History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
Though the Adams Street station is now the central relief station, the
most imposing display of supplies is made at the Pennsylvania Railroad
freight and passenger depots. Here, on the platforms and in the yards,
are piled up barrels of flour in long rows, three and four barrels high;
biscuits in cans and boxes, where car-loads of them have been dumped;
crackers, under the railroad sheds in bins; hams, by the hundred, strung
on poles; boxes of soap and candles, barrels of kerosene oil, stacks of
canned goods, and things to eat of all sorts and kinds. The same is
visible at the Baltimore and Ohio road, and there is now no fear of a
food famine in Johnstown, though of course everybody will have to rough
it for weeks. What is needed most in this line is cooking utensils.
Johnstown people want stoves, kettles, pans, knives, and forks. All the
things that have been sent so far have been sent with the evident idea
of supplying an instant need, and that is right and proper, but it would
be well now, if, instead of some of the provisions that are sent,
cooking utensils would arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this
morning, and it is said that more are coming.
At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big
rope-line incloses them in an impromptu yard, so as to give room to
those having them in charge to walk around and see what they have got.
On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers, with
their rifles on their shoulders, and, beside the lines pressing against
the ropes, there stands every day, from daylight until dawn, a crowd of
women with big baskets, who make piteous appeals to the soldiers to give
them food for their children at once, before the order of the relief
committee. Those to whom supplies are dealt out at the stations have to
approach in a line, and this line is fringed with soldiers, Pittsburgh
policemen, and deputy sheriffs, who see that the children and weak women
are not crowded out of their places by the stronger ones. The supplies
are not given in large quantities, but the applicants are told to come
again in a day or so and more will be given them. The women complain
against this bitterly, and go away with tears in their eyes, declaring
that they have not been given enough. Other women utter broken words of
thankfulness and go away, their faces wreathed in smiles.
One night something in the nature of a raid was made by Father McTahney,
one of the Catholic priests here, on the houses of some people whom he
suspected of having imposed upon the relief committee. These persons
represented that they were destitute, and sent their children with
baskets to the relief stations, each child getting supplies for a
different family. There are unquestionably many such cases. Father
McTahney found that his suspicions were correct in a great many cases,
and he brought back and made the wrong-doers bring back the provisions
which they had obtained under false pretenses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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