The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-17
LITTLE SCORCHED
BALTIMORE BY NO MEANS WAS
 BURNED OUT.
If Blessings semefimes Come ss woes the Great CenAagration Was Benison Tn . Cloak
 0f Flames.

Baltimore, Sept. 1s.-If there Is a husier snot today. in the whole known world. than the recently burned out area of Baltimore City, no recoro shows 1t. If there was ever com
 punity with greater buoyancy during and after the devastation of last Feo- ruary and s history does not present if and if there exists a vast metropohs new or old or a boom town young or ancient that Is up an hustling with greater vim than the Monumental City no information by rail or wire tells about 1t.
 If blessings come sometimes dis ruised as woes then Beltimore's great condensation. of last February must have been e benison in cloak of flame for never befere has there been such hustling activity as now seems to inspire every man. woman and child on Patapsco's lovely tide water city. Strange people are these Balti- moreans. So strangely conservative that they could not even get up a bank failure in forty years--not even in the disastrous panic of 1873. when commercial houses all over the Union were toppling. They saw their duty when their city was smitten by flames and they performed that duty we'll. After the fire king had swept through their entire commercial dis- trict there was no wringing of hands; despair entered not into their souls; there were no suicides over blasted fortunes; there was no settling down into watery helplessness: there was no. acceptance of dollar that was held out by the hand of charity and good fellowship. Filled with thanks that not one life was lost in that terror of two days and a night, the people of Baltimore began on the minute to re- trieve their fortunes. Hampered though they were by building regula- tions and other laws that never con- tempiated so great a Catastrophe. the people themselves became impatient over the unavoidable delays that pre- vented instant rehabilitation and mur- mured at their officials. Then came the desire to broaden business thor oughfares, to straighten crooked ave- nues, to close up narrow lanes and to institute a grand system of docks that Baltimore might be bigger, more beau- tifuL more facile fin the handling of her immense trade and better adapted than ever before to welcome the stran- ger guest. And so, the libel went forth that Baltimore was slow 'and could never recover from her blow. Behold her today.
 Ana HtTt iCt youi SoiiSoPO'N ent call to mind something unique in the annals of such disasters. Every newspaper office but one had gone down in the fire. One of them never theless did not miss a single issue. NO other paper missed more than one. Be- lieving. in the light of past great fires in big cities. that all business would be for a time at a complete standstill and that for days there would be little or no advertising, the newspapers planned to give exhaustive accounts Of the fire. But the business people de- scended like an avalanche upon the papers for advertising space. They stood in long lines waiting for their turns to get to the advertising desks, like voters at a hot election. Extra clerks were employed, money poured in floods over the counters and news was crowded out of the sheets to make room for paid announcements of new temporary quarters taken up by the business houses that had lost their homes. One paper, on certain day. found it possible to print only tw9 col umns of news out of q total of one hundred and twelve columns that the publication held. That another sec ton was not added to the journal was due mainly to the fact that at the time there was a paper famine all over the United States and publishers were even then conferring upon some plan to tide over the scarcity.
 All this was a revelation. There had been nothing like it In Boston; 1t had not been witnessed in Chicago. It had taken Baltimore but q second of time to recover from her shock. The ne- cessity of the hour showed tho mettle or her business community.
 But let us get down to the present time. The burnt district of today is 0 theatre of marvellous activity. Over these hundred and fifty-six acres of re. cent destruction there are rising, all most by magic, neWer and more beau- tiful structures. The whole area teoms with a myriad forms of labor. 'Arti- sans are building. engineers surveying. contractors moving about with their plats, city workmen busily regarding. repaving and re-a1igning the water pipes and electric conduits and the la- borers of the gas and heating compa- nies re-establishlng their ducts. Thou sands of vehicles drawn by some 5000 or 10000 draught animals are moving about, sometimes becoming congested and again passing on with their bur dens of steel and lumber and bricks, cement, stone. sand or ether material for the upbuilding.
 Thhe great sky-scraper buildings. looking now taller than ever by reason