From a photograph taken in 1897, just before leaving the United States for her work among the Reconcentrados in Cuba.
From a photograph taken in 1882, just after Clara Barton had completed the organization of the American Red Cross.
While there were seven States represented by members actually present (at the meeting), the entire list of signers to the Memorial (by the remonstrants), with one exception, were residents of Washington, D. C.
With one exception, not one of the twenty-five members has ever taken part in Red Cross Field work for a single day;—and she valuing her services, however, at $50.00 per week for two weeks, making a sum of $100, which was allowed and paid by the board; nor were there any records to show that, aside from their membership fees aggregating about $160, they have ever contributed to the funds of the Red Cross, while individual signers of this Memorial have drawn from it more than 500, in aggregate amount.
Clara Barton has never been a pensioner on the Red Cross Society, and certainly could not assent to be placed in that relation. We may, too, reasonably ask how these sticklers for correct form in all proceedings can find authority, being only a small minority of the membership, to offer such terms; and how can they undertake to barter its offices, privileges, and funds for a compliance with their demands? They admit they can stop the proceedings in Congress—for a consideration—thereby indirectly admitting the purpose of their movement from the beginning. The mere statement of the situation will suggest its difficulties. The majority in control of the body is at a loss to know where and how, under the charter or any of its bylaws, past or present, there can be authority for such proceedings.
“That it was physically withstood,” says Clara Barton after her retirement, “was beyond either the expectation or the intention;” “still stamping on me;” “so long as I am personally unharmed I expect nothing more.” Fortunately for her country her life was spared, by her “enemies,” eight years more; for in that eight years she did a work many times more difficult than to have kept running her perfected and well-oiled Red Cross machinery. She brought into existence a new organization, of possible greater benefit to the American people than the Red Cross, an organization with headquarters in Boston and branch societies everywhere from Maine to California.
And why should she not have done so? About the time of her retirement (in 1903) there was filed with Congress by a committee of the Red Cross an official report, unanimously concurred in by the committee, in which report appears the following: “At no time in her life has Miss Barton been in sounder bodily or mental health, or better able to continue the work to which her years of experience and natural endowments have preeminently fitted her. Moreover, the nation’s confidence is Miss Barton’s, and no hand can better guide its Red Cross work than hers. While every right minded person will deplore the mental suffering, anxiety, and personal humiliation inflicted upon one of the noblest women that ever lived, it cannot be supposed that she will abandon her life work on such a demand as this, or that she will retire from the office to which she has been almost unanimously elected, while under fire; nor would her friends permit it if she were so disposed.—We find nothing in the opposition except malice, resentment, and the jealousy of a few people whose ambition has been thwarted.”
Tis eminence that makes envy rise;
As fairest fruit attract the flies.