Part VI. Mary Roberts Coolidge, formerly associate professor of

sociology, Leland Stanford Junior University; reviser of Warner’s American Charities; author of Almshouse Women, and other works.

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When the six separate studies were completed, a perplexing situation was disclosed. The purpose in preparing the survey was to offer a book of ready reference for use on occasions of special emergency. The six studies would have formed a set of volumes valuable as a contribution to the literature of relief work but not adapted to the particular purpose in view. It therefore became necessary to condense the studies at the cost of cutting out material. In order to preserve certain facts in proper sequence, subject matter in a few instances has been transposed from one part to another.

The authors of the various parts have wished to express their appreciation of the help rendered by university colleagues and students. A study made by Lilian Brandt of the first registration after she had worked at relief headquarters in the late spring and early summer of 1906, has been used in part. An article by Colonel C. A. Devol, extracts from which appear in Appendix I, furnished valuable data concerning the part taken by the army, especially in receiving and distributing the relief supplies. _Charities and the Commons_ has been drawn upon for data from articles which have not been noted in the text because their authors were so a part of the relief work itself that specific mention seemed uncalled for.

The statistics of this volume require, perhaps, a word of explanation. The quantitative material upon which the study is so largely based is derived from records, many of which were compiled in haste and under great pressure of work. The record forms themselves were properly devised primarily to aid the relief workers in abating distress, rather than as possible sources of social statistics to be compiled at some future time; and it was necessary to entrust the filling out of the records to persons most of whom were wholly without experience in work of this character. The data for the several parts of the study were, moreover, compiled by a number of persons working quite independently of one another.

Under these circumstances it is but natural that there should have been embodied in the report various minor inaccuracies and some real or apparent inconsistencies. Every possible effort has been made, in preparing the material for publication, to correct errors, to remove inconsistencies, and to harmonize the plan of statistical presentation as far as this could be accomplished by means of the information available.

No attempt has been made to present a comprehensive statement covering the complete disposition of the Relief Funds. It is understood that such a statement will be prepared under the direction of the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds. The figures showing receipts and disbursements, which appear in this volume, have been presented solely because of their bearing on the relief problems dealt with, and not by way of an accounting.

INTRODUCTION

The San Francisco earthquake and resultant fire ranks with the great catastrophes of the world’s history. Comparatively insignificant as was the list of the killed and injured, the annihilation of the business section of the city and of the most thickly populated residence districts brought to the bread line virtually the city’s whole population. The response of the nation and of other nations was in proportion to the magnitude of the disaster.

By a series of favoring circumstances the administration of the large fund donated fell into the hands of a committee, afterwards transformed into a corporation, on which were some of San Francisco’s ablest and broadest-minded men of affairs, as well as representatives of the rejuvenated and re-organized American National Red Cross. How at first the distinguished services of Dr. Edward T. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross were utilized by the local committee, and later, the no less valuable services of Ernest P. Bicknell, is told in the following pages along with the account of the splendid part played by the United States Army.

If for no other reason than that the disaster was of tremendous proportions, with relief funds correspondingly large, the value of an intensive study of the problems, methods, and results of the relief work must be very great. No such intensive study of any other American disaster of like proportions has been made. The report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society on the relief work of the Chicago fire is the nearest approach. If one, however, reads that report he will find it to be largely a description of general methods with a thorough accounting of expenditures. The value of such an investigation as this Relief Survey inheres not only in the fact that no previous intensive study has been made of any large disaster but also in the fact that the time and the persons engaged combined to give the San Francisco relief work exceptional significance.

Since the Chicago fire, in this, as in other civilized countries, there has been a rapid evolution of social thought and action. We have become impatient of philanthropic endeavors that do not promise permanently to better conditions. In the field of relief we are discounting mere almsgiving and are fighting for constructive treatment and permanent betterment, which often involve larger relief expenditures. In serious disasters, from the Chicago fire to the San Francisco earthquake and conflagration, this spirit has more and more characterized the relief work. The idea that all moneys should be spent merely to keep the victims of a disaster from the starvation and exposure which confront them in the weeks immediately following the catastrophe is directly opposed to the spirit of modern relief measures. In other words, the idea of rehabilitation, of giving to those who have been left with the least a reasonable lift on the road to a recovery of the standard of living maintained before the disaster, constantly has grown clearer and more definite, a natural fructifying of the modern philosophy of charity.

Attention was given to rehabilitation after the Chicago fire by a special committee on housing and by one on “giving aid to persons in the purchase of tools, machinery, furniture, fixtures, or professional books.” A large part of this special work of relief consisted in aiding destitute sewing women who had lost their machines to obtain others. But in San Francisco we find the first large attempt to emphasize and develop rehabilitation.[1]

[1] For relative expenditures for rehabilitation compare the figures in the Relief Survey with those given in the Report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society of Disbursements of Contributions for the Sufferers by the Chicago Fire, 1874, Chapter XII.

The circumstances that so happily combined to magnify the principle of rehabilitation have already been alluded to. Funds of generous proportions, capable army officers, the reorganized Red Cross, and an exceptional group of keen and broad-minded San Francisco business men,--the last a group which knew its own mind but was willing to take the advice and accept the assistance of experienced social workers,--constituted a force permeated by the spirit of modern philanthropy which wrought out the first large undertaking in rehabilitation in the United States.

Having made clear the reasons for this Relief Survey, let us consider its several parts.