MANSFIELD -- That "home service" in the title of Mrs. Mary M. Beal, secretary, expresses nicely just what the ideals and ambitions of that department of the Red Cross really are.
During (World War I), the home service section had to do primarily with the home life of the soldier who had enlisted for overseas duty.
"We looked after the family of the man who had entered the service, providing a bread-winner for the home that had suddenly been deprived of the father and gave advice and help to the wife, who was suddenly confronted with the supplying of the family needs," said Mrs. Beal.
Her work covers a field that is wide in its requirements, and calls for a vast amount of plain common sense and executive ability. Years of service as a minister's wife, has given to Mrs. Beal the unselfish ideal of trying to make life more humanly possible and livable for a great many human beings.
She began her work as head of this department in January, 1919, and has since the inception of her office looked after over 1,000 cases that have filing correspondence and innumerable others, probably, for which she has no tangible evidence.
"Since the war," continued Mrs. Beal, "our work has not had so much to do with the home as with the returned soldier himself. Lately, all our time has been taken up with the adjusted compensation claims, investigating and following up such claims for the ex-service men. Many of the men, in filing their claims do not know what evidence they want to get results.
"It is our work to do that for them. To get affidavits from their employees and statements from their physicians requires time and advice.
"Then, we have charge of the reinstatement of insurance for the men. And our field broadens into vocational training for those soldiers who are unable to work at their former employment and finding other work at which they will be satisfied. The latter is rather discouraging sometimes. Not so long ago we were trying to get a man a place and had quite a time doing it. But I told him to be patient and now he has the kind of work he likes and is happy and satisfied.
"Another man, a foreigner, who was unable to resume his old occupation, is now happily at work in Toledo and every once in a while I get letters from him telling how happy he is.
"Our work is increasing every day because of the increase in breakdowns of the men. Every day some veteran has to stop work and be sent to a sanitarium. That is also our work, finding hospitalization for the man who is ill. And the government says, the peak in this phase of the work will not be reached until 1925.
"Men who have been apparently all right, gradually became more and more tired and have to give up. Only the other day we sent a man to the sanitarium for tuberculosis, a disease that is increasing every day."
She was asked if she had any assistants to help in her work.
"Yes," she answered, "But all the visiting I am required to do myself and just at present all the office work. That is filing of claims, which no one else here understands at present. A great deal of my work takes me to the (Ohio State) Reformatory and I have adjusted a number of claims for veterans who have been in the institution."
She was asked if most of the ex-service men in the reformatory were criminals before the war?
"No indeed," Mrs. Beal emphatically answered. "Most of the men are there as a result of restlessness, and not knowing what to do with their time. They saw a row of autos and could see no reason for not taking a ride and consequently got sent up for stealing a car.
"All our work has to do with some phase of the family life, and often it takes the form of just advice, of how to best meet some problem, of which there are many that comes up, many times it is not material aid.
"Yet every bit takes time and often results in correspondence throughout the entire country. I have even had a great deal of correspondence with Canada for many of her ex-soldiers are in this country and need adjustment of their claims."