Grants were confined almost entirely to re-establishing families in a line of business in which they had been engaged as proprietors. A departure from this rule was for good cause, such as the death or injury of the former head of the business, or a change in trade conditions. The number of exceptions is 75, or 8.4 per cent of the whole number of re-visited families receiving grants. They are: 28 wage-earners and six housewives given grants to enter business; and 41 former proprietors aided to re-engage in business in an entirely different line.
In 79 cases it was recognized at the time the grants were made that it would be impracticable to reinstate the applicant on the before-fire scale. In such cases it was hoped that business would be successful enough on a small scale to admit of gradual expansion. [Table 56] shows the occupations for which grants were most frequently given.
TABLE 56.—PROPOSED OCCUPATION OF APPLICANTS RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION
| Proposed occupation | Applicants who proposed to follow each specified occupation |
|---|---|
| Boarding and rooming house | 256 |
| Tailor shop | 46 |
| Dressmaking shop | 45 |
| Notions or branch bakery | 33 |
| Barber shop | 30 |
| Restaurant | 30 |
| Grocery store | 24 |
| Huckster or peddler | 23 |
| Millinery shop | 21 |
| Seamstress | 20 |
| Cigar stand | 19 |
| Boot and shoe making and repairing shop | 18 |
| Physician’s equipment | 18 |
| Printing shop | 16 |
| Drayman | 14 |
| Painting contractor’s shop | 14 |
| Other occupations | 267 |
| Total | 894 |
Among the 267 cases entered in the table opposite “other occupations,” there were 61 occupations with only one representative each, and 49 with from two to thirteen representatives each.
6. HOMOGENEITY OF GRANTEES
Of the 2,032 applicants for business rehabilitation considered by the business committee, 464, or about 23 per cent, were refused business aid, though many who were judged not to be suitable candidates for business rehabilitation were given aid for other purposes. This severe weeding out of candidates for one definite, specialized form of aid had this result, that those aided were a group homogeneous to a high degree. This fact was voiced often by the investigators during the progress of the work and by the staff that did the re-visiting in 1908, and was mirrored in the uniform reports filed by all these visitors. The uniformity shown in the records was not due to superficial inquiries, for data were unusually full and often included side-lights on the situation thrown by old friends, former business associates, former landlords, and other references. A further indication that the business group was looked on as being practically homogeneous is the fact that there were so many unconditional grants of $250. The phenomenon of so many of the grants being for exactly $250 may have been due in part to the effort to make the average grant not more than one-half[159] of what was the established $500 maximum grant, or may have been a reflection of the committee’s impression that there was little to distinguish many of the applicants, one from another, either as to plight or as to recuperative power.
[159] See [Part II], [p. 129], for the result of limiting a committee’s power to make grants larger in amount than $500.
The applicants that received aid were almost uniformly persons who had had successful business experience. Most had founded their own enterprises; none, as far as the records show, had come into his holding by inheritance, as might have been the case in an older city; and few by purchase of an established business. There were but few of the applicants who had occupied for any great length of time the place burned out. A shifting population and the resultant changes in minor business centers had been the instruments by which the less fit had been to a great extent eliminated in the years preceding the disaster.