, a stimulation or a suggestion." In short, crises are the

result either of a slowly maturing process or of sudden strain or shock;

and the nature of the reaction in the crisis-hour is nothing more than

the effort towards the reestablishment of habits, new or old, when the

former functioning has been disturbed. The situation, as has been

pointed out, is closely correlated with attention.

[6] Jeune, Sir Francis, a celebrated judge in divorce cases.

[7] Mathews, Shailer, _The Church in the Changing Order_ (N. Y.,

1907), ch. i, p. 1.

When the habits are running smoothly the attention is relaxed; it is

not at work. But when something happens to disturb the run of habit,

the attention is called into play, and devises a new mode of

behavior which will meet the crisis. That is, the attention

establishes new and adequate habits, or it is its function so to

do.[8]

[8] Thomas, William I., _Source Book of Social Origins_ (Chicago,

1909), Introduction, p. 17.

What appears to take place is analogous to what is known as the

reconditioning of instincts in psychology. Professor Giddings has been

the first to make the sociological application:

Folk-ways of every kind, including mores and themistes are the most

stable syntheses of pluralistic behavior; yet they are not

unchanging. Under new and widening experience they suffer attrition

and are modified. Instincts and with them emotion and imagination

which largely fills the vast realm between instinct and reason are

reconditioned. The word means simply that reflexes and higher

processes subjected to new experiences are in a degree or entirely

detached from old stimuli and associated with new ones. From time to

time also traditions are invaded and habits are broken down by

crisis. Pluralistic behavior then is scrutinized, criticized,

discussed. It is rationally deliberated.[9]

[9] Giddings, Franklin H., "Pluralistic Behaviour," _American Journal

of Sociology_, vol. xxv, no. 4 (Jan., 1920), p. 401.

Crises often, perhaps most often, precede catastrophies, as when

revolutions break. The alternate truth that the catastrophies themselves

are re-agents to generate the crisis-situation has not been so commonly

noted. Nevertheless the disintegration of the normal by shock and

calamity is an increasingly familiar spectacle.

Heretofore it has been in the life-histories and careers of individual

men rather than in the case of communities that the observations have

been recorded. Our biographies teem with instances of personal crises

precipitated by a great shock or disappointment--Hawthorne's dismissal

from the custom house, Goldsmith's rejection from Civil Service, the

refusal of Dickens's application for the stage, the turning back of

Livingstone from China, the bankruptcy of Scott.

Now examination reveals that the one thing characteristic of the

crisis-period in the individual is a state of fluidity[10] into which

the individual is thrown. Life becomes like molten metal. It enters a

state of flux[11] from which it must reset upon a principle, a creed, or

purpose. It is shaken perhaps violently out of rut and routine. Old

customs crumble, and instability rules. There is generated a state of

potentiality for reverse directions. The subject may "fall down" or he

may "fall up." The presence of dynamic forces in such a state means

change. But the precise role of the individual mind in a period of

crisis is a problem not for sociology but for psychology.

[10] The phrases "The world in a welter," "nations in the melting

pot," "life in the smelting oven," are commonly heard and suggest a

solution stage prior to the hardening process, or antecedent to

crystallization.

[11] Following the French Revolution Wordsworth wrote:

I lost

All feeling of conviction and in fine

Sick, wearied out with contrarieties

Yielded up moral questions in despair.

--_Prelude_, bk. xi.

The principle that fluidity is fundamental to social change is also

true, however, of the community. Fluidity is not the usual state of

society.

Most of the "functions" of society have no tendency to disturb the

_status quo_. The round of love, marriage and reproduction, so long

as births and death balance, production so far as it is balanced by

consumption, exchange so long as the argosies of commerce carry

goods and not ideas, education so far as it passes on the

traditional culture, these together with recreation, social

intercourse, worship, social control, government and the

administration of justice are essentially statical. They might

conceivably go on forever without producing change.[12]

[12] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 200.

Indeed the usual condition of the body politic is immobility,

conservatism and "determined resistance to change." The chief reason for

this immobility is habit:[13]

When our habits are settled and running smoothly they most resemble

the instincts of animals. And the great part of our life is lived in

the region of habit. The habits like the instincts are safe and

serviceable. They have been tried and are associated with a feeling

of security. There consequently grows up in the folk mind a

determined resistance to change ... a state of rapid and constant

change implies loss of settled habits and disorganization. As a

result, all societies view change with suspicion, and the attempt to

revise certain habits is even viewed as immorality. Now it is

possible under such conditions for a society to become stationary or

to attempt to remain so. The effort of attention is to preserve the

present status, rather than to re-accommodate. This condition is

particularly marked among savages. In the absence of science and a

proper estimate of the value of change they rely on ritual and magic

and a minute unquestioning adhesion to the past. Change is

consequently introduced with a maximum of resistance ... Indeed the

only world in which change is at a premium and is systematically

sought is the modern scientific world.[14]

But when there comes the shattering of the matrix of custom by

catastrophe, then mores are broken up and scattered right and left.

Fluidity is accomplished at a stroke. There comes a sudden chance for

permanent social change.

[13] To this cause of immobility may be added others, such as: (1)

Narrow experience and few interests. (2) Large percentage of

population owning property. (3) Oriental pride in permanence. (4)

Fatalistic philosophies. (5) Over-emphasis of government.

[14] Thomas, _op. cit._, pp. 20, 21.

Social changes follow both minor and major disasters. The destruction of

a mill may change the economic outlook of a village. The loss of a

bridge may result in an entirely different school system for an isolated

community; a cloud-burst may move a town. Great visitations, like the

Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake, reveal these social

processes in larger and more legible scale. Take as a single instance

the latter city. Its quick recovery has been called one of the wonders

of the age. In the very midst of surrounding desolation and business

extinction, the Californian city projected a Panama-Pacific exposition,

and its citizens proceeded to arrange for one of the greatest of all

world fairs. On the other hand, the social changes which succeed

relatively small disturbances are often such as to elude an estimate.

The reason has been well suggested that "big crises bring changes about

most easily because they affect all individuals alike at the same time."

In other words a more general fluidity is accomplished. We see,

therefore, a second principle begin to emerge. Not only is fluidity

fundamental to social change, but the degree of fluidity seems to vary

directly as the shock and extent of the catastrophe.

There yet remains to notice the bearing of catastrophe upon social

progress. The following words are quotable in this connection:

It is quite certain that the degree of progress of a people has a

certain relation to the number of disturbances encountered, and the

most progressive have had a more vicissitudinous life. Our proverb

"Necessity is the mother of invention" is the formulation in

folk-thought of this principle of social change.[15]

We cannot, however, remain long content with this suggestion as to the

principle concerned--namely, that progress is a natural and an assured

result of change. The point is that catastrophe always means social

change. There is not always progress. It is well to guard against

confusion here. Change means any qualitative variation, whereas progress

means "amelioration, perfectionment." The latter will be seen to depend

on other things--the nature of the shock, the models presented, the

community culture and morale, the stimulus of leaders and lookers-on.

The single case of Galveston, Texas,[16] is sufficient to disprove the

too optimistic hypothesis that the effects of catastrophies are uniform.

Here a city lost heart by reason of the overwhelming flood, and in spite

of superior commercial advantages was outgrown by a rival fifty miles

away. At the same time the case of Dayton, Ohio, should be borne in

mind. Here also was a flood-stricken city and she became "the Gem City

of the West." The principle[17] thus appears to be that progress in

catastrophe is a resultant of specific conditioning factors, some of

which are subject to social control.

[15] Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 18.

[16] "It has one of the finest, if not the finest, ports in North

America. In 1900 a great tidal wave swept over the city, causing

enormous damage and loss of life. While the city has had a certain

growth since that time, it has been far outstripped by Houston,

Dallas, and other Texas cities."--Kirby Page, formerly of Texas, in a

letter to the author.

[17] Another principle is suggested for study by the following

sentence in Ross' _Foundations of Sociology_ (p. 206): "Brusk

revolution in the conditions of life or thought produces not sudden,

but gradual changes in society." This might easily be elaborated.

It is indeed this very thing which makes possible the hope of eventual

social control over disaster-stricken cities, and the transmutation of

seeming evil into tremendous good. And this is in addition to the many

practical social lessons which we have already been intelligent enough

to preserve, such as those of better city-planning, and a more efficient

charity organization.

How much of man's advancement has been directly or indirectly due to

disaster?[18] The question asks itself and it is a question as yet

without an answer. When the answer is at last written, will there not be

many surprises? Pitt-Rivers tells us that "the idea of a large boat

might have been suggested in the time of floods when houses floated down

the rivers before the eyes of men."[19] A terrible storm at sea gave

America its first rice.[20] City-planning may be said to have taken its

rise in America as a result of the Chicago fire, and the role of

catastrophe in the progress of social legislation is a study in itself.

The impetus thus received is immeasurable. Historically,

labor-legislation took its rise with the coming of an infectious fever

in the cotton-mills of Manchester in 1784. After the Cherry mine

disaster legislation ensued at once. Again it was the Triangle fire

which led to the appropriation of funds for a factory investigation

commission in the State of New York. The sinking of the Titanic has

greatly reduced the hazards of the sea.

[18] The relationship of poetry and disaster is of interest. In a

recent article on Disaster and Poetry a writer asks "whether often, if

not always, suffering, disease and disaster do not bring to him [the

poet] the will to create."--Marks, Jeanette, "Disaster and Poetry,"

_North American Review_, vol. 212, no. 1 (July, 1920), p. 93.

[19] Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 23.

[20] In this storm a ship from Madagascar was driven into a South

Carolina port. In gratitude the Captain gave the Governor a sack of

seed.

It may easily prove true that the prophets of golden days to come who

invariably arise on the day of disaster, are not entirely without ground

for the faith which is in them; and that catastrophies are frequently

only re-agents of further progress. But this is merely introductory.

Thought becomes scientific only when its conclusions are checked up and

under-written by observation or experiment. Prior to such procedure it

must still remain opinion or belief.

The whole subject is, it must be repeated, a virgin field in sociology.

Knowledge will grow scientific only after the most faithful examination

of many catastrophies. But it must be realized that the data of the

greatest value is left ofttimes unrecorded, and fades rapidly from the

social memory. Investigation is needed immediately after the event. It

is, therefore, of the utmost importance that sociological studies of

Chicago, Galveston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and other disaster cities

should be initiated at once.[21]

[21] It is perhaps due to the reader to say that while this volume

treats specifically of Halifax, the writer has studied the records of

many disasters and these have been kept in mind in drawing his

conclusions. He participated in the rescue and relief work at Halifax

in 1917, and at the time of the Titanic disaster accompanied one of

the expeditions to the scene. He was in New York when the Wall Street

explosion occurred, and made a first hand study of its effects.

Of such a series--if the work can be done--this little volume on Halifax

is offered as a beginning. It is hoped that the many inadequacies of

treatment will receive the generous allowances permitted a pioneer.

CHAPTER I

CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION

The City of Halifax--Terrific nature of the explosion--Destruction of

life and property--The subsequent fire and storms--Annihilation of

homes--Arresting of business--Disintegration of the social order.

Halifax is the ocean terminal of the Dominion of Canada on her Atlantic

seaboard. It is situated at the head of Chebucto Bay, a deep inlet on

the southeastern shoreline of Nova Scotia. It is endowed by nature with

a magnificent harbor, which as a matter of fact is one of the three

finest in the world. In it a thousand vessels might safely ride at

anchor. The possession of this harbor, together with ample defences, and

a fortunate situation with regard to northern Europe established the

Garrison City, early in the year 1914 as the natural war-base of the

Dominion. Its tonnage leaped by millions, and it soon became the third

shipping port in the entire British Empire. Hither the transports came,

and the giant freighters to join their convoy. Cruisers and men-of-war

put in to use its great dry-dock, or take on coal. Here too, cleared the

supply and munition boats--some laden with empty shells, others with

high explosives destined for the distant fields of battle. How much of

the deadly cargo lay in the road-stead or came and went during those

fateful years is not publicly known.[22] Certainly there was too much to

breed a sense of safety, but no one gave the matter second thought. All

were intent upon the mighty task of the hour. Sufficient unto each day

was each day's evil. Each night the great war-gates were swung across

the channels. Powerful searchlights swept unceasingly the sea and sky.

The forts were fully manned. The gunners ready. The people knew these

things, and no one dreamed of danger save to loved ones far away. Secure

in her own defences the city lay unafraid, and almost apathetic.

[22] During the month of December, 1915, alone, 30,000 tons of

munitions passed over the railroad piers of Halifax.

About midway in the last two years of war--to be exact December,

1917,--a French munitioner[23] heavily laden with trinitrotoluol, the

most powerful of known explosives, reached Halifax from New York. On the

early morning of the sixth of that month, she was proceeding under her

own steam up the harbor-length toward anchorage in the basin--an oval

expansion half-hidden by a blunt hill called Turple Head. Suddenly an

empty Belgian relief ship[24] swept through the Narrows directly in her

pathway. There was a confusion of signals; a few agonized manoeuvers.

The vessels collided; and the shock of their colliding shook the world!

[23] The _Mont Blanc_, St. Nazaire, Captain Lemedec, Pilot Francis

Mackay, owners La Compagnie General Transatlantique 3,121 tons gross,

2252 net register, steel, single screw, 330 ft. long, 40 ft. beam,

speed 7-1/2 to 8 knots, inward bound, from New York to await convoy.

Cargo 450,000 lbs. trinitrotoluol, 2300 tons picric acid, 35 tons

benzol, employed in carrying munitions to France.

[24] The _Imo_, Christiania, Captain Fron, Pilot William Hayes, owners

Southern Pacific Whaling Company, 5,041 tons gross, 3161 tons

register, steel, single screw, 430 ft. long, 45 ft. beam, speed 11 to

12 knots, outward bound to New York, in ballast, employed in carrying

food to Belgium.

War came to America that morning. Two thousand slain, six thousand

injured, ten thousand homeless, thirty-five millions of dollars in

property destroyed, three hundred acres left a smoking waste, churches,

schools, factories blown down or burned--such was the appalling havoc of

the greatest single explosion in the history of the world.[25] It was an

episode which baffles description. It is difficult to gain from words

even an approximate idea of the catastrophe and what followed in its

trail.

[25] The greatest previous explosion was when 500,000 pounds of

dynamite blew up in Baltimore Harbor.

It was all of a sudden--a single devastating blast; then the sound as of

the crashing of a thousand chandeliers. Men and women cowered under the

shower of debris and glass. There was one awful moment when hearts sank,

and breaths were held. Then women cried aloud, and men looked dumbly

into each other's eyes, and awaited the crack of doom. To some death was

quick and merciful in its coming. Others were blinded, and staggered to

and fro before they dropped. Still others with shattered limbs dragged

themselves forth into the light--naked, blackened, unrecognizable human

shapes. They lay prone upon the streetside, under the shadow of the

great death-cloud which still dropped soot and oil and water. It was

truly a sight to make the angels weep.

Men who had been at the front said they had seen nothing so bad in

Flanders. Over there men were torn with shrapnel, but the victims were

in all cases men. Here father and mother, daughter and little child, all

fell in "one red burial blent." A returned soldier said of it: "I have

been in the trenches in France. I have gone over the top. Friends and

comrades have been shot in my presence. I have seen scores of dead men

lying upon the battlefield, but the sight .... was a thousand times

worse and far more pathetic."[26] A well-known relief worker who had

been at San Francisco, Chelsea and Salem immediately after those

disasters said "I am impressed by the fact that this is much the saddest

disaster I have seen." It has been compared to the scenes pictured by

Lord Lytton in his tale of the last days of Pompeii:

True there was not that hellish river of molten lava flowing down

upon the fleeing people; and consuming them as feathers in fierce

flames. But every other sickening detail was present--that of

crashing shock and shaking earth, of crumbling homes, and cruel

flame and fire. And there were showers, not it is true of ashes from

the vortex of the volcano, but of soot and oil and water, of

death-dealing fragments of shrapnel and deck and boiler, of glass

and wood and of the shattered ship.[27]

Like the New Albany tornado, it caused loss "in all five of the ways it

is possible for a disaster to do so, in death, permanent injury,

temporary injury, personal property loss, and real property loss."[28]

Here were to be found in one dread assembling the combined horrors of

war, earthquake, fire, flood, famine and storm--a combination seen for

the first time in the records of human disaster.

[26] Johnstone, Dwight, _The Tragedy of Halifax_ (in MS.).

[27] McGlashen, Rev. J. A., _The Patriot_ (Dartmouth, N. S.).

[28] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. ii, p. 158.

It was an earthquake[29] so violent that when the explosion occurred the

old, rock-founded city shook as with palsy. The citadel trembled, the

whole horizon seemed to move with the passing of the earth waves. These

were caught and registered, their tracings[30] carefully preserved, but

the mute record tells not of the falling roofs and flying plaster and

collapsing walls which to many an unfortunate victim brought death and

burial at one and the same time.

[29] "The effect of the vast, sudden interference with the air was

practically the same as if an earthquake had shaken Halifax to the

ground." (MacMechan, Archibald, "Halifax in Ruins," _The Canadian

Courier_, vol. xxiii, no. 4, p. 6.)

[30] The tracings on the seismograph show three distinct shocks at the

hours 9.05, 9.10 and 10.05.

It was a flood, for the sea rushed forward in a gigantic tidal wave,

fully a fathom in depth. It swept past pier and embankment into the

lower streets, and receding, left boats and wreckage high and dry, but

carried to a watery doom score upon score of human lives. Nearly two

hundred men were drowned.

It was a fire or rather a riot of fires, for the air was for a second

filled with tongues of igneous vapour hiding themselves secretly within

the lightning discharge of gas, only to burst out in gusts of sudden

flame. Numberless buildings were presently ablaze. Soon there was naught

to the northward but a roaring furnace. Above, the sky was crimson;

below, a living crematorium--church and school, factory and home burned

together in one fierce conflagration; and the brave firemen knew that

there were men and women pinned beneath the wreckage, wounded past

self-help. Frantic mothers heard the cries of little children, but in

vain. Fathers desperately tore through burning brands, but often failed

to save alive the captives of the flame. And so the last dread process

went on,--earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And when the

fires at last abated, the north end of the City of Halifax looked like

some blackened hillside which a farmer had burned for fallow in the

spring.

But perhaps the most terrible of all the terrible accompaniments was the

tornado-like gas-blast from the bursting ship. It wrought instant havoc

everywhere. Trees were torn from the ground. Poles were snapped like

toothpicks. Trains were stopped dead. Cars were left in twisted masses.

Pedestrians were thrown violently into the air, houses collapsed on all

sides. Steamers were slammed against the docks. Then followed a

veritable air-raid, when the sky rained iron fragments upon the helpless

city. Like a meteoric shower of death, they fell piercing a thousand

roofs, and with many a mighty splash bore down into the sea.

Nor yet did this complete the tale of woes of this _Dies Irae_. Scarce

was the catastrophe an hour old when the news was flashed around that a

second explosion was approaching. It was the powder magazine in the

Navy-yard, and the flames were perilously near. Through the crowded

streets raced the heralds like prophets of wrath to come. "Flee!....

Flee!.... Get into the open ground" was the cry. Shops were abandoned

unguarded, goods laid open on every side. No key was turned, no till was

closed, but all instanter joined the precipitant throng, driven like

animals before a prairie fire--yet this was not all; for "the plight of

the aged, the sick, the infants, the bed-ridden, the cripples, the

nursing mothers, the pregnant can not be described."

It was like the flight from Vesuvius of which Pliny the Younger tells:

You could hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children and the

shouts of men. Some were seeking their children; others their

parents, others their wives and husbands ... one lamenting his own

fate, another that of his family. Some praying to die from the very

fear of dying, many lifting their hands to the gods, but the greater

part imagining that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the

last and eternal night was come upon the world.[31]

It has been said that "Moscow was no more deserted before Napoleon than

were the shattered streets of Halifax when this flight had been carried

out."[32] And when the hegira was over, and when there had ensued a

partial recovery from the blow and gloom, a still lower depth of agony

had yet to be undergone--a succession of winter storms. Blizzards, rain,

floods and zero weather were even then upon the way. They came in close

procession and as if to crown and complete the terrors of the great

catastrophe thunder rumbled, lightning broke sharply and lit up weirdly

the snow-clad streets. Such was the catastrophe of Halifax--"a calamity

the appalling nature of which stirred the imagination of the world."[33]

[31] Pliny, _Letters_ (London, 1915), vol. i, bk. vi, p. 495.

[32] Smith, Stanley K., _The Halifax Horror_ (Halifax, 1918), ch. ii,

p. 24.

[33] Bell, McKelvie, _A Romance of the Halifax Disaster_ (Halifax,

1918), p. 57.

The description here concluded, brief and inadequate as it is, will

sufficiently indicate the terrific nature of the catastrophic shock, and

explain how utter and complete was the social disintegration which

followed.

There was the disintegration of the home and the family,--the

reproductive system of society--its members sundered and helpless to

avert it. There was the disintegration of the regulative

system--government was in perplexity, and streets were without patrol.

There was the disintegration of the sustaining system--a dislocation of

transportation, a disorganization of business while the wheels of

industry ceased in their turning. There was a derangement of the

distributive system[34]--of all the usual services, of illumination,

water-connections, telephones, deliveries. It was impossible to

communicate with the outside world. There were no cars, no mails, no

wires. There was a time when the city ceased to be a city, its citizens

a mass of unorganized units--struggling for safety, shelter, covering

and bread. As Lytton wrote of Pompeii; "The whole elements of

civilization were broken up .... nothing in all the varied and

complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of

self preservation."[35]

[34] Spencer, Herbert, _The Principles of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1908),

pt. ii, p. 499 _et seq._

[35] Lytton, Lord, _The Last Days of Pompeii_ (London, 1896), p. 405.

A writer has given a vivid word picture of the social contrasts of the

disaster night and the beautiful evening before.

What a change from the night before! No theatres open, no happy

throngs along the street, no cheery gatherings around the fire-side.

The houses were all cold, and dark and silent. Instead of laughter,

weeping; instead of dancing, agonizing pain; instead of Elysian

dreams, ominous nightmares. Fears and sorrow were in the way and all

the daughters of music were brought low ... Halifax had become in a

trice a city of dead bodies, ruined homes and blasted hopes.[36]

To have looked in upon one of the great makeshift dormitories that first

night, to have seen men, women and children, of all stations, huddled

together on the stages of theatres, the chancels of churches, in

stables, box-cars and basements was to have beheld a rift in the social

structure such as no community had ever known. Old traditional social

lines were hopelessly mixed and confused. The catastrophe smashed

through strong walls like cobwebs, but it also smashed through fixed

traditions, social divisions and old standards, making a rent which

would not easily repair. Rich and poor, debutante and chambermaid,

official and bellboy met for the first time as victims of a common

calamity.

[36] Johnstone, _op. cit._

Even on the eighth, two days after the disaster, when Mr. Ratshesky of

the Massachusetts' Relief arrived he could report: "An awful sight

presented itself, buildings shattered on all sides--chaos apparent." In

a room in the City Hall twelve by twenty, he found assembled "men and

women trying to organize different departments of relief, while other

rooms were filled to utmost capacity with people pleading for doctors,

nurses, food, and clothing for themselves and members of their families.

Everything was in turmoil."[37] This account faithfully expresses the

disintegration which came with the great shock of what had come to pass.

It is this disintegration and the resultant phenomena which are of

utmost importance for the student of social science to observe. To be

quite emotionally free in the observation of such phenomena, however, is

almost impossible. It has been said of sociological investigations that

observation is made under bias because the facts under review are

those of human life and touch human interest. A man can count the

legs of a fly without having his heart wrung because he thinks there

are too many or too few. But when he observes the life of the

society in which he moves, lives and has his being, or some other

society nearby, it is the rule that he approves or disapproves, is

edified or horrified, by what he observes. When he does that he

passes a moral judgment.[38]

Sociology has suffered because of this inevitable bias. In our present

study it is natural that our sympathy reactions should be especially

strong. "_Quamquam animus meminisse horret, incipiam_" must be our

motto. As students we must now endeavor to dissociate ourselves from

them, and look upon the stricken Canadian city with all a chemist's

patient detachment. In a field of science where the prospect of

large-scale experimental progress is remote, we must learn well when the

abnormal reveals itself in great tragedies and when social processes are

seen magnified by a thousand diameters. Only thus can we hope for

advances that will endure.

[37] Ratshesky, A. C., "Report of Halifax Relief Expedition," _The

State_ (Boston, 1918), p. 11.

[38] Keller, A. G., "Sociology and Science," _The Nation_ (N. Y., May

4, 1916), vol. 102, no. 2653, p. 275.

In this spirit then let us watch the slow process of the reorganization

of Halifax, and see in it a picture of society itself as it reacts under

the stimulus of catastrophe, and adjusts itself to the circumstantial

pressure of new conditions.

Before doing so, however, we shall pause, in the next chapter, to glance

at a number of social phenomena which should be recorded and examined in

the light of social psychology. But we must not lose the relationship of

each chapter to our major thesis. It is sufficient for our purpose if

thus far it has been shown that at Halifax the shock resulted in

disintegration of social institutions, dislocation of the usual methods

of social control and dissolution of the customary; that through the

catastrophe the community was thrown into the state of flux which, as

was suggested in the introduction, is the logical and natural

prerequisite for social change; and finally that the shock was of a

character such as "to affect all individuals alike at the same time,"

and to induce that degree of fluidity most favorable to social change.

CHAPTER II

CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Shock reaction--Hallucination--Primitive instincts--Crowd

psychology--Phenomena of emotion--How men react when bereft

completely--Post-catastrophic phenomena--Human nature in the absence of

repression by conventionality, custom and law--Fatigue and the human

will--The stimuli of heroism--Mutual aid.

Social Psychology is a subject of primary importance to the student of

society. Like Sociology itself its field is far from being exhausted.

One looks in vain for a treatment of disaster psychology. In such a

study the diverse phenomena involved would be of interest to the

psychologist. Their effects in retarding or promoting social

organization would concern the sociologist. With such possible effects

in mind we are now to proceed to an examination of the major subjective

reactions as they were to be seen in the Halifax catastrophe.

It is improbable that any single community has ever presented so

composite a picture of human traits in such bold relief as appeared in

the City of Halifax upon the day of the explosion. Human phenomena which

many knew of only as hidden away in books, stood out so clearly that he

who ran might read. Besides the physiological reactions there was

abundant illustration of hallucination, delusion, primitive instincts,

and crowd psychology as well of other phenomena all of which have

important sociological significance tending either to prolong

disintegration, or to hasten social recovery.

The first of these phenomena was the "stun" of the catastrophe itself.

The shock reaction at Halifax has been variously described. It has been

graphically likened "to being suddenly stricken with blindness and

paralysis." It was a sensation of utter helplessness and disability. "We

died a thousand horrible deaths" ran one description, "the nervous shock

and terror were as hard to bear as were the wounds." "The people are

dazed," wrote another observer, "they have almost ceased to exercise the

sensation of pain." This physiological reaction animals and men shared

alike. The appearance of the terror-stricken horses was as of beasts

which had suddenly gone mad.

A physiological accompaniment of shock and distraction is the abnormal

action of the glands. The disturbance of the sympathetic nervous system

produced by the emotional stress and strain of a great excitement or a

great disappointment is reflected in the stimulation or inhibition of

glandular action. Much physical as well as nervous illness was

precipitated by the grief, excitement and exposure of the disaster.[39]

Among cases observed were those of diabetes, tuberculosis and

hyper-thyroidism, as well as the nervous instability to which reference

is subsequently made. Such an epidemic of hyper-thyroidism--exaggerated

action of the thyroid gland--is said to have followed the Kishineff

massacres, the San Francisco earthquake and the air-raids on London.[40]

As to diabetes, it has been shown that

emotions cause increased output of glycogen. Glycogen is a step

toward diabetes and therefore this disease is prone to appear in

persons under emotional strain ... so common is this particular

result in persons under prolonged emotion that someone has said that

"when stocks go down in New York, diabetes goes up."[41]

[39] For a full discussion of nervous disorders induced by an

explosion at short range, _vide_ Roussy and Llermette, _The

Psychoneuroses of War_ (London, 1918), ch. x.

[40] Brown, W. Langden, Presidential address to Hunterian Society,

London.

[41] Crile, George W., _The Origin and Nature of the Emotions_

(Phila., 1915), p. 163.

Turning now to other psychological aspects, we have to note the presence

of hallucination in disaster.

Hallucination may be roughly defined as false sense impression. For

example, the patient sees an object which has no real existence, or

hears an imaginary voice. Hallucinations are termed visual,

auditory, tactile, _etc._ according to the sense to which the false

impression appears to belong.[42]

Hallucination is induced by the unusual suggesting the expected. It is

sense-perception colored by association. It is the power of a dominant

idea that, unbidden, enters the field of consciousness and takes

possession of even the senses themselves. In Halifax one idea seemed to

dominate most minds and clothe itself in the semblance of reality--the

expected Germans. For a long time there had been under public discussion

the question as to whether or not the city would be shelled by Zeppelin

raiders, or possibly by a fleet at sea. All street-lights had been

darkened by military orders. The failure to draw window shades had been

subject to heavy penalty. It is no wonder eyes looked upward when there

came the crash, and when seeing the strange unusual cloud beheld the

Zeppelin of fancy. A man residing on the outskirts of the town of

Dartmouth "heard" a German shell pass shrieking above him. Dartmouth

Heights looks out over Halifax harbor, and here perhaps the vista is

most expansive, and the eye sees furthest. The instant after the

explosion a citizen standing here "saw" clearly a German fleet

manoeuvering in the distance.[43] That shells had actually come few on

the instant doubted. The head of one firm advised his employees not to

run elsewhere, as "two shots never fall in the same place."

[42] Hart, Bernard, _The Psychology of Insanity_ (Cambridge, 1916),

ch. iii, p. 30.

[43] "So hypochondriac fancies represent

Ships, armies, battles in the firmament

Till steady eyes the exhalations solve

And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve."

--Defoe, _Journal of the Plague Year_.

This--a German assault--was the great mental explanation that came into

the majority of minds. There was one other--that of the end of the

world. Many fell to their knees in prayer. One woman was found in the

open yard by her broken home repeating the general confession of the

church. Few would have been surprised if out of the smoky cloud-ridden

skies there should have appeared the archangels announcing the

consummation of mundane affairs. Indeed there were instances, not a few,

of those who "saw" in the death-cloud "the clear outlines of a face."

Thus both auditory and visual hallucination were manifested to a degree.

Hallucination has been described as "seeing" something which has no

basis in reality. Thus it differs from delusion, which is rather a

misinterpretation of what is seen. "Delusions are closely allied to

hallucinations and generally accompany the latter. The distinction lies

in the fact that delusions are not false sensations but false

beliefs."[44] Anxiety, distraction by grief and loss, as well as nervous

shock play freely with the mind and fancy and often swerve the judgment

of perception. This was especially noticeable at Halifax in the hospital

identification, particularly of children. A distracted father looked

into a little girl's face four different times but did not recognize her

as his own which, in fact, she was. The precisely opposite occurrence

was also noted. A fond parent time and time again "discovered" his lost

child, "seeing" to complete satisfaction special marks and features on

its little body. But often there were present those who knew better, and

the better judgment prevailed. Again this phenomenon was repeated in

numberless instances at the morgue. Wearied and white after frantic and

fruitless search wherever refugees were gathered together, the

overwrought searchers would walk through the long lines of dead, and

suddenly "recognize" a missing relative or friend.[45] Regretfully the

attendant fulfilled the same thankless task from day to day. There had

been no recognition at all. The observer had seen "not the object itself

but the image evoked in the mind."[46]

[44] Hart, _op. cit._, ch. iii, p. 31.

[45] For parallel cases of erroneous recognition of the dead, _vide_

Le Bon, Gustave, _The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind_ (London),

bk. i, ch. i, p. 51.

[46] _Ibid._, p. 51.

The primitive instincts of man were for a long time vaguely and loosely

defined, until James and later McDougall essayed to give them name and

number. But only with Thorndike's critical examination has it become

clear how difficult a thing it is to carry the analysis of any situation

back to the elemental or "primal movers of all human activity."

Thorndike is satisfied to describe them as nothing save a set of

original tendencies to respond to stimuli in more or less definite

directions. When he speaks of instincts it is to mean only a "series of

situations and responses" or "a set of tendencies for various situations

to arouse the feelings of fear, anger, pity, _etc._ with which certain

bodily movements usually go." Among them, there are those resulting in

"food-getting and habitation," in "fear, fighting and anger" and in

"human intercourse."[47] But McDougall's classification preserves the

old phrases, and men are likely to go on speaking of the "instinct of

flight," the "instinct of pugnacity," "parental instinct," "gregarious

instinct" and the others.[48] For the sociologist it is enough that all

agree that men are held under some powerful grip of nature and driven at

times almost inevitably to the doing of acts quite irrespective of their

social effects.

[47] Thorndike, Edward L., _The Original Nature of Man_ (N. Y., 1913),

ch. v, p. 43 _et seq._

[48] McDougall, William, _An Introduction to Social Psychology_

(Boston, 1917), ch. iii, p. 49 _et seq._

In catastrophe these primitive instincts are seen most plainly and less

subject to the re-conditioning influences of ordinary life. This was

especially noticeable at Halifax. The instinct of flight for

self-preservation was reflected in the reaction of thousands. "Almost

without thought, probably from the natural instinct of self-preservation

I backed from the window to a small store-room and stood there

dazed."[49] The experience so described may be said to have been

general. This instinct was to be seen again in the action of the crew of

the explosives-laden ship. Scarcely had the collision occurred when the

whole complement lowered away the boats, rowed like madmen to the

nearest shore--which happened to be that opposite to Halifax--and

"scooted for the woods." As the ship, although set on fire immediately

after the impact, did not actually blow up until some twenty minutes

later, much might have been done by men less under the domination of

instinct, in the way of warning and perhaps of minimizing the inevitable

catastrophe.[50]

[49] Sheldon, J., _The Busy East_ (Sackville, N. B. Can.), March,

1918.

[50] The judgment of the court of enquiry ran as follows: "The master

and pilot of the Mont Blanc are guilty of neglect of public safety in

not taking proper steps to warn the inhabitants of the city of a

probable explosion." (Drysdale Commission, _Judgment of_, sec. viii.)

The instinct of pugnacity was to be seen in many a fine example of

difficulty overcome in the work of rescue; as also in other instances,

some suggestive of that early combat when animals and men struggled for

mere physical existence.

The parental instinct was everywhere in evidence, and was reflected not

only in the sacrifices made and the privations endured by parents for

their young, but in every act of relief, which arose in involuntary

response to the cry of the distressed. It perhaps partially explains the

phenomenon often noticed in disasters that "immediately and

spontaneously neighbors and fellow-townsmen spring to the work of rescue

and first aid."[51]

[51] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. vi, p. 151.

The gregarious instinct--the instinct to herd--showed itself in the

spontaneous groupings which came about and which seemed somehow to be

associated with feelings of security from further harm. The refugees

found comfort in the group. They rarely remained alone.

These and other instinctive responses in a greater or less degree of

complication were to be remarked of the actions not only of individuals

but of groups as well. In the latter the typical phenomena of crowd

psychology were manifested upon every hand. The crowd was seen to be

what it is--"the like response of many to a socially inciting event or

suggestion such as sudden danger." Out of a mere agglomeration of

individuals and under the stress of emotional excitement there arose

that mental unity, which Le Bon emphasizes.[52] There was noticeable the

feeling of safety associated with togetherness which Trotter

suggests.[53] There was the suggestibility, with its preceding

conditions which Sidis[54] has clarified, namely, expectancy,

inhibition, and limitation of the field of consciousness. There were the

triple characteristics which Giddings notes: "Crowds are subject to

swift contagion of feeling, they are sensitive to suggestion .... and

always manifest a tendency to carry suggested ideas immediately into

action."[55]

[52] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 26.

[53] Trotter, William, _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_

(London, 1919), p. 31.

[54] Sidis, Boris, _The Psychology of Suggestion_ (N. Y., 1919),

ch. vi, p. 56 _et seq._

[55] Giddings, Franklin H., _Principles of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1916),

bk. ii, ch. ii, p. 136.

Of illustrations of impulsive social action there are none more apt than

those furnished by the reactions following the Halifax tragedy. Only

Pliny's narrative of the flight from the eruption of Vesuvius, or the

story of the "Day of Fear" in France,[56] or that depicting the days of

the comet[57] are comparable thereto.

[56] Stephens, Henry M., _A History of the French Revolution_ (N. Y.,

1886), vol. i, p. 179.

[57] Wells, H. G., _In the Days of the Comet_ (N. Y., 1906).

At first all was confusion. Some ran to the cellars. Some ran to the

streets. Some ran to their shops. Those in the shops ran home. This was

in the area of wounds and bruises. Farther north was the area of death.

Thither the rescuers turned. Automobiles sped over broken glass and

splintered boards toward the unknown. Then came the orders of the

soldiers, whose barracks were situated in the very heart of the danger

district, for the people to fly southward, Common-ward, to the open

spaces--anywhere. Another explosion was imminent. Then came further

outbreaks of the flight impulse. Runs a graphic account:

The crowd needed no second warning. They turned and fled. Hammers,

shovels and bandages were thrown aside. Stores were left wide open

with piles of currency on their counters. Homes were vacated in a

twinkling. Little tots couldn't understand why they were being

dragged along so fast. Some folks never looked back. Others did,

either to catch a last glimpse of the home they never expected to

see again or to tell if they could from the sky how far behind them

the Dreaded Thing was.... They fled as they were.... Some carried

children or bundles of such things as they had scrambled

together.... Many were but scantily clad. Women fled in their night

dresses. A few were stark naked, their bodies blackened with soot

and grime. These had come from the destroyed section of the North

End. What a storm-tossed motley throng, and as varied in its aspect

and as poignant in its sufferings as any band of Belgian or Serbian

refugees fleeing before the Hun.... A few rode in autos, but the

great majority were on foot. With blanched faces, bleeding bodies

and broken hearts, they fled from the Spectral Death they thought

was coming hard after, fled to the open spaces where possibly its

shadow might not fall. Soon Citadel Hill and the Common were black

with terrified thousands. Thousands more trudged along St.

Margaret's Bay road, seeking escape among its trees and winding

curves.... Many cut down boughs and made themselves fires--for they

were bitterly cold. Here they were--poorly clad, badly wounded, and

with not one loaf of bread in all their number, so hastily did they

leave, when galloping horsemen announced the danger was over and it

was safe to return.[58]

[58] Johnstone, Dwight, _The Tragedy of Halifax_ (in MS.).

The ever-shifting responsiveness to rumor which distinguishes a crowd

was noted.

The entrance to the Park was black with human beings, some massed in

groups, some running anxiously back and forth like ants when their

hill has been crushed. There were blanched faces and trembling

hands. The wildest rumors were in circulation and every bearer of

tidings was immediately surrounded.[59]

[59] _St. John Globe_, Correspondence, Dec., 1917.

Not only here but when the crowd trekked back, and in the subsequent

scenes which were witnessed in supply stations and shelters, the

association which Sidis draws between calamity and hyper-suggestibility

in the body politic was abundantly endorsed.

We must now endeavor to understand the phenomena of emotion which

accompany a great catastrophe. This is not the less difficult because

the term emotion is not given consistent use even by psychologists. One

interprets it as merely the affective side of the instinctive

process--those "modes of affective experience," such as "anger, fear,

curiosity," which accompany the excitement of "the principal powerful

instincts."[60] Another sees it as also an impulsive, not merely a

receptive state. It is "the way the body feels when it is prepared for a

certain reaction," and includes "an impulse toward the particular

reaction."[61]

[60] McDougall, _op. cit._, p. 46.

[61] Woodworth, Robert S., _Dynamic Psychology_ (N. Y., 1918),

ch. iii, p. 54.

It will be accurate enough for our purpose to think of the emotions as

complicated states of feeling more or less allied to one another and to

the human will.[62] Among them are jealousy and envy--"discomfort at

seeing others approved and at being out-done by them."[63] This appeared

repeatedly in the administration of relief and should be included in

disaster psychology. Again greed[64]--more strictly a social instinct

than an emotion--was common. How common will receive further

exemplification in a later chapter.

[62] "Anger, zeal, determination, willing, are closely allied, and

probably identical in part. Certainly they are aroused by the same

stimulus, namely, by obstruction, encountered in the pursuit of some

end." (_Ibid._, p. 149.)

[63] Thorndike, _op. cit._, p. 101.

[64] "To go for attractive objects, to grab them when within reach, to

hold them against competitors, to fight the one who tries to take them

away. To go for, grab and hold them all the more if another is trying

to do so, these lines of conduct are the roots of greed." (_Ibid._,

p. 102.)

Fear has already been referred to. Anger, shame, resentment while

evident, were of less significance. Gratitude was early shown and there

were many formal expressions of it. Later on, it seemed to be replaced

by a feeling that as sufferers they, the victims, were only receiving

their due in whatever aid was obtained.

Of special interest is the role of the tender emotions, kindliness,

sympathy and sorrow, as well as the reactions which may be expected when

these occur in unusual exaltation through the repetition of stimuli or

otherwise. Whatever may be the nature of the process whereby the

feelings of his fellows affect a man, that which chiefly concerns us

here, is how these reactions differ when the stimulation is multiplex.

Of this multiplex stimulation in collective psychology Graham Wallas has

written:

The nervous exaltation so produced may be the effect of the rapid

repetition of stimuli acting as repetition acts, for instance, when

it produces seasickness or tickling.... If the exaltation is extreme

conscious control of feeling and action is diminished.[65] Reaction

is narrowed and men may behave, as they behave in dreams, less

rationally and morally than they do if the whole of their nature is

brought into play.[66]

[65] M. Dide, a French psychologist, regards "the hypnosis produced by

emotional shock--and this occurs not only in war but in other great

catastrophies as well--as genetically a defence reaction, like natural

sleep whose function according to him is primarily prophylactic

against exhaustion and fatigue, ... it is comparable to the so-called

death-shamming of animals." (Dide, M., _Les emotions et la guerre_

(Paris, 1918), Review of, _Psychological Bulletin_, vol. xv, no. 12,

Dec., 1918, p. 441.)

[66] Wallas, Graham, _The Great Society_ (N. Y., 1917), p. 136.

What Wallas has said of the additional stimulation which the presence of

a crowd induces may be given wider application, and is indeed a most

illuminating thought, describing exactly the psycho-emotional reactions

produced by the stimulation of terrifying scenes, such as were witnessed

at Halifax.

A case in point was that of the nervous exaltation produced upon a young

doctor who operated continuously for many hours in the removal of

injured eyes. The emotional tension he went through is expressed in his

words to a witness: "If relief doesn't come to me soon, I shall murder

somebody."

Another instance where conscious control of feeling and action was

diminished was that of a soldier. He was so affected by what he passed

through during the explosion and his two days' participation in relief

work, that he quite unwittingly took a seat in a train departing for

Montreal. Later in a hospital of that city after many mental wanderings

he recovered his memory. Over and over again he had been picturing the

dreadful scenes which he had experienced. This condition includes a

hyperactivity of the imagination "characterized by oneirism [oneiric

delirium] reproducing most often the tragic or terrible scenes which

immediately preceded the hypogenic shock."[67]

[67] _Ibid._, p. 440.

The nature of sympathy[68] may not be clearly comprehended but of its

effects there is no doubt. It may lead to the relief of pain or induce

the exactly opposite effect; or it may bring about so lively a distress

as to quite incapacitate a man from giving help. Again it may lead to

the avoidance of disaster scenes altogether. Thus some could on no

account be prevailed upon to go into the hospitals or to enter the

devastated area. Others by a process understood in the psychology of

insanity secured the desired avoidance by suicide. The association of

suicide with catastrophe has been already remarked in the case of San

Francisco. A Halifax instance was that of a physician who had labored

hard among the wounded. He later found the reaction of his emotional

experiences too strong. He lost his mental balance and was discovered

dead one morning near his office door. He had hanged himself during the

night. Still another, a railroad man, driven to despair by loneliness

and loss, his wife and children having perished, attempted to follow

them in death.

[68] Classed by William James as an emotion, but considered by

McDougall a pseudo-instinct.

Joy and sorrow are pleasure-pain conditions of emotional states. Sorrow

is painful because "the impulse is baffled and cannot attain more than

the most scanty and imperfect satisfaction in little acts, such as the

leaving of flowers on the grave;"[69] although the intensity is

increased by other considerations. Here again the unusual degree of

stimulation which catastrophe induces brings about a behavior other than

that which commonly attends the experience of grief. A phenomenon

associated with wholesale bereavement is the almost entire absence of

tears. A witness of the San Francisco disaster said it was at the end of

the second day that he saw tears for the first time.[70] At Halifax,

where the loss of life was many times greater, there was little crying.

There seemed to be indeed a miserable but strong consolation in the fact

that all were alike involved in the same calamity.[71]

[69] McDougall, _op. cit._, p. 152.

[70] O'Connor, Chas. J., _San Francisco Relief Survey_ (N. Y., 1913),

pt. i, p. 6.

[71] "The cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their

character of loneliness."--(James, William, _Memories and Studies_,

N. Y., 1911, p. 224.)

There was "no bitterness, no complaint, only a great and eager desire to

help some one less fortunate." Another observer said: "I have never seen

such kindly feeling. I have never seen such tender sympathy. I have

never heard an impatient word." And this was amongst men "who were

covered with bruises, and whose hearts were heavy, who have not had a

night's sleep, and who go all day long without thought of food." Another

visitor remarked "there is not a more courageous, sane and reasonable

people. Everyone is tender and considerate. Men who have lost wives and

children, women whose sons and husbands are dead, boys and girls whose

homes have been destroyed, are working to relieve the distress." A

Montreal clergyman reported that "Halifax people have been meeting with

dry eyes and calm faces the tragedies, the horrors, the sufferings and

the exposures which followed the explosion." Grief is after all "a

passive emotion," a "reaction of helplessness." It is "a state of mind

appropriate to a condition of affairs where nothing is to be done"--[72]

and there was much to be done at Halifax.

[72] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 58.

There are also to be added the phenomena of emotional parturition. As

was to be expected the shock meant the immediate provision of a

maternity hospital. Babies were born in cellars and among ruins.

Premature births were common, one indeed taking place in the midst of

the huddled thousands of refugees waiting in anguish upon the Common for

permission to return to their abandoned homes. Nor were all the ills for

which the shock was responsible immediately discernible. There were many

post-catastrophic phenomena. Three months after the explosion many found

themselves suffering an inexplicable breakdown, which the doctors

attributed unquestionably to the catastrophe. It was a condition closely

allied to "war-neurasthenia." Another disaster after-effect also may be

here recorded. This was the not unnatural way in which people "lived on

edge," for a long period after the disaster. There was a readiness and

suggestibility to respond to rumor or to the least excitant. Twice at

least the schools were emptied precipitately, and citizens went forth

into pell-mell flight from their homes upon the circulation of reports

of possible danger. No better illustration is afforded of the

sociological fact that "the more expectant, or overwrought the public

mind, the easier it is to set up a great perturbation. After a series of

public calamities .... minds are blown about by every gust of passion or

sentiment."[73]

[73] Ross, Edward A., _Social Psychology_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. iv,

p. 66.

There are also to be included a few miscellaneous observations of

behavior associated with the psychology of disaster relief. (1) The

preference upon the part of the refugee for plural leadership and

decision. (2) The aggravation of helplessness through the open

distribution of relief. (3) The resentment which succeeds the intrusion

of strangers in relief leadership. (4) The reaction of lassitude and

depression after a period of strain. (5) The desire for privacy during

interviews. (6) The vital importance of prompt decision in preventing an

epidemic of complaint.[74]

[74] A list compiled by the author from suggestions in Deacon's

discussion of disasters. All were to be observed at Halifax.

Analytic psychology is becoming increasingly interested in the phenomena

of repression, inhibition and taboo. The real motives of action are

often very different from the apparent motives which overlie them.

Instinctive tendencies are buried beneath barriers of civilization, but

they are buried alive. They are covered not crushed. These resistances

are either within our minds or in society. The latter are summed up in

conventionality, custom and law, all so relatively recent[75] in time as

to supply a very thin veneer over the primitive tendencies which have

held sway for ages. Few realize the place which conventionality, custom

and law possess in a community until in some extraordinary catastrophe

their power is broken, or what is the same thing the ability to enforce

them is paralyzed. This fact is especially true of repressive

enactments, and most laws fall within this category. Catastrophe

shatters the unsubstantial veneer. When the police of Boston went on

strike it was not only the signal for the crooks of all towns to repair

to the unguarded center, but an unexpected reserve of crookedness came

to light within the city itself. Lytton discovered at Pompeii signs of

plunder and sacrilege which had taken place "when the pillars of the

world tottered to and fro." At the time of the St. John Fire "loafers

and thieves held high carnival. All night long they roamed the streets

and thieved upon the misfortunes of others."[76]

[75] It has been said that were the period of man's residence on earth

considered as having covered an hundred thousand years, that of

civilization would be represented by the last ten minutes.

[76] Stewart, George, _The Story of the Great Fire in St. John_

(Toronto, 1877), p. 35.

With the possibility of apprehension reduced to a minimum in the

confusion at Halifax, with the deterrent forces of respectability and

law practically unknown, men appeared for what they were as the

following statement only too well discloses:

Few folk thought that Halifax harbored any would-be ghouls or

vultures. The disaster showed how many. Men clambered over the

bodies of the dead to get beer in the shattered breweries. Men

taking advantage of the flight from the city because of the

possibility of another explosion went into houses and shops, and

took whatever their thieving fingers could lay hold of. Then there

were the nightly prowlers among the ruins, who rifled the pockets of

the dead and dying, and snatched rings from icy fingers. A woman

lying unconscious on the street had her fur coat snatched from her

back.... One of the workers, hearing some one groaning rescued a

shop-keeper from underneath the debris. Unearthing at the same time

a cash box containing one hundred and fifty dollars, he gave it to a

young man standing by to hold while he took the victim to a place of

refuge. When he returned the box was there, but the young man and

the money had disappeared.

Then there was the profiteering phase. Landlords raised their rents

upon people in no position to bear it. The Halifax Trades and Labor

Council adopted a resolution urging that the Mayor be authorized to

request all persons to report landlords who "have taken advantage of

conditions created by the explosion." ... Plumbers refused to hold

their union rules in abeyance and to work one minute beyond the

regular eight hours unless they received their extra rates for

overtime; and the bricklayers assumed a dog-in-the-manger attitude

and refused to allow the plasterers to help in the repair of the

chimneys. And this during days of dire stress ... when many men and

women were working twelve and fourteen hours a day without a cent or

thought of remuneration. One Halifax newspaper spoke of these men as

"squeezing the uttermost farthing out of the anguished necessities

of the homeless men, women and children." Truckmen charged

exorbitant prices for the transferring of goods and baggage.

Merchants boosted prices. A small shopkeeper asked a little starving

child thirty cents for a loaf of bread.

On Tuesday, December the twelfth, the Deputy Mayor issued a

proclamation warning persons so acting that they would be dealt with

under the provisions of the law.[77]

[77] Johnstone, _op. cit._

Slowly the arm of repression grew vigorous once more. The military

placed troops on patrol. Sentries were posted preventing entrance to the

ruins to those who were not supplied with a special pass. Orders were

issued to shoot any looter trying to escape. The Mayor's proclamation,

the warning of the relief committee, the storm of popular indignation

gradually became effectual.

The stimulus of the same catastrophe, it thus appears, may result in two

different types of responses--that of greed on the one hand or

altruistic emotion on the other. One individual is spurred to increased

activity by the opportunity of business profit, another by the sense of

social needs. Why this is so--indeed the whole field of

profiteering--would be a subject of interesting enquiry. Whether it is

due to the varying degrees of socialization represented in the different

individuals or whether it is not also partly due to the fact that

philanthropy functions best in a sphere out of line with a man's own

particular occupation, the truth remains that some display an altogether

unusual type of reaction in an emergency to the actions of others; and

perhaps exhibit behavior quite different from that which appears normal

in a realm of conduct where associations based on habit are so strongly

ingrained.

The human will as we have seen is in close association with the

emotions. We are now to notice the dynamogenic value of the strong

emotions aroused by catastrophe. It is first of all essential to

remember the role of adrenin in counteracting the effects of fatigue.

Wonderful phenomena of endurance in disaster might well be anticipated

for "adrenin set free in pain and in fear and in rage would put the

members of the body unqualifiedly at the disposal of the nervous

system." This is "living on one's will" or on "one's nerve." There are

"reservoirs" of power ready to pour forth streams of energy if the

occasion presents itself. Strong emotions may become an "arsenal of

augmented strength." This fact William James was quick to see when he

said "on any given day there are energies slumbering within us which the

incitements of that day do not call forth."[78] But it was left to

Cannon to unfold the physiological reasons,[79] and for Woodworth to

explain how the presence of obstruction has power to call forth new

energies.[80] Indeed the will[81] is just the inner driving force of the

individual and an effort of will is only "the development of fresh motor

power."[82] Following the lines of least resistance the will experiences

no unusual exercise. Catastrophe opposes the tendency to eliminate from

life everything that requires a calling forth of unusual energies.

[78] James, William, _The Energies of Men_ (N. Y., 1920), p. 11.

[79] Cannon, Walter B., _Bodily changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and

Rage_, ch. xi, p. 184, _et seq._

[80] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 147.

[81] Will is indeed the supreme faculty, the whole mind in action, the

internal stimulus which may call forth all the capacities and powers.

(Conklin, Edwin G., _Heredity and Environment in the Development of

Man_ [Princeton], ch. vi, p. 47.)

[82] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 149.

The energizing influence of an emotional excitant was shown at Halifax

in the remarkable way in which sick soldiers abandoned their beds and

turned them over to the victims rushed to the military hospitals. It was

seen again in the sudden accession of strength displayed by the invalids

and the infirm during the hurried evacuation of the houses--a behavior

like that of the inhabitants of Antwerp during the bombardment of that

city in October 1914, when those who fled to Holland showed

extraordinary resistance to fatigue.[83] The resistance to fatigue and

suffering received more abundant illustration at Halifax in the work of

rescue and relief. Often men themselves were surprised at their own

power for prolonged effort and prodigious strain under the excitement of

catastrophe. It was only on Monday (the fifth day) that collapses from

work began to appear. Among the more generally known instances of

unusual endurance was that of a private, who with one of his eyes

knocked out, continued working the entire day of the disaster. Another

was that of a chauffeur who with a broken rib conveyed the wounded trip

after trip to the hospital, only relinquishing the work when he

collapsed. An unknown man was discovered at work in the midst of the

ruins although his own face was half blown off. Those who escaped with

lesser injuries worked day and night while the crisis lasted. Many did

not go home for days, so manifold and heavy were the tasks. There was no

pause for comment. Conversation was a matter of nods and silent signs,

the direction of an index finger. Weeks later the workers were surprised

to find themselves aged and thin. The excitement, the stimulus of an

overwhelming need had banished all symptoms of fatigue. During the

congestion which followed the arrival of the relief trains there were

men who spent seventy-two hours with scarcely any rest or sleep. One of

the telephone terminal room staff stuck to his post for ninety-two

hours, probably the record case of the disaster for endurance under

pressure. Magnificent effort, conspicuous enough for special notice was

the work of the search parties who, facing bitterest cold and in the

midst of blinding storms, continued their work of rescue; and the

instance of the business girls who in the same weather worked for many

hours with bottles of hot water hung about their waists. An effect which

could not escape observation was the strange insensibility to suffering

on the part of many of the victims themselves. Men, women and little

children endured the crudest operations without experiencing the common

effects of pain. They seemed to have been anaesthetized by the general

shock. Sidewalk operations, the use of common thread for sutures, the

cold-blooded extracting of eyes were carried on often without a tremor.

This resistance to suffering was due not only to the increase of energy

already described but also to the fact that the prostrating effect of

pain is largely relative to the diversion of attention,--as "headaches

disappear promptly upon the alarm of fire" and "toothaches vanish at the

moment of a burglar's scare." Much pain is due to the super-sensitivity

of an area through hyperaemia, or increased blood supply, following

concentrated attention. Thus it is actually possible by volition to

control the spread of pain, and the therapeutic virtues of an electric

shock or a slap in the face are equally demonstrable. This reasoning is

also applicable to the absence of sympathetic reactions among many

disaster workers. They were found often to be "curiously detached and

not greatly moved by the distressing scenes in morgue, in hospital, in

the ruins and at the inquiry stations."[84]

[83] Sano, F., "Documenti della guerra: Osservazioni psicologiche

notate durante il bombardamento di Anversa," _Rivista di psichologia_,

anno xi, pp. 119-128.

[84] Smith, Stanley K., _The Halifax Horror_ (Halifax, 1918), ch. iv,

p. 44.

Catastrophe and the sudden termination of the normal which ensues become

the stimuli of heroism and bring into play the great social virtues of

generosity and of kindliness--which, in one of its forms, is mutual aid.

The new conditions, perhaps it would be more correct to say, afford the

occasion for their release. It is said that battle does to the

individual what the developing solution does to the photographic

plate,--brings out what is in the man. This may also be said of

catastrophe. Every community has its socialized individuals, the

dependable, the helpful, the considerate, as well as the "non-socialized

survivors of savagery," who are distributed about the zero point of the

social scale. Calamity is the occasion for the discovery of the

"presence of extraordinary individuals in a group." The relation of them

to a crisis is one of the most important points in the problem of

progress.

At Halifax there were encountered many such individuals as well as

families who refused assistance that others might be relieved.

Individual acts of finest model were written ineffaceably upon the

social memory of the inhabitants. There was the case of a child who

released with her teeth the clothes which held her mother beneath a pile

of debris. A wounded girl saved a large family of children, getting them

all out of a broken and burning home. A telegraph operator at the cost

of his life stuck to his key, sent a warning message over the line and

stopped an incoming train in the nick of time.

Group heroism was no less remarkable. For the flooding of the powder

magazine in the naval yard an entire battery volunteered. This was why

the second explosion did not actually occur. Freight handlers too, as

well as soldiers, revealed themselves possessors of the great spirit. A

conspicuous case was that of the longshoremen working on board of a ship

laden with explosives. Fully realizing the impending danger, because of

the nearness of the burning munitioner, they used what precious minutes

of life remained them to protect their own ship's explosives from

ignition. A fire did afterwards start upon the ship but a brave captain

loosed her from the pier, and himself extinguished the blaze which might

soon have repeated in part the devastations already wrought.

No disaster psychology should omit a discussion of the psychology of

helpfulness--that self-help to which the best relief workers always

appeal, as well as of the mutual aid upon which emergency relief must

largely depend. Mutual aid while not a primary social fact is inherent

in the association of members of society, as it also "obtains among

cells and organs of the vital organism." As it insured survival in the

earlier stages of evolution[85] so it reveals itself when survival is

again threatened by catastrophe.

[85] Kropotkin, Prince, _Mutual Aid_ (N. Y., 1919), ch. i, p. 14.

The illustrations of mutual aid at Halifax would fill a volume. Not only

was it evidenced in the instances of families and friends but also in

the realm of business. Cafes served lunches without charge. Drug stores

gave out freely of their supplies. Firms released their clerks to swell

the army of relief. A noteworthy case of community service was that of

the Grocers' Guild announcing that its members would

fill no orders for outside points during the crisis, that they would

cooperate with the relief committee in delivering foodstuffs free of

charge to any point in the city, and that their stocks were at the

disposal of the committee at the actual cost to them.[86]

By incidents such as these, Halifax gained the appellation of the City

of Comrades.

[86] Johnstone, _op. cit._

Catastrophe becomes also the excitant for an unparalleled opening of the

springs of generosity.[87] Communication has transformed mutual aid into

a term of worldwide significance. As at San Francisco, when from all

directions spontaneous gifts were hurried to the stricken city, when in

a period of three months seventeen hundred carloads and five

steamerloads of relief goods arrived, in addition to millions of cash

contributions, so was it at Halifax. So it has always been, as is proven

by Chicago, Dayton, Chelsea as well as by numbers of other instances.

The public heart responds with instantaneous and passionate sympathy.

Halifax specials were on every railroad. Ships brought relief by sea.

Cities vied with each other in their responses. Every hour brought

telegraphed assistance from governments and organizations. In about

fifteen weeks approximately eight millions had been received, aside from

the Federal grant. But it was not the totality of the gifts, but the

number of the givers which gives point to our study. So many rushed with

their donations to the Calvin Austin before she sailed from Boston on

her errand of relief that "the police reserves were called out to

preserve order." A great mass of the contributions involved much

personal sacrifice upon the part of the contributors, as accompanying

letters testified. It could be written of Halifax as it was of San

Francisco that:

all the fountains of good fellowship, of generosity, of sympathy, of

good cheer, pluck and determination have been opened wide by the

common downfall. The spirit of all is a marvelous revelation of the

good and fine in humanity, intermittent or dormant under ordinary

conditions, but dominant and all pervading in the shadow of

disaster.[88]

Abridged and sketchy as the foregoing necessarily is, it is perhaps full

enough to have at least outlined the social phenomena of the major sort

which a great disaster presents. These are found to be either abnormal

and handicapping, such as, emotional parturition; or stimulative and

promotive, such as the dynamogenic reactions. In propositional form it

may be stated that catastrophe is attended by phenomena of social

psychology, which may either retard or promote social organization.

[87] There is no better evidence of the response of the public heart

to a great tragedy than the fact that at Halifax upwards of a thousand

offers were received for the adoption of the orphaned children.

[88] Bicknell, Ernest P., "In the Thick of the Relief Work at San

Francisco," _Charities and the Commons_, vol. xvi (June, 1906),

p. 299.

In addition this chapter has discussed the role of catastrophe in

stimulating community service, in presenting models of altruistic

conduct, in translating energy into action, in defending law and order,

and in bringing into play the great social virtues of generosity,

sympathy and mutual aid.

CHAPTER III

CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The organization of relief--The disaster protocracy--The transition from

chaos through leadership--Vital place of communication--Utility of

association--Imitation--Social pressure--Consciousness of

kind--Discussion--Circumstantial pressure--Climate--Geographic

determinants--Classification of factors.

We have seen something of the disintegration which followed what has

been called the "stun of the explosion." It included the abrupt flight

from, and the emptying of, all the houses and centers of employment, the

division of families in the haste of the running and the rescue, and the

utter helplessness of thousands in the three basic necessities of

life--food, raiment and a roof. There was the dislocation of

transportation, the disorganization of business, and the problem of

unemployment aggravated because not only was the work gone, but also

with it the will to work.

Social organization comes next in order and because its process was

associated with the organization of relief--the first social

activity--the sociological factors observed in the latter call for

descriptive treatment. When the human organism receives an accident to

one of its parts, automatic relief processes from within spring at once

into being, and it is so with the body politic. This "_vis medicatrix

naturae_" assumes sovereign power over all the resources of the

community. That part of the social sensorium which is most closely

organized in normal hours, first recovers consciousness in disaster. In

the case of Halifax it was the army. So was it in San Francisco, and in

Chelsea. The army has the intensive concentration, the discipline, the

organization and often the resource of supplies instantly available. Its

training is of the kind for the endurance of shock.[89] It so happened

that at Halifax large numbers of men in uniform were stationed where

they could quickly respond to call. They were very soon under orders.

The military authorities realized before midday, the part which the army

should play. The firemen too were a social group which largely remained

organized, and responded to the general alarm soon after the explosion.

Their chief and deputy-chief had been instantly killed so they were

leaderless, until one of the city controllers assumed command, and in

spite of the wild exodus when the alarm of a second explosion spread,

these men remained at their posts.

[89] What has been said of soldiers is of course equally true of

sailors.

Play actors also display similar traits of collective behavior. They are

accustomed to think quickly, to live in restricted spaces, and to meet

emergencies. Than the stage there is no better school. Each actor does

his or her part and it alone. The Academy Stock Company, forsaking the

school of Thespis for that of Esculapius, organized the first relief

station established at Halifax. This was in operation about noon on the

day of the disaster.

Thus it came about that the soldiers, firemen and play actors may be

called the disaster protocracy.[90] They were "the alert and effective,"

the most promptly reacting units in emergency. And it would appear that

the part of society which is most closely organized and disciplined in

normal periods first recovers social consciousness in disaster.

[90] Giddings, Franklin H., "Pluralistic Behaviour," _American Journal

of Sociology_, vol. xxv, no. 4 (Jan., 1920), p. 539.

It is the events of the first few hours which are of special interest to

the sociologist. The word most descriptive of the first observable

phenomenon was leadership. The soldiers were foremost in the work of

rescue, of warning, of protection, of transportation and of food

distribution. But the earliest leadership that could be called social,

arising from the public itself, was that on the part of those who had no

family ties, much of the earliest work being done by visitors in the

city. The others as a rule ran first to their homes to discover if their

own families were in danger. From this body in a short while however

many came forward to join in the activities of relief.

As already said those with no social, family or property ties were among

the first to begin relief work. But many of these started early simply

because they were present where need arose. Many indeed of the uninjured

folk at a distance seemed unable to realize the terribleness of the

immediate need in the stricken area. In fact, owing to the collapse of

communication they did not for an appreciable time discover that there

was an area more stricken than their own, and devoted themselves to

cleaning up glass and the like. But within a quarter of an hour a

hospital ship had sent ashore two landing parties with surgeons and

emergency kits. With almost equal dispatch the passengers of an incoming

train--the railroad terminal at the time being in the north end of the

city--were on hand, and were among the earliest first-aid workers. One,

a Montreal man, was known individually to have rendered first aid to at

least a half hundred of the wounded.

It was early afternoon, perhaps five hours after the catastrophe, when a

semblance of cooperative action in rescue work began. Previous to this

the work had been done in a rapid and random fashion, a single ruin

being dug through a second or even a third time. Then came the

recognition of the utility of association.[91] Thereafter the searchers

became parties each of which was detailed to go over a definite area.

When a particular section had been covered it was so recorded. This

process considerably expedited the work in hand. Meanwhile relief was

organized in other important directions.

[91] Tenney, Alvan A., Unpublished lectures on Social Organization.

The vital place of communication in society was recognized at once. It

is a major influence in association, and upon it in disaster depends the

immediacy as well as the adequacy of relief. Connections had been cut by

the explosion and the outside world could only wait and wonder. How

little real information filtered through is shown by the fact that at

Truro, only sixty-two miles distant, the announcement was made three

hours after the explosion that the death roll would not bear more than

fifty names. Nevertheless within an hour after the explosion a telegraph

company had a single line established, and with news of the disaster,

communities everywhere took up the role of the Samaritan.

While the great hegira was in progress another leader, a railroad

official, drove rapidly out the Bedford Road and commandeered the first

unbroken wire to Moncton. Thereafter all that the government railroad

equipment could do was at the community's service. Meanwhile the

dislocated railroad yards were being combed for a live engine and

coaches in commission. A hospital train was put together and in less

than four hours after the explosion a large number of injured people

were being transported to Truro.

Even before the rushing of the wounded to the hospitals a few began to

realize the great human needs which would soon be manifest among the

concourse of thousands who waited in helpless suspense upon the Common

and the hill. Here they were _en masse_, a typical social aggregation,

responding to the primitive, gregarious instinct of the herd. "Like

sheep they had flocked together too bewildered for consecutive

thought."[92] Yet here ministrations of one sort or another came into

spontaneous operation. Soon the military began raising white tents upon

the field. One after another they rose, presenting the appearance of an

huge encampment. The idea spread by imitation,[93] the repetition of a

model,--"the imitative response of many minds to the suggestive

invention of one." One or two here and one or two there began to prepare

the big church halls and other roomy institutional buildings for

occupancy. Hastily the windows were patched up, the glass swept out, and

no sooner had the danger of a second explosion passed, and the rumor of

a possible roof reached the homeless, than they began to repair thither.

At first each improvised shelter became a miniature clothing and food

depot as well as a habitation. Then the idea spread of taking the

refugees into such private homes as had fared less badly. Imitation is

the foundation of custom. It became the thing to do. The thing to do is

social pressure. It may be unwilled and unintended but it is inexorable.

It worked effectively upon all who had an unused room. Many sheltered

upwards of a dozen for weeks; some, more.

[92] Bell, McKelvie, _A Romance of the Halifax Disaster_ (Halifax,

1918).

[93] Tarde, Gabriel, _Les lois de l'imitation_ (N. Y., 1903),

translation by E. C. Parsons, ch. i, p. 14.

In the homes and shelters association of the like-minded soon came about

through consciousness of kind. At first it was a very general

consciousness which seemed to draw all together into a fellowship of

suffering as victims of a common calamity. There was neither male nor

female, just nor unjust, bond nor free. Men, women and little children

lay side by side in the large sleeping rooms and "shared each other's

woes," for "the consciousness of kind allays fear and engenders

comradeship."[94] Then followed requests for changes of location in the

dormitories, and for changes of seats at the dining tables. As various

shelters sprang up, the religious element appeared. Applications came

for transfers from Roman Catholic institutions to Protestant stations

and _vice versa_. Even the politically congenial were only too ready to

segregate when occasion offered.

[94] Giddings, _op. cit._, p. 396.

Discussion and agreement must precede all wise concerted volition. There

must be "common discussion of common action."[95] Propositions must be

"put forth" and talked over. There must be a "meeting of minds" and a

"show of hands," and decisions made. There had been no preparedness. The

city possessed not even a paper organization for such a contingency as a

sudden disaster; so that during the most precious hours citizens and

civic officials had to consult and map out a program as best the

circumstances allowed. It was late afternoon on the day of the disaster

when a tentative plan had been formulated in the City Hall. The newly

formed committees could do but little until the following dawn.

[95] Bagehot, Walter, _Physics and Politics_ (N. Y., 1884), p. 159,

_et seq._

Men at best are largely creatures of circumstance. Innumerable causes,

small and great, conspire to incite social action. But in catastrophe

the control of circumstantial pressure[96] becomes almost sovereign in

extent. The conditions it brings about, while often delaying measures of

individual relief, account very largely for the rapidity of

organization. While they limit they also provoke effort. The common

danger constrains great numbers to "overlook many differences, to

minimize many of their antagonisms and to combine their efforts." At

Halifax the pressure of indescribable suffering precipitated the medical

and hospital arrangements which were the earliest forms of communal

service. But it was the meteorological conditions which commanded the

most prompt attention to the consideration of shelter and clothing. The

months appeared to have lost station and February to have come out of

season. The following table gives the weather record for the seven days

which followed the catastrophe.[97] It is the record of a succession of

snow, wind, cold and blizzard.

Thursday, Dec. 6th.

9 a. m. Fair. Frozen ground. Light N. W. wind. No precipitation.

Temperature: max. 39.2, min. 16.8.

Friday, Dec. 7th.

9 a. m. N. E. wind, velocity 19. Snow falling. At noon N. W. gale.

Afternoon, blizzard conditions. 9 p. m. N. W. wind, velocity 34.

Precipitation 16.0 in. snow. Temperature: max. 32.2, min. 24.8.

Saturday, Dec. 8th.

9 a. m. N. W. wind, velocity 20. Intermittent sunshine. 9 p. m. N. W.

wind, velocity 11. Precipitation 1.2 snow (in a. m.). Temperature: max.

29.8, min. 15.

Sunday, Dec. 9th.

9 a. m. S. E. gale, velocity 39. Streets icy and almost impassable.

9 p. m. S. W. wind, velocity 27. Precipitation .99 rainfall (1.40 a. m.

till noon). Temperature: max. 50.41, min. 14.6.

Monday, Dec. 10th.

9 a. m. S. W. wind, velocity 11. Afternoon, blizzard (worst in years).

Knee-deep drifts. 9 p. m. W. wind, velocity 20. Precipitation 5.6

snowfall (2 p. m. till 5.40 p. m.). Temperature: max. 34.2, min. 16.8.

Tuesday, Dec. 11th.

9 a. m. Clear. W. wind, velocity 18. 9 p. m. W. wind, velocity 11. No

precipitation. Temperature: max. 18.2, min. 6.6.

Wednesday, Dec. 12th.

9 a. m. N. W. wind, velocity, 15. 9 p. m. N. E. wind, velocity 3. No

precipitation. Temperature: max. 17, min. 2.

[96] Giddings, _op. cit._, p. 390.

[97] From information kindly supplied by D. L. Hutchinson, director of

the St. John (N. B.) observatory, and F. B. Ronnan, Halifax Station.