The Girl with a Future

About the same lime, the elder daughter Sa lly, a high school se nior, is viewing a short motion pi<:ture, "Rewurd Unlimited," starring Dorothy McGuire as Cadet Nurse Pegs}' Ada ms, at the Main Street movie theater. After the show the gang stops at the drugstore to hash over the latest gossip under a compelling poster above the soda fountain which proclaims: " He a Cadet Nu rse-The Gi rl with a Future." Later that evening the whole family talks about the possibility of Sally's becoming II nurse. Their conclusion is posit ive ; the Cadet Nurse Corp~ fills the bill. Smaillown "nd the Joneses. of course, are composites, drawn from the hundreds of commu nities and thousands of families that sent girls 10 nursing school from 1943 to 1945. The story of their exposure 10 nursing via the Cadet Nurse Corps informational services offers valli;: . ble insight inlo how publicity nnd ndvertisemenl can foster a belleT image of nursi ng and improved public relations fo r schools of nursing." Before the Cadet Corps, nursing received little attention from the general public. Like medicine and cerla in other profess ions, nursing had shied IIway from publicity, viewing it as unprofessional, undesirable, unethica l, and undignified. In nddi· tion to this fear, nurses lacked Ihe skills necessary to present themselves and their cause effectively. But the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, established by Congress on June 15, 1943 (the Bolton Act) as an emergency program to provide an adequale supply of nurses 31 home and for Ihe mili· tary, was to change all that. From July 194310 October 1945, some 132,000 girls were admiw:d as Corps members to 1,125 of lhe 1,295 schools of nursing. Federal gra nts ..... ere made to schools of nurs· ing that mel the provisions of lhe act, which required that the school provide a 24to 30-month accel· crated program and tbat students admitted to the Corps pledge to "en· gagc in essential nursing, milila rr or civil ian, for the duration of the war." In return for this moral obligation on thc part of the student nurse, thc government paid all reasonable