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Under Red Cross leadership, various agencies and volunteers carried out the enormous task of tending to the injured, sheltering and feeding the homeless, and distributing public contributions and government funds and supplies. The San Francisco operation instilled Red Cross leaders with renewed confidence and ideas for new directions in a number of health and safety areas.

For example, the American Red Cross sold Christmas Seals, the nation's first, from 1907 to 1919 to help finance the country's fight against tuberculosis. In 1909, Jane Delano, then superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps, established a Red Cross nursing program. By organizing nurses to travel around the country, she helped spearhead a relentless attack on communicable diseases in the nation's urban and rural areas. Delano resigned from the Army in 1912 to devote full time to the Red Cross nursing corps, which would later officially serve the U.S. Army and Navy in World War I.

In 1910, Army Major Charles Lynch and Matthew Shields, M.D., began Red Cross first aid and industrial safety campaigns to reduce accidents that daily crippled and killed America's workers. Red Cross instructors sometimes crisscrossed the nation in Pullman railroad cars to take courses directly to workers in the factories in the early years. The Red Cross even translated its first aid handbook into several languages to reach the many immigrant workers. Today, almost 4 million certificates a year are awarded for taking Red Cross CPR and other first aid courses.

Lillian D. Wald, a nurse and pioneer of public health nursing in urban centers pioneered the concept of a nation-wide rural nursing service. In 1912, when the American Red Cross Rural Nursing Service was established, it was implemented through local Red Cross chapters under the direction of the national office. In 1913, the service was expanded to include large towns and cities with populations up to 25,000.

Former newspaperman Wilbert E. Longfellow helped establish Red Cross water safety instruction in 1914 to combat the mounting number of drownings. As a result, drownings began to decline significantly, and now Red Cross instructors award more than 2 million Red Cross water safety certificates a year.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the American Red Cross had only 107 chapters. By the end of the war, the number of chapters had grown to 3,864. One out of every five Americans was a member of the American Red Cross.

NEXT: America and the Red Cross enter World War I

 

  • 1908 - Red Cross Christmas seals raise $135,000.
  • 1909 - Army nurse Jane Delano launches Red Cross nursing program.
  • 1910 - Maj. Charles Lynch and Matthew Shields begin Red Cross first aid campaigns.
  • 1912 - Luxury liner Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic.
  • 1912 - Lillian D. Wald pioneers American Red Cross Rural Nursing Service.
  • 1914 - Commodore Wilbert Longfellow establishes water safety classes to stem increase in drownings.
  • 1914 - President Wilson orders U.S. fleet to Tampico Bay, Mexico.

 

 

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