Help from the President

If your town ever burns, gets in times of distress or something terribly drastic happens, would you be willing to help rebuild the city? Well, when the city of Chicago burnt down, you might be surprised how many people, not just from the town who came to help. In Harold M. Mayer and Richard C. Wade’s book, they explained how the people of the city, and people from other cities, and even the president at the time came to help Chicago.

After the fire had struck the city of Chicago, the word spread around the country very quick through newspapers. In a matter of a few days, the president, Ulysses S. Grant had sent materials and other things to try to help the city in need. He sent extra food, clothing and anything else he thought that the city might need. Not only from the president was help sent, but because the railroads had not been affected from the fire, people were able to send supplies through the railroads. Other cities from all over the country send things that the people of Chicago might need. When the supplies came, they were very grateful for what they could get their hands on because the majority of the people were homeless, their houses being destroyed in the fire days before. If nobody had sent them materials and supplies, I believe that a lot of the people in the city would simply give up and if that had happened, the city may not have been rebuilt the way it is now. If so, they may not have had skyscraper ideas or if they had not raised the city, the city would be flooded more times than less. This was a good thing that the people all worked together and were able to rebuild the city in such a fast time, because winter season was coming fast.

Less than three days after, the townspeople started to rebuild the city. As previously said before, the government had set a new law stating that the buildings needed more than one layer of fireproof material. Not only houses were being built, but also industrial buildings for work. For supplies, they used horses and buggies to carry things such as the materials that they needed to build, hammers, and other things. Throughout the day as they were building, there had been some people pulling carts and they would have food on their for sale, meaning that they never stopped building until it was night. The time spent rebuilding was a lot, and they worked full days trying to make the city better than it was before so something like this wouldn’t happen again. If the people had not made the choice to start rebuilding quickly, many would become ill and it may have been as worse as death. Many of the people who lived in the city also worked in an industrial way, so they may have started so they could get their homes back. If they had not started to build so early, the city might have had different outcomes. The city could have been less modernized, or not as many tall buildings.

FURTHER RESEARCH: How was the city affected by the fire(overall)?(need to add pic)