CLOTHING BRANCH, HILTON HEAD DISTRICT.
REPORT BY MRS. MACDONALD.
Accustomed as I had been, in Chicago and other large cities, to see a miscellaneous assortment of rags worn under the name of clothing, I was little prepared for the sight of the almost nude condition of the great mass of people, which came to my notice on first entering on the relief work of the Sea Island Sufferers. After a couple of days and nights spent in the clothing room in Beaufort, packing barrels and boxes for the Hilton Head District, we proceeded there and amid loud exclamations of “closen” had the freight hauled to our camp. Before an hour had passed we were besieged with applicants, but as our present supply was limited, we could only attend to a few of the worst cases, and these were told to come at ten o’clock the next morning. Having already procured the information regarding the families—ages, sex and number of children—we spent the time in putting into bundles suitable clothing for such as had been told to come. Fearful of being late, they began to assemble by daylight, and as each man or woman was seen emerging, “toting” the bundle, a hum of voices would assail the lucky one with “Bress de Lawd; what ye done get?” The experience with this first installment showed that some work must be expended on the clothing before distribution, to make it more serviceable. As the men were put to work in the ditches, so the women who were able to leave their families were called on for a week’s work each in the sewing tents; a sewing machine was borrowed from one, and Miss Mary Clark (who was put in charge) assorted the garments, giving to some patching to do, to others buttons to sew on, to others apparently useless garments to make into children’s clothing. When all got steadily to work, one would commence a patter song, the rest would quickly join in, and, to the accompanying rattle of the sewing machine, work and music blended. To hear them sing, one would hardly think they had just passed through a great calamity; but it was the calm which follows the storm—they knew their troubles were over, and they were going to get “kiverin” for the “chilluns.” How they worked! Garment after garment was quickly mended, examined by Miss Clark for faults, and then placed in its proper barrel, ready for giving away. When all the clothing had been repaired, the list of needy ones was examined, and, as before, the most needy told to come the next day. But the “most needy” generally included half the island, for telegrams never flew faster than did the news that clothes were going to be issued. Then, when the last garment had been issued, some happy, some dejected, they would go away to await the next issue. So week by week, a constant stream of barrels, boxes and bundles would be received, mended and given away to those who, many of them, hardly knew what a whole garment was. Occasionally one, more crafty than the rest, would try to excite extra sympathy by producing a goodly array of “motherless chilluns,” borrowed for the occasion, in the hope of getting an extra supply, not knowing that we already knew the full number and ages of each family. The system adopted by the Red Cross of first quietly getting its information complete, and then going to work, knowing what to do and how to do it, showed its value in preventing imposition, which must always be met with to some extent, in all charitable work. In this way 3,400 garments were repaired and given away in this district, besides shoes, hats, etc.
While the sewing was in progress in one tent, I helped attend the cases in the hospital tents, and made daily calls when necessary on patients who were unable to come to me. My experience in Hahnemann Hospital, Chicago, fitted me for this part of the work. In all this work the lack of suitable supplies had to be overcome. As soon as our busiest season had passed and the sickness had abated, I opened a free school in one room of our house, expecting to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to ten pupils. The attendance rose almost immediately to forty and we gave up another room to the use of the school, and I had one of the older pupils assist me with the younger ones. To Mr. Proudfit, of Morristown, N.J., are due our thanks for his generous contributions, enabling us to purchase slates, books and other school supplies.
WAREHOUSE AND SHIPPING DEPARTMENT.
In introducing the dual reports of Dr. E.W. Egan, I imagine that I realize something of the feeling of the Queen of Sheba when she proclaimed that the half had not been told. The practical, unswerving and unique method of procedure pursued by Dr. Egan with these thousands of ignorant, hungry wards and waifs would constitute an interesting study for the most advanced philanthropist. The problem, as he tersely states it, of how to make thirty thousand dollars feed and shelter thirty thousand people a year, was not easily solved; and yet, largely under his original calculation and undeviating faithfulness to his own plans, it was solved, and how successfully, all the years from that time to this have testified. The medical aid which he established among these poor, deluded sufferers was as if an advanced clinic from his Alma Mater, Jefferson College, or the University of Pennsylvania, had been suddenly opened in their midst. The old dislocated joints, broken bones, tumors, internal diseases, carried about and dragged on through years of pain, disappeared; they literally took up their beds and walked. Their faithful hearts, like their eyes, followed him in admiring confidence, as with hurried step and quick glance he passed among the distributers of the warehouse; and if he told them that a pound of meat and a peck of grits was enough for a week—all they could have and must be supplemented either by work, if obtainable, or fish or game, if it could be caught—there was no complaint, no demur: “The doctor said so, and it was all right.”
It is a comfort to me as I write to know that his skillful hand is now on the keys that have for such weary months locked in the untold agonies of the terrible dens in western Cuba, designated, for the lack of some more appropriate term, as “hospitals.”
Report by E. Winfield Egan, M.D.
The first official word of the Port Royal Relief Field, ambiguously called the Sea Island Relief Field, came to Dr. J.B. Hubbell, the general field agent of the American National Red Cross, with whom it was my privilege to be at Indianapolis, attending the annual reunion of the Grand Army, where, for the first time in the history of that organization, the Red Cross of Geneva took its place upon the arms of the surgeons, the ambulances and the tents which were regularly distributed along the line of march. Twenty-four hours found us en route to Beaufort, S.C., which was to be the headquarters of the American National Red Cross, through its year of effort to take care of 30,000 human beings living upon the islands, known as the “Sea Island” or Old Port Royal group, as they were called during the war, lying off the coast of South Carolina, between Charleston and Savannah, and which had been devastated by that memorable cyclone of August 27, 1893.
I reported to the president, at headquarters, for duty the twenty-eighth day of September, 1893. Upon arrival I found the president and field secretary quartered in an unused club house, using parts of billiard tables for dining purposes, desks made of dry goods boxes, crude furniture made in a day and nicely upholstered with manila paper—in short, it was camping out indoors.