The Great Quake Debate by Susan Hough;

Author:Susan Hough;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE BOOK

But, my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out.

—Ecclesiastes 12:12

Following Hill’s reassuring speech to the Building Owners and Managers Association of Los Angeles in July 1927, the association commissioned Hill to write a report summarizing his findings. For this work, Hill was to be compensated at a base pay of one hundred dollars per day for work expected to take ten to fifteen days. His daughter Justina visited Los Angeles that summer and helped him to complete the report. Upon delivery of the initial report, association secretary Charles A. Copper (sometimes mistakenly referred to as Cooper) persuaded Hill to expand the brief treatise into a book. The agreement called for publication by the Southern California Academy of Sciences. Hill was introduced to the president of the academy and promised to deliver a worthy scholarly book. Copper made it clear that the book should be completed with all due haste, so that it would be published while public interest remained high. The association would provide Hill with editorial services, proofreading, publication, and distribution costs. The book would not be the exhaustive monograph Hill had once planned to complete, and the precise details of the financial compensation appear to have been only vaguely spelled out. Murky details aside, Hill accepted the offer and set out once again to write up his work.

Hill had two interests in writing the book: First, he wanted to summarize the extensive geological mapping that he had done, which had never been—and at that point was almost certain to never be—published properly, at least not with US Geological Survey resources. (His 800-pluspage draft appears to have languished permanently in his personal papers.) Second, much as he had been responding to talk of end-times after the 1909 Strait of Messina earthquake, he continued to see a need to provide a prudent scientific counterpoint to what he felt had been irresponsible grandstanding on Willis’s part. In this case, he sought to counter not only alarm but also damage to the economy that, in his view, had been wrought by overly alarmist statements.

Like so much else in Hill’s life, the eventual publication of his book involved machinations. At the outset, although the arrangements ostensibly called for the Southern California Academy of Sciences to publish the book, as was eventually indicated on the dust jacket, it was an association in name only. An Academy of Sciences imprimatur gave the book a measure of gravitas, but the book would in fact be published and distributed by Copper himself. Copper not only oversaw the publication process, arranging for editing and being the primary point of contact for Hill, he also went on to handle publication and distribution of the book and retained copyright himself.

As Copper had urged, Hill completed the book quickly, eager to see at least a cogent summary of his fieldwork published and reassured that the proffered professional proofreading services would smooth over any rough edges. By the end of 1927, Hill had substantively completed his manuscript.

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