AFTERMATH OF THE CYCLONE

The Union elevator bad its roof blown off, and corner blown off the cupola and the river house and conveyor badly damaged. All above the bin walls of the Advance elevator was a wreck, and the machinery on the upper floors is destroyed and the engine and boiler house wrecked. The upper part of the river house of the Merchants' elevator is blown away.

The insurance company that suffered the most from the storm was the Concordia, of Milwaukee. It was reported in local insurance circles that the storm would cost the Concordia fully $50,000, but according to Frank Tombridge, the company's general agent here, it will not exceed $30, 000. Mr. Tombridge received a telegram from the president of the Concordia to pay all claims at once -that of Mr. Eschrick, for damages to his store on Grand and Gravois avenue-and settled ten others. The policies on which the $30,000 will be paid foot up $250,000. From February 1 up to the storm Mr. Tombridge wrote $206,000, and in the three days following it over $400,000.

He relates several interesting incidents connected with his recent tornado business. Ten days ago Mr. Ottenad, a merchant in Frenchtown, took out a tornado policy on his store. Wednesday the building was wrecked, and Mr. Ottenad killed. His family will receive $1,700 in tornado insurance. Another Frenchtown merchant took out policies amounting to $14, 000 on the same day as Mr. Ottenad. When a collector called on him last week with a bill for the premium, the merchant returned the policies with the remark that $37 was too much to throw away. His store was badly wrecked by the storm, and be wishes now that be had "thrown away" the $37.

The only St. Louis insurance company that writes tornado insurance is the American Central, the charters of the others not authorizing a tornado business. "We have 185 claims for losses from the storm," said Secretary John H. Adams yesterday. "They amount to not over $10,000. George Ittner took out a $3,000 tornado policy on his residence on Ann avenue Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock without paying the premium. In less than three hours his house was wrecked. Early next morning he came in and paid the premium, and reported his loss; the first we knew of it. We paid him $1,800 before night.

Our next largest policy was for $2,500, A. A. Selkirk, the auctioneer, having divided his $5,000 tornado insurance between us and the Northwestern National, of Milwaukee. The building insured was wrecked by the storm."

Mr. Adams wrote policies to the amount of $600,000 in two days. A very large -number of insurers were for loan, trust and building companies. It has heretofore been their custom to insure the buildings on which they have made loans against loss by fire only. Now they are taking out tornado insurance.

Geo. D. Capen & Co. placed $300,000 of tornado insurance since the storm with the Home and Phoenix, of New York, and the Springfield, of Massachusetts. "We were up late last night writing policies," said one of the managers two days after the tornado. "We used up all the blank policies in the office, and had to telegraph for more. Before the storm our tornado business was almost exclu. sively on residences. The new business is largely on business houses and their contents. A good many stables are also being insured, and considerable household furniture. People laughed a week ago when we asked them to take out tornado insurance. Now they are rushing to get it. We were treated very nicely by the storm. Our policies are mostly in the West End, where very little damage was done. Our losses will not foot up more to $1,500.

True, there is a silver lining to this cloud. Hundreds of laborers are being employed to clear away the debris and artisans are in great demand for building purposes. But this is a readjustment of the labor conditions which will prove disastrous to the mechanics and craftsmen who toiled in the mills and factories. They cannot become ,builders, and if they are hired as laborers they will still be sufferers, dependent upon an humble and precarious employment.

The officials of many concerns which were leveled, frankly admitted that the disaster threw out of employment bodies of men numbering from 25 to 200. Others pointed to the squads of laborers, and said they had more men on their pay rolls than they bad before the storm.

This comparison is deceptive. It loses sight of the working capital that has been blown out of the business of the concerns affected. This loss of capital will affect the workmen who were employed in those mills and factories, as when business is resumed it may be on a smaller scale and with reduced forces. The weekly reports of the mercantile agencies showed how the credit men of the business world looked at the storm. Those reports contained long lists of factories with tornado damages attached.

The reports did not say that these figures of diminished credit represented losses to workmen, but that goes without saying. Perhaps many concerns are cleaning out their ruined works with money borrowed to pay the laborers, Certainly not a few of them will be obliged to ask extensions of current loans and to make new ones in order to resume business.

Time alone will tell bow many concerns will go to the wall, for the interested persons are keeping a stiff upper lip in the hope that they can withstand the mercantile cyclone that is forming, and to the credit of wholesale houses, many of them are offering extensions without being asked. One cigar store owner notified his supply house he was as poor as the day that he was born. He received by messenger a receipt in full for the amount of his indebtedness, with a notification that as soon as he could open up again in any way, his store would be stocked for him on any terms of credit he desired.

"All was lost save honor,"--no, not quite. The reputation for honesty which the sufferer had earned for himself, was sufficient capital for him to commence business on again.

The largest number of men now idle on account of the damage done one concern is the force of 250 formerly employed by the St. Louis Refrigerator and Wooden Gutter Co. The factory of this concern, at Main street and Park avenue, was burned, and is a heap of ruins. It will be a long time before operations can be resumed, and as yet little has been done to recover from the blow as the adjustment of the fire insurance is proving a tedious task. Eventually business will be done on the same scale as of yore, for this company is rated very high by the mercantile agencies, and is believed to be the largest and strongest concern of the kind in the country.

Its recent order for 100,000,000 feet of lumber is talked of by kindred concerns as the largest contract of the sort ever made. The 250 persons employed in the factory of the St. Louis Refrigerator and Wooden Gutter Co. were engaged in making everything "from a needle to an anchor."

The St. Louis Steam Forge and Iron Works, better known as McDonald's Forge, at Main and Miller streets, was badly, damaged by the storm. Up to last Wednesday evening it gave work to seventy men. Now ten men are engaged in cleaning and repairing. The company expects to be in shape in about three weeks or a month. Until then sixty men will be in idleness..

When a reporter called at the office of the Union Iron and Foundry Co., Second and Barry streets, groups of workmen were standing on the corners. They bad visited the shop to get their pay and their tools. Similar scenes are transpiring daily about many like places.

The men got the wages which they earned prior to the storm and they looked at the money with a knowledge that it may be the last they will receive for some time.

The Union Iron Foundry Co. had 100 men in its shops. They have been idle since.

Aside from the actual storm damage sustained telegraph companies they were in an absolutely paralyzed condition up to the following Sunday.

Even had not a single wire of the telegraph companies been destroyed by the tornado, they could not have handled the immense volume of business that was thrust upon them.

Even had their armies of operators been multiplied by ten, every instrument clicking constantly, and the army of messengers been multiplied by 1,000, and the whole force worked night and day, the amount of business created by the storm could not have been promptly handled.

Within an hour after the tornado brief bulletins were sent over the one or two wires remaining in working order to the outside cities announcing that a terrible storm bad struck St. Louis. At that time it was impossible to particularize, for the extent of the damage was unknown.

These brief bulletins were repeated all over the United States and cabled to all parts of the civilized world. The afternoon papers of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston and other large cities issued extra editions. They had no definite information at hand, and they relied on the imagination of their writers.

These publications with their exaggerated reports were sold on the streets long after midnight, with the result that all St. Louisans abroad, and those residents of other cities in this country and foreign lands, who bad relatives or friends in this city, rushed to the nearest telegraph office and started messages. of inquiry. Hundreds of thousands of St. Louisans in this city, whose first thought, after their own safety was assured, was to reassure friends and relatives abroad of their escape, hastened to the telegraph offices and left from one to fifty messages to be sent, subject to the delay which they knew would be experienced.

No city in the world, in proportion to its population, has better telegraphic facilities than St. Louis. But the storm had blown down the wires and stilled the instruments, and for a few hours St. Louis was virtually in a world to itself. Thousands on top of thousands of messages were stacked up here to be sent, and as great a number were filed in other cities for St. Louis delivery.

In addition to the private telegrams inquiring about friends and in reply to queries many special newspaper correspondents bad congregated in the city, and to a great extent they monopolized the wires with specials to their papers. Friday night nearly 1,000,000 words of special telegrams were sent by these correspondents.

In these hundreds of thousands of private messages, business was almost a tabooed subject. One operator kept account for a given time of messages received by him. Of the seventy telegrams he handled, sixty-eight were inquiries from relatives and friends. The other two were of a business nature.

At the Post-office the conditions were almost as bad as with the telegraph companies.

When the greatly exaggerated reports were bulletined over the country, thousands of telegrams poured into the city. They came in such a quantity that the telegraph companies were powerless to deliver them, and all day Thursday and Friday the telegraph companies put 2-cent stamps on the envelopes and dumped them by the bushel into the post office for delivery. The wires were working so badly that nearly all the replies were sent by mail, and this increased the bulk of the matter fully 100 per cent. while the force was diminished nearly 25 per cent.

The telegrams were given the preference and were sent out as rapidly as possible. While the business mail increased greatly the amount of miscellaneous letters simply flooded the office and the carriers were all overloaded.