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In view of the magnitude of the task of conquering infantile paralysis the Trustees decided that the 1935 proceeds should go exclusively for the benefit of the cause as a whole.

A Commission and a Medical Advisory Committee were appointed to help in the best possible allocation of funds. Besides the sorely needed help provided for localities, a national research fund was made available to the Commission. Famous scientific institutions in various parts of the country were given funds by the Commission to carry on research work.

The Commission reported that it was amazing how unified the fight for the discovery and control of the virus of infantile paralysis had become. Scattered scientists were much better able to keep track of the progress made elsewhere, and so direct their own work more effectively. And the feeling of unity inspired them to ever greater effort.

Vast strides forward have been made. New hopes have been born. Knowledge of care and prevention has been disseminated to the practising physicians throughout the land. Work is being carried out at a feverish pace. Yet last summer . . .

IV

Another Black August . . . Infantile paralysis epidemic strikes the Middle West, the Coast, the Eastern Seaboard. Swimming pools, motion picture theatres are closed. Business is at a standstill. Hospitals are crowded. Schools won't open. Police cars in the streets keep children in their homes. Doctors are all too few. Iron lungs must be shuttled about the country by airplane, by Zephyr train, by fast motor car. Three deaths today . . . eighteen more stricken . . . terror everywhere.

This is the picture of a modern city when epidemic comes as it did last August. Cities literally bar their doors and windows to hide from this dread plague. The populace rose up, but in vain, to fight against the unseen enemy that cripples, twists, and chokes the life out of little children.

The experience of last summer forcefully brought to the public mind the fact that, although science had made great strides forward, the fight against infantile paralysis was still in its primary stages. Thinking people realized the magnitude of the emergency. Leaders in business, welfare and national affairs girded themselves for the gigantic task ahead. They saw it was not a fight that any one community could carry on unaided, that there was a crying and immediate need for a vast national organization to carry on the fight, to rush its resources and fighting men to the scene of action when epidemic struck, to find out more about the disease through the tireless, heroic work of scientific men in laboratories throughout the land -- in short, to prepare.

And on September 23, 1937, from the White House came the President's announcement of The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

V

President Roosevelt's statement marked the declaration of war against infantile paralysis. On October 18 he sent out his orders for mobilization. He said that he had received from Basil O'Connor, the Treasurer of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the following recommendations:

1. That all of the funds received next year by the Birthday Celebration Committee be given by the President to the new National Foundation, and that none of these funds go to Warm Springs.

2. That the name of the Committee to handle the celebration of his birthday in 1938 be "The Committee for the Celebration of the President's Birthday for Fighting Infantile Paralysis."

3. That the executive personnel of that Committee be:

Keith Morgan, Chairman; George E. Alien, Walter J. Cummings, Marshall Field, Fred J. Fisher, Edsel B. Ford, W. Averell Harriman, S. Clay Williams.

The President said that he endorsed these recommendations and felt that changing the seventy-thirty per cent plan of distribution, used in the previous three celebrations, to the one to be used in 1938, whereby all of the money is to be given to the new National Foundation, would be of great benefit to those communities unduly pressed by the accumulation of those afflicted.

VI

The practising physicians have been called the front line fighters, but they will be the first to say that without the aid of research very little advancement would have been made in the treatment of infantile paralysis. The great followers in the glorious path of Pasteur in laboratories, hospitals, and clinics have carried the light into unknown fields. They have searched far into mysterious lands that none have trod before them. As you read this, their lamps are burning far into the night as they search patiently for an answer to the problem which as yet has had no solution. From this source, and from this source alone, will come the cure and prevention of poliomyelitis. Let us view the long list of their work to date:

1. Discovery that the rhesus monkey was the only available animal to which poliomyelitis could be transmitted.

2. Study of characteristics of the disease that might be inheritable.

3. Facts about climatic conditions and localities.