The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

A VERY GRAVE PROBLEM.

Then a problem in mortality such as no other American community ever faced was presented. Pestilence, which stalked forth by Monday, seemed about to take possession of what the storm had left. Immediate disposition of those bodies was absolutely necessary to save the living.

Then it was that Lowe and McVittie and Sealy and the others, who by common impulse had come together to deal with the problem, found Hughes. The longshoreman took up the most gruesome task ever seen, except on a battlefield. He had to have helpers. Some volunteered; others were pressed into the service at the point of the bayonet.

Whisky by the bucketful was carried to these men, and they were drenched with it. The stimulant was kept at hand and applied continuously. Only in this way was it possible for the stoutest-hearted to work in such surroundings.

Under the direction of Hughes these hundreds of bodies already collected and others brought from the central part of the city—those which were quickest found—were loaded on an ocean barge and taken far off into the gulf to be cast into the sea.

There were 38,000 people in the city when the census was taken a few weeks before the flood. After a careful survey of the desolate field since the storm and flood have wrought their sad havoc, the conclusion is forced that there were in Galveston 25,000 people, or thereabouts, who had to be fed and clothed. The proportion of those who were in fair circumstances and lost all is astonishing.

Relief cannot be limited to those who formed the poorer class before the storm. An intelligent man left Galveston, taking his wife and child to relatives. He said: “A week ago I had a good home and a business which paid me between $400 and $500 a month. To-day I have nothing. My house was swept away and my business is gone. I see no way of re-establishing it in the near future.” This man had a real estate and house renting agency.