Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
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Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
The amendment permits the Red Cross to do the work of alleviating
distress in all national calamities, such as fire, flood, famine,
cyclone and earthquake. Under this amendment, Clara Barton
administered relief at Johnstown, Charleston, Carolina Islands—in all,
in about twenty disasters—relief of untold benefits to hundreds of
thousands of American people. No other woman in this country, nor in
the history of civilization, has to her credit an achievement of such
world-humanitarian influence.
Clara Barton, as President of the Red Cross, served for over twenty
years and on every field of national disaster then occurring in the
United States; and also served in Cuba through the Spanish-American War
within that period of time. Through that period of over twenty years,
not one dollar was drawn by her from the national treasury; with
confidence in her, the people contributed what was necessary. And,
further, unprecedented in all history was her self-sacrificing
humanitarian spirit in this, and in all similar work. Clara Barton, in a
personal letter, confides to her friend as follows: “In all my life, in
its various humanitarian activities, _I have never received, nor have I
desired, remuneration for my services_; and with the exception of the
$15,000 (expended out of my private funds and returned to me by the 39th
Congress), I have never received in all my life _anything in return for
my personal expenditures_.”
“During the first nineteen years, to maintain the Red Cross
Headquarters, to build up the Organization and carry on its work,”
according to an official report made to the House of Representatives by
the Red Cross Committee, “Clara Barton expended from her individual
funds an average of $4,000 a year, or a total of $76,000. This does not
include her expenses for the four years that followed while she was
President of the Red Cross, nor for the five years spent in securing for
this country the American Red Cross. Nor does this include the amount
expended by Miss Barton, after retiring from the Red Cross—from 1905 to
1912—in organizing and carrying on the work of the National First Aid
Association—this amount from her personal funds being about $5,000.”
As through her fifty years of public services she continuously expended
moneys from her personal funds, accepting no remuneration for her
services, it has been estimated by an ex-secretary of the Red Cross that
Clara Barton put the equivalent of a half million dollars in the Red
Cross Society.
LXXX
The great good Christian woman—one of God’s noblest creatures.
DOCTOR HENRY A. LATHROP, Author.
Clara Barton lives in deeds, and will be an inspiration to millions
who shall come after her.
CHAPLAIN COUDON, Nat’l House of Representatives.
Clara Barton bequeathed to the world a glorious heritage.
Birmingham (Ala.) _Age-Herald_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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