The Board of Inquiry met at Johnstown on July 15th and issued orders for relief to those entitled to it. The Commission classified the sufferers into classes one, two, three, four, and five, and recommended that immediate payment be made to classes one, two, and three, requiring $496,000. Classes four and five would require $686,000. As the Commission only appropriated $500,000 without intimating when another distribution would be made, the board determined to apportion the $500,000 among the five classes instead of the three classes as at first proposed.

    Two days later Judge Cummin opened his office and instructed his notaries and clerks as to their duties in disbursing the relief funds. They were, he said, to require an affidavit from each beneficiary, in order to make up an indisputable record, to place on file at the State Capitol. Of the $290, 000 already received by the local finance committee, at this date $150,000 had been paid out in a ten-dollar-a-head distribution. On July 18th Judge Cummin and Mr. Thompson, the banker having charge of the relief funds, began payout out money to the sufferers. Up to noon $6,000 had been paid out; most of the checks being for $80, the lowest amount paid to a single sufferer. The bank was closed at 3.40 P.M. During the day one hundred and sixty-five checks were issued, calling for a sum total of $16,333. The highest check called for $600, and was paid to a poor woman who lost her husband in the flood. The district paid the first day was one in which damage resulted from back water. The houses were not washed away and but few people were drowned.

    The receipt of the money put some life into the people and a feeling of confidence began to show. Judge Cummin's force was kept very busy during bank hours, but everything passed off smoothly and satisfactorily to all.

    The next day $10,000 was paid out, and so the work went on smoothly and systematically. Meantime the insurance companies had begun to settle up their losses. By July 19th more than $175,000 had been paid to various companies. One life insurance company had over a thousand policies in and about Johnstown, and sustained only three losses. The companies all paid up as fast as proofs of death were furnished, and it was made clear to whom the money belonged. The latter proved a very perplexing question.

    Judge Cummin, on realizing the magnitude of the catastrophe, and the inadequacy of the relief fund, great as it was, to restore the valley to anything like its former condition, proposed that aid be sought from the National Government. Congress would, he said, first be asked to pay for public improvements, such as dredging of streams, the erection of bridges, buildings, etc., for if the residents of the place were compelled to pay taxes on these the burden would be too great; “but,” but he continued, “we may go still further.

    “Congressman McCormick, of the Lycoming District, is now in Washington, to see if Congress has heretofore granted financial aid to citizens of communities that have been visited by calamities. It is said that the yellow fever suffers, the losers by the Charleston earthquake, the Pittsburg flood, and others have received some recompense from the National Government, and if we find a precedent for such action, Congress will come to the aid of this people who have lost much more than all those referred to. On this you can depend. We have come here to do everything in our power for the sufferers, and the sights daily witnessed but urge us the more to procure such relief as we can.”

    Judge Cummin further stated that, while nothing strictly accurate could as yet be given out as to the amount of money that will be placed in the hands of Johnstown sufferers, he was satisfied that eventually all would receive fifty per cent of their losses.

    It is unpleasant to record that, not many days after the distribution of funds was begun, a number of orders fro money had to be stopped by the Board of Inquiry, because of systematic swindling on the part of some applicants for relief. Some of the schemes resorted to were decidedly ingenious, among them the following: A father would register himself and family, and be placed in a certain class by the local committees, when he would be followed by some other member of his household, the result being a double allowance to the family. In this way some families received as much as $240, while it was the purpose of the Committee to allow but $80.

    Up to July 25th only about one-fifth of the half-million dollars appropriated had been distributed. At that rate it would take until late in the fall to dispose of the whole.