Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 163, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1915 — The SCARLET PLAGUE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SCARLET PLAGUE

By JACK LONDON

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SYNOPSIS. Ta a California Talley an old man. one •f the few eurvlvore of a world-wide plague that has destroyed civilisation, tells the story of the Scarlet Plague to Ms grandsons. CHAPTER ll—Continued. "Like Band on the beach here, like ■and on the beach, each grain of sand a man, or woman, or child. Yea, my boy, all those people lived right here tn San Francisco And at one time or another all those people came out on this very beach —more people than there are grains of sand. More — more—more. And San Francisco was a noble city. And across the bay—where we camped last year, even more people lived, clear from Point Richmond, on the level ground and on tiie hills, all the way around to Ban Leandro —one great city of seven million people. Seven teeth . . . there, that's it, seven millions ” Again the boys* eyes ranged up and down from Edwin's fingers to the teeth on the log. "The world was full of people. The census of 2010 gave eight billion for the whole world—eight crab shells, yea, eight billions. It was not like today. Mankind knew a great deal more about getting food. And the more food there was, the more people there were. In the year 1800, there were of sand, Hoo-Hoo —one hundred and seventy millions tn Europe alone. One hundred yean later —a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo—one hundred yean later. In 1800. there were five hundred millions In Europe—five grains of sand, HooHoo, and this one tooth. This shows how easy was the getting of food, and how men Increased. And in the year 2000, there were fifteen hundred millions tn Europe. And it was the same an over the rest of the world. Bight crab shells there, yes, eight billion people wen alive on the earth when the Scarlet Death began.

"I was a young man when the Plague came —twenty-seven years old; and I lived on the other side of San Francisco bay, tn Berkeley. You remember those stone houses. Edwin, when we came down the hills from Contra Costa? That was when I lived, in those stone houses. ;, I was a professor of English literature.” Much of this was over the heads of the boys, but they strove to comprehend dimly this tale of the past. "What was them stone houses for?” Hare-Lip queried. “You remember when your dad taught you to swim?” The boy nodr ded. "Well, in the University of California —that is the name we had for the houses —we taught young men and women how to think, just as I have taught you now, by sand and pebbles and shells, to know how many people lived In those days. Then was very much to teach. The young men and women we taught were called students. We had large rooms in which we taught I talked to them, forty or fifty at a time, just as I am talking to you now. I told them about the books other men had written before their time, and even, sometimes, tn their time —”

“Was that all you did? —just talk, talk, talk?*’ Hoo-Hoo demanded. “Who hunted your meat for you. and milked the goats, and caught the fish?" “A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question. As I have told you. In those days food-getting was very easy. We were very wise. A few men got the food for many men. The other men did other things. As you say, I talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me—much food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted In sixty years, and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful achievement of our tremendous civilisation was food—lts inconceivable abundance, its infinite variety, its marvelous delicacy." This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts, as a mere senile wandering in the narrative.

“Our food-gutters were called freemen. This was a joke. We of the ruling classes owned all the land, all the machines, everything. These food-get-ters were our slaves. We took almost all the food they got, and left them a little so that they might eat. and work, and get ua more food —" "I’d have gone into the forest and got food for myself,” Hare-Lip announced; "and if any man tried to take it away from me I’d have killed him.” The old man laughed. "Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all the forest, everything? Any food-get-ter who would not get food tor us. him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that. They preferred to get food for us. and make clothes for us, and prepare and administer to us a thousand —a mussel shell, Hoo-Hoo—a thousand satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those days— Prof. James Howard Smith. "And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat, and my hands

were soft, because I did not work with them, and my body was clean all over and dressed In the softest garments —” He surveyed his mangy goatskin with disgust. "We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go in swimming.”

"Neither do you, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo retorted. “I know, I know. I am a filthy old man. But times have changed. Nobody washes these days, and there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap. You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called It a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs. Remember that word —germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when they run In the forest. Only the germ is very ■mall. It is so small that you cannot see it—” Hoo-Hoo began to laugh. "You’re a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can’t see. If you can’t see ’em, how do you know they are? That’s what I want to know. How do you know anything you can’t see?" "A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see—some of them. We had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger than they really were, and many things we could not see without the microscopes at all. Our best rltra-

♦ microscopes could make a germ look forty thousand times larger. A mussel shell is a thousand times larger. A mussel shell is a thousand fingers like Edwin’s. Take forty mussel shells, and by many times larger was the germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see. Take a grain of sand. Break it into ten pieces. Break one of those pieces Into ten, and one of those into ten, and one of those Into ten, and one of those into ten, and do it all day, and maybe, by sunset, you will have a piece as small as one of the germu” The boys were openly incredulous. Hare-Up sniffed and sneered and HooHoo snickered, until Edwin nudged them to be silent. “The woodtick sucks the blood of the dog, but the germ, being so very email goes right into the blood of the body, and there it has many children. In those days there would be as many as a billion —a crab shell, please—as many as that crab shell In one man’s body. We called germs micro-organ-isms. When a few million, or a nillion, of them were in a man, tn an the blood of a man, he was sick. These germs were a disease. There were many different kinds of them—more different kinds than there are grains of sand on this beach. We knew only a few of the kinds. The micro-organic world was an invisible world, a world we could not see, and we knew very little about it Yet, we did know

something. There was the bacillus aathracis; there was ‘ the mlcrococue; there was the bacterium termo. and the bacterium lactis—that’s what turns the goat milk sour even to this day, Hare-Lip; and there were schlzomycetes without end. And there were many others. . . ■” "But the Scarlet Death, Granser," Edwin at last suggested. "Yes. yes, Edwin; I had forgotten. Sometimes the memory of the past is very strong upon me, and I forget that I am a dirty old man, clad in goatskin, wandering with my savage grandsons who are goatherds in the primeval wilderness. 'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,’ and so lapsed our glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married Into that tribe. My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramentos, and the PaloAltos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, arc of the Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are of the Palo-Altos. Your tribe takes its name from a town that was near the seat of another great institution of learning. It was called Stanford university. Yes, I remember now. It is perfectly clear. I was telling you of the Scarlet Death. Where was I in my story?’’ "You was telling about germs, the things you can’t see, but which make men sick,” Edwin - prompted. "Yes, that’s where I was. A man did not notice at first when onlf a few of these germs got into his body. But each germ broke in half and became two germs, and they kept doing this very rapidly so that In a short time there were many millions of them in the body. Then the man was sick. He had a disease, and the disease was named after the kind of a germ that was In him. It might be measles, it might be influenza, it might be yellow fever; it might be any of thousands and thousands of kinds of disease. "Now, this is the strante thing about these germs. There were always new ones coming to live in men’s bodies. Long and long and long ago, when there were only a few men in the world, there were few diseases. But as men increased and lived closely together In great cities and civilizations, new diseases arose, new kinds of germs enterci their bodies. Thus were countless millions and billions of human beings killed. And the more thickly men packed together, the more terrible were the new diseases that came to be. Long before my time, in the middle ages, there was the black plague that swept across Europe. It swept across Europe many times. There was tuberculosis, that entered Into men wherever they were thickly packed. A hundred years before my time there was the bubonic plague. And in Africa was the sleeping sickness. The bacteriologists fought all these sicknesses and destroyed them, just as you boys fight the wolves away from your goats, or squash the mosquitoes that light on you. The bacteriologists —’’ “But, Granser, what Is a what-you-call-lt?" Edwin Interrupted. "You, Edwin, are a goatherd. Your task is to watch the goats. You know a great deal about goats. A bacteriologist watches germs. That’s his task, and he knows a great dbal about them. So as I was saying, the bacteriologists fought with the germs and destroyed them —sometimes. There was leprosy, a horrible disease. A hundred years before I was born, the bacteriologists discovered the germ of leprosy. They knew all about it They made pictures of it I have seen those pictures. But they never found a way to kill It But in 1984, there was the pantoblast plague, a disease that broke out in a country called Brazil and that killed millions of people. But the bacteriologists found it out, and found the way to kill it so that the pantoblast plague went no farther. They made what they called a serum, which they put into a man’s body and which killed the pantoblast germs without killing the man. And in 1910, there was pellagra, and also the hookworm. These were easily killed by the bacteriologists. But in 1947 there arose a new disease that ».ad never been seen before. It got into the bodies of babies of only ten months old or less, and it made them unable to move their hands and feet, or to eat, cr anything; and the bacteriologists were eleven years in discovering how to kill that particular germ and save the babies. “In spite of all these diseases, and of all the new ones that continued to arise, there were more and more men in the world. This was because it was easy to get food. The easier it was to get food the more men there were; the more men there were, the more thickly were they packed together on the earth; and the more thickly they were packed, the more new kinds of germs became diseases. There were warnings. Soldervetzsky, as early as 1929, told the bacteriologists that they had no guaranty against some new disease, a thousand times more deadly than any they knew, arising and killing by the hundreds of millions and even by the billion.** It was at this point that Hare-Lip rose to his feet, an expression of huge contempt on his face. “Granser," he announced, “you make me sick with your gabble. Why don’t you tell about the Red Death? If you ain’t going to, say so, an’ we’ll ■tart back for camp." The old man looked at him and silently began to cry. The weak tears of age rolled down his cheeks, and all the feebleness of his eighty-seven years showed In his grief-striekep countenance. (TO BE

"That’s What I Want to Know. How Do You Know Anything You Can’t See?”