Reference has already been made to the policy to which the Commission was committed. This policy may be more exactly stated by an extract from the act incorporating the commission: _Whereas_, the said Halifax Relief Commission as heretofore constituted has recommended to the Governor-General of Canada in Council, that reasonable compensation or allowance should be made to persons injured in or by reason of the said disaster and the dependents of persons killed or injured in or by reason of the said disaster and the Governor-General of Canada in Council has been pleased to adopt said recommendation; _etc._ In the provision of material assistance, the strengthening of morale and the eventual establishment of a Relief Commission, government may be said to have contributed an important and deciding influence in the reorganization of the community of Halifax and its restoration to normal conditions. Not only must social legislation be acknowledged to have had a very direct determining influence upon whatever picture of the community is subsequently drawn, but social legislation itself was enriched by the catastrophe. The association of catastrophe with progress in social legislation has already been noticed in our introduction, the mass of facts in support of which no writer has yet compiled. In this introduction we noted how on many occasions disasters have been the preceding reagents in effecting legislation of permanent social value. It is instanced that city-planning in America took its rise from the Chicago fire, that the origin of labor legislation is traceable to a calamitous fever at Manchester and that the Titanic disaster precipitated amendment to the Seamen's laws.[137] It has been said that "the vast machinery of the Public Health Department in England has rapidly grown up in consequence of the cholera visitations in the middle of the last century;"[138] and also that public health work in America practically began with yellow fever epidemics. Writing of mining disasters, J. Byron Deacon says in this connection If it can be said that any circumstance attending such disasters is fortunate, it was that they exercised a profound influence upon public opinion, to demand new effort and legislation both for the prevention of industrial accidents and for the more equitable distribution of the burden of individual loss and community relief which they involved.[139] Again E. A. Ross writes: A permanent extension to the administration of the state has often dated from a calamity,--a pestilence, a famine, a murrain, a flood or a tempest--which, paralyzing private efforts has caused application for state aid.[140] [137] Parkinson, Thomas I., "Problems growing out of the Titanic Disaster," _Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science_, vol. vi, no. 1. [138] Ross, Edward A., _Foundations of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1905), ch. viii, p. 254.