"I hesitate to say how much it will take to put Galveston where her people can care for themselves. Certainly $5,000,000 will be a moderate estimate. There is not a building but is damaged, not a house of those left standing but will have to be re-roofed, and few that will not need to be straightened on their foundations. If Galveston could get $10,000,000 it would be used judiciously to enable the people to become self-sustaining.
"It is true Galveston is represented as being one of the wealthiest cities of the country. But our rich people had everything here and are crippled. The people of moderate means, who had homes and worked on salaries are, with scarcely an exception, ruined. The class dependent upon labor must be furnished something to do for wages or must suffer.
"Dr. Lord and others, who have been among the people more than I have, say there are 8,000 helpless who must be fed and clothed and carried along for some time to come, even after what might be called immediate needs have been met.
"There is no contagious disease and we do not anticipate any. But many are suffering from shock and exposure and from injuries received among the ruins. The City of Galveston, I am convinced, lost fully 5,000 persons. Down the island, outside of the city limits, were scattered between 2,000 and 3,000 persons. From the reports slowly coming in it appears that most of these people lost their lives. The island in the sparsely settled parts seems to have been swept clean of habitations."
The most motley crowd of United States regulars ever seen at attention lined up before Captain Rafferty the second Monday after the calamity. Battery O, First United States Artillery, the organization, was battered Battery O. No two men were dressed alike. Parts of uniforms and clothes which bore no semblance to any uniform were barely sufficient to cover nakedness, and in some cases there were bad rents, which showed the bare anatomy on dress parade.
Battery O came out of the storm with a loss of 28 out of 190 men, a loss seldom sustained in battle. One of these regulars floated fifty-two miles on a door, another was carried on an outhouse across the island and then across Galveston Bay. The survivors had been barracked in a shattered church since the Sunday after the storm. They were sent to San Antonio to be outfitted and armed.