Colonel Haskell Reports on Russian Relief
This is William N. Haskell's final report on relief efforts in Russia.
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OCR Page 1 of 5COLONEL HASKELL REPORTS ON RUSSIAN RELIEF.
Washington, D.C.,
August 27, 1923,
Honorable Herbert Hoover,
Chairman, American Relief Administration,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. Hoover:
At the conclusion of my services as your assistant in charge of
the distribution of ARA relief in Russia I take occasion to give a short
review of the task and its accomplishment.
It is now two years since you undertook to organize the relief
of this great famine which arose fundamentally from the sapping of pro-
duction in Russia but was made more acute by drought conditions in 1921.
During this period a little under a million tons of food, seed,
clothing and medical supplies have been bought in the United States by
the American Relief Administration, requiring about 250 voyages of Amer-
ican ships to nine different ports serving Russia. These supplies amount-
ed to 60,000 carloads on the Russian railways. Their distribution was
accomplished through the organization of 35,000 different stations at
the worst period when we were Teeding nearly 11,000,000 men, women and
children daily. Not only would these millions have died without this re-
lief, but even large numbers would have perished from the cesspool of
contagious disease which was then raging in every direction.
In the battle against these epidemics the American Relief Admin-
istration furnished supplies to over 15,000 hospitals and institutions and
organized the inoculation and vaccination of over 7,000,000 individuals.
Its systematic campaign of sanitation stamped out the most dangerous center
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