Private individuals, business houses, great corporations, municipal, state and national government vied with each other, as they did when fire swept over Chicago and the flood overwhelmed Johnstown, in expediting relief to the storm-ruined people of Texas.
Day by day trains sped to Galveston from every part of the country, loaded with supplies, and the telegraph wires carried orders for money, testifying to the unanimity of the great work of relief, and to the higher and nobler instincts of human nature when it is appealed to by the claims of humanity.
The ghouls of Galveston were comparatively few in number. Its generous sympathizers were to be counted by scores of millions.
The convicts in the Texas state penitentiary at Rusk were moved by the sufferings of the Galveston victims to contribute $40 to the relief fund.
Are men who go to prison totally bad?
The scope and rapidity of the Galveston relief work all over the country afforded a spectacle at once gratifying and noteworthy. Trains laden with food and comforts for the sufferers were rushed towards the stricken city from every quarter of the United States.
From Boston to San Francisco nearly every city, regardless of size, contributed its quota to the generous cause. Even from across the Atlantic the Liverpool and Paris funds came, being on the list for $10,000 each. Within a week after the disaster Galveston was in possession of a magnificent relief fund that went far toward alleviating the physical sufferings of its homeless thousands.
Here is a social phenomenon that may well give pause to all critics who are wont to inveigh against our commercial and industrial age. These exhibitions of liberality are not rare in the United States. A long series of them might be compiled within the period between the Chicago fire and the Porto Rican hurricane.
Singly and in the aggregate they are a striking negative to the charge of sordid commercialism in our individual and national life. The modern American is making more money than ever before, but he has a heart as well as a business head, and he is giving larger sums to noble causes than were ever given before.
Probably the increased willingness of the people to help stricken communities like Galveston is due more to the railroads and telegraph lines than to anything else. Modern charity is the child of modern conditions. These indispensable adjuncts to commercial enterprise alone make widespread relief work possible.