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]