Thrift, Red Cross and the other purses, at counted size

ROW #663 · BRANCH ITEM 3 · COUNTS AT COUNTY / STATE STRENGTH, PENN FIGURES AT THEIR SIZE — NONE

The smaller purses ran beside the loans, and the official record counts them at state and county size: War Savings and Thrift. Indiana's War Savings Stamp campaign, run with the loans from the same headquarters, had sold 6,500,000 dollars of War Savings and Thrift stamps in Indiana by 1 April 1918 (Indiana W.S.S. Bulletin, 8 April 1918, as carried in Greenough), and the state took a counted pride in the machinery: after the county war conferences of February 1918, held under the State Council of Defense in thousands of homes, churches, schools and stores, “Indiana had the proud distinction of being the first state in the Union” in War Savings societies, in Greenough's chapter heading's words — the claim prints as the state's own, attributed. The two campaigns were formally yoked: at the opening of the Third Loan, and again on 18 September 1918 for the Fourth, the War Savings and loan organizations announced they would unite their forces rather than compete for the same purse.

The women's registration and the women's work, counted at the strength the record gives. Indiana's women registered for war work in the Woman's Franchise League's drive of spring 1917 — about 400 registered at the founding Indianapolis patriotic meeting alone, and Grace Julian Clarke was appointed in May 1917 to supervise the processing of the registration cards statewide, each card a woman's pledge of a kind of government service if called (Indiana Historical Bureau's account, from the Clarke papers). Out of that registration machine came the counted speaking army: the Fourteen-Minute Women, organized by Julia C. Henderson for food-conservation speaking, taken into state service in January 1918 and extended statewide when the Seventh District experiment proved “so effective” — and the county end of that machine is named for this county: when the state's Motor Corps was divided in June 1918 into three sections, Miss Catherine Oliver of South Bend commanded the northwestern section, commissioned major by Governor Goodrich, under Mrs. Helen Dean as colonel (the World War supplement record of the Woman's Section, State Council of Defense). The checklist's two pattern counts — a 27,575-card women's registration and 2,713 women in factories — are another city's patterns (Fort Wayne's build); no St. Joseph County women's-registration total and no Penn or county women-in-factories count is carried in any source reached for this section, and neither pattern number is borrowed. What this county can print counted is its women's loan work, from Greenough's own tables: Third Loan, Mrs. Victor F. Jones's committee, 341,900 dollars sold on a 625,000-dollar women's quota; and the YMCA war-work purse beside it — the National War Work Council's county table (Indiana Year Book record) carries St. Joseph County: quota 45,000 dollars, pledged 46,232.90 dollars, paid 43,752.90 dollars in the Second War Fund campaign of 11–18 November 1917. Penn's women registered, spoke, sewed and sold inside those county machines; a Penn-only count does not survive in the record reached, and the purses print at county size because that is the size they were kept at.

Red Cross, food and the fuel winter, tested. The Red Cross's wartime chapter for this ground was searched in the sources reached: the state record carries Red Cross war work whole (the Motor Corps itself passed to the Red Cross's Lake Division on 10 October 1918, in the supplement record above), and this build's Fairs leg carries a present-day Red Cross register negative — but no St. Joseph County Red Cross chapter total, no Penn garden count, and no Penn fuel-winter record is carried in any source reached — TESTED NEGATIVE at the strength searched, with the settler named: the Tribune / Enterprise files of 1917–19 and the state Council of Defense reports at full strength (GAP-WWI-3). A negative with its settler named is this row's honest close for those three sub-items; the counted purses that do survive — War Savings, the women's loan tables, the YMCA table — are DUG above.

Sources:

1. Greenough (1922), War Savings chapters and bulletins cited there (W.S.S. Bulletin, 8 April 1918: $6,500,000 by 1 April 1918; the February 1918 county conferences; the loan / War Savings unions of April and September 1918); women's Third Loan county table (Mrs. Victor F. Jones; 625,000 / 341,900).
2. Indiana Historical Bureau, “The Intersection of War Work & Women's Enfranchisement” / “Fourteen-Minute Women” (Indiana History Blog) — the 1917 registration, Clarke's supervision, Henderson's speakers' bureau, state service from January 1918.
3. World War supplement, Woman's Section, State Council of Defense — the Motor Corps' three sections, June 1918; Miss Catherine Oliver of South Bend, northwestern section.
4. National War Work Council county table, Indiana Year Book record — St. Joseph County YMCA war fund: 45,000 / 46,232.90 / 43,752.90.