Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1905 — VEIL OF DEATH DRAWN OVER SCOURGED CITY OF NEW ORLEANS. [ARTICLE]

VEIL OF DEATH DRAWN OVER SCOURGED CITY OF NEW ORLEANS.

The yefiow fever situation in New Orleans grows worse. The number of new cases is not large, they are scattered over a much larger section of the city, and the danger is correspondingly increased. Never before in the history of New Orleans have its citizens been so thoroughly aroused. Prominent business men can be seen cleaning out their own gutters. The people are screening their cisterns from one end of the city to another. iTlie entire fight is being carried on by the people of New Orleans. New Orleans is shut off, so far as all practical purposes are concerned, to the outside world. Friday night the State Board of Health quarantined the entire State of Louisiana against the City of New Orleans. Governor Vardanian has called out the militia of Mississippi to act as guards along the State line to keep out people from the infected districts of Louisiana. Practically everything but the through mail trains have been taken off by the railroads. Many towns will not allow- the transmission of money by express. In the face of the strictest regulations many are still fleeing from their homes in the poor districts, only to be driven back by bayonets and shotguns when they reach State lines. The postoffice department, acting on the mosquito theory, will not fumigate the mails sent from the city. The fruit industry is rapidly nearing paralysis, as Chicago, St. Louis, and other points are cutting down orders. They fear that the scourge may be carried North on the fruit trains. River commerce is at a* standstill antT ocean shipping is greatly checked by quarantine regulations against the port of New Orleans. Banana ships from Honduras are not venturing to make port. A sensation was sprung in quarantine circles by the warlike action of Governor Varda man of Mississippi, whose severe criticisms of the New Orleans health authorities threaten to involve him in a personal controversy with the Governor of Louisiana. Governor Vardanian ordered Colonel Wyatt, inspector general of the Mississippi National Guard, to mobilize the State troops on the Louisiana lines as quarantine guards. The State of Mississippi has refused to allow passenger and baggage communication from New Orleans.

The people in the yellow fever zone are to be congratulated upon the fortitude and hopefulness with which they have encountered the plague peril. Not even Inveterate optimism, however, can ignore the fact that the situation at New Orleans is by no means encouraging. Facts have to be faced. The most serious feature of the situation is the admitted spread of the disease beyond the circumscribed local by to which it was at first confined. So long as no cases developed outside of the Italian quarter there was reason to accept the assurances of the medical and sanitary Experts that the fever would he isolated and stamped out. The development of new foci of infection tremendously Increases the difficulties of the problem. It also weakens the public morale, which is as powerful a factor ns the merely medical phase of the matter. Nor is the uneasiness confined to the city of New Orleans. The expressed suspicion that the Infection has been carried up the river and perhaps over to Mlssissijipl sound Is calculated jo excite apprehension in the minds of people all over the yellow fever zone, and these apprehensions are finding expression In the establishment of quarantines. Eight hundred cutters in a big clothing factory in Philadelphia struck because they got no ice water.