The report of an army officer that the city was ruined beyond recovery and the suggestions of other persons that Galveston should be rebuilt on another site find no sympathy among the citizens. Galveston will be rebuilt upon its former site.
Carpenters, masons and artisans are being called for by thousands, and, with the generous aid contributed by people all over the country, there will be a rapid transformation. The city has thrust its sorrow behind it and has its face set toward the future.
Since the danger of flood cannot be removed so long as the city stands at its present level, it is to be hoped its builders will begin a new era of security by raising the grade of the streets.
A few feet will materially decrease the danger from tidal waves. It will also be wise to construct the foundations of all permanent large buildings of stone to a height above the level reached by the recent inundation. In resolving to defy an untoward fate Galveston should begin by adopting all practical means for defying wind and waves.
Even though the expense and delay will be greater, it will pay to give the new buildings all possible safeguards of solidity.
Galveston will be rebuilt, as it was after the disaster of fourteen years previously. Its inhabitants will reason that the city had existed for two-thirds of a century in comparative safety, and that such a tidal wave is not likely to be repeated in a hundred years. The same commercial advantages that first tempted settlers to the island, and that made Galveston one of the most thriving cities on the gulf coast, are still present.
Men who own real estate on the island will not abandon it, even though the improvements thereon have been reduced to a wreck. They know that even if they did abandon it there would be plenty of others to take it—risks and all—and rebuild the city.
The federal government may hesitate about rebuilding its structures on so precarious a site, but private interests are not likely to abandon a city even for so terrible a disaster as that at Galveston.