My Story by Elizabeth J. Hauser Page B

which keeps us forever tinkering at a defective spigot when the bung-hole is wide open. If we were wise enough to seek and find the causes that call for charity there would be some hope for us.
    In Johnstown it was a defective dam used for the recreation of the well-to-do. A great reservoir of water in which fish were kept to be fished for by the privileged members of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club of Pittsburgh. This property, comprising some five hundred acres, had been acquired by purchase. Originally a part of the State canal system it had passed into the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company when the latter purchased the canal in 1857–58, and became private property in 1875 when Congressman John Reilly bought it. He later offered it for sale at two thousand dollars, when it was purchased by the originator of the Club above mentioned and two other Pittsburgh gentlemen.
    It was suspected that the dam wasn’t safe. I myself had gone to look at it one day the summer before it broke and had speculated on what might happen to us in the little city eight miles down the valley in case the dam should give way. The innocent cause of the catastrophe when at last it did come was some leaves which clogged the spill-way. Citizens living in the vicinity wanted to remove the wire grating which held the leaves back and caused the water to go over the breast of the dam, but were refused permission to do so, refused, forsooth, because some of the privately-owned fishes swimming around in the privately-controlled pool might escape — might be swept over the confines of their aristocratic dwelling and eventually be caught with a bent pin attached to a cane pole, instead of being hauled out of the sacred waters, inwhich they had been spawned, by that work of art known as a high class rod and reel equipped with a silk line and a many-hued artificial fly.
    Yes, the Johnstown flood was caused by Special Privilege, and it is not less true that Special Privilege makes charity apparently necessary than it is that “crime and punishment grow on one stem!” It is cupidity which creates unjust social conditions sometimes for mere pleasure — as in this case — but generally for profit. The need of charity is almost always the result of the evils produced by man’s greed.
    What did charity do for Johnstown? It was powerless to restore children to parents, to reunite families, to mitigate mourning, to heal broken hearts, to bring back lost lives. It had to be diverted to uses for which it was not intended. As charity it had to be eliminated, as we have seen, before the people could save themselves.
    Materially Johnstown was benefited by the flood, just as so many other communities have been by similar catastrophes. And material prosperity seems so important that we have acquired a habit of saying, “Oh, the fire was a good thing for Chicago or London,” “The flood was a good thing for Johnstown,” etc., etc. But is it not true that when human lives are lost the price paid for material benefits is one that can’t be counted? We must leave this out of the reckoning then when we say that the flood was a good thing for Johnstown.
    The town went forward as one united people now no longer divided by separate borough governments, and on the wreckage of the former city built up a great manufacturing community which to-day numbers more than fifty thousand souls.

    CERTIFICATE ISSUED BY THE JOHNSON COMPANY AT JOHNSTOWN
    It was a marvelous thing to witness such utter destruction and in so short a time such complete reconstruction, and the spectacle made a profound impression upon me. When I became mayor of Cleveland twelve years later I was faced by problems of a different character, but problems due to the same root cause from which Johnstown’s difficulties came. And many, many times when these problems seemed hopelessly entangled I reasoned with myself that there must be a way out, since in