The greatest immediate need after food and dry clothing, is for furniture and mattresses to replenish the thousands of homes whose furniture is utterly demolished, or so badly wrecked as to be practically useless. The first impulse was to ship in large quantities of furniture and give it away, or sell it at cost. Fortunately, a live furniture man, the president, in fact, of the National Retail Furniture Dealers’ Association, was encountered accidentally early in the proceedings. He was asked whether the retail dealers of Dayton could not handle this matter themselves. One large furniture house was entirely destroyed, but twelve others remained. All were in the flooded district, but all proved to be uninjured above the first floor. On the first floor the more expensive kinds of furniture had usually been displayed. This was all gone, either bodily out of the window—these were the more fortunate—or in a hopeless mess of mud and wreckage in the building. The less expensive kinds of beds, tables, chairs and dressers were largely stored on the upper floors. It was, therefore, only a question of cleaning out the first floor—getting the elevators into operation—often a hard job in itself—and securing trucks or wagons for delivery. This was a still harder job, for those that were not gone in the flood had been impressed into military or relief service. But the retail dealers held a meeting of their association, and agreed to handle the problem, and later the department stores which carry furniture came into line. By resolution they bound themselves not to increase prices. Requisitions are therefore given after the Red Cross registration is completed, for from $10 to $100 worth of furniture, according to the losses and circumstances of the family, to be selected by the purchaser at any one of a dozen stores from a list printed on the back of the requisition. These orders are filled in the usual way by the dealer and already such goods are being delivered. Transportation from Dayton and other points for women, children and disabled men has been given by the railways through to the real destination after the usual inquiries and precautions familiar to those who work under the national transportation agreement. In the first few days refugees were carried free without question to points in the vicinity of Dayton, but on the opening of the Red Cross headquarters, this indiscriminate free travelling was at once replaced by the other system.