It is estimated that 100,000 fatal accidents occur annually in the United States, and 500,000 accidents occur that render the victims incapable of earning their own living. Hundreds of thousands are being trained in first aid classes; and likewise many hundreds of thousands of victims of accidents on the railways, in the factories, and on the farms, are receiving the benefits of first aid assistance. The First Aid Division of the American Red Cross is affiliated with the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of America, and also allied with many other humanitarian and patriotic associations.
“First Aid,” therefore, is becoming hardly less important in war and peace than Red Cross Aid in war. Clara Barton’s constructive humanitarian work in First Aid may yet be recognized by her country as even of greater humanitarian service than her Red Cross achievement, or that of the “American Amendment” to the International Red Cross. For seven years—from the inception of the “First Aid” in 1905 to 1912—Clara Barton was the unanimous choice of its members for President. To her co-workers in her latest national humanitarian association are the prophetic words of the “Mother of First Aid:”
“I believe the ‘First Aid’ to be the beginning of an organized movement that shall permeate more homes, carry useful knowledge to more men and women who would get it in no other way, assuage more suffering that nothing else could reach, awaken an interest in the welfare of his brother man in more rough toil-worn hearts unknown to it before, than lies in our power to estimate or our hopes to conceive.”
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Clara Barton worked for humanity, for whom she had a love unparalleled in history. Alice Hubbard—In The Fra.
My first endeavor has been to wipe from the scroll of my country’s fame the stain of imputed lack of common humanity—to take her out of the rôle of barbarism. Clara Barton.
Alas! what a stony soil the Red Cross has sometimes found, and the seeds scattered by the wayside many a day. Clara Barton.
With what fidelity, wisdom and unanimity it has fulfilled its important and peaceful mission, its vast work of almost twenty years (1901) has conclusively shown. Clara Barton.
The whole civilized world acclaims the noble character and good work of Clara Barton. Portland (Oregon) Union.
The Clara Barton movement spanned the globe.