The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most successful New Deal programs of the Great Depression. It existed for fewer than 10 years, but left a legacy of strong, handsome roads, bridges, and buildings throughout the United States. Between 1933 and 1941, more than 3,000,000 men served in the CCC. The effects of service in the CCC were felt for years, even decades, afterwards. Following the depression, when the job market picked up, businessmen indicated a preference for hiring a man who had been in the CCC, and the reason was simple. Employers believed that anyone who had been in the CCC would know what a full day’s work meant, and how to carry out orders in a disciplined way.
Continue Reading →In 1943, it was said: “Never before in the history of the human race has a public works program, whose principal object was the mitigation of need due to unemployment, reached the magnitude of the Work Projects Administration (note the name change, which occurred in 1939). This is true, however you measure it–by persons employed, money expended, or volume of results.” (Joanna C. Colcord, Director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, in The WPA and Federal Relief Policy, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943, p. 15)
Continue Reading →The seeds for establishing a “national” child welfare advocacy organization were planted by a group of influential child welfare advocates attending the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, convened by President Theodore Roosevelt. The idea of a national advocacy organization was further strengthened by the presentation of an influential committee report by Carl Christian Carstens, Secretary and General Agent, Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Boston. Carstens report was presented at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (NCCC) in 1915 in Baltimore, MD. His presentation was entitled: “Report of the Committee: A Community Plan in Children’s Work.”
Continue Reading →Modern adoption history has been marked by vigorous reforms dedicated to surrounding child placement with legal and scientific safeguards enforced by trained professionals working under the auspices of certified agencies. In 1917, for instance, Minnesota passed the first state law that required children and adults to be investigated and adoption records to be shielded from public view. By mid-century, virtually all states in the country had revised their laws to incorporate such minimum standards as pre-placement inquiry, post-placement probation, and confidentiality and sealed records. At their best, these standards promoted child welfare. Yet they also reflected eugenic anxieties about the quality of adoptable children and served to make adult tastes and preferences more influential in adoption than children’s needs. The Adoption Project paper is a part of that history.
Continue Reading →Editor’s Note: This entry about the “Martyrs of Memphis” was suggested to me by The Rev. Canon Lance Beizer, an Episcopal Priest from Canaan, CT.
In 1878 the city of Memphis, Tennessee on the Mississippi River was struck by an epidemic of yellow fever, which so depopulated the area that the city lost [...]
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Editor’s Note: The National Housing Conference, Inc. (NHC) was founded at the Public Housing Conference in New York City on March 22, 1932. A major contributor in founding the Public Housing Conference (PHC) was Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, social worker, reformer and founder of Greenwich House settlement in New York [...]
Continue Reading →Editor’s Note: The National Public Housing Conference (NPHC) was originally known as the Public Housing Conference (PHC). The purpose of the PHC was to bring together social workers and housing experts to lobby on the state and federal level for housing legislation. Some of the early members were: Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, founder of Greenwich House [...]
Continue Reading →These nurseries were started about 1854. Think what that means. Realize they came before even the dawn of social work as we know it. Wipe from your memory every family agency, every clinic, board of health, even every kindergarten. Visualize the dismal “paupers” waiting for the dole, the ramshackle porches of county poor farms where ragged children played beside the drunken and insane, visualize little scarlet fever patients serenely playing with their brothers and sisters, consider a world where there was no diphtheria antitoxin. And another picture–the old “district school” children sitting stiffly in high backed desks, marching inline, droning empty words, the rawhide whip in the corner.
Continue Reading →Hine’s interest in social welfare and in reform movements led him in 1905 to begin his first documentary series; immigrants on Ellis Island. In 1908 he left teaching to become an investigator and photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), and between 1908 and 1916 he traveled extensively photographing child-labor abuses. Hine would manage to gain access to the sweatshops and factories where children were employed, and then, if he could, photograph them at work. Hine inveigled his way into factories by posing as an insurance agent, bible salesman, postcard seller, or industrial photographer.
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