At daylight Colonel Harris rode with George and
Gertrude home to breakfast.
In the evening press a call for a public meeting at 8 o'clock next
morning of the prominent citizens resulted in the forming of an emergency
committee of one hundred earnest men and women to furnish aid to the
afflicted and needy work-people. The most influential people of
Harrisville were enrolled on this committee, which to be more thoroughly
effective was subdivided. Every house occupied by the mill-people was
visited, and every injured person was cared for.
The women on the committee visited the hospitals and for a time became
nurses ministering to every want. Money and abundance of food were also
contributed, and such kindness on the part of the rich the work-people
had never known before.
The evening papers gave the authoritative statement that the total
number of those killed outright by the explosions at the steel mills was
one hundred and twenty-seven. Of this number eighty-six were workmen,
fourteen were men who lived in the vicinity, but were not employed in the
mills, ten were women, and seventeen were children. The total number of
wounded was sixty-eight.
A public funeral was decided upon by the committee.
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