The Relief and Aid Society deserves a great deal of credit for its
extraordinary efforts. It probably did dispense the world's charity more
effectively than Chicago's overburdened and underfinanced post-fire city
government could have done. But its supporters' assessment of the dangers of
entrusting the funds to local officials, like many other rumors connected with
the fire, were exaggerated by concerns about the balance of power in a democracy
defined by class and ethnicity (the Society took care to identify its clients by national
origin). Journalist Sydney Howard Gay, who later wrote the Society's
self-congratulatory report, claimed that its leaders were men "above personal
temptation" who saved the relief from "the utter corruption of our city
politics." The alternative, the Tribune agreed, was "the foul brood of city
politicians who greedily "counted...upon retaining place and putting their
enemies under their feet, with the personal and pecuniary power which the
handling of the relief fund and provisions in kind would give them."
Meanwhile, some applicants grumbled about inefficiency, impersonality, and
favoritism. In late February the Society terminated assistance to 800 families
on the grounds that they were now the responsibility of the financially-strapped
county government, drawing severe criticism for withholding aid to the needy in
the dead of winter when the organization possessed the only resources available. Common
Council President Holden proposed that the Society be made to hand over the
remaining relief funds to the city. But the proposal failed, and the consensus
remained that the Society, like Sheridan and his soldiers, had saved Chicago in
its hour of need when its own worst enemy was perhaps itself. "In the midst of
the most pressing demands of their private affairs," Frederick Law Olmsted told
readers of The Nation, "men of great good sense and well informed have taken
time to devise and bring others into a comprehensive and sufficient
organization, acting under well-guarded laws."
