The Greater Dangers; The Greater Enemies.
By Editor
San Jose was “hit hard” by the earthquake, but she was a long way from being killed. She was hardly stunned, as her noble call for thousands of San Francisco refugees demonstrated. Mountain View was “hit hard” so was Palo Alto, Redwood, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Rosa first of all. And yet to-day we would as soon settle and build in Santa Rosa or San Jose as any other city in the world of equal advantage elsewise. We do not believe there is worse danger in these cities than there is in any two cities of equal size in the East. The worst foe of San Jose is not the earthquake or the man who tells of it, it is the saloon and the rum-sodden politics which surround it. The earthquakes and cyclones are incident to the ageing of the earth in consequence of the sin-perverted laws in her physical being, and go where we will we can not escape regions of disaster. Therefore as we have said from the beginning we do not consider California any more perilous than any other state or locality and in many respects the Golden State is generally to be preferred to many other sections of the world. The worst foe of any city is its unrighteousness. “By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted; but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.” Prov. 11: 11.