[32] See [Appendix I], [pp. 399-400]. See also Diagram of Organization, [p. xxv].

Each chairman was required to make an investigation of and report on any undertaking of his department that called for an appropriation. Each chairman was also a member of the Executive Committee and was responsible for the appointment of his employes. He was further responsible for preparing monthly budgets and for the printing and distribution of all printed matter.

From the plan of organization it is to be seen, of course, that housing as a reason for incorporation had yielded to the pressure to make inclusive the treatment by one incorporated body of all divisions of the many-sided work.

The experiments of the preliminary and transition periods had tried out many men and methods, so that on the newly incorporated body were found men of affairs who in the relief work itself were ready to act in harmony and with method and to come together in small groups for frequent meetings. If one looks at the [diagram] of organization presented,[33] one sees how gradually through the trying three months there had been a shaping through experiment that made the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds itself a fruition that in germ lay in the union of official effort and private initiative.

[33] See [p. xxv].

Step by step the confidence of the public at home and abroad had had to be won. Only through the selection and trying out of generous-minded and capable men could the suspicions of those who controlled the contributions in the east have been dispelled.[34] Only after the abortive effort to make political capital out of positions of relief administration had fallen flat could the work itself get into its steady swing. The lessons are clearly written, however, that there must of necessity be in any great sudden emergency the creation of public confidence in the administration of the relief, and that along with a force of persons trained from within and without to act quickly and with definiteness must be the voluntary services of men and women on whom the community itself has learned to rely.

[34] See [Part I], [p. 99] ff.

A few notes of later date are added here to round out the account of organization.

On August 1, 1906, Mr. Bicknell succeeded Dr. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross, and he in turn was succeeded on October 1 by Mr. Dohrmann.[35]