We cannot thank Miss Barton in words. Hunt the dictionaries of all languages through and you will not find the signs to express our appreciation of her and her work. Try to describe the sunshine. Try to describe the starlight. Words fail, and in dumbness and silence we bow to the idea which brought her here. God and humanity! Never were they more closely linked than in stricken Johnstown.
Governor Beaver of Pennsylvania expressed the appreciation of the people of the State in the following letter:
In this matter of sheltering the people, as in others of like importance, Miss Clara Barton, president of the Red Cross Association, was most helpful. At a time when there was a doubt if the Flood Commission could furnish houses of suitable character and with the requisite promptness, she offered to assume charge, and she erected with the funds of the association three large apartment houses which afforded comfortable lodgings for many houseless people. She was among the first to arrive on the scene of calamity, bringing with her Dr. Hubbell, the field officer of the Red Cross Association, and a staff of skilled assistants. She made her own organization for relief work in every form, disposing of the large resources under her control with such wisdom and tenderness that the charity of the Red Cross had no sting, and its recipients are not Miss Barton’s dependents, but her friends. She was also the last of the ministering spirits to leave the scene of her labors, and she left her apartment houses for use during the winter, and turned over her warehouse, with its store of furniture, bedding and clothing and a well-equipped infirmary, to the Union Benevolent Association of the Conemaugh Valley, the organization of which she advised and helped to form; and its lady visitors have so well performed their work that the dreaded winter has no terrors, mendicancy has been repressed, and not a single case of unrelieved suffering is known to have occurred in all the flooded district.
The Russian Famine of 1891-92
To understand properly the Russian Famine of 1891-92, and the relief work of the Red Cross connected therewith, one needs to keep in mind the ordinary moral and economic condition of the Russian peasantry. They were, many of them, not long ago serfs attached to the land in a condition but little better than American slaves. Though the liberation of the serfs made their legal condition better, it left them in condition scarcely less discouraging than before. They were subject to all the disabilities of hard bargains on every side, from the exactions of taxes levied in one way or another, and payable in services or goods, all of which called for an ever-increasing sacrifice. They were subject to onerous military service, and penal exactions for violations of the law. These conditions surrounded them with an atmosphere of depressing poverty, fear, and hopeless endurance, if not of despair. They have not felt the stimulating habitual influence of hope, of courage, of enterprise. They are not educated to surmount discouragements by overcoming them. Difficulties do not down easily before them; they go down before difficulties and disasters in something like apathetic despondency, or live in an amazing light-hearted, careless recklessness that easily turns to drink, to idleness, weakness, disease, and early death. Fear is with them always, as if fate was over and against them.
The climate of Russia is cold in winter, and the means of cooking and artificial warmth are scanty, and not easily procured at any time; thus, when the famine really came upon them, observers were divided in opinion whether the famine, or fear of famine, or of something worse, destroyed or paralyzed these people the more.
The harvest yields of 1889 and 1890 had been much less than an average, and at the beginning of 1891 but little of the old supplies of grain was left over. The harvest of 1891 was nearly a total failure throughout a vast region in central Russia extending from Moscow, roughly speaking, say, three hundred miles in a northeasterly direction over a plain eight hundred to a thousand miles in width, beyond the Ural Mountains, and some distance into Siberia in Asiatic Russia—a district of nearly a million square miles. Ordinarily this is the most productive part of the Empire, upon which the remainder of the country had been accustomed to draw for food supplies in the frequent cases of deficiency elsewhere. The appearance of the country is similar to our prairie States in the early days before the growth of the planted trees; and the soil is a rich, black loam that usually produces good harvests.
It was estimated by those best qualified to judge that from thirty to thirty-five millions of people were sufferers by the famine of 1891.
Count Tolstoy gave up his whole time to mitigating the suffering caused by this great disaster, and to understanding the situation broadly. He went into the homes of the people, and studied their needs sympathetically; he placed himself by their side, and with his dramatic instinct understood them, ascertained where the hurt was felt, and how it could be cured, if it could be cured at all.
At that time the Count wrote of these poor unfortunates: “I asked them what sort of a harvest they had had, and how they were getting along; and they replied in a blithe, offhand manner: ‘Oh, right enough, God be praised!’ And yet these people who reside in the most distressed districts of the government of Toula, cannot possibly live through the winter, unless they bestir themselves in time. They are bound to die of hunger, or some disease engendered by hunger, as surely as a hive of bees left to face the rigors of a northern winter, without honey or sweets, must perish miserably before the advent of spring. The all-important question, therefore, is this: Will they exert themselves while yet they possess the strength, if, indeed, it be not already wholly exhausted? Everything that I saw or heard pointed with terrible distinctness to a negative reply. One of these farmers had sold out the meager possessions which he could call his own, and had left for Moscow to work or beg. The others stayed on and waited with naïve curiosity watching for what would happen next, like children, who, having fallen into a hole in the ice, or lost their way in a dense forest and not realizing at first the terrible danger of their situation, heartily laugh at its unwontedness.”