Thrift, Red Cross and the other purses at counted size; women's registration; food and the fuel winter

1917–1919 · THE COUNTED PURSES

The Red Cross, counted: the St. Joseph County Chapter, headquartered at the Chamber of Commerce Building, South Bend, ran two money campaigns in the record reached. The membership campaign of April 1917 opened with 25,000 pledge cards distributed through the churches for a drive for members beginning Thursday 19 April (News-Times, 15 Apr. 1917; first members named in the paper: Mrs. F. M. Hatch for the women, Dr. George P. Morey for the men). The Red Cross War Fund week of June 1917 set the county's quota at $70,000 — the News-Times of 21 June 1917 prints the figure in an appeal signed in the chapter's name ("We've got to raise this $70,000 before Sunday night"), and the paper of 25 June was still exhorting South Bend, in print, that it "has not measured up in subscriptions to the RED CROSS" even while conceding it "did nobly in the Liberty loan work." The outcome total for the $70,000 drive was not reached in the issues sampled; the quota is dug, the result is a named point for the settler named below, and the gap between the Liberty Loan success and the Red Cross exhortation is itself the press record's own contrast, printed as it stands. The second War Fund drive was announced nationally for the week of 6–13 May 1918 ($100,000,000 nationally; News-Times, 28 Feb. 1918).

The other purses: the YMCA's Second War Work Fund campaign (11–18 Nov. 1917) prints this county in its Indiana table: St. Joseph County quota $45,000, pledged $46,232.90, paid $43,752.90 — a county purse oversubscribed on pledges and short on collections, both figures printed as the Year Book prints them. The county War Chest — the federated purse that succeeded the separate drives — was organizing its pledge-card payment machinery by April 1918 (News-Times, 21 Apr. 1918: the distribution committee's first meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, payments suggested through employers with the pledge cards). War Savings and thrift — the 25-cent stamp campaign — are Greenough's ch. VIII whole at state strength, with county apportionment tables in the Indiana record: the War Savings table reached in this run prints St. Joseph County's apportionment at $3,057,480 with post-office sales of $518,275.50 and Federal Reserve Bank sales of $31,390.00 in the columns as read (the table's OCR is degraded and the figures print at that stated strength, as apportionment and partial sales, not as a final county total). Township breakouts for any purse: none reached, same settler as the loans.

Women's registration — the system dug, the county count unlocated: the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense registered American women for war service on enrollment cards — over 4,000,000 women nationally through some 17,000 local committees, the cards recording skills, employment, and service offered; Indiana's registration ran through the Woman's Section of the State Council of Defense, whose published report (Oct. 1917–Apr. 1919) is the state record, and surviving Indiana card collections are held for other counties (Miami County's 8,503 registrants by the official final report, 3,770 cards surviving; Jasper and Pulaski county holdings). The row's pattern figures (27,575 cards; 2,713 women in factories) are another city's counts from the floor example and are not this county's. For St. Joseph County, this run reached no registration total and no surviving card collection: TESTED NEGATIVE at web-record strength for a published county count; NAMED GAP for the count itself, settler: the Report of the Woman's Section of the Indiana State Council of Defense (1919) read whole, and the Indiana State Archives' Council of Defense records. The women's loan work, by contrast, is documented as an organized arm in Greenough's ch. VII — Indiana's women ran loan organizations in every county — at state strength.

Food and the fuel winter: food production on this ground has one hard county figure in the spring record: County Agent John S. Bordner's estimate in the News-Times of 4 June 1917 — St. Joseph County normally producing 600,000 bushels of wheat, its 1917 crop expected normal against a national shortage — with the county agent system (Bordner's office) as the food campaign's local arm; garden counts for the county or townships were searched and not reached — TESTED NEGATIVE at the record reached, settler: the county agent's annual reports and the News-Times food-conservation columns of 1917–18. The fuel winter of 1917–18 is documented at state strength whole: the coldest December–January in the Ohio Valley record (the Ohio River frozen in mid-December 1917; 12 January 1918 "probably the coldest and most disagreeable day experienced in a century"); Indiana's federal fuel administrator Evans Woolen wiring the state's mine owners the week before Christmas 1917 to give "rigorous preference to needs of utilities and domestic consumers" as non-essential factories began to pinch and close (Hammond Times, 19 Dec. 1917, reporting the state situation); county fuel administrators seizing coal cars for households and closing billiard rooms in the January crisis (Hendricks County's record, printed as the state pattern); schools and churches closed for fuel across the region in January 1918. A St. Joseph County fuel-administrator action or closure list specific to South Bend, Mishawaka or the township schools was not reached in this run — the winter's local incidence is a NAMED GAP, settler: the News-Times/Tribune of December 1917–February 1918 read whole, and the Schools section's township school records. The winter prints here as what it was for Harris Prairie households regardless: a coal famine in a farm county that heated with coal and wood, administered by a county fuel office whose paper sits in that settler.

Sources:

1. South Bend News-Times, 15 Apr. 1917 (25,000 Red Cross cards; first members Hatch and Morey); 21 June 1917 (the $70,000 county War Fund quota, chapter headquarters at the Chamber of Commerce); 25 June 1917 (the "not measured up" editorial against the Liberty Loan contrast); 28 Feb. 1918 (the May 1918 national drive); 21 Apr. 1918 (War Chest pledge machinery); 4 June 1917 (Bordner, 600,000 bushels).
2. National War Work Council (YMCA), Year Book — Indiana Second War Fund table: St. Joseph County quota $45,000.00, pledged $46,232.90, paid $43,752.90.
3. Greenough (1922), chs. VII–VIII — Indiana women in the loan campaigns; the War Savings campaign and its county apportionment table (St. Joseph apportionment $3,057,480 as read, OCR-degraded, printed at that strength).
4. Woman's Committee, Council of National Defense — the national registration system (4,000,000+ cards; 17,000 committees); Indiana Woman's Section report (1919) as the state record; Miami County, Indiana, surviving cards (8,503 official count) as the Indiana survival pattern (Miami County Museum index).
5. National Weather Service, Louisville — the December 1917–January 1918 cold and snow record; Hammond Times, 19 Dec. 1917 — Fuel Administrator Evans Woolen's preference wire and the Indiana factory pinch; Danville Gazette, 17 Jan. 1918 — county fuel administration in the January crisis (state pattern).