Red Cross Assayed

The American Red Cross last week, just before its 50th anniversary, was in the hands of diagnosticians.* Public apathy toward last winter's drive for $10,000,000 for Drought relief and the fierce criticism of the U. S. Senate (TIME, Jan. 26 et seq.) made the brains of the organization, Chairman John Barton Payne and his Central Committee, suspect that they did not look well, were systematically deranged, might need a purge.

The Red Cross is not on a permanent financial basis. Annual contributions do not pay for annual expenses. The difference has amounted to $37,000,000 the past twelve years. That money came out of the $51,800,000 surplus left over from Red Cross War work and from the income of the organization's $10,400,000 endowment.

The investigators are asking why every recent Red Cross dollar was spent, of what use every Red Cross worker is, the wisdom of every Red Cross operation. Chairman Payne, as he remarked last week, "is more or less on trial." His "trial" judges, acting for the organization's Central Committee, are Eliot Wadsworth, Boston financier, onetime (1921-25) Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; George Eaton Scott, Chicago steel founder, a fisherman (past president of the Izaac Walton League); and Mrs. August Belmont, Manhattan dowager. They expect, as does he, that he will soon know enough facts to purge the Red Cross of inconsequential expenses and personnel, to balance its budget, regain popular esteem. Conducting the actual investigation: Edwin G. Booz Surveys of Chicago.

* A row is on because commemorative stamps carry the picture of one Marie Bard, artist's model, instead of Clarissa Harlowe (Clara) Barton's, cantankerous Red Cross foundress.

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