p. 5 | Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 16, 1903

Note and Comment

WHILE sections of the West have suffered almost incalculable damage from floods the past few weeks, a vast section bordering the Atlantic coast has during the same time suffered almost as severely, as regards property loss, for the want of rain. The provinces of Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, the northern and southwestern parts of Maine from Augusta to the New Hampshire line, the eastern part of the latter State, large tracts in eastern and western Massachusetts, several thousand acres in northern Vermont, the Adirondack region in New York, Long Island, and a large tract in eastern New Jersey, comprise the territory affected by the drought and the fires. Giving an estimate of the property loss incurred in this section, the Chicago Tribune says:—

Over this great area, embracing millions of acres of timber land, the fire has swept away not only the standing trees, involving immense losses for the lumber companies and manufacturers, but ruining many farms, and destroying hundreds of farmhouses, schoolhouses, shops, and mills, and in some cases completely wiping out small villages adjacent to the woods. The losses by fire may be roughly estimated as follows: in Canada, $5,000,000; in New England, $5,000,000, to which Maine contributes $3,000,000; in New York, $2,500,000; in New Jersey, $2,000,000. This estimate includes only the losses on timber land. Adding to it other losses, such as buildings and business property, the total probably will reach $20,000,000, which is about the average of annual losses from forest fires in the whole country. This is not the whole extent of the loss the East has suffered. It is estimated by the Massachusetts board of agriculture that the drought has occasioned losses in New England of seventy-five per cent on hay and forage, cereals, vegetables, live stock, and live stock products amounting to more than $70,000,000.

Estimating the agricultural losses in New York and New Jersey, there probably will be a total loss from fire and drought in this fire area of a round hundred million dollars.

The Chicago Tribune of June 9 closed an editorial on “The Revival of Sectionalism” by saying: “It is a serious thing to contemplate that this country is liable, unless care is taken, to be rent again into factions hating each other. And the saddest thing about it is that we seem to be going backward instead of forward. Eight, six, four, and two years ago the North and South were far more friendly than they are to-day.”

The explanation is that “intensity is taking possession of every earthly element,” and the spirit of strife and not of peace, is in the ascendency. These are the troublous times of earth’s last days: