On Friday night Governor Sayers stated that the work of relieving the flood sufferers was making excellent progress. He said:
“Most generous contributions are coming in from all parts of the country sufficiently large to relieve the immediate wants as to food and clothing, and in the meantime the people of Galveston are recovering themselves, and I have no hesitancy in expressing the firm conviction that a strong reaction from an almost mortal blow to the city has already set in, and that in a short while the city will be in a condition to resume its normal and progressive position in commercial life. After a full conference to-day with an authorized committee from Galveston, I am more than convinced that the people there will be able, with the assistance already given, to handle the situation successfully.”
HOW GALVESTON’S BUSINESS MEN WERE HELPED ALONG.
As a rule there is no sentiment in business, but the retail merchants of Galveston whose business and fortunes were swept away were not forgotten in the hour of need by the wholesale houses of Chicago, which announced just after the disaster that stocks of goods would be shipped promptly and willingly, any time and terms being accorded to the business of the gulf city. The regular way of determining credits was ignored, as was the credit man also. His cold judgment was not asked for, but instead sympathy and compassion for the unfortunate position of the merchants of the stricken city determined largely the stand the wholesalers announced they would take.
In doing this the houses of Chicago had the precedent established by the outside world in its treatment of them in the days following the great Chicago fire. Chicago men said they will do as they were done by, and the Galveston merchant had but to ask for the help he needed. Many Chicago houses wrote their Galveston customers at once advising them that they could have credit, time, and terms to suit themselves. This favor was also given to all business men who had lost all but names and prestige, whether they had been customers or not.
Firms that never had had any business with Galveston or Texas firms stated that they stood ready to ship goods on the same terms. No business man in the damaged district, they said, whose misfortunes were due to the catastrophe could come to Chicago for supplies and go away without them even if he had not a dollar’s worth of assets in the world, as long as he could show a former good business standing and repute.
“We will take any and all risks,” said one after another of the representatives of Chicago wholesale houses. “In the present emergency credits cannot be measured by the regular business standards. Humanity must dictate the terms on which the merchants of Galveston who have bought from us, or who may want to buy from us, are to have goods and supplies.”
Firm after firm of the wholesale district, whether or not they now have trade in the afflicted territory, made the same statement.
“We already have written to 200 former customers who are scattered along the coast, asking them how they came out of the disaster and offering them any terms of settlement their losses may warrant,” said the credit man of one of the largest houses in the West, on the Friday following the flood. “We will view the facts in their cases not from a business but from a sympathetic standpoint.”
“We are making our former customers time, terms and credits of their own asking,” said the Vice-President of a great wholesale dry goods house. “We will make the same terms to new customers who have been good business men.”