A few well-timed suggestions were sufficient. The meetings were held in our house and some of the leading men and women of the city effected a permanent organization to be incorporated under the name of the "Benevolent Union of Conemaugh Valley."
This completed, we had only to turn over to their hands, as the leaders of the town, our warehouse with its entire remaining stock, amounting to some thousands of dollars; the care of the infirmary; one of our trained clerks, with all papers and accounts of our relief work from the day of its inception; one of our experienced working men to handle transportation--to fit up for them large, warm rooms for winter use; give them our blessing; accept theirs in fullest measure; say good bye to them and to our faithful helpers, with heavy hearts and choking voices, and return to our home, bearing the record of a few months of faithful endeavor among a people as patient and brave as people are made, as noble and grateful as falls to the lot of human nature to be. Enterprising, industrious, and hopeful, the new Johnstown, phoenix-like, rose from its ruins more beautiful than the old, with a ceaseless throb of grateful memory for every kind act rendered, and every thought of sympathy given her in her great hour of desolation and woe. God bless her, and God bless all who helped save her!
We had employed during our sojourn in Johnstown a working force of fifty men and women, whom we had housed, fed and paid, with the exception of the volunteers who worked for the good they could do and would accept nothing. The means which we so largely handled came from everywhere; accounts were rendered for everything, and no word of business complication ever came to us. There never has in all our work.
There was much to do in Johnstown after we left; buildings to remove and property to care for when it had served its purpose and the ground became needed. But there is always a right time for any benevolent work to cease; a time when the community is ready to resume its own burdens, and when an offered charity is an insult to the honest and independent, and a degradation to the careless and improvident, tending to pauperize and make them an added burden on their better-minded fellow citizens. And then, the moment the tradesman is able to re-establish himself, he looks with jealous eyes on any agency that diverts possible business from his channels. Thus it is not only wise but just to all concerned to withdraw all gratuities from a people the instant they are able to gain even a meagre self-support.