When the advertising manager of the Register checked up the results he decided that the paper had broken about even as far as the rain was concerned. The real-estate companies had called off most of the advertising because they knew how cold and gloomy empty houses seemed in the rain, even if you could get people out to look at them. But he had five new ads from resorts in the snow-country, and a tire company had broken out with a half-page announcing a new non-skid tread.

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The effects of the forecast tended to spread out link by link until they formed long chains. The shrewd proprietors of several restaurants called up the factory, and reduced their orders for ice-cream. The manager of the factory found his needs for milk and cream lessened, and passed on his word to the dairy. Since the cows could not be forced to co-operate, the dairy company diverted the surplus to its subsidiary corporation which manufactured butter and cheese. The manager then hired two extra men, whose wives on the strength of the prospective jobs spent more freely than usual at one of the smaller retail stores. The retailer optimistically imagined an up-swing of business, and said he would take the new car over which he had been hesitating. At this point, however, the chain of effects turned back upon itself and ended. For the store-keeper, later in the day, read the forecast, and believing that his retail business always suffered in rainy weather, he called up the automobile salesman and cancelled the order.

9

The great banners above the City hung at their poles, or flapped languidly, now this way, now that way. No longer did they ripple out bravely before the northwest wind, for in the night that wind, dominant through many weeks, had faltered and then died. Blue and white, red and yellow, maroon, crimson and black, they no longer flaunted proudly above the pearl-gray city against the clean blue of the sky. Now from west and south and southeast in uncertain puffs the shifting airs served only to wrap the banners around the poles and tangle them with the halyards. Caught at the calm center among far-off mighty actions, the banners flapped and fell, symbols of interregnum and coming change.

10

If there had been a moderately high range of mountains running east and west along the Canadian border the cold wave would largely have spent itself at that barrier or been diverted; the existence of such a mountain wall would have been a more potent factor in American history than the institution of slavery. But the isolated Black Hills only impeded the advance slightly; the polar air swept around them, reunited its front, and went on.

By noon of Saturday temperatures had fallen far below zero over all the northern plains. Five persons, foolish or unlucky, had been caught in the open and frozen to death; more than fifty others had been killed or injured in accidents attributable to the blizzard.