Marian Moser Jones, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal

Abstract

The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal traces the ‘organizational biography’ (p. viii) of an iconic American institution. Thanks to John F. Hutchinson, the Red Cross is no longer a ‘sacred cow’.1 It is still, however, a powerful international and domestic actor, and while Jones fleshes out Hutchinson's analysis of the early American Red Cross with a full account of its now unfashionable biases, she is mindful too of their legacies. The first section of the book recounts the biography of the organisation through the life history of Clara Barton, the spirited leader of the American National Red Cross Society from its foundation in 1881 until her ousting in 1904. We encounter an independent woman, who, while employed as one of the only female government clerks in the antebellum capital, organised an impromptu relief mission for wounded Union troops during the American Civil War. Holidaying in Europe at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, she organised local Strasbourg women into a sewing circle, thereby meeting the need for garments whilst avoiding pauperising the population. Thus was instituted a familiar system of ‘self-help’ and moral oversight. Some of the features of these early relief endeavours still prevail: a gendering of compassion which emphasised a maternalist imperative in the representation and distribution of aid; the prioritisation of direct, flexible treatment in the field; greater attention to the welfare of the common soldier in an age of ‘total’ war; and an attempt at the neutral delivery of aid nevertheless weighted by moral concerns and conditional upon the recipient's identity.