“But the able-bodied are working in parties under the direction of bosses. They are paid in food and clothing. In this way the relief committee is, within the first week, meeting the needs of the survivors and at the same time gradually clearing the streets and burning the ruins and refuse.
“A single report made by a ward committeeman to Mr. McVittie will serve to show on what scale this plan is being carried out. ‘In my ward,’ said the committeeman, ‘I have 600 men employed and I am feeding 3,700 persons.’
“The system of the Galveston relief organization is admirable. Perhaps never before was economy practiced so rigidly in the distribution of the nation’s largess. ‘Our aim,’ Mr. McVittie said, ‘is to distribute no money at this time, but to employ with relief funds all of the labor in the clearing of the city and the cremation of the dead until we have removed to that extent the ravages of the storm.
“‘We employ all who can work and we give food and clothing as remuneration. We scrutinize most carefully applications for charity and grant none if the applicant is able to render service. We adopted this plan in the beginning and we are going to continue it. Most of our people responded to the rule and went to work. To those who were unwilling to work we applied the authority of martial law.
“‘All Galveston is now at work and the contributions which we are receiving from the sympathizing nation are going to pay for the most urgent work the storm imposed on us.’
“Six days have wrought surprising changes in conditions at Galveston. Each day has been a chapter in itself. Sunday was paralysis. On Monday came the beginning of realization. Tuesday might be called the crisis period. And the crisis was passed safely. What has been accomplished since the turning point on Tuesday is amazing. It is almost as incredible as some of the effects of this visitation are without precedent.
“On Sunday the people did little but go about dazed and bewildered, gathering a few hundred of the bodies which were in their way. On Monday the born leaders who are usually not discovered in a community until some great emergency arises began to forge in front. They were not men from one rank in point of wealth or intelligence. They came from all classes. For example there was Hughes, the ’longshoreman.
“Bodies which lay exposed in the streets and which were necessary to remove somewhere lest they be stepped on were carried into a temporary morgue until 500 lay in rows on the floor. Then a problem in mortality, such as no other American community ever faced, was presented. Pestilence, which stalked forth by Monday, seemed about to take possession of what the storm had left. Immediate disposition of those bodies was absolutely necessary to save the living. Then it was that Lowe and McVittie and Sealy and the others, who by common impulse had come together to deal with the problem, found Hughes.
“The ’longshoreman took up the most grewsome task ever seen away from a battlefield. He had to have helpers. Some volunteered, others were pressed into the service at the point of the bayonet. Whisky by the bucketful was carried to these men and they were drenched with it. The stimulant was kept at hand and applied continuously. Only in this way was it possible for the stoutest-hearted to work in such surroundings. Under the direction of Hughes these hundreds of bodies already collected and others brought from the central part of the city—those which were quickest found—were loaded on to an ocean barge and taken far off into the gulf to be cast into the sea.”
HOW THE STORM AFFECTED TRADE.