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c h a p t e r e i g h t Establishment Between 1905 and 1915, mabel Boardman ran the American red cross. once ruthlessly devoted to bringing down clara Barton, she became doggedly dedicated to building up the organization. “she is the boss, the manager, the impresario and the ring-master of the American national red cross,” wrote syndicated newspaper columnist James hay Jr. in an unpublished 1913 column. “she dominates the personnel, the meetings and the activities of her fellow workers. she does it with all the ease she might display in drinking a cup of tea, and with all the graciousness that is needed to make people cough up much money and be glad of it.” The central committee and the executive committee, which officially controlled the organization under the 1905 charter, did little more than “registering and approving her decisions and recommendations ,” disaster-relief director ernest Bicknell remembered in his memoir. “President Taft, with his inimitable chuckle, took his red cross orders from her.” Although Boardman displayed strong and decisive leadership talents, her greatest strength, according to hay, was “taking money away from big financiers.” in 1905 the organization had a mere fifteen thousand dollars in its coffers; by 1916 Boardman had built its endowment to more than $3 million. With her wealth of connections, Boardman began to expand the organization into the national institution that Barton had never quite succeeded in creating. since the Arc lacked funds to hire a large paid workforce, Boardman focused on amplifying the organization’s influence through developing close working relationships with government agencies and the business elite. The strong ties she forged with the state department enabled the Arc to become involved in numerous foreign relief operations without having to hire and train its own team of international relief workers. in domestic affairs, Boardman garnered support from Progressive business leaders and philanthropists through launching a new program of worker first aid. Bicknell, in turn, utilized his national network of charitable organizations to provide relief personnel in disasters. These developments signaled the Arc’s growing commitment to organizational humanitarianism. its principles of humanity and neutrality, though 138 The Boardman Era less visible, became more deeply embedded in its programs and in systems of decision making and deal-brokering. As the Arc became closely intertwined with government agencies and the economic elite, the type of neutrality that came with organizational independence disappeared altogether.1 American (red cross) diplomacy during this period, the Arc relied directly on the state department for information on foreign distress and for personnel to distribute its aid abroad. in 1907 Assistant secretary of state robert Bacon, who served on the Arc’s executive committee from 1905 to 1909, informed Boardman about a recurrence of famine in russia. The organization, though occupied with its work in san Francisco, sent seven thousand dollars to the russian red cross. in April 1909, when ethnic tensions in Turkey once more boiled over into ethnic violence against Armenians, the Arc cabled the American ambassador at constantinople to ask whether aid was needed. receiving an affirmative response, the Arc, with some help from Barton’s old nemesis Louis Klopsch and his Christian Herald, collected $29,500, which it sent to the ambassador to distribute at his discretion. These small efforts preceded a full-scale relief operation following a catastrophic earthquake in the towns of messina and reggio di calabria, italy, in december 1908.2 This quake struck at the point where the northeast corner of sicily nearly kisses the southern tip of the italian Peninsula. After triggering a tsunami and fires, the shocks destroyed so many buildings that somewhere between 72,000 and 110,000 victims were buried in what one newspaper called “a colossal sarcophagus” of bricks and mortar. Two days afterward, the Arc central committee voted to wire $50,000 of the funds remaining in the san Francisco relief account to Lloyd Griscom, the American ambassador to italy. This action angered the san Francisco relief committee , but they could do little, since the Arc’s new bylaws allowed donations to be used for many purposes. The Arc then raised more than $1 million from the American public, augmenting the $800,000 that congress appropriated for the navy’s Atlantic fleet to distribute. Byron cutting, the American vice consul in milan and previously an active member of the new York red cross, agreed to serve as the Arc’s official representative in distributing relief.3 The Arc’s decision to use...

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