The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-06-19

Galveston, Tex, June 1S.-(SpeciaL) Galveston" said the conductor, would be fine city if it only had different location" Which reminded me of the chap who remarked that a certain girl would be pretty if it wasn't for her face. We were standing on the back platform of the train from Houston. The train was on a trestle And the trestle was on the wreck of what two years ago was Galveston's pride and joy-the million dollar concrete causeway connecting the watery city with the Texan mainland.
 T was on a train running through here,' continued the optimistic conduc- tor, when the storm happened that smashed things up so. The train was stopped by sand and water on the track, and the waves just washed over the cars.
 But it wasn't so bad. Tons of wreck age banked up against the windows and all we had to do was reach out and grab off caned goods and stuff. That kept us in food for 30 hours or so till the storm stopped and we could get somewhere.
 Just off there to the right is a house where you can see the yard still piled full of driftwood and boats and things that washed up against it. The thick, black looking stuff on the ground is the remains of crude oil from tank that busted and ran all over the place.
 This here trestle," he went on, while I gaped and stared, was thrown up in nine days after the causeway went to pieces. In the meantime Galveston was cut off from the world; it's water main broke in a dozen places and not a wire was left to send a message over"
 I had read of the 1915 storm, but until I saw those great cakes of shattered con- crete with their steel internals sticking up all rusty and twisted from the now innocent looking water, I had not the faintest notion of what husky tropical storm can do.
 I should think Galveston would be in chronic state of nerves. But the con- ductor says not-that you 'get used to it," and that-"outside of Caribbean blows and tidal waves Galveston's grand in summer" And the surf bathing is elegant
 GALVESTONIANS ARE LOYAL
 You enter the city through handsome station and find the streets and build ings tidy and attractive. As every body knows, Galveston has literally raised itself out of the sea since the great storm of 1sOO and is now, notwith- standing the fiasco of the causeway, con- sidered virtually stormproof.
 It has made itself famous for two things that grew out of that storm: Its 1A1 e. I raising behind 1t, from which the town slopes gradually down to the old level. And it's origination of the commission form of government.
 I was anxious to see an original com missioner. I felt that a group of busi- ness men who could take a drowned city, revive it, nurse it back to life and boost it into more prosperous activity than it had ever known before must be worth looking at and talking to.
 The board of Trade was-or were most obliging. They picked me out an awfuIly nice original commissioner, MT. Isaac H. Kempner, banker and cotton broker, who perhaps did more to beat the new city government into shape than any other one citizen.
 If MT. Kempner isn't careful they will make him mayor at next months elec- tion, and he'll have to work harder than ever But he, like the conductor, thinks that, despite the bites the Gulf of Mex ico takes out of poor Galveston from time to time, 1t is a perfectly good place to live, once you get things nailed down.
 Tt is tough proposition," agreed MT. Kempner, when in practically A hours a city of our size loses 7500 persons by death in the storm and another 1000 leave to seek employment or homes else where, not to mention s, 900 GOO property loss, a couple of millions bonded debt-- and a few other little things like that. CITY'S FINANCES IN SHIPSHAPE
 Tt was depressing and a trifle bewil- dering. We didn't know what to do first But something had to be done quickly, so we just kicked over the old cumber- some, wasteful form of city government and started fresh on a simple business basis.
 Today we have no floating debt. Our net bonded debt is about $4000,000, for while we were busy issuing bonds we were active in retiring them to the ex- tent of over $1,25o0OO. Besides this, from