The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal by Marian Moser Jones (review)

Marian Moser Jones provides a cogent review of the complicated evolution of the American Red Cross (ARC), which grew from a Civil War relief effort inspired by European volunteer associations into a quasi-governmental agency. In modifying European ideals of neutral, humanitarian war relief, the ARC created a feminized federation for local, national, and international disaster relief. Clara Barton, the founder of the ARC, began her relief work on Civil War battlefields. During the Franco-Prussian War, she worked with the Swiss Red Cross aiding the Swiss Army and joined with leaders such as Henri Dunant in calling for a neutral volunteer force to provide medical services for wounded combatants, ideals formalized in the Geneva conventions. Determined to do more, Barton organized a civilian relief action following the siege of Strasbourg. She then returned to the United States determined to convince Congress to sign the conventions and resolved to apply Red Cross ideals to civilian relief during national calamities.

Barton envisioned that the ARC would increase the effectiveness of local benevolent efforts through a well-organized national agency. Unfortunately, this female-led agency, which emphasized the socially sanctioned female role of nurturer and carer, had no secure funding. Moreover, Barton often personally directed ARC assistance, stretching her abilities to the limit. Jones contrasts the stories of the Johnstown flood of 1889 and the Sea Island storm of 1893 to tease out this organizational structure’s advantages and disadvantages, in terms of aid offered and the conflicted definitions of neutrality in an age of rampant racial discrimination. The ARC’s international relief efforts in the 1890s further complicated the ideal of neutrality. For example, when the ARC provided aid to Armenian survivors after the massacres of 1895–1896, Barton found herself differing with Christian missionaries who were devoted to relief efforts but virulently anti-Muslim. Another problem was the continuous need for donations.

In 1900, after many years of Barton’s lobbying, the U.S. government granted a charter that made the ARC responsible for fulfilling the terms of the Geneva conventions. The charter was both Barton’s crowning achievement and the beginning of the end of her prominent role in the ARC. Barton was in failing health, though this was not public knowledge. More significantly, the Board of Control appointed under the charter was uncomfortable with Barton’s personalized and even ad hoc operating methods. The ensuing power struggle replaced Barton with Mabel Boardman, who had a very different vision of the ARC. Her tenure resulted in a streamlined, better financed, more powerful ARC. Furthermore, the federal government became more directly involved, demanding, for instance, that the ARC submit its budget and itemized reports to the War Department. Jones uses the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to highlight how the ARC had changed. When Barton’s loyalists left, the ARC had few experienced staff. As a result, the organization sent trained social workers into the field, a significant shift from the populist, feminist outlook of Barton’s era to a more managerial style. Barton’s personal involvement in caring for individuals turned into a focus on management of the organization. The nineteenth-century concept of neutrality demanded that the ARC operate independent of powerful governmental and social interests; in the twentieth century it was redefined to mean negotiating with various business and government interests in an attempt to create a unified and effective relief program.

The second half of The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal documents the activities of this reconfigured ARC. Boardman detested Barton’s total control but she too came to dominate ARC’s governance, while significantly enhancing its financial basis and extending its national influence. Emblematic of the new ARC was the changed philosophy of first aid training, a growing aspect of ARC’s work; in this period, it ignored the liability of...