[Gutenberg 30230] • A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work

Clara Barton was one of those diminutive New England women of the nineteenth century who was determined to make the world a better place. What Susan B. Anthony was to women's suffrage and Harriet Beecher Stowe was to the cause of abolition, Clara Barton was to the humanitarian impulse of the American people to help the unfortunate victims of war and disaster. In 1881 Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross; she served as its president from 1882 to 1904. The Red Cross of today stands as a living memorial to the lifelong efforts of this valiant women. Miss Barton tells the story of the first twenty-five yeas of the organization which she founded. The relief offered by the organization in the Texas Famine, the Mount Vernon Cyclone, the Johnstown Flood, the Sea Island Hurricane, and the Galveston Tidal Wave is discussed in detail. The stories become all the more dramatic because they are told in Clara Barton's own words and from her point of view as an eyewitness. She lived much that she did not write, but she wrote nothing that she did not live.