Just one week after the coming of the deluge Governor Cox entered his home city for the first time, accompanied by several of the members of the Ohio Flood Relief Committee. Governor Cox praised Mr. Patterson for his invaluable part in the relief work. "Mr. Patterson is the one man who is in the eye of America more than any one other man," said the Governor. Mr. Patterson, after he returned Tuesday night in company with H. E. Talbott, chief engineer, from a tour of sections of Dayton that were swept by the flood, issued a statement in which he said: "Dayton is facing one of the gravest problems that any city of the world ever faced and we want the world to know we need money and food for our stricken people." In speaking of a tentative plan to ask the Federal Government for a loan of from $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 to be used in reconstruction work, Mr. Patterson said: "At a meeting of bankers and officials of the building associations this evening it was decided to make an appeal for Federal aid. The banks and building associations have $60,000,000 worth of assets which they will put up as collateral. It may be deemed advisable to ask the Government to give us some financial assistance. We feel that the disaster is an emergency which would justify extraordinary action on the part of Congress." Since Sunday more than $750,000 in cash was received from banks in Cincinnati to replace damaged money in local banks which remained closed until April 8th. DEATH AND PROPERTY LOSS Mr. Talbott estimated that the property loss in Montgomery County totaled at least $150,000,000. He declared that one manufacturing company alone had lost half a million dollars. Although several carloads of provisions were received on Tuesday, officials in charge of relief work stated that the food situation was a matter of grave concern. "We must have rations for more than 100,000 people for an indefinite period," Mr. Patterson declared. A carload of automobile tires, contributed by an Akron rubber company for use in relief work, arrived on Tuesday. One of the great losses sustained from the flood was that which befell the public library. An inspection of the institution disclosed the fact that the children's library, the medical library and the reference library had been wiped out of existence. Included in the loss were all the public and official accounts and copies of the newspapers dating from the first issues, back in 1822, none of which could be replaced. County Coroner John McKemy, who in the week following the flood handled nearly one hundred bodies, said that at least twenty-five bodies were disposed of before he was released from his imprisonment by the flood. He estimated that the number of lives lost from the flood in Dayton exceeded two hundred. THE TASK OF REBUILDING