At the national convention in Washington, D. C., in 1900, fifty States and Territories were represented by 509 delegates. Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens succeeded Miss Willard as president.
The American National Red Cross Society was organized March 1, 1882, with headquarters at Washington, D. C. Its object is the relief of suffering by war, pestilence, famine, flood, fires, and other calamities of sufficient magnitude to be deemed national in extent. It is governed by the provisions of the International Convention of Aug. 22, 1864, at Geneva, Switzerland.
Up to the present time relief has been given on fields as follows: Michigan forest fires, 1881, material and money, $80,000; Mississippi floods, 1882, money and seeds, $8,000; Mississippi floods, 1883, material and seeds, $18,500; Mississippi cyclone, 1883, money, $1,000; Balkan war, 1883, money, $500; Ohio and Mississippi river floods, 1884, food, clothing, tools, housefurnishings and feed for stock, $175,000; Texas famine, 1885, appropriations and contributions, $120,000; Charleston, S. C., earthquake, 1886, money, $500; Mt. Vernon, Ill., cyclone, 1888, money and supplies, $85,000; Florida yellow fever epidemic, 1888, physicians and nurses, $15,000; Johnstown, Pa., flood disaster, 1889, money and all kinds of building material, furniture, etc., $250,000; Russian famine, 1891-2, food, $125,000; Pomeroy, Ia., cyclone, 1893, money and nurses, $2,700; South Carolina Islands hurricane and tidal wave disaster, money and all kinds of supplies, material, tools, seeds, lumber, $65,000; reconcentrado relief in Cuba, 1898-9, $500,000; American-Spanish War, 1898-9, $450,000; Galveston flood and hurricane, 1900, $120,000; total, $2,016,200.
Miss Clara Barton was its principal founder and has been its president continuously.
The Association of Collegiate Alumnae was organized January 14, 1882; incorporated by special act of the Massachusetts Legislature, April 20, 1899, to unite the alumnae of different institutions for practical educational work.
From 1890 to 1901 the association gave fourteen $500 European fellowships (sharing two others) and ten $300 American fellowships. Among those holding the fellowships was the first woman admitted to the laboratory of the United States Fish Commission, the first woman to receive the Ph. D. degree from Yale, the first woman admitted to Göttingen University, the first woman permitted to work in the biological laboratory at Strasburg University, the first American woman to receive the degree of Ph. D. from any German university, and the first American woman to receive a Ph. D. from Göttingen and Heidelberg Universities.
The character of the work accomplished by those holding fellowships made it possible for the association to establish, three years ago, a Council to Accredit Women for Advanced Work in Foreign Universities. Any woman applicant, college graduate or otherwise, found qualified in work, character and serious purpose, receives a certificate properly signed and attested which will secure for her, if possible to any woman, the courtesy and privileges desired at a foreign university.
The organization contributes to the support of the Association for Maintaining the American Woman's Table at the Zoological Station at Naples and to that for Promoting Scientific Research by Women. The latter pays $500 annually for the support of the Woman's Table, and to promote research has just offered a prize of $1,000, which offer, it is expected, will be renewed biennially.
The A. C. A. Committee on Corporate Membership maintains a high standard of colleges whose graduates are admitted to this organization, which has done much in a quiet way to raise the standards of department work, equipment and endowment of American colleges admitting women.
For the past three years the association has published a magazine containing the addresses and reports given at its annual meetings. Among its other publications are statistics relative to the Health of College Women (1885); a Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women (1897); a full descriptive list of the fellowships for graduate study open to women in this country, together with a list of the undergraduate scholarships offered to women in the nineteen colleges belonging to the A. C. A. (1899). It will soon issue studies of the growth and development of colleges, a supplement to the Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women, a study of the child from the point of view of parents and teachers, and a comprehensive statistical investigation into the health, occupations and marriage-rate of college and non-college women.