422 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1166 



where, in order to protect themselves, they 

 are compelled to make their customers pay 

 for risks about which we are all equally ig- 

 norant. As a matter of fact not a single 

 railway or tramway company, not a single 

 telegraph or telephone company, not a 

 single insurance company, not a single 

 electric power company, and only one water 

 company — the Spring Valley Water Com- 

 pany of San Francisco — has ever mani- 

 fested the slightest interest in our work or 

 lifted a finger to help us gather the data 

 necessary for a rational study of the earth- 

 quake problems of this coast. What could 

 we not do if we had the cordial cooperation 

 of all such organizations on this coast? It 

 seems almost incredible that the business 

 interests of this state and of this coast 

 should willingly and weakly, year after 

 year, allow a permanent threat to hang over 

 their industries, their transportation lines, 

 their public utilities, and their very exist- 

 ence, without making an intelligent effort 

 to study the subject or to help those who are 

 willing and anxious to study it, and to find 

 means of meeting it. Yet such are the sad 

 facts. 



What is the explanation of this remark- 

 able state of affairs? So far as I am able 

 to judge, it comes from the false attitude 

 into which the people of this coast have un- 

 wittingly drifted. At the time of the 

 earliest settlement of the Pacific coast by 

 whites, pious people grouped the earth- 

 quakes along with a choice lot of other dis- 

 asters and calamities commonly known as 

 "acts of God." And naturally enough 

 pious people regarded the acts of God as 

 things to which we should take off our hats, 

 but which should not be questioned or ir- 

 reverently pried into. 



In time they came to be simply accepted 

 as drawbacks to the general attractiveness 

 of California, and as such it seemed best to 

 regard them as evils to be endured but not 



to be talked about. Here was a great and 

 beautiful land that lacked capital, a good 

 class of immigrants, and the development 

 of its natural resources ; and nothing must 

 be said or done to frighten away either the 

 capital or the immigrants. If the news of 

 an earthquake occasionally made its way 

 out of the state it was immediately given 

 a back seat by being confronted with the 

 enormous damage done by destructive tor- 

 nadoes and annual floods in the Mississippi 

 Valley. Our real-estate agents rarely or 

 never heard of earthquakes ; it seemed bet- 

 ter that they should not ; such things inter- 

 fered with business. About the same time 

 the newspapers fell into the habit of for- 

 getting to mention them, and there seemed 

 to grow up spontaneously a sort of con- 

 spiracy of silence in regard to the subject. 

 And so it came about that when the earth- 

 quake of 1906 broke the water mains of the 

 Spring Valley Water Company and at the 

 same moment set fire to the city of San 

 Francisco, we were entangled in the snares 

 of our own weaving. And now see how we 

 tried to hide our heads in the sand. The 

 geologists hereabout were very anxious to 

 gather the data made available by that par- 

 ticular earthquake, but as the necessary 

 field work required considerable funds ef- 

 forts were made to interest some of our 

 business men in the subject. But our busi- 

 ness men rose up almost to a man and as- 

 sured us in the most emphatic language 

 that there had been no earthquake, and we 

 were told to "forget it"; to "cut it out," 

 and above all, to publish no report on it. 



It is not necessary to tell this audience 

 that such an attitude is false and absolutely 

 untenable. The battles of science can not 

 be successfully fought with the weapons of 

 ignorance and bigotry. 



I am confident that this state of affairs 

 can not long endure. Very likely indeed we 

 have not done our own duty in pointing 



