Science's Business

Science has often upset philosophy, religion and even government. When it upset business lately, in California, the event was more unusual.

The scientific subject in question was Earthquakes. In California, allusion to earthquakes is avoided in polite conversation. God is very close to California and His acts, against which people take out insurance policies, do not bear discussion.

But almost as strong as reverence for God in California, is the rivalry between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles could not overlook it when a San Francisco man--Professor-Emeritus Bailey Willis of Stanford University, President of the Geological Society of America --freely predicted some time ago that the next mighty upheaval of the Pacific Coast would come in Southern California. As a result of that prediction, insurance rates in Los Angeles skyrocketed 200 to 2,200%. The premium of the Union Bank and Trust Co.'s building, for example, went from $2,500 to $12,500.

Los Angeles property owners at once engaged Geologist Robert Thomas Hill of the University of California, onetime (1889-1904) member of the U. S. Geological Survey, to examine the terrestrial underpinning of Los Angeles and make an announcement "to the world." There was little doubt but what this report would mitigate, if not wholly crush, the Willis doctrine. In seismology, as in medicine, so many factors must be surmised that from the few known facts, paid experts may arrive honorably as often as willfully at different conclusions.

Geologer Willis chanced to be away from California, lecturing in Ohio, when, last fortnight, Geologer Hill's retort professional was given "to the world" by the Los Angeles Graphic (society weekly). Whether or not the world heard, the Graphic made sure that Geologer Willis would hear. Of him it said, with good-natured Californian venom: "God must have tipped him off ... the incondite ravings of a mischief maker. ... It is generally believed that Dr. Willis' service to the fire insurance underwriters was substantially rewarded."

Of the Willis predictions and the security of Los Angeles, the Hill report said: "From the first time I heard these cries of disaster and from the time I began to investigate them, I knew that they were ill-founded and that some, as yet unexposed fallacy lay at the base of them. These doubts were based upon a long acquaintance with the geologic and historic facts of Southern California. We, of Southern California, where engineering skill has long been at its highest, knew that no such movements had occurred here within the recollection of man. If so, our aqueduct across the San Andreas rift would have long since been destroyed. Even the San Francisco earthquake movement did not faze it. If such movements had occurred they would have been reflected in the astronomic computations from Mt. Wilson, in our land surveys, or by dis placements along our many highways and railways which cross fault lines.

"First, I deny that any man can predict the time or place of the next earthquake in California. . . . Southern California is but a small spot along the great

Pacific Coast line of seismicity, which extends at least 8,000 miles from the Arctic circle to Tehuantepec. . . .

"Will Dr. Willis be equally fair and withdraw his prophecies and let us pursue pur way in peace ? And last of all, will the insurance companies be as magnanimous in reducing rates as they were generous in raising them?"