Nursing in America i6i regenerated the moral atmosphere, and banished coarseness and vulgarity, neglect and indifference. They were often stem, often severe, sometimes hard, but no one can realize what they did, who knows nothing of the conditions they grappled with. After some twenty years of this intensive in- dividual experience the need of union was widely and keenly felt. It was realized that Professional the pioneer schools had an exclusive organization spirit, that nursing workers were separated, had no points of contact, and that standards were beginning to vary greatly. The very popular success of trained nursing was proving a danger, for it facilitated an enormous increase in the num- bers of hospitals, and as these multipHed each one organized its own school for pupil nurses. This rapid growth tended to break down the safeguards thrown about the pupil, and the educational stand- ards which, imperfect as they then were, needed to be constantly improved. The World's Fair in Chicago (1893) gave an opportunity to express these ideas. Isabel Hamp- ton, then superintendent of nurses and principal of the Johns Hopkins school, congress^at was appointed chairman of the nurs- the World's ing section of the Congress of Hospi- tals and Dispensaries, whose director was Dr.
