In times gone by it was the habit to jeer at Old Probabilities, and whenever a prediction failed of verification to condemn the Weather Bureau as unreliable and not worth the expense of its maintenance.
During the last few years, however, its operators have gained in skill and its record now is of a character of which its officials have every reason to be proud and which amply justifies whatever expense it may entail by its great saving of life and property.
WHY SHOULD NOT GALVESTON BE REBUILT?
The appalling nature of the wreck to which Galveston was reduced naturally led to some talk of abandoning the old site altogether and rebuilding the city somewhere on the mainland. An army officer concluded his report to Washington headquarters by expressing the opinion that Galveston was destroyed beyond the ability to recover, and the Southern Pacific railway was said to be in favor of leaving the flat island to the sport of the treacherous waves and heading a movement to rebuild the city at the mouth of the Brazos river.
It is natural that non-residents of Galveston should consider the advisability of abandoning such a perilous site, especially as there can never be any complete security against a disaster like that of Saturday, September 8. But it is safe to say that Galveston will be rebuilt on its sand island. Mankind is not wont to desert any spot of the earth’s surface because of a sudden and rare convulsion of nature.
Lisbon was not abandoned because of the disastrous earthquake that killed 50,000 people in 1755.
Similar earthquake disasters in Central and South America have not induced the survivors to abandon a single city.
When 100,000 Chinamen were swallowed up at Peking in the last century it did not change the site of the city, nor have the still more disastrous floods along the Yellow river ever caused the survivors to change their habitat.
History shows Europeans and Americans to be quite as tenacious in this regard as any other races.
Italian peasants continue to cultivate the slopes of Vesuvius in spite of all past disasters, and the inhabitants of the Sea Islands along the Carolina coast were not disheartened when the elements committed fearful ravages.