“At Texas City I met a woman from Kansas City. She was demoralized by what she had passed through and seen and she declared that Galveston would never be rebuilt; that no one would be foolish enough to again build in a place which had been so storm swept.
“Answering her, I said that she did not know what she was talking about; that Galveston would be rebuilt because it was necessary to have a city here; that if the storm had swept the island bare of every human habitation and every structure and had left it as barren as it was before civilized man set foot upon it, still men would come here and build a city, because a port was demanded at this place. ‘And why should we not restore our city?’ I asked. ‘It has been visited by the severest storm on record. As it has withstood that storm, partially, why should we hesitate to rebuild? Why should we consider it less safe than another place? Can you conceive that another such a storm is more likely to strike at that exact spot again in a thousand years? Can you tell me any spot on earth, on hill or dale, on mountain or plain, on which you can guarantee me any immunities? If so, I would like to go there. If I were in the accident insurance business, I would rather insure a man against storm in Galveston than to insure a man in New York against accident on the railroads. You are now on your way to Kansas City. Do you know that you will reach there safely? Do you know that you may not be pitched into some river and drowned, or being only half drowned be burned to death?’
WILL BUILD BETTER THAN BEFORE.
“I slept at my home last night with as great a sense of security and safety as I ever have felt during my residence in this city,” Colonel Moody continued. “There may be some people who will leave here, but there will be enough people left here who will rebuild their properties and go ahead with the city to form the nucleus for its future growth. We will build better than before, and the city will be better and stronger and safer than ever.
“The railroads are leading off with this better construction; they will build a double track steel bridge. Every man who builds in this city hereafter will build better and stronger than before, and the weaker structures will be weeded out. We will have better building regulations, and men will not be permitted, if they would, to construct faulty buildings.
“Some people may say, ‘Oh, Moody can afford to make this talk; he is planted down here and can not get away.’ But let me tell you I could get away very easily if I wanted to. The greater portion of what I hope I own is not in Galveston, but is scattered throughout the State. It is in the hands of merchants throughout Texas to whom we have made advances on cotton. I could get away very easily if I had any desire to do so; in fact, I believe I could liquidate and get out of town about as easily as any man in it.
“So far as our business and property are concerned, the bank is running along with unimpaired facilities. I have had an architect at work all day preparing for the immediate restoration of the bank building, the compress buildings and my other property. The compress machinery is intact, and we will be pressing cotton again within a week. Some of the partition walls in the cotton warehouses were blown out, but we will have a force of men at work immediately and will have them rebuilt before it is realized. And the walls will be better than they were before, because they were originally constructed by contract, while I am now having them rebuilt myself by day’s work.
MOST MIRACULOUS ESCAPE.
“The people of Texas have not lost confidence in Galveston and have not manifested a disposition to quit the city. In to-day’s mail we received bills of lading for three hundred bales of cotton shipped to us since the storm.”
The most miraculous escape from the storm reached one of the newspapers in a roundabout way. An employe of the paper was coming to work when he overheard a few words passing between a couple of men talking on the street. He heard enough to elicit his interest and made inquiries. One of the men told him that an old German, whose name he did not know, had been picked out of the debris at Sherman square Saturday evening after having laid there a week.