The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 14

The Sheriff has taken charge of Johnstown and armed men are this morning patrolling the city. The people who have been properly in the limits are permitted to enter the city if they are known, but otherwise it is impossible to get into the town. The regulation seems harsh, but it is a necessity.

Troops Sent Home.

Battery B, of Pittsburgh, arrived in the city this morning under command of Lieutenant Sheppard, who went to the quarters of Adjutant-General Hastings in the railroad watch tower. The General had just got up, and as the officer approached the General said:--

"Who sent you here?"

"I was sent here by the Chamber of Commerce," replied the Lieutenant.

"Well, I want to state that there are only four people who can order you out, viz.:--The Governor, Adjutant-General, Major General and the Commander of the Second Brigade. You have committed a serious breach of discipline, and my advice to you is to get back to Pittsburgh as soon as possible, or you may be mustered out of service. I am surprised that you should attempt such an act without any authority whatever."

This seemed to settle the matter, and the battery started back to Pittsburgh. In justice to Lieutenant Sheppard it might be stated that he was told that an order was issued by the Governor. General Hastings stated afterwards that the sending down of the soldiers was like waving a red flag, and it would only tend to create trouble. He said everything was quiet here, and it was an insult to the citizens of Johnstown to send soldiers here at present.

Extortioners Held in Check.

A riot was almost caused by the exorbitant prices that were charged for food. One storekeeper in Millville borough was charging $5 a sack for flour and seventy-five cents for sandwiches on Sunday. This caused considerable complaint and the citizens grew desperate. They promptly took by force all the contents of the store. As a result this morning all the stores have been put under charge of the police. An inventory was taken and the proprietor was paid the market price for his stock.

A strong guard is kept at the office of the Cambria Iron Company.

Sat.u.r.day was pay day at the works, and $80,000 is in the safe. This became known, and the officials are afraid that an attempt would be made to rob the place.

Sheriff d.i.c.k and a posse of his men got into a riot this afternoon with a crowd of Hungarians at Cambria City. The Hungarians got the better of him, and he called on a squad of Battery B boys, who charged with drawn sabres, and soon had the crowd on the run.

Men Hard at Work.

Order is slowly arising out of chaos. The survivors are slowly realizing what is the best course to pursue. The great cry is for men. Men who will work and not stand idly by and do nothing but gaze at the ruins.

The following order was posted on a telegraph pole in Johnstown to-day:--

"Notice--During the day men who have been idle have been begged to aid us in clearing the town, and many have not refused to work. We are now so organized that employment can be found for every man who wants to work, and men offered work who refuse to take the same and who are able to work must leave Johnstown for the present. We cannot afford to feed men who will not work. All work will be paid for. Strangers and idlers who refuse to work will be ejected from Johnstown.

"By order of Citizens' Committee."

Turning Away the Idlers.

Officers were stationed at every avenue and railroad that enters the town. All suspicious looking characters are stopped. But one question is asked. It is, "Will you work?" If an affirmative answer is given a man escorts him to the employment bureau, where he is put to work. If not, he is turned back. The committee has driven one or two men out of the town. There is a lot of idle vagabond negroes in Johnstown who will not work. It is likely that a committee will escort them out of town. They have caused the most trouble during the past terrible days.

It is a fact, although a disagreeable one to say, that not a few of the relief committees who came to this city, came only out of curiosity and positively refused to do any work, but would hang around the cars eating food. The leaders of the committee then had to do all the work. They deserve much credit.

Begging for Help.

An old man sat on a chair placed on a box at the intersection of two streets in Johnstown and begged for men. "For G.o.d's sake," he said, "can we not find men. Will not some of you men help? Look at these men who have not slept for three days and are dropping with fatigue. We will pay well. For G.o.d's sake help us." Tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke.

Then he would threaten the group of idlers standing by and again plead with them. Every man it seems wants to be a policeman.

CHAPTER VII.

Burial of the Victims.

Hundreds have been laid away in shallow trenches without forms, ceremonies or mourners. All day long the work of burial has been going on. There was no time for religious ceremonies or mourning and many a mangled form was coffined with no sign of mourning save the honest sympathy of the brave men who handled them. As fast as the wagons that are gathering up the corpses along the stream arrive with their ghastly loads they are emptied and return again to the banks of the merciless Conemaugh to find other victims among the driftwood in the underbrush, or half buried in the mud. The coffins are now beginning to arrive, and on many streets on the hillside they are stacked as high as the second and third story windows.

At Kernville the people are not so fortunate. It would seem that every man is his own coffin maker, and many a man can be seen here and there claiming the boards of what remains of his house in which perhaps he has found the remains of a loved one, and busily patching them together with nails and hoops or any available thing to hold the body.

When the corpses are found they are taken to the nearest dead house and are carefully washed. They are then laid out in rows to await identification. Cards are pinned to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s as soon as they are identified, and their names will be marked on the headboards at the graves.

Wholesale Funerals.

There were many rude funerals in the upper part of the town. The coffins were conveyed to the cemeteries in wagons, each one carrying two, three or more.

At Long View Cemetery and at one or two other points long trenches have been dug to receive the coffins. The trenches are only about three feet deep, it being thought unnecessary to bury deeper, as almost all the bodies will be removed by friends. Nearly three hundred bodies were buried thus to-day.

There will be no public ceremony, no funeral dirge, and but few weeping mourners. The people are too much impressed with the necessity of immediate and constant work to think of personal grief.

The twenty-six bodies taken to the hose house in Minersville were buried shortly after ten o'clock yesterday morning. Of the twenty-six, thirteen were identified. Eight women, a baby and four men were buried without having been identified.

All day yesterday men were engaged in burying the dead. They ran short of coffins, and in order to dispose of the rapidly decomposing bodies they built rough boxes out of the floating lumber that was caught. In this way they buried temporarily over fifty bodies in the cemetery just above the town.

Putrefaction of dead bodies threatens the health of the whole region.

Now that the waters are fast shrinking back from the horrid work of their own doing and are uncovering thousands of putrid and ill-smelling corpses the fearful danger of pestilence is espied, stalking in the wake of more violent destruction.

The air is already reeking with infectious filth, and the alarm is widespread among the desolated and overwrought population.

Cremation Best.

Incident to this phase of the situation the chief sensation of the morning was the united remonstrance of the physicians against the extinguishment of the burning wreck of the demolished town which is piled up against the bridge. They maintain, with a philosophy that to anxious searchers seems heartless, that hundreds, if not thousands, of lifeless and decaying bodies lie beneath this ma.s.s of burning ruins.

"It would be better," they say, "to permit Nature's greatest scavenger--the flames--to pursue his work unmolested than to expose to further decay the horde of putrefying bodies that lie beneath this debris. There can be but one result. Days will elapse before the rubbish can be sufficiently removed to permit the recovery of these bodies, and long before that every corpse will be a putrid ma.s.s, giving forth those frightful emanations of decaying human flesh that in a crowded community like this can have but one result--the dreadful typhus. Every battlefield has demonstrated the necessity of the hasty interment of decaying bodies, and the stench that already arises is a forerunner of impending danger. Burn the wreck, burn the wreck."

Sorrow Rejects Safety.

A loud cry of indignation arose from the lips of the vast mult.i.tude and the warnings of science were lost in the eager demands of those that sought the remains of the near and dear. The hose was again turned upon the hissing ma.s.s, and rapidly the flames yielded to the supremacy of water.

It is almost impossible to conceive the extent of these smoking ruins.

An area of eight or ten acres above the dam is covered to a depth of forty feet with shattered houses, borne from the resident centre of Johnstown. In each of these houses, it is estimated, there were from one to twenty or twenty-five people. This is accepted as data upon which to estimate the number that perished on this spot, and if the data be correct the bodies that lie beneath these ruins must run well up into the thousands.

Members of the State Board of Health arrived in Nineveh this morning and determined to proceed at once to dredge the river, to clean it of the dead and prevent the spreading of disease. To this end they have wired the State Department to furnish them with the proper appliances.

Drinking Poisoned Water.