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c h a p t e r s i x Barton versus Boardman When a hurricane flattened Galveston, Texas, in september 1900, clara Barton responded in much the same way she always had: she focused on meeting people’s urgent needs with little regard to keeping detailed balance sheets of donations and expenditures or checking with the American red cross treasurer before making purchases . These practices did not sit well with the new Board of control appointed under the federal charter. The board demanded that the reluctant Barton turn over her expense vouchers, and board members closely scrutinized her relief expenditures. Their investigation exposed Barton’s sloppy methods of paying her staff and revealed that one of Barton’s trusted associates had apparently embezzled donations. other scandals and financial problems soon followed, and Barton became increasingly defensive about her methods of operating the Arc. The organization soon split into two factions. one, led by Barton’s blindly loyal nephew stephen, fought to make her “president for life,” while the other, led by an ambitious Washington socialite named mabel Boardman, sought to coax or force Barton to retire. For four years this infighting played out in red cross board meetings, in the newspaper pages, and finally in congress. When the smoke cleared, an entirely new organization emerged. historians have previously characterized this tumultuous period at the Arc as just another example of a Progressive era reform struggle. The clamor for more rigorous accounting of expenditures and for fresh professional leadership, they have argued, flowed from the tidal wave of reform that swept the nation at the turn of the twentieth century, producing positive changes in political, business, and social organizations. more recent scholarship on Progressivism has cast this movement more ambivalently, as an effort to impose the values of the late-Victorian middle classes—the penchant for rational order, social purity, and moral propriety—onto the world as a whole. While some Progressive reformers fought for social justice, women’s suffrage, and more humane labor practices, others sought to create a better-ordered society by consolidating corporations into multitiered national systems, a reform that resulted in increased control of society by business elites. The push to reorganize the Arc along Progres- 98 The Boardman Era sive lines fell mainly into this latter camp. The new organization, though more powerful , better funded, and better organized than Barton’s ragtag society, became much more closely allied with the federal government and business leaders and distanced itself from the feminist, independent-minded populism that Barton embraced.1 Winds of Trouble The Galveston hurricane of september 8, 1900, still ranks as the most deadly natural disaster in U.s. history. The storm surge and battering winds killed as many as eight thousand people and left survivors stranded for days in a tangle of dark ruins. The port city, which had up to this time rivaled houston in size and commercial importance, was transformed overnight into a prairie “covered with lumber, debris, pianos, trunks and dead bodies,” a New York World correspondent wrote. Galveston citizens, unable to bury all their dead, loaded hundreds of corpses onto barges and carried them out to sea, only to find the bloated remains later washed up on shore. in desperation, the citizens decided to burn the bodies in massive pyres.2 When the yellow journals learned of the storm, they launched competing campaigns to collect donations for its survivors. hearst’s papers organized three relief trains and raised funds for an orphanage, while Pulitzer’s World announced it was sending its own trains, with Barton and six assistants on board. The Arc leader eagerly agreed to this publicity bonanza, and the World did not disappoint. A front-page story headlined “red cross Leader Begins noble Task” announced, “The bringing of the great machinery of the red cross society to the aid of Galveston will be of inestimable value. . . . her renown as a manager of such movements is world-wide.” The World’s editors were not aware that Barton’s health had begun to falter, since she strenuously concealed this fact. mussey, however, had worked closely with Barton during the congressional hearings for the Arc’s federal charter and knew the truth. But her objections met with little success. “it was naturally my work to go to that field,” Barton later wrote in her diary. during the twenty-four-hour railroad trek to Galveston, Barton fell ill. mussey, who had accompanied her, waited until she was asleep and then arranged to...

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