THAT the masses of the people in the cities stricken by the earthquake are not disposed to heed the lesson, and scatter over the millions of broad, unoccupied acres, instead of repeating the follies of the past is evident from many circumstances:
(1) Millions have been lost because invested in these cities; yet capitalists are in a rush to invest more millions in the same way, boasting the ability to thwart the earthquake and the fire. Like Babylon of old, the resources of the country are being perverted to the proud purposes of rearing and embellishing great cities. And, like Babylon of old, the investment will in the end prove unprofitable.
(2) Homes have been lost because they were crowded in the cities. Yet those who can raise the means, by borrowing or otherwise, will plant homes in the same localities. Men and women lose their lives, their health, their characters, by the criminal and immoral associations and surroundings of the cities; yet they seem oblivious to any way of living excepting by the scanty gleanings of city life.
(3) Men and women prefer meager wages and uncertain employment, together with life in loathsome and crowded tenements, rather than life amid the productive and healthful fields in the country. One man reports that he sought farm laborers among the needy men in San Francisco, and out of several hundred who professed to want work, he finally secured two who were really willing to go to the country.
(4) The hundreds of varying languages in the world stand as a great monument to God's displeasure with the folly of city-building. And the ages are strewn with buried and devastated cities, fallen under the wrath of God because of their moral and political corruption. The great dens of political chicanery, of business dishonesty, of moral depravity, of iniquity indescribable, to an extent that mortal vision can not perceive or mortal mind compute, are all hatched and brooded and nurtured in the cities.
The everywhere-expressed determination to rebuild greater, grander, and stronger, the recently-devastated cities, is an indication that capital has not learned the lesson. The persistence with which the poor wage-earners cling to the ruins or flock to other cities, would indicate that labor has not yet learned the lesson. But neither class know what else to do; they follow in the wake of their worldly education. It would require faith in God's Word to inspire courage to do otherwise, and this the masses do not possess. That which they have done they will do; and the folly and its fruits will be repeated. Here and there one will be wise, even at the expense of what seems to be for profit, and in the greater destruction yet to come it will be this "little flock" that will be saved.
The Word of God is full of warnings and instruction for the people of the last days, and never before were there, in His providence, so many instrumentalities for printing and distributing this Word. This is no mere chance coincidence. The definite purpose of the merciful Father is that the people shall be made wise, not merely as to the physical fact of the disasters that are coming upon the earth, but as to the means of escape in the time of trouble. There is no other means of escape than by taking heed to the Word, and fleeing to the only Refuge. "Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us." Ps. 62:8. G.
Looking from the Post Office, Seventh and Mission Streets, San Francisco, northward, after the fire.
