"I want you to give $50,000 to enlarge the insane hospital in this city!"
"Madam, I'll do it!" was the reply.
After three years of this sort of work, Miss Dix became an expert on the question of how an insane asylum should be built and managed. In New Jersey, she succeeded after much hard work in securing the passage of a bill establishing the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, and the money necessary to build it. This building was a model for the times.
For twelve years she went up and down through the United States in the interests of the suffering insane, securing the enlargement of three asylums and the building of thirteen.
In 1850, Miss Dix secured the passage of a bill giving twelve million acres of public lands for the benefit of the poor insane, the deaf and dumb, and the blind. Applause went up all over the country, yet, strange to say, after the passage of the bill by both Houses, President Franklin Pierce vetoed it!
This was a severe blow to Miss Dix and she again went to Europe for a rest. But rest she could not. All the large European cities had abuses of this kind to be corrected, and she must work to help them.
A most interesting story is told of her encounter with Pope Pius IX. In vain had she tried to get authority in Rome to enable her to do something to improve the horrible Italian prisons. She had even tried, but vainly, to get audience with the Pope. One day she saw his carriage, stopped it, and addressed him, willy-nilly, in Latin, as she knew no Italian. Her enterprise appears to have impressed the Pope favorably, for he gave her everything she asked for. In her own country, again, she extended her labors to the Western States. Then the breaking out of the Civil War rendered such labors useless.
But now there were the soldiers to help! Her active interest in them came about in the following way:
Shortly after April, 1861, she happened to be passing through Baltimore when the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts, on its way to Washington, was stoned by a vast mob, several men being killed. At once Miss Dix knew what to do. She took the first train she could get for Washington, and reported at the War Department for free service in the hospitals, where through Secretary Simon Cameron, she immediately received the appointment as "Superintendent of Women Nurses." Here, truly, was an enormous piece of work for her.
Among her duties were the selection and assignment of women nurses; the superintendence of the thousands of women already serving; the seeing that supplies were fairly distributed; and looking after the proper care of wounded soldiers. Her remarkable executive ability soon brought order and system out of confusion. It is said that she accepted no women who were under thirty years of age, and demanded that they be plain in dress and without beauty. Good health and good moral character were also, of course, requirements.