On the mainland the searching for and cremating of bodies that either perished or found lodgment there was being prosecuted vigorously.
The situation throughout the country extending from Bolivar to High island was possibly worse than in any other section of the mainland.
Clara Barton, president of the Red Cross Society, issued an appeal on September 18 to the American people for money and supplies for the sick and wounded. Her idea was to spend some of the money with local merchants wherever practicable.
Chairman Davidson of the relief committee stated that the greatest sufferers from the storm were the people of limited means who owned homes near the beach. There were hundreds of these people who owned mortgaged lots and had homes constructed by the loan companies and though their property was swept away the loan companies were protected by liens.
Mr. Davidson advised that a fund be raised for people who had suffered in this way, that they might be able to restore what took them years to accumulate and was taken from them in a single night.
The resources of the numerous sub-relief stations scattered throughout the city were taxed to their utmost capacity, and long lines of people awaited their turns for provisions and clothing.
At Texas City a force of deputy United States marshals under Marshal Grant was guarding the entrance to Galveston and keeping back all people who could show no good reason for desiring to go there. People were daily leaving the city, a majority being women and children. The city was still under martial law, and remained so for weeks. Idlers and sight-seers who eluded the guards on the mainland upon their arrival were pressed into the street service. There was no place for a man who would not work. It was work or go to jail, and they generally went to jail.
GOVERNOR SAYERS IN A HOPEFUL MOOD.
“I look for the rebuilding of Galveston to be well under way by the latter part of this week,” said Governor Sayers, of Texas, on September 18, at Austin, the state capital. “The work of cleaning the city of unhealthful refuse and burying the dead will have been completed by that time, and all the available labor in the city can be applied to its rebuilding.