This is a kind of institutional memoir and document of advocacy written by Clara Barton, found of the American Red Cross, and published in 1904. The book begins with Clara Barton’s responding to a query by a young letter writer (whether real or emblematic) and so begins a nonfiction account that is similar to Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas in its format and design. The letter writer asks Clara Barton not to simply tell the history of the Red Cross or explain its motivating rationale, but to tells a story that shows both in this portrayal. And so Barton begins to talk about the origins of and then representative examples from the history of the organization.
What’s interesting about this book is that you can feel the argument developing as she writes. The Red Cross relies on donations, relies on government contract (as she indicates a few times to be paid back, not to accept direct funding), and relies on its reputation to continue to be able to do its work. If the book is to be trusted, and it does come off as more or less reliable, the organization’s mission has been more or less altruistic from the beginning.
The stories begin during the Civil War, move on to the Jonestown Flood, the floods in Louisiana and Texas in the 1890s, and surprisingly in Turkey after the Armenian massacre.
The book has the exact problems you could imagine. There’s a heavy strain of benevolent racism and white savior narrative in response to the floods in Louisiana. But there’s also a kind of witness-bearing of the Armenian massacre which was erased from Turkish public record for most of a century. I wouldn’t read this for any purpose than as an historical text and accounting of public advocacy.
(Photo: https://ebornbooks.com/shop/uncategorized/a-story-of-the-red-cross-glimpses-of-field-work-by-clara-barton-1913/)