Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/168

162 occupants out." Several panics occurred in schools. One man relates that his wife and sister "rushed to him." Nurses were alarmed in a hospital. Telephone girls left the switch-boards in Chicago, and "were scared" in Clinton. A particular mention is made of a seamstress who was alarmed, and of another woman who sank frightened on a bed. But in no case is a man specially mentioned as having been afraid. In places where men were scared, fright was general, and there was then no cause for such special mention. The evidence of this difference can hardly be charged to an unconscious discrimination by the reporters in favor of the stronger sex. It must be regarded as a noteworthy incident in this earthquake that its intensity was near that limit, which is strong enough to scare women but not men. This limit must approximate seven in the Rossi-Forel scale, and the unsentimental seismologist may hence add another criterion for correctly locating the seventh isoseismal.

One general observation which has a practical bearing should perhaps not be left unmentioned. It is that the earthquake was more strongly felt in the upper stories of high buildings than on the ground floors. In Dubuque "the upper part of the high buildings swayed." A reporter in Burlington says that the shock was "felt most in the upper stories of tall buildings." "The floors shook in the upper stories of large buildings "in Clinton, and in Davenport" the tremors were mostly noted in high office buildings." In Chicago the shock was not felt on the ground floors, but mostly "only in the higher stories." The top floors are especially mentioned as having shaken in some of the university buildings in Evanstown and in a college building at Cedar Rapids. In the architecture produced by the demands of industry and business in this part of the world, the eventuality of a severe earthquake has not entered as an element of consideration. The experience of a half century shows that this neglect is probably justified. Nevertheless, it is appalling to contemplate how different the story of this recent jar would appear if the intensity of the disturbance had been just a little greater than it was. From our past experience we may safely infer that the valley of the upper Mississippi is in a region where earthquakes are not frequent. Are we also justified in believing that when such disturbances do occur, they will not be severe? The violence of the New Madrid earthquakes a hundred years ago makes the answer to this question uncertain. Time alone will tell.