interests the real need of these suffering communities was not
understood by the Texas people--it had not come home to them--but that
once comprehending, it would be their wish to have it known and cared
for by themselves and not by others outside of the State.
Assuring these poor people that their actual condition should be made
known to their own people, through the authoritative means of the Red
Cross, and that they should be speedily cared for, we bade them farewell
and hurried away to Dallas, where we intended to send out a statement to
the people of the State.
Arriving there, we sought an interview with Colonel Belo of the Dallas
_News_ and laid before him the result of our observations. He placed the
columns of his paper at our disposal, and through them we enlightened
the people of the true status of affairs in their own State. The
response was as quick as it was gratifying, and thence onward there was
no further necessity for appealing to anyone outside of the State
limits. Indeed, that act in the first place was the greatest mistake, as
to the average Texan, feeling a genuine pride in the State's wealth and
resources, it savored of frauds and imposition, and prejudiced him
against the brother who would pass him by and appeal to outsiders.
The Texas Legislature appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for
food, and in the meantime rain began to fall and the entire aspect of
affairs began to change for the better. But there were still many needs
unprovided for--clothing, fuel, seeds for gardens and fields, live stock
and many other things--and it was necessary to place these needs before
the people. This the _News_ took upon itself to do; and upon my
suggestion it opened a popular subscription and announced that it would
receive contributions of seed or cash and would publish the same from
day to day and turn them over to the constituted authorities appointed
to disburse them. In order to encourage the movement I inaugurated it
with the first subscription, and from that time until now I do not
believe any one has heard of any need in Texas that has not been taken
care of by her own people.
Congress had appropriated ten thousand dollars for seed to be given the
Texas drouth sufferers; but President Cleveland promptly vetoed the act
and thereby laid himself open to a great deal of unkind criticism. He
was right, however, and by his resolute action saved the nation's money
and the State's pride. I know that it must have been an unpleasant duty
for the President to feel compelled to apply his pruning knife to that
tender shoot, for he was one of the first to respond with his own
personal check to the call for aid for the drouth sufferers; and the
subject had always held his kindly interest.
The services of the Red Cross, beyond those given by its president and
field agent in making their investigation, were not required in this
emergency; and as we had performed the duty most needed, viz.: to
unravel the misunderstanding and rightly inform the people of the true
condition of affairs in the stricken district, we concluded that our
task was ended and that we could return to our home.
On our return to Washington the following report was made to the
President:
_February 19, 1889._
_To the President of the United States_:
MR. PRESIDENT--I have not been unmindful of your distinguished
permission to write you concerning the condition of the people of
Texas suffering from the drouth. Desiring to spare your time and
labor so far as possible, I delayed my communication until the
investigations should be completed, and my opinions in regard to the
extent of their necessities, and the sources from which relief
should properly emanate, could be satisfactorily settled in my own
mind.
The prime reason for my going in person, to Texas was my entire
inability to solve the mystery of why Texas was not equal to the
care of its own poor and the meeting of its own calamities. I could
not comprehend how a couple of seasons of drouth in one sparsely
settled corner of an old State of six millions of acres, with a
treasury out of debt, should throw the people of that State upon the
charity of the other States, or upon the support of the general
government. My investigations brought to light the following
perplexed conditions:
She had contending interests between her original cattlemen who
wanted the lands left open, and the farmers who came in to settle
them up; the former placing every obstacle, like the cutting of
fences and driving off stock, in the way of the little immigrant!
A second conflicting interest arose between these same original
lords of the soil--the free ranchmen--and those, who, through
railroad grants or purchase, had become actual owners of land which
they desired to sell, and for this purpose, and to this end, held
out unwarranted inducements, clothed in glowing descriptions, both
false and dangerous, to encourage immigration, for which no
preparation against the failure of crops from any cause, or toward
the opening of industries of any other kind had been made--not even
the taking care to leave a small sum at the discretion of the
governor in case any harm might befall these newly invited citizens.
The immigrants, on their part, coming, as they had been instructed
to believe, into a semi-tropical climate, with exhaustless soil
covered with almost perpetual verdure, made no provisions beyond the
wants of the hour. One looked long and generally in vain for some
trace of a cellar, or storehouse, or barn, or even the marks of some
former hayrick, which might betoken some thought of provision for
the future on the part of these so-called farmers. Pioneer like,
they had wasted what they could not at the moment use. In this
condition the drouth struck this section of the country.
Fearing the effect of these conflicting interests, the mistake was
made of their coming out of the State to solicit aid, in the place
of turning bravely and confidently to the people of her rich
Southern sections for help among themselves.
Again, the mistake of overstatement was made, and a population of
thousands represented as "starving," when in reality no one had
starved nor was expected to. They were in far too great want, but
not "starving." These statements served to mortify and incense the
people, and to turn the strength of nearly the entire press of the
State against the statements of those representing the distress, and
literally to kill all help from both without and within.
Added to this, the courtesy of the railroads entering the State, and
which at the first call for help had generously offered free freight
on all gifts for the drouth sufferers, had most unfortunately been
abused, and the occasion used by dealers to send goods in free to
their customers for sale. This had the effect in ten days to shut
off all free railroad transportation into the State, and thus it
remains to-day, and the freight on a carload of gift oats from the
grain centres of the Northwest would exceed their value when there.
These were a part of the perplexing conditions which confronted me
upon my arrival in Albany, January, 1887.
The Legislature was occupied in electing a senator, and so continued
during two weeks, paying no attention to the Relief bill before it.
Meanwhile, I occupied myself in traveling by private conveyance
among the people, learning their conditions from themselves. They
suffered every necessity but _homelessness_, and this was the worst
feature in the case. Lacking this, they would have felt justified in
going away and seeking plenty in the homes of others; but how to
pick up their unfed children and travel out, leaving their few
cattle to the cowboys and the farm to the tax collector.
I attempted to write the real state of things to you; but of what
use? I might as well have sent you a tangled skein of silk to pick
out for the winding. It was clearly no case for a great call for
charity from the people at large, neither for governmental aid.
Texas was a thousand times equal to it herself, when once she looked
it clearly in the face and set about the work. This she at length
commenced by an appropriation of $100,000 for food.
As good fortune would have it, rains commenced, the wheat was
apparently saved, and hope revived. There was still need for staple
grains at once to plant and sow the fields. These must come from the
people within the State, as they had closed all avenues from
without, and it was proper they should furnish them. But it could
only be accomplished by the aid of the press, which was still
pointing its horns at John Brown, who persisted in declaring that "a
million of dollars must come from Congress or the people of the
North." There was no way but to reach the press, and turn its powers
in the true direction.
The arrangement was not difficult for us to make. The columns of
both the Dallas and Galveston _News_ are open for a "Seed Fund" from
the State, pledged to close them only when the need is met. I left
that night, feeling that the skein was unraveled, and _our_ part of
the work done.
I thank you with all my heart, Mr. President, for the encouragement
given me at the commencement, and the privilege of writing you. I
have done this little bit of work faithfully, and hope it may meet
your approval. I am home, with scarcely strength to leave my bed,
but I trust we have heard the _last of "Texas drouth_."
I have the honor to be,
Most respectfully,
CLARA BARTON.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1898, by Clara Barton.
CAMP PERRY.
_The Northern Florida Yellow Fever Quarantine Station of
the U.S. Marine Hospital, during the epidemic of 1888,
for refugees coming north._]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1898, by Clara Barton.
RED CROSS HEADQUARTERS.
PARLORS. VESTIBULE AND LOWER HALL.
FIRST OFFICE. SECOND OFFICE AND BREAKFAST ROOM.]
THE MOUNT VERNON CYCLONE.
ILLINOIS.
Sunday, February 19, 1888, will ever be a memorable day in the annals of
the little town of Mount Vernon, Ill.--a day of supreme horrors,
destruction and death. There had been thunder and lightning during the
afternoon, followed by rain and hail, which had given away to an ominous
stillness. The sky was covered with a wierd light, and the air was
strangely oppressive. The clouds rapidly changed color, rolling and
whirling, and dropping nearer to the earth, until suddenly they assumed
the dreaded shape of a huge funnel or inverted cone, which came whirling
along with an awful roar, and within three minutes after the fury of the
storm had struck the town, thirty people had been killed and scores of
others injured, and an immense amount of property destroyed.
Mount Vernon is the county seat of Jefferson county, and contained four
thousand inhabitants. It was a pretty and prosperous place; its business
centre surrounded a public square, whose four sides were lined with
stores, and the middle ground occupied by the county court house, a fine
three-story building; its broad streets were bordered with shade trees
and lighted by electricity.
The cyclone cut a broad swath through the eastern half of the town,
destroying everything in its path, tearing down brick houses, uprooting
trees, and picking up small wooden houses and carrying them along as if
they were made of cardboard, and finally dashing them to pieces against
more substantial obstacles. In a very few minutes after the storm had
passed, the sun shone out brightly, but on what a scene! The air was
filled with cries of anguish coming from the maimed sufferers crushed
under the ruins, and with the wailings for the dead and missing.
To add to the horrors already wrought, fire broke out in a dozen places.
Those who were uninjured quickly came to the rescue, quenching the
flames and exerting themselves to relieve the unfortunate victims, who
were, in most cases, pinned down under the wreckage of their houses.
All night long these brave men and women worked, and when morning came
the few houses that remained standing were filled with the dead and
injured.
Appeals for assistance were sent out to the people of the country, but
through an improper statement of the situation, the public was misled,
and not realizing the pressing needs of the stricken community, failed
to take up the matter in a business-like manner, and the town was left
to suffer for a little of the great abundance that was around them. In
their extremity the despairing citizens appealed to the Red Cross for
aid, which responded at once.
A most deplorable situation was presented: the people were homeless and
helpless, neglected, and in a state of mind bordering on insanity.
After a somewhat hasty examination of the situation, the following
simple message was sent to both the Associated and the United Press:
The pitiless snow is falling on the heads of three thousand people
who are without homes, without food or clothing and without money.
CLARA BARTON.
With only this little word to explain the needs, our generous American
people responded promptly and liberally, as they always do when they
fully understand what is needed.
It was unnecessary to remain longer than two weeks with these people,
who, as soon as they recovered from the first shock of their great
misfortune, and when they felt that kind friends were by their side,
lending them moral and substantial support, manfully commenced to bring
order out of chaos, to rebuild their town and resume their usual
avocations. Large quantities of relief supplies of all kinds quickly
came to hand, and when we were ready to leave them, the Citizens'
Committee had in its treasury a cash balance of ninety thousand dollars.
And thus, with their blessings ringing in our ears, we left them.
We were scarcely home from Mount Vernon when the yellow fever of Florida
broke out in the summer and autumn of 1888.
YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC IN FLORIDA.
During the month of August, 1888, yellow fever broke out in
Jacksonville, and in September it was declared to be epidemic, the usual
alarm and exodus of citizens taking place. On September eighth heroic
measures to depopulate the city were taken. Every person that was still
well and could leave was requested to go; very little urging was
necessary. Camps were established outside of the city, where those who
had not the means to go further and get better quarters were enabled to
live under medical surveillance, and away from the seat of infection.
The Mayor of Jacksonville had made an appeal for doctors and nurses,
which had been quickly responded to, and they were doing everything
possible to attend to the rapidly increasing number of patients.
On the formation of the Red Cross Society of New Orleans in 1893, it had
been carefully and wisely arranged that in case of yellow fever becoming
epidemic in any place, no unacclimated persons, or those not immune,
should be sent as assistants by the Red Cross. New Orleans was the home
of the famous "Old Howard Association," that had won its reputation and
worn its grateful renown from the horrors of Memphis to the present
time. This body freely united with the Red Cross of New Orleans, and it
was arranged that the southern states, through this society, should
provide all Red Cross nurses for yellow fever, and that the northern
portion of the country should raise the money to pay and provide them.
We felt this to be a security, and an immediate provision which the
country had never before known. Fearing that this might not, at its
first inception, be fully understood, I called at once on Dr. Hamilton,
then in charge of the Marine Hospital, explaining it to him, and
offering all the nurses that could be required, even to hundreds, all
experienced and organized for immediate action. Perhaps it was not
strange that a provision so new and so unknown in the sad history of
plagues and epidemics, should have seemed Eutopian, and as such been
brushed aside as not only useless, but self-seeking and obtrusive. Like
the entire organization of which it was a part, it had to wait and win
its way against custom or even prejudice, by honest worth and stern
necessity. It was the "old, old story." The world takes reform hard and
slow.
As it was, however, we did what we could. Headquarters were established
at the Riggs House in Washington. The good hearted people of the north
who felt that they must go to Florida, had by some means gotten the idea
that they must have a pass from the Central Committee of the Red Cross
in order to go. They came to us in hundreds and were mercifully held
back from a scourge for which they would have been both food and fuel.
Whilst the entire people of the country in pity and horror at the
reports received, were holding meetings, raising money, and pouring
funds like water into the doomed city of Jacksonville, where the scourge
had centered, and to which every effort was made to confine it.
Not realizing the opposition there might prove to be to our nurses, we
called upon their old time leader, Colonel F.R. Southmayd, the efficient
secretary of the Red Cross Society of New Orleans, instructing him to
enlist a body of nurses and take them at once to the fever district. He
enlisted thirty, both men and women, white and colored, took a part with
him, the remainder following next day.
Colonel Southmayd, Southern born and bred, was a man of quick impulse
and intense feelings; his heart was warm with the love of humanity and
the sense of justice. He had been identified with the old Howard
Association almost from its inception, and had worked through every
epidemic of fever or other disease that had afflicted the South since
the war; and he knew full well the value of the services of his chosen
nurses. He strongly resented the injustice that he felt they were
receiving, and naturally became involved in an unfortunate altercation
with his superiors. In order to restore peace and remove an impediment
to effective work, I withdrew the Colonel, requesting him to come to
Washington and assist the Central Committee.
He came in obedience to the call, but burning with a sense of indignity
and injustice to himself and the faithful suffering nurses he had
brought--even with the lack of the good right arm which had swung his
sword for the Confederate cause till it dropped from the shoulder, he
was not an easy man to hold; but duty to the Red Cross, which he loved,
and loyalty to its officers, whom he honored, held him quiet. He would
never return to New Orleans, but at length retired to some northern
city, where, after a few years he died, beloved and respected by those
who knew his proud high soul, sterling worth and devotion to humanity.
His was one of the strong hearts that carried the impress of its
memories and griefs to the grave, and we always felt that somewhere on
that heart that had ceased to beat could have been found a spot still
bruised and sore on which was written Jacksonville.
Refugees who had fled from Jacksonville, carried the plague to several
smaller places in the surrounding country, where in some instances it
acquired quite a foothold; but owing to their obscurity and the lack of
communication with the outside world, they were left alone to fight the
disease as best they could. Among these places was the little town of
MacClenny, where as soon as it became known that there was a case of
fever within its limits, all trains were ordered to rush through without
stopping, and an armed quarantine was placed around it with orders to
shoot anyone attempting to leave the town. Thus left to their fate,
without doctors, nurses or food, in any quantity, their situation was
pitiable. There were a number of volunteers who had made attempts to get
into MacClenny, but owing to the unreasoning panic existing, they were
not permitted to enter the place.
Colonel Southmayd had heard of these neglected people, and he succeeded
while en route to Jacksonville in dropping off ten nurses so much needed
at MacClenny. How he did this, I have told in a little brochure entitled
"The MacClenny Nurses," that was issued at the close of the year 1888 as
a holiday greeting, and intended as a public acknowledgment of the
appreciation in which the Red Cross held those noble men and women who
braved everything that they might serve their stricken brethren.
Following is the story:
"THE MACCLENNY NURSES."
A HOLIDAY TRIBUTE
TO
RED CROSS WORKERS,
IN
_Warm appreciation and grateful acknowledgment of the faithful hands
that toiled, and the generous hearts that gave._
BY
CLARA BARTON,
_President of the American Association of the Red Cross._
"THE MACCLENNY NURSES."
During the fourth week in November a dispatch to National
Headquarters announced that the last band of Red Cross nurses, known
as the MacClenny nurses, had finished their work at Enterprise, and
would come into Camp Perry to wait their ten days' quarantine and go
home to New Orleans for Thanksgiving.
Seventy-nine days ago that would mean that their little company of
eighteen, mainly women, steaming on to Jacksonville, under guidance
of their old-time trusted leader, Southmayd, of New Orleans,
listened to his announcement that the town of MacClenny,
thirty-eight miles from Jacksonville, Florida, and through which
they would soon pass, was in a fearful state of distress; a
comparatively new town, of a few thousand, largely Northern and
Western people, suddenly stricken down in scores; poor, helpless,
physicians all ill, and no nurses; quarantined on all sides, no
food, medicine, nor comforts for sick or well.
"Nurses, shall I leave a part of you there; the train cannot stop
in, nor near the town, but if I can manage to get it slowed up
somewhere, will you jump?"
"We will do anything you say, Colonel; we are here in God's name and
service to help His people; for Him, for you, and for the Red Cross,
we will do our best and our all."
"Conductor, you had a hot box a few miles back; don't you think it
should be looked to after passing MacClenny?"
"I will slow up and have it seen to, Colonel, although it may cost
me my official head." And it did.
One mile beyond town, the rain pouring in torrents, the ground
soaked, slippery, and caving, out into pitchy darkness, leaped three
men and seven women from a puffing, unsteady train, no physician
with them, and no instructions save the charge of their leader as
the last leap was made, and the train pushed on. "Nurses, you know
what to do; go and do your best, and God help you." Hand to hand,
that none go astray in the darkness, they hobbled back over a mile
of slippery cross-ties to the stricken town. Shelter was found, the
wet clothes dried, and at midnight the sick had been parceled out,
each nurse had his or her quota of patients, and were in for the
issue, be it life or death. Those past all help must be seen
through, and lost, all that could be must be saved. The next day a
dispatch from Southmayd went back to New Orleans for Dr. Gill, a
Norwegian by birth, tall, straight, honest, and true as the pines of
his native land, to come and take charge of the sick and the nurses
at MacClenny. It was done, and under his wise direction they found
again a leader. Their labors and successes are matters for later and
more extended record.
It is to be borne in mind that these nurses found no general table,
no table at all but such as they could provide, find the food for,
and cook for themselves, for the sick, the children, and the old and
helpless who had escaped the fever and must be cared for. No patient
could be left till the crisis was passed, and many are their records
of seventy-two hours without change or sleep or sitting down. As the
disease gradually succumbed to their watchful care, experience and
skill, they reached out to other freshly attacked towns and hamlets.
Sanderson and Glen St. Mary's became their charge, and return their
blessings for life preserved.
On November first it was thought they could safely leave and go into
camp for quarantine; but no regular train would be permitted to take
them. The Red Cross secured and paid a special train for them, and,
as if in bold relief against the manner of their entry seven weeks
before, the entire town, saving its invalids, was assembled at the
station at seven o'clock in the morning to bid them good-by and
God-speed.