San Francisco Earthquake (1906) Rumbles the City Awake. President Roosevelt Orders the Red Cross to Take Action.
On the morning of April 18, 1906, at 5:12 a.m., the city of San Francisco heaved and buckled as an earthquake shook it to pieces. Some 250,000 individuals were made homeless, nearly 500 people died, and hundreds more were injured. Although Mabel T. Boardman protested that the American Red Cross was ill-equipped to handle a relief operation of such magnitude, President Roosevelt ordered the organization to assist the army and other agencies. Overnight, the struggling little organization was faced with a large-scale operation. Following the disaster, the Red Cross established an extensive San Francisco earthquake relief operation.

Mine Disaster in Cherry, Illinois
On November 13, 1909, 256 miners were entombed in a coal mine at Cherry, Illinois. The final death toll reached nearly 260 as would-be rescuers were trapped in a fire on the second level of the mine. After the disaster, the American Red Cross provided assistance through The Cherry Relief Commission to the widows and orphans of the men who were killed.

Red Cross Involvement in the First World War (1914-1919)

The First World War helped transform the American Red Cross into a powerful social force. At the onset of the war, the American Red Cross had 562 chapters and about 500,000 members. Millions of volunteers joined the Red Cross, and by the end of the war, there were 3,724 chapters, 17,000 branches, and over 31 million members (including children and adults). Within weeks of the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1914, the Red Cross sent a mercy ship on a short mission to provide assistance to soldiers of all nationalities, marking the beginning of wartime service that continued until 1916. After the United States went to war in 1917, the American Red Cross focused its attention on American soldiers. Red Cross staff and volunteers tended to the needs of the wounded and sick, and the able-bodied and disabled veterans. Institutes for the blind and the crippled were opened, and valuable contributions were made in veterans hospitals. When the armistice was signed in France in 1918, Red Cross personnel were scattered from the British Isles to Siberia's far reaches.

Mercy Ship Carries Red Cross Volunteers Abroad
On September 12, 1914, an American Red Cross mercy ship sailed out of the New York Harbor bound for Europe. The volunteer doctors and nurses on the ship witnessed disrupted civilian life and the horrors of the battlefield, while serving all fighting nations without regard to allegiance or nationality. Although these first volunteers were called home after one year due to limited funds, they created a standard of excellence for medical care.

President Wilson Creates War Council
The war emergency brought great change in the American Red Cross almost overnight. On May 10, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson announced, "I have today created within the Red Cross a War Council to which will be entrusted the duty of responding to the extraordinary demands which the present war will make upon the Red Cross both in the field and in civilian relief."

The council assumed most of the executive committee's duties, but its main tasks were "to raise great sums of money for the support of the work to be done . . . upon a great scale" and to run the Red Cross, transforming it into an efficient "arm of the government." Headed by financier Henry P. Davison, the War Council took advantage of the patriotic mood sweeping the nation to launch a $100-million war drive, which filled the days with bazaars, block dances, "Kick the Kaiser" parties, and other special events.

The members of the War Council are pictured above: Front row from left to right: Robert W. DeForest, Red Cross vice-president (not a member of the War Council); President Woodrow Wilson; William H. Taft, Central Committee Chairman; and Eliot Wadsworth, Vice-Chairman. In the rear row from left to right: Henry P. Davison, War Council Chairman, and members Grayson M. P. Murphy, Charles D. Norton, and Edward N. Hurley. Jesse H. Jones, pictured on the far right in the bottom photograph, served on the War Council from January through March, 1919.

Canteen Volunteers Serve Doughnuts and Coffee With a Smile
During the First World War, the American Red Cross established canteens for soldiers in the United States and Europe. At the 22 front-line canteens, American Red Cross volunteers served coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches, and other food items to truck and ambulance drivers and passing Allied troops. Canteen workers gave drinks of water or coffee and offered words of encouragement to the wounded soldiers who lay on stretchers outside operating rooms.

One busy canteen served 10,000 hot meals in one day and poured coffee at the rate of one cup every 10 seconds. At outpost canteens, volunteers supplied milk, coffee, eggs, cocoa, chocolate, cigarettes, magazines, ice cream, and fruit to French and American soldiers in tent warehouses located as close to the Western front as the artillery fire permitted. Red Cross volunteers helped boost the morale of soldiers and gave themselves as wholly to the war effort as their brothers-in-arms.

From December 1917 to June 1919, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) worked for the American Red Cross Publicity Office in France. He produced three paintings of canteens, such as the "American Red Cross Canteen at Toul", pictured above, which depicts the exterior of a canteen at twilight, with soldiers milling about outside.

America Relies on Red Cross Nurses at Home and Abroad
During the First World War, 18,000 American Red Cross nurses served with the Army and Navy Nurse Corps. Nearly half of the nurses served at home to ensure exemplary health and sanitary conditions. The remainder served at American base hospitals in France, on hospital trains, and in evacuation and field units in the zone of advance. The Red Cross provided two out of every three navy nurses and four out of five army nurses, including the first African-American nurses.

Nurses worked diligently at home, especially during a deadly influenza epidemic that swept the country in 1918. Responding to a call for help from the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, 15,000 Red Cross nurses, dietitians, and others were recruited to work in military camps, hospitals, coal fields, munitions plants, and shipyards, where they remained until the epidemic finally subsided in the spring of 1919.

African-American Nurses Join the Cause
The women pictured here were among the approximately 1,800 black nurses who were first certified for duty with the military by the American Red Cross. Because the Red Cross had no control over their assignments to hospitals, if a "colored cantonment" did not need their services, the nurses were probably not able to serve. With the flu epidemic of 1918-1919, the situation changed because medical assistance was scarce, and all qualified hands were called to help with the disastrous situation.

Red Cross Provides aid to Civilian War Victims Following the Conflict
As the world made the transition to peace, it saw the creation of Henry P. Davison's League of Red Cross Societies and then the League of Nations, which received the blessing of world leaders. As directed by Article XXV of the League of Nations Covenant, the world's Red Cross Societies began "the improvement of health, prevention of disease, and mitigation of suffering throughout the World." Following the armistice, the American Red Cross immediately sent doctors and nurses to several countries to help local medical personnel set up clinics and teach health courses. Refugees, such as those shown above, flocked to the facilities for food, shelter, and medical care. The Red Cross operated about twenty-five civilian hospitals and convalescent homes for war refugees, as well as numerous health centers, clinics, and mobile dispensaries around France. Red Cross volunteers assisted more than 1.7 million French people with their basic needs and resettlement.

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