ade fair
to be justified. Undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering,
through the medium of runaways from the stricken houses. But the
"Clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "I-told-you-so," admitting
the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. More
than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had
already been sacrificed to the shibboleth of secrecy; the whole city had
been imperiled; the disease had set up its foci of infection in a score
of places, and there were some three hundred cases, in all, known or
suspected. One method only could cope with the situation: the fullest
public information followed by radical hygienic measures.

Of information there was no lack. So tremendous a news feature could not
be kept out of print by the other dailies, all of whom now admitted the
presence of the pestilence, while insisting that its scope had been
greatly exaggerated, and piously deprecating the "sensationalism" of
their contemporary. Thus the city administration was forced to action.
An appropriation was voted to the Health Bureau. Dr. Merritt, seizing
his opportunity, organized a quarantine army, established a detention
camp and isolation hospital, and descended upon the tenement districts,
as terrible (to the imagination of the frantic inhabitants) as a
malevolent god. The Emergency Health Committee, meantime, died and was
forgotten overnight.

Something not unlike panic swept the Rookeries. Wild rumors passed from
mouth to mouth, growing as they went. A military cordon, it was said,
was to be cast about the whole ward and the people pent up inside to
die. Refugees were to be shot on sight. The infected buildings were to
be burned to the ground, and the tenants left homeless. The water-supply
was to be poisoned, to get rid of the exposed--had already been
poisoned, some said, and cited sudden mysterious deaths. Such savage
imaginings of suspicion as could spring only from the ignorant fears of
a populace beset by a secret and deadly pest, roused the district to a
rat-like defiance. Such of the residents as were not home-bound by the
authorities, growled in saloon back rooms and muttered in the streets.
Hatred of the "Clarion" was the burden of their bitterness. Two of its
reporters were mobbed in the hard-hit ward, the day after the
publication of the first article.

Nor was the paper much better liked elsewhere. It was held responsible
for all the troubles. Th