Largely through Clara Barton’s endeavors, the Red Cross became international, with the national power represented by the Stars and Stripes as one of its staunchest supporters. Hon. John M. Ross, President of District of Columbia Board of Commissioners.
We question whether there has been any man or woman in the world’s history who has been a greater blessing to mankind than the sweet-faced Clara Barton. Topeka Daily Capital.
HUMANITARIANISM, UNPARALLELED IN ALL HISTORY
Greater than the organization of the American Red Cross, and of far more reaching importance to the human race, was the securing of the so-called American Amendment to the original International Red Cross treaty. To secure this amendment, Clara Barton personally addressed the Governments through the “International Committee of Geneva,” advocating the measure. This measure was seriously considered by the “Congress of Berne,” and adopted by the powers. The amendment is in force by every civilized nation in the world—wherever there is a Red Cross Society. Through their representatives, hundreds of millions of people are reaping continuing benefits of this humanitarian Clara Barton measure.
The amendment permits the Red Cross to do the work of alleviating distress in all national calamities, such as fire, flood, famine, cyclone and earthquake. Under this amendment, Clara Barton administered relief at Johnstown, Charleston, Carolina Islands—in all, in about twenty disasters—relief of untold benefits to hundreds of thousands of American people. No other woman in this country, nor in the history of civilization, has to her credit an achievement of such world-humanitarian influence.
Clara Barton, as President of the Red Cross, served for over twenty years and on every field of national disaster then occurring in the United States; and also served in Cuba through the Spanish-American War within that period of time. Through that period of over twenty years, not one dollar was drawn by her from the national treasury; with confidence in her, the people contributed what was necessary. And, further, unprecedented in all history was her self-sacrificing humanitarian spirit in this, and in all similar work. Clara Barton, in a personal letter, confides to her friend as follows: “In all my life, in its various humanitarian activities, I have never received, nor have I desired, remuneration for my services; and with the exception of the $15,000 (expended out of my private funds and returned to me by the 39th Congress), I have never received in all my life anything in return for my personal expenditures.”
“During the first nineteen years, to maintain the Red Cross Headquarters, to build up the Organization and carry on its work,” according to an official report made to the House of Representatives by the Red Cross Committee, “Clara Barton expended from her individual funds an average of $4,000 a year, or a total of $76,000. This does not include her expenses for the four years that followed while she was President of the Red Cross, nor for the five years spent in securing for this country the American Red Cross. Nor does this include the amount expended by Miss Barton, after retiring from the Red Cross—from 1905 to 1912—in organizing and carrying on the work of the National First Aid Association—this amount from her personal funds being about $5,000.”
As through her fifty years of public services she continuously expended moneys from her personal funds, accepting no remuneration for her services, it has been estimated by an ex-secretary of the Red Cross that Clara Barton put the equivalent of a half million dollars in the Red Cross Society.
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The great good Christian woman—one of God’s noblest creatures.