Chapter IV: Part II: is a presentation of the methods of rehabilitation, followed by

some facts obtained from a tabulation of the case records of the Rehabilitation Committee.

Two of the most important forms of rehabilitation, business and housing, are analyzed in detail in Parts III and IV. These parts illustrate methods, and they also show actual results of rehabilitation, which were learned by following into their homes at a later period a certain number of the families helped.

A study of the families under care of the Associated Charities since the work of the Rehabilitation Committee ceased gives the data for Part V. This was made to determine the character of the dependency, how much was due to the disaster itself, how much to faulty rehabilitation work, how much was inevitable. The work of the Associated Charities is indeed only a prolongation of the rehabilitation effort.

The last inquiry, Part VI, was into that saddest and least hopeful of all forms of rehabilitation, the permanent care of the aged and infirm. To call it rehabilitation seems a misnomer. The methods, the number of persons involved, their character, and other items are considered. Also the attempt is made to determine how far present dependence was inevitable, or accelerated, or actually caused by the change of circumstances due to the fire and to the additional burdens put upon relatives and friends who in the ordinary course of events would themselves have assumed the duty.

This summary reveals not alone what these studies contain but also what they omit. They do not comprise a complete history of the San Francisco relief work. A bird’s-eye view of that work is given in the Sixth Annual Report of the American National Red Cross. They present, rather, certain important and significant phases of rehabilitation with a sketch of the organization structure. And they present these not primarily for any reason of historical interest but in the hope that they may help concretely and suggestively in solving problems of family rehabilitation in connection with disasters, small and large, which in the future may confront the American National Red Cross, citizens’ committees, and relief agencies of every kind.

The full measure of results cannot be given in this Relief Survey. The acumen of no group of investigators, no matter how broad in their sympathies, or how trained to their work, can probe to the heart of a community to find the main arteries through which it has drawn its full life. The people were sound at the core. They had an instinct for adventure. Their own sanity, their self-reliance and faith in the future made them ready to rebound from fortune’s sudden blow. But in the wearying days that followed in the wake of the first efforts at recuperation, the adventurous spirit flagged under the strain and the ugliness of life. It was then that the city called on men whom it had bred, to uphold the courage and maintain the spirit of independence of its weaker citizens. The men who responded because they treasured San Francisco, their city, have shown, as this study proves, what sustained and co-operative effort can achieve.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(A detailed Table of Contents precedes each part)

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