Informant38

The Johnstown Calamity - Johnstown, Pa. Flood, 1889 detail

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years.
In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers.
The Indians are to-day where civilized man then was.
When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and the poorest of his braves.
The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization.
This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial.

Wealth
Andrew Carnegie
Cornell Univ. Library - Making of America
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High in the mountains, near the small town of South Fork, the South Fork Dam was originally built between 1838 and 1853 by the State of Pennsylvania as part of the canal system to be used as a reservoir for the canal basin in Johnstown.
It was abandoned by the state, sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and sold again to private interests.
Speculators had purchased the abandoned reservoir, modified it, and converted it into a private resort lake for the wealthy of Pittsburgh. The changes included lowering the dam to make its top wide enough to hold a road, putting a fish screen in the spillway (that also trapped debris), and raising the lake level. These alterations are thought to have increased the vulnerability of the dam. They built cottages and a clubhouse to create the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an exclusive and secretive mountain retreat. Members included over 50 wealthy Pittsburgh steel, coal, and railroad industrialists, among them Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Philander Knox, and Robert Pitcairn.

After the flood, Andrew Carnegie, one of the club's better known members, built the town a new library.

Johnstown Flood - Wikipedia