Editor’s Note: The Family Welfare Association of America was a forerunner of the Family Service Association of America.  This entry is a document prepared in recognition of Mary Wilcox Glenn who was the president of the association for 16 years. A two-part history of Family Service Association of America is located under the tab ORGANIZATIONS.

A group of men and women from many sections of the country will meet in New York on November 20, 1936 to pay fitting tribute to Mrs. Mary Willcox Glenn who is retiring from the presidency of the Family Welfare Association of America after sixteen years in this position of leadership.

The name of Mrs.Glenn is written large in the pages of social work. Her active interest in efforts to meet the problems which human beings face in every community extends over a period of more than a third of a  century. As a member of a socially distinguished and well-to-do family, Mrs.Glenn might well have confined  her interests  to contacts  within  her own group, to travel, out-door life, and musical  and literary  pursuits, all of which have. always been attractive to her.

Early in her life, Mrs.Glenn was able, however, to see beyond the limitations of her own surroundings to the larger community in which people were faced by problems of poverty, poor housing, unemployment, disease and lack of opportunity. She was also able to relate these realities to her own life and to see that she might take a genuine part in systematic efforts to discover and remove some of the handicaps which seem to be   characteristic of our society.

As a young woman, Mrs. Glenn became a visitor in the Baltimore Charity Organization Society, and later a member of its board. Here she developed a professional interest in social work which was then only emerging from an early stage of voluntary non-professional philanthropy. Within the the next few years Mrs.Glenn became general secretary of the Henry Watson Children’s  Aid   Society in Baltimore and   then   general secretary of  the Charity Organization of Baltimore.  In this latter  position she   was   the successor of Mary Richmond who stands out as a great pioneer in laying a foundation for modern social  case work, and whose book “Social Diagnosis”  “remains a classic  in this  field.

Mrs. Glenn thus  in  a sense bridges  the  gap between the long period of awakening of the  social conscience which followed the Civil  War and  the modern era which has been devoted to the translation of conscience into terms of systematic, rational and effective social measures. Family social  work has its  origin in the interest aroused when this  country in the  early Seventy’s  first saw  the darker  side  of industrialization.  Great throngs of  workers were compelled to  depend on bread lines and soup kitchens for subsistence, and it soon became clearly evident that such philanthropy, impulsive and sporadic, did not meet the needs. The  necessity of  organizing  good-will and superior means became evident and  the result was the establishment of   societies which bore  such names as  Charity Organization  and  Associated  Charities.

At  about the time that Mrs. Glenn came to New York in 1908, still a newer conception of  social responsibility was  beginning to  form. People were beginning to  question  whether it was   enough to organize charity. Some  began to think that  perhaps efforts should be directed toward society itself in order to discover the reasons why large  groups of persons were in need of charity.

Mrs. Glenn at this time was active as a volunteer worker in the Charity Organization Society  of New York, and at the same time took part  in discussing the possibilities  of  a  larger movement, national in its  scope which would bind together local  groups in their efforts  to understand social  conditions as they influence family life. The outcome of these discussions was the  formation in 1911 of the  present Family Welfare Association of America, known originally as the National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity.

It will be seen that the Association began  with a  name  which carried  over the older concepts of philanthropy  even though its purp0se was the promotion of  a newer concept.

The  first head of the Association was  Alice  Higgins  Lothrop, who  like Mary   Richmond,  is one of  the great figures  in  social work.  In 1920 Mrs. Glenn succeeded Mrs. Lothrop as  president of  the Association.  It was at this very time that  the principles  which from the  start to  the  present have dominated the Association were first clearly  enunciated and  generally  agreed upon. It is particularly to be noted that in a statement of its scope and policy in 1919 the Association declared that it is  the function of family societies “to bear unhesitating witness to bad conditions of   work and wages in industry  and to assume  responsibility  for furthering better  conditions.” Participation  in the larger  social  reforms by legislation and education was also agreed upon. The focus in method, however, was to be upon a  better understanding and adjustment of  the individual within his  family and his  community.  This is  social  case work, consistent with larger social aims in that  it is a means  of   interpreting  social needs and opportunities  in  terms of  individual  growth.

The  changing concepts  ofsocial work are well  symbolized by the changes  in name of   the Association. In 1924 it became the  American Association for Organizing Family Social  Work, and in 1929 it took  the present name, Family Welfare Association  of America, which implies  a concentration not upon organizing charity or upon organizing family societies,  but rather upon the promotion of family welfare. In this  span of  twenty·five  years  from its beginning to  the present  time,  the Association  has increased  from its original 59  member  agencies to 240  member agencies located  throughout the United States and Canada. Mrs. Glenn,through this  whole period, has exerted a constant leadership which has brought us into the closest co-operation the lay groups acting in response to their sense of social responsibility and the professional groups whose special function it is to actualize the aims of the lay sponsors.

In spite of the time and energy which Mrs.Glenn gave to the Associa­tion, she has also served in many other ways. She is president of the National Council of the Church Mission of Help.  She was one of the founders of the International Migration Service, and she has been active in the Association of Volunteers. During the War, Mrs. Glenn was the chairman of the Home Service Section of the American Red Cross in New York, a work to which she gave unstintingly of her energy.  In 1915 Mrs. Glenn’s great contributions were recognized by  her election as president of the National Conference of Social Work.  She took a prominent part in the International Conferences of Social Work, in Paris, 1928, and in Frankfort,· 1932.

It is impossible to evaluate properly the work of such a person as Mrs.Glenn. It cannot be done by listing her activities or affiliations, Her influence, like that of Mary Richmond, Alice Higgins Lothrop and Jane Addams, exerts itself directly on the lives of thousands of persons with whom she has been and is in contact, and indirectly on the lives of many more through the various organizations which she continues to serve.

Source: Family Service Association of America records. Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota Library. More information is available at: http://special.lib.umn.edu/

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The National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship was formed in 1930 as an association of organizations and individuals who sought to reform naturalization laws and regulations. The Council advocated policies and procedures that were humane, uniform, and simple. Among its prominent leaders were Ruth Z. Murphy, Read Lewis, Abram Orlow, and Frank Orlow.

Next, in 1954, the American Immigration Conference was formed by representatives of thirty-one immigration-related organizations and agencies who sought a more humane, nondiscriminatory alternative to the existing national origins quota system.

In 1960, the two organizations, which already shared many officers and activities, merged to form the American Immigration and Citizenship Conference (AICC). The American Immigration and Citizenship Conference served as a clearinghouse of information and coordinated activities for organizations and agencies committed to reforming immigration policy. Its efforts were recognized as influential in shaping the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. In addition to monitoring legislation and administrative regulations, AICC committees conducted studies on the integration of immigrants and education for citizenship tests. In 1982, AICC became a part of the National Immigration Forum.

For more information, visit: American Immigration and Citizenship Conference under the tab ORGANIZATIONS

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Survey Associates, Inc., was a cooperative publishing society which sought to “advance the cause of constructive philanthropy by the publication and circulation of books, pamphlets, and periodicals, and by conducting any investigations useful or necessary for the preparation thereof.” The certificate of incorporation, signed on October 31, 1912, by Robert W. de Forest, Edward T. Devine, John M. Glenn, Alfred T. White, and Paul U. Kellogg, named twelve original directors: Jane Addams, Robert S. Brewster, Robert W. de Forest, Edward T. Devine, John M. Glenn, V. Everit Macy, Julian W. Mack, Charles D. Norton, Simon N. Patten, Frank Tucker, Paul M. Warburg, and Alfred T. White.

Survey Associates was a non-partisan, non-profit organization whose primary work was the publication of the Survey magazines. It was incorporated without capital endowment; contributions from members made up deficits which ordinary publishing receipts could not cover. The organization was managed by a board of directors and advised by the National Council of Survey Associates. Officers of the organization were a president, a chairman of the board of directors, vice-presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and an editor. Presidents of Survey Associates were Robert W. de Forest, 1912-1931; Lucius Eastman, 1931-1938; and Richard B. Scandrett, 1938-1948. Chairmen of the board of directors were Julian W. Mack, 1938-1943; and Joseph P. Chamberlain, 1943-1952. Officers were elected at the annual meetings of Survey Associates, held by constitutional provision on the last Monday of October and open to all members. (One became a member by contributing not less than ten dollars to Survey Associates.)

The Survey had roots in several other magazines which were concerned with philanthropy. It developed from the Charities Review , a monthly organ of the New York Charity Organization Society (COS, now the Community Service Society of New York City). First issued in 1891 as a monthly journal of sociology, the Charities Review was financed by Robert W. de Forest and edited by Paul Leicester Ford and Frederick Howard Wines. In March, 1897, the Charities Review merged with Lend-A-Hand , founded and edited by Edward Everett Hale. In December, 1897, the COS began publishing a second house organ, the Charities (published with various subtitles), edited by Edward T. Devine. It was intended to be a weekly review of philanthropy that would serve COS members. In 1905, at the time that the Charities Publication Committee of the COS assumed responsibility for publishing the Charities, it was merged with the Commons, a magazine edited first by John Palmer Gavit and later by Graham Taylor, founder of the Chicago Commons settlement. As Charities and the Commons , it absorbed in 1906 Jewish Charity , edited by Lee K. Frankel. In April, 1909, the magazine took the name Survey because, as the editors stated, “letters and messages continually received have strengthened the conviction that not by the name of charity do most men call the movements we have stood for.” The source of the name was the Pittsburgh Survey, an investigation of the “life and labor” of the Pittsburgh steel district made under the direction of Paul Kellogg, 1907-1909. In 1912, for financial reasons and for purposes of editorial independence, the magazine broke its ties with the COS and formed an independent publishing organization, Survey Associates, Inc.

From 1912 the Survey was published weekly, but because weekly publication was prohibitively expensive and because of a constant clash between readers seeking technical material and readers seeking an overall view of philanthropic fields, the Survey split into two publications, the Survey Midmonthly and the Survey Graphic . The Midmonthly was formally founded in June, 1922, as a “modern service periodical” which was a digest of social work and experience. It was directed at social workers and board members, and it dealt with all fields of social work, health, recreation, and human welfare. The Survey Graphic, formally founded in October, 1921, dated from a series of reconstruction numbers published during and after World War I. It was a magazine of “social interpretation” directed at intelligent laymen who were concerned with social and economic problems which underlay headlines. It focused on areas of industrial relations, health, education, international relations, housing, race relations, consumer education, and related fields. Financial problems caused the two magazines to merge in 1949. Publication of the Survey was suspended in 1952 and Survey Associates was dissolved as a corporate entity.

Paul Underwood Kellogg (1879-1958), editor of the Survey from 1912 to 1952, is the crucial figure in this collection. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he served as an editor of the Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph before coming to New York to study at Columbia University. He joined the staff of the Charities and, after directing the Pittsburgh Survey and editing the six-volume report of that investigation, became editor of the Survey in 1912. Kellogg was one of the founders of the Foreign Policy Association, a member of the Committee on Research in Medical Economics, and vice-chairman of the Advisory Committee to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security. His brother, Arthur P. Kellogg (1878-1934), served as treasurer of Survey Associates and managing editor of the Survey and Survey Graphic until his death in 1934.

Paul Kellogg conceived of the Survey as a broadly educational enterprise operating “along the borders of research, journalism, and the general welfare.” It was to be an open forum, limited only by the facts. The emphasis of the Survey was on first-hand inquiry and investigation, and regular procedure involved submitting controversial articles in draft form to concerned parties, considering suggested revisions, rechecking disputed sections, and offering opportunity for rebuttal. The Survey featured articles by staff members and by paid and volunteer contributors. In the January, 1949, issue Paul Kellogg named the factors that had characterized the Survey ‘s working scheme since 1912: swift research, visualization, human interest, things of the spirit, public concern, and free discussion.

Note: For a full account of the history of the Survey and the life of Paul Kellogg, see Clarke A. Chambers, Paul U. Kellogg and the Survey: Voices for Social Welfare and Social Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 1971).

Source: Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Library. More information is available at: http://special.lib.umn.edu/

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Introduction: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), was created on April 10, 1933.  It was open to unemployed, unmarried U.S. male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26. All recruits had to be healthy and were expected to perform hard physical labor. Blacks were placed in segregated camps, although administrators denied the practice of discrimination. Enlistment in the program was for a minimum of 6 months; many re-enlisted after their first term. Participants were paid $30 a month and often given supplemental basic and vocational education while they served. Under the guidance of the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, CCC employees fought forest fires, planted trees, cleared and maintained access roads, re-seeded grazing lands and implemented soil-erosion controls. They built wildlife refuges, fish-rearing facilities, water storage basins and animal shelters. To encourage citizens to get out and enjoy America’s natural resources, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) authorized the CCC to build bridges and campground facilities. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC employed over 3 million men.

The Creation of the CCC: When President Roosevelt  took office in 1933, he immediately commenced a massive revitalization of the nation’s economy. In response to the great depression that hung over the nation in the early 1930s, President Roosevelt created many programs designed to put Americans back to work. Roosevelt was not interested in the dole. He was was determined, rather, to preserve the pride of American workers in their own ability to earn a living, so he concentrated on creating jobs.

In his first 100 days in office, President Roosevelt approved several measures as part of his New Deal, including the Emergency Conservation Work Act (ECW), better known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). With that action, he brought together the nation’s young men and the land in an effort to save them both. Roosevelt proposed to recruit thousands of unemployed young men, enlist them in a peacetime army, and send them to battle the erosion and destruction of the nation’s natural resources. More than any other New Deal agency, the CCC is considered to be an extension of Roosevelt’s personal philosophy.

The speed with which the plan moved through proposal, authorization, implementation, and operation was certainly a miracle of cooperation among all the agencies and branches of the federal government. From FDR’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, to the induction of the first CCC enrollee, only 37 days had elapsed.

Revitalization and reforestation: The CCC, also known as Roosevelt’s “Tree Army,” was credited with renewing the nation’s decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees from 1933 to 1942. This was crucial, especially in states affected by the dust storms where reforestation was necessary to break the wind, hold water in the soil, and hold the soil in place. So far reaching was the CCC’s reforestation program that it was responsible for more than half the reforestation, public and private, accomplish in the nation’s history.

Eligibility requirements for the CCC carried several simple stipulations. Congress required U.S. citizenship only. Other standards were set by the ECW. Sound physical fitness was mandatory because of the hard physical labor required. Men had to be unemployed, unmarried, and between the ages of 18 and 26, although the rules were eventually relaxed for war veterans. Enlistment was for a duration of six months, although many reenlisted after their allotted time was up.

Problems were confronted quickly. The bulk of the nation’s young and unemployed youth were concentrated in the East, while most of the work projects were in the western parts of the country. The War Department mobilized the nation’s transportation system to move thousands of enrollees from induction centers to work camps. The Agriculture and Interior departments were responsible for planning and organizing work to be performed in every state. The Department of Labor was responsible for the selection and enrollment of applicants. The National Director of the ECW was Robert Fechner, a union vice president chosen personally by President Roosevelt.

Young men flocked to enroll. Many politicians believed that the CCC was largely responsible for a 55 percent reduction in crimes committed by the young men of that day. Men were paid $30 a month, with mandatory $25 allotment checks sent to families of the men, which made life a little easier for people at home.

Camps were set up in all states, as well as in Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Enrollment peaked at the end of 1935, when there were 500,000 men located in 2,600 camps in operation in all states. California alone had more than 150 camps. The greatest concentration of CCC personnel was in the Sixth Civilian Conservation Corps District of the First Corps Area, in the Winooski River Valley of Vermont, in December 1933. Enlisted personnel and supervisors totaled more than 5,300 and occupied four large camps.

The program enjoyed great public support. Once the first camps were established and the CCC became better known, they became accepted and even sought after. The CCC camps stimulated regional economies and provided communities with improvements in forest activity, flood control, fire protection, and overall community safety.

Segregation and education: Although policy prohibited discrimination, blacks and other minorities encountered numerous difficulties in the CCC. In the early years of the program, some camps were

Black CCC Member in Barracks Doorway

integrated. By 1935, however, there was, in the words of CCC director Fechner, a “complete segregation of colored and white enrollees, ” but “segregation is not discrimination.” At its peak, more than 250,000 African Americans were enrolled in nearly 150 all-black CCC companies.

An important modification became necessary early in 1933. It extended enlistment coverage to about 14,000 American Indians whose economic circumstances were deplorable and had mostly been ignored. Before the CCC was terminated, more than 80,000 Native Americans were paid to help reclaim the land that had once been theirs. In addition, in May 1933, the president authorized the enrollment of about 25,000 war veterans, with no age or marital restrictions. This made it possible for more than 250,000 veterans to rebuild lives disrupted by earlier service to their country.

In June 1933, the ECW decided that men in CCC camps could be given the opportunity of vocational training and additional education. Educational programs were developed that varied considerably from camp to camp, both in efficiency and results. More than 90 percent of all enrollees participated in some facet of the educational program. Throughout the CCC, more than 40,000 illiterate men were taught to read and write.

Leaving its mark on the land: By 1942, there was hardly a state that could not boast of permanent projects left as markers by the CCC. The CCC worked on improving millions of acres of federal and state lands, as well as parks. New roads were built, telephone lines strung, and trees planted.

CCC projects included:

• more than 3,470 fire towers erected;
• 97,000 miles of fire roads built;
• 4,235,000 man-days devoted to fighting fires;
• more than 3 billion trees planted;
• 7,153,000 man days expended on protecting the natural habitats of wildlife; 83 camps in 15 Western states assigned 45 projects of that nature;
• 46 camps assigned to work under the direction of the U.S. Bureau of Agriculture Engineering;
• more than 84,400,000 acres of good agricultural land receive manmade drainage systems; Indian enrollees do much of that work;
• 1,240,000 man-days of emergency work completed during floods of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys;
• disease and insect control;
• forest improvement — timber stand inventories, surveying, and reforestation;
• forest recreation development — campgrounds built, complete with picnic shelters, swimming pools, fireplaces, and restrooms.

In addition, 500 camps were under the control of the Soil Conservation Service. The primary work of those camps was erosion control. The CCC also made outstanding contributions to the development of recreational facilities in national, state, county, and metropolitan parks. By design, the CCC worked on projects that were independent of other public relief programs. Although other

Tractor Repair Class
Colored CCC

federal agencies, such as the National Park Service and Soil Conservation Service contributed, the U.S. Forest Service administered more than 50 percent of all public work projects for the CCC.

Residents of southern Indiana will always remember the extraordinary work of the CCC during the flood of the Ohio River in 1937. The combined strength of the camps in the area saved lives as well as property. The CCC also was involved in other natural disasters, including a hurricane in New England in 1938, floods in Vermont and New York, and blizzards in Utah.

The CCC approached maturity in 1937. Hundreds of enrollees had passed through the system, and returned home to boast of their experiences. Hundreds more demonstrated their satisfaction by extending their enlistments.

The end of the CCC, the beginning of war preparation: There were numerous reasons why Congress refused to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps as a permanent agency. However, disenchantment, or failure to recognize the organization’s success, were never topics of debate. In fact, Congress extended its life as an independent, funded agency for two years.

The year 1939 brought about a major challenge, because there was a struggle with internal problems brought on by changing conditions in both the United States and Europe. The potential of war in Europe was belatedly recognized. Storm clouds were forming that positively affected the United States economy. The president’s Lend-Lease program made jobs more plentiful in the armaments industry, and applications for the CCC declined.

Also in 1939, Congress authorized the Federal Security Agency (FSA) to consolidate several offices under one director. The CCC lost its status as an independent agency. Congress added $50 million to the CCC’s 1940-41 appropriation and the Corps remained at its current strength of about 300,000 enrollees. However, by late summer 1941, it was obvious that the Corps was in serious trouble. A lack of applicants, desertion, and a great number of enrollees leaving for jobs had reduced the Corps to fewer than 200,000 men in about 900 camps. Many were beginning to question the necessity of retaining the CCC when unemployment had all but disappeared.

Although there was still work to be done, most agreed that defense had to come first. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, it became obvious that any federal project not directly related to the war effort was in jeopardy. A joint committee of Congress recommended that the CCC be abolished by July 1, 1942. Technically, however, the corps was never abolished. Congress simply refused it any additional money. Eventually, $8 million was set aside to cover all costs of liquidation, and the War Department, Labor Department, and Civil Aeronautics Administration were given first opportunity to acquire CCC properties. The War Department claimed the majority of the equipment.

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.

Today, many of the remaining physical features the CCC built have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Source:  United States History http://www.u-s-history.com

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By John E. Hansan, Ph.D.

Editor’s Note:  This entry is a composite of portions from three separate sources.  Essentially, this was done because no single source presented a complete description of the most important public works program ever implemented in the U.S.A.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Executive Order #7034 on May 6, 1935.  President Roosevelt had the authority for this Executive Order via the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.  The WPA was created to offer direct government employment to the jobless.  The unemployment rate was about 20% at the time the WPA was created.  The WPA lasted until June 30, 1943.  The unemployment rate then was possibly below 2%, with many Americans working in the armed services, defense industries, etc.  The WPA–during it’s 8 years of existence–employed over 8.5 million different Americans, and reached peak employment of over 3.3 million in late 1938.

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)

Indeed, the variety and volume of work performed by the WPA is mind-boggling.  Variety: In addition to their well-known infrastructure projects (e.g., roads, bridges, airports, dams, water mains, sewers, sidewalks, schools), there were also WPA projects involving theater, writing, music, sewing, food distribution, archaeological digs, historic and environmental preservation, disaster relief, and more.  Volume: Here are just some of the the totals for the WPA’s work projects:
*Half a billion garments & other articles produced in sewing room projects

*1.2 billion school lunches served

*650,000 miles of new or improved roads (enough roadwork to go around the Earth 26 times)

*124,000 new or improved bridges

*1.1 million new or improved culverts

*39,000 schools built, improved, or repaired

*85,000 public buildings built, improved, or repaired (excluding schools)

*8,000 new or improved parks

*18,000 new or improved playgrounds & athletic fields

*2,000 swimming & wading pools

*4,000 new or improved utility plants

*16,000 miles of water lines installed (enough water line to extend from New York to India…and back again)

*24,000 miles of sewer lines installed (nearly enough to circle the globe)

*950 airports/airfields built, improved, or repaired

*1,500 nursery schools operated

*225,000 concerts performed

*475,000 works of art

*276 full length books

SOURCES FOR THESE TOTALS : Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-1943,  Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 134-36 (available for download at: http://lccn.loc.gov/47032199), & Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, When FDR put the Nation to Work, New York: Bantam Books, 2009 paperback edition, pp. 523-24.

 It’s been my observation that whenever the government–especially the federal government–performs an action, or creates a law or program, that is designed to help those in need, a flurry of criticism and panic ensues.  This can be seen throughout America’s history, during attempts to end slavery, or give women the right to vote, or prohibit small children from working in mines, or in the legislation to create Social Security, or Medicare, or the recent attempts to see that more Americans have access to affordable health insurance or have extended unemployment benefits while unemployment rates remain high.

The WPA, i.e., the federal effort to provide work for the jobless during a time of extremely weak private sector job growth, was no different. Speaking about work programs for the unemployed in 1935, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia said “we have a class of people in this country that just cannot understand anything spoken in humane terms, but they will understand you when you speak to them in terms of tons of steel, thousands of brick, and so forth…” (Smith, p. 105–see reference list at bottom).

So, the WPA–like many other New Deal programs–was under constant political attack.  Some people felt that certain programs of the WPA, like the Federal Theater Project, were akin to communism.  Others felt that those who worked in the WPA were lazy “shovel leaners,” who did nothing more than dig ditches and fill them back up again (in actuality, the WPA workers did dig ditches and fill them back up again–but critics omitted the part about a water main or sewer line being installed before the ditch was re-filled).  Some derisively said the WPA stood for “We Piddle Around,” or “We Poke Along.”

On May 8th, 1938, Harry Hopkins defended the New Deal (including the WPA) from criticism–made by former President Herbert Hoover–that the New Deal was leading America towards fascism.  Hopkins said of the New Deal:

“Is it dictatorship to operate a government for all the people and not just for a few?  Is it dictatorship to guarantee the accounts of small depositors and keep phony stocks and bonds off the market?  Is it dictatorship to save millions of homes from foreclosure?  Is it dictatorship to give a measure of protection to millions who are economically insecure and jobs to millions who can’t find work?”  (“Hopkins Denies Relief Waste In Reply To http://wpatoday.org/WPA_History.html Hoover On Fascism,” Washington Post, May 9, 1938, p. XI).  Hopkins was, of course, referring to New Deal policies and agencies such as FDIC, the SEC, and the WPA.

Source: Brent McKee: WPA Today- In Maryland and the Nation: http://wpatoday.org/WPA_History.html

***********************************

The Great Depression stands as an event unique in American history due to both its length and severity. With the unprecedented economic collapse, the nation faced “an emergency more serious than war” (Higgs 1987, p. 159). The Depression was a time of tremendous suffering and at its worst, left a quarter of the workforce unemployed. During the twentieth century, the annual unemployment rate averaged double-digit levels in just eleven years. Ten of these occurred during the Great Depression.

A confused and hungry nation turned to the government for assistance. With the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, the federal government’s response to the economic emergency was swift and massive. The explosion of legislation — which came to be collectively called the New Deal — was designed, at least in theory, to bring a halt to the human suffering and put the country on the road to recovery. The president promised relief, recovery and reform.

Although the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) were all begun two years earlier, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) became the best known of the administration’s alphabet agencies. Indeed, for many the works program is synonymous with the entire New Deal. Roosevelt devoted more energy and more money to the WPA than to any other agency (Charles 1963, p. 220). The WPA would provide public employment for people who were out of work. The administration felt that the creation of make-work jobs for the jobless would restore the human spirit, but dignity came with a price tag — an appropriation of almost $5 billion was requested. From 1936 to 1939 expenditures totaled nearly $7 billion.

WPA Projects and Procedures

The legislation that created the WPA, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 sailed through the House, passing by a margin of 329 to 78 but bogged down in the Senate where a vocal minority argued against the measure. Despite the opposition, the legislation passed in April of 1935.

Harry Hopkins headed the new organization. Hopkins became, “after Roosevelt, the most powerful man in the administration” (Reading 1972, pp. 16-17). All WPA administrators, whether assigned to Washington or to the agency’s state and local district offices, were employees of the federal government and all WPA workers’ wages were distributed directly from the U.S. Treasury (Kurzman 1974, p. 107). The WPA required the states to provide some of their own resources to finance projects but a specific match was never stipulated — a fact that would later become a source of contentious debate.

The agency prepared a “Guide to Eligibility of WPA Projects” which was made available to the states. Nineteen types of potentially fundable activities were described ranging from malaria control to recreational programs to street building (MacMahon, Millet and Ogden 1941, p. 308).

Hopkins and Roosevelt proposed that WPA compensation be based on a “security wage” which would be an hourly amount greater than the typical relief payment but less than that offered by private employers. The administration contended that it was misleading to evaluate the programs’ effects solely on the basis of wages paid — more important were earnings through continuous employment. Thus, wages were reported in monthly amounts.

Wages differed widely from region to region and state-to-state. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia explained, “In the State of Tennessee the man who is working with a pick and shovel at 18 cents an hour is limited to $26 a month, and he must work 144 hours to earn $26. Whereas the man who is working in Pennsylvania has to work only 30 hours to earn $94, out of funds which are being paid out of the common Treasury of the United States” (U.S. House of Representatives 1938, p. 913). Recurring complaints of this nature led to adjustments in the wage rate that narrowed regional differentials to more closely reflect the cost of living in the state.

The work done by the organization stands as a tribute to the WPA. Almost every community in America has a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. As of 1940, the WPA had erected 4,383 new school buildings and made repairs and additions to over 30,000 others. More than 130 hospitals were built and improvements made to another 1670 (MacMahon, Millet and Ogden 1941, pp. 4-5). Nearly 9000 miles of new storm drains and sanitary sewer lines were laid. The agency engaged in conservation work planting 24 million trees (Office of Government Reports 1939, p. 80).

Addressing the nation’s transportation needs accounted for much of the WPA’s work. By the summer of 1938, 280,000 miles of roads and streets had been paved or repaired and 29,000 bridges had been constructed. Over 150 new airfields and 280 miles of runway were built (Office of Government Reports 1939, p. 79).

Because Harry Hopkins believed that the work provided by the WPA should match the skills of the unemployed, artists were employed to paint murals in public buildings, sculptors created park and battlefield monuments, and actors and musicians were paid to perform. These white-collar programs did not escape criticism and the term “boondoggling” was added to the English language to describe government projects of dubious merit.

Work relief for the needy was the putative purpose of the WPA. Testifying before the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Unemployment and Relief in 1938, Corrington Gill — Assistant to WPA administrator Harry Hopkins — asserted, “Our regional representatives . . . are intimately in touch with the States and the conditions in the States” (U.S. Senate 1938, p. 51).

The Roosevelt administration, of course, asserted that dollars were allocated to where need was the greatest. Some observers at the time, however, were suspicious of what truly motivated the New Dealers.

The Distribution of WPA Funds

In 1939, Georgia Senator Richard Russell in a speech before the Senate compared the appropriation his state received with those received by Wisconsin, a state with similar land area and population but with far more resources. He was interrupted by Senator Ellison Smith of South Carolina:

“Mr. Smith: I have been interested in the analysis the Senator has made of the wealth and population which showed that Wisconsin and Georgia were so nearly equal in those features. I wondered if the Senator had any way of ascertaining the political aspect in those two States.”
“Mr. Russell: Mr. President, I had not intended to touch upon any political aspects of this question.”
“Mr. Smith: Why not? The Senator knows that is all there is to it (U.S. House of Representatives 1939, p. 926).”

Scholars have begun to examine the New Deal in this light, producing evidence supporting Senator Smith’s assertion that political considerations helped to shape the WPA.

An empirical analysis of New Deal spending priorities was made possible by Leonard Arrington’s discovery in 1969 of documents prepared by an obscure federal government agency. “Prepared in late 1939 by the Office of Government Reports for the use of Franklin Roosevelt during the presidential campaign of 1940, the 50-page reports — one for each state — give precise information on the activities and achievements of the various New Deal economic agencies” (Arrington 1969, p. 311).

Using this data source to investigate the relationship between WPA appropriations to the states and state economic conditions makes the administration’s claims of allocating dollars to where need was greatest difficult to support. Instead, evidence supports a political motivation to the pattern of expenditures. While the legislation that funded the WPA sailed through the House, a vocal minority in the Senate argued against the measure — a fact the Roosevelt administration did not forget. “Hopkins devoted considerable attention to his relations with Congress, particularly from 1935 on. While he continually ignored several Congressmen because of their obnoxious ways of opposing the New Deal . . . he gave special attention to Senators . . . who supported the work relief program (Charles 1963, p. 162).

Empirical results confirm Charles’ assertion; WPA dollars flowed to states whose Senators voted in favor of the 1935 legislation. Likewise, if the state’s Senators opposed the measure, significantly fewer work relief dollars were distributed to the state.

The matching funds required to ‘buy’ WPA appropriations were not uniform from state-to-state. The Roosevelt administration argued that allowing them discretion to determine the size of the match would enable them to get projects to the states with fewer resources. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia complained in a Senate speech, “the poorer states . . . are required to contribute more from their poverty toward sponsored projects than the wealthier states are” (Congressional Record 1939, p. 921). Senator Russell entered sponsor contributions from each state into the Congressional Record. The data support the Senator’s assertion. Citizens in relatively poor Tennessee were forced to contribute 33.2 percent toward WPA projects while citizens in relatively rich Pennsylvania were required to contribute only 10.1 percent toward their projects. Empirical evidence supports the notion that by lowering the size of the match, Roosevelt was able to put more projects into states that were important to him politically (Couch and Smith, 2000).

The WPA represented the largest program of its kind in American history. It put much-needed dollars into the hands of jobless millions and in the process contributed to the nation’s infrastructure. Despite this record of achievement, serious questions remain concerning whether the program’s money, projects, and jobs were distributed to those who were truly in need or instead to further the political aspirations of the Roosevelt administration.

References

Arrington, Leonard J. “The New Deal in the West: A Preliminary Statistical Inquiry.” Pacific Historical Review 38 (1969): 311-16.

Charles, Searle F. Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins and the Depression. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969.

Congressional Record (1934 and 1939) Washington: Government Printing Office.

Couch, Jim F. and Lewis Smith (2000) “New Deal Programs and State Matching Funds: Reconstruction or Re-election?” unpublished manuscript, University of North Alabama.

Higgs, Robert. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal. Fairlawn, NJ: R.E. Burdick, 1974.

MacMahon, Arthur, John Millett and Gladys Ogden. The Administration of Federal Work Relief. Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1941.

Margo, Robert A. “The Microeconomics of Depression Unemployment.” Journal of Economic History 51, no. 2 (1991): 333-41.

Office of Government Reports. Activities of Selected Federal Agencies, Report No. 7. Washington, DC: Office of Government Reports, 1939.

 Source: The Works Progress Administration. Posted Mon, 2010-02-01 18:21 by Anonymous: Jim Couch, University of North Alabama http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/couch.works.progress.administration

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Of all of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the most famous, because it affected so many people’s lives. Roosevelt’s vision of a work-relief program employed more than 8.5 million people. For an average salary of $41.57 a month, WPA employees built bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports.

Under the direction of Harry Hopkins, an enthusiastic ex-social worker who had come from modest means, the WPA would spend more than $11 million in employment relief before it was canceled in 1943. The work relief program was more expensive than direct relief payments, but worth the added cost, Hopkins believed. “Give a man a dole,” he observed, “and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit”.

The WPA employed far many more men than women, with only 13.5 percent of WPA employees being women in the peak year of 1938. Although the decision had been made early on to pay women the same wages as men, in practice they were consigned to the lower-paying activities of sewing, bookbinding, caring for the elderly, school lunch programs, nursery school, and recreational work. Ellen Woodward, director of the women’s programs at the WPA, successfully pushed for women’s inclusion in the Professional Projects Division. In this division, professional women were treated more equally to men, especially in the federal art, music, theater, and writers’ projects.

When federal support of artists was questioned, Hopkins answered, “Hell! They’ve got to eat just like other people.” The WPA supported tens of thousands of artists, by funding creation of 2,566 murals and 17,744 pieces of sculpture that decorate public buildings nationwide. The federal art, theater, music, and writing programs, while not changing American culture as much as their adherents had hoped, did bring more art to more Americans than ever before or since. The WPA program in the arts led to the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The WPA paid low wages and it was not able to employ everyone — some five million were left to seek assistance from state relief programs, which provided families with $10 per week. However, it went a long way toward bolstering the self-esteem of workers. A poem sent to Roosevelt in February 1936, in block print, read, in part,

“I THINK THAT WE SHALL NEVER SEE
A PRESIDENT LIKE UNTO THEE . . .
POEMS ARE MADE BY FOOLS LIKE ME,
BUT GOD, I THINK, MADE FRANKLIN D.”

Source:  PBS: The American Experience:  www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-wpa/

The post WPA: The Works Progress Administration appeared first on Social Welfare History Project.

By Wm. J. Norton*, Secretary, Detroit Patriotic Fund

Editor’s Note: This is a copy of a presentation at the National Conference of Social Work’s Forty-Sixth Annual Session Held in Atlantic City, New Jersey June 1-8. 1919

As the pomp and glory of battle fade and the fervor of a people consecrated to a noble end subsides, our social forces find themselves confronted with greater responsibilities than any they have yet assumed. Sobered by the struggle and the sombreness of war, and disturbed by the red torch of revolution flaring across the world, the whole nation realizes today that social problems are serious matters which must be met intelligently and vigorously. The best that is in American civilization turns an inquiring eye to find if their social workers are ready to offer the nation some guidance in her rough course over the reconstruction road.

Faced with such an opportunity it behooves social work to look to itself, to gird up its own loins, to examine its own armor, to find if it has a plan of battle, to see if its forces can be marshaled in an effective fighting array. This is doubly important because the task ahead is no easy one. In spite of the uneasy conscience of America’s rulers, and in spite of their new knowledge that change, although perhaps not desirable from their point of view is at least inevitable, every advance towards a better ordered and more just society, will be bitterly opposed by powerful forces of social stagnation.

What has happened in the world is simply this. The tremendous pressure that men and women are under simply to live, due to the enormous destruction of the war, is bringing out in bold relief the imperfections of the prevailing social structure. Many men admit begrudgingly today what they would never admit and probably never knew before, that the economic organism needs readjustment. It must be made more democratic, more just in its distribution of luxuries and necessities, more safe for health and limb, more stable in its power to employ at all times and to distribute the costs of sickness, accidents, and inefficiency. Thousands who never saw or cared before know now as national needs, that our society must be purged of the feeble-minded, that epidemics must be curbed and eliminated, that better standards of every day health must be attained and sustained, that play must be made wholesome and extensive, that education must adjust itself to a modern world, that our millions of immigrants must be truly assimilated, that the remaining misfits in society must be cared for adequately and humanely.

The nation is worried. The straining pressure of life gives its vision. Social reform will go far in the coming years. And we, the social workers of America, might play the part of greatness in guiding our beloved country in a series of sane progressions if we were ready now. But we are not ready.

The world today is an organized world. Business is organized for production. Transportation is organized to distribute the product. Credit is organized to lubricate the organizations of production and distribution. Capital is organized to protect its interests. Labor is organized to get larger rewards. Politics is organized to guard one or another of the great self-centered interests. Education is organized to pass on the old traditions. Everywhere one turns he finds giant organizations-everywhere but in the fields devoted to an impartial advancement of all the people.

I am disclosing no secret and uttering no heresy when I say to you that except in a few communities, the social work armies all over this great land, are organized in guerrilla bands only. In the main they closely resemble noisy rabbles led by a few ennobled Pancho Villas, conducting badly organized and poorly executed raids against the solid phalanxes of poverty, inefficiency, ignorance, disease, crime, and injustice. If this disorganization is to continue the social worker’s answer to the nation’s cry is already written. “We cannot serve you in the big affairs of the day. All that we can do is to continue coaxing, coddling, and punishing the poor, the unfortunate, and the erring children of your family.”

But some of us here, especially those who gather in this division, believe that such an answer is not necessary. We have watched in our mid-western communities, these guerrilla bands organized into regiments, the regiments into brigades, the brigades into divisions, and the divisions into a community wide army accoutred and ready to be marshalled against society’s social enemies.

It is this community organization movement that I desire to discuss today, not because alone it is a solvent of our weaknesses, for eventually it must be supplemented with coherent and cohesive state and national organization, but because it is the best expression just now of that type of harmonious, disciplined, group power, which must be injected into social work.

Originating in the west the community organization is spreading rapidly. It has in its head social intelligence. It has in its heart social power. It has in its whole being the strength to grapple successfully with the present problems of social reconstruction.

Yet, being new, it is feared. There are those who regard it as a blatant usurper. There are those who think of it as an autocrat in sackcloth garb. There are those who fear it will disturb their own tenure of little power. And there are those who fear that it will take the emotionalism that tickles their nerves out of the scheme of charity.

We must silence these natural fears, for community organization is not a monster designed to give over to the enemies of social progress the body of social work. Let us, therefore, consider it in its historic setting and in its relation to the present scheme of such organization as philanthropy has.

To understand this fully it is necessary for us to go back and to trace quickly the growth of social work in America, which began in a time when the nation was settled only in the east and when life even there was largely rural. Social knowledge and the means of acquiring and spreading social knowledge were not extensive; and the thing which we have named the social conscience, that dynamo driving our professional wheels and belts, was hardly yet awake. Altogether our forerunners in social work began in an era when American society had not been forced into ‘cohesion, and in a land and time where the doctrine of unrestrained competitive individualism was in the hey day of its revelry.

In this misty era, which seems so remote to us now, the spiritual life of the people concerned itself with individual morality, the winning of a pleasant personal existence after death, salvation of the heathen, and personal service and charity. This ideal of personal service and charity was the closest approach to a social conscience. It was founded for the most part in religion, and its exercise was a duty to be performed either directly by the person himself, or through the church as his agent. It was represented in action by the charitable societies and institutions of the church, especially of the Catholic Church. Such agencies formed the nucleus of that large body of church societies, hospitals, homes, and other institutions which we see today representing many denominations and dotting all of the communities of America.

In addition to the church agencies there was another well defined group of institutions in our early society. These were exemplified by the poorhouse, a very early American institution for the care of various groups of dependents; the jail and a few prisons to house delinquents; a children’s home here and there; an occasional school for the blind or the deaf; and a few similar institutions. They were supported for the most part from the public treasury. They formed the beginnings from which has grown the great body of present day state and municipal welfare service.

The relief giving societies of the church, large in number, were also supplemented by similar societies either independent in operation or attached to some fraternal organization.

It was mainly an attempt to reduce excessive competition among these, to eliminate imposture by relief seekers, and to introduce the fundamentals of what has since become known as case-work that lead Robert Hartley and his associates into their attack upon social problems as they saw them and in particular upon poverty; which later grew indirectly perhaps into great proportions as the charity organization or family welfare branch of social work. Contemporaneously with Hartley’s efforts, or possibly a little preceding them, another set of people began efforts towards prison reform and the aid of prisoners starting another line of effort which led eventually into another great branch of social work, modern humanized penology that concerns itself not only with improved institutional treatment of delinquents, but also with probation work and other forms of individual outdoor treatment of the offender.

Between these early groups, laying the background of our now very extensive work was a common tie of a common humanity. But aside from this mutual ideal each went their ways separately, organizing their works apart from the others. They revolved about three different centers, the church, the state, and private societies.

As time went on bringing changing conditions, the expansion of industry and commerce with their attendant problems, and a gradual enlargement of medical, penological, sociological, and economic knowledge various other social problems began to batter at the consciousness of the people. So there came following one year after another a series of new attacks upon new emerging social difficulties. Institutions for the insane and the feeble-minded expanded the public institutional field laying the foundation again for a specialized group of those interested in the problems of mental hygiene.

Home finding societies for dependent children and agencies to fight neglect of the helpless little ones, began to supplement and did, in some instances, replace the orphanages and children’s homes and the almshouses as a place for children. A large cohesive group of workers specializing in the care of children gradually emerged from this.

The development of medicine brought a whole chain of new agencies for new attacks upon new problems. Hospitals appeared; a visiting nurses group; a hospital social service; dispensaries; a fight against infant mortality; a crusade against tuberculosis; and the end is not yet in sight.

In the course of time the social settlement appeared out of which has grown various types of educational work, the great recreational movement, and the Americanization effort.

Societies for promoting economic readjustments developed, such as the fight on child labor, the safety movement, and struggle for social insurance.

Time does not permit mentioning all the different channels into which the vigorous leaven of the new social ideas has pushed the forces of social work. Enough has been cited to show how and why the expanding structure of this new and not yet very well defined social service was naturally organized in little groups around separate fields and around separate problems.

Several points in this development are worth stressing for a complete understanding of the situation which history has handed out for the community organizer to break his lance upon.

One is that we have several distinctive lines of approach to similar problems which have not been very sympathetic to one another. There is the church or religious approach which promptly subdivides itself into Catholic and Protestant with entirely different motives. There is the state or public approach which has again quite another motive from either of the church groups. There is the racial approach, represented best by the Jewish charities. And finally there is the segregated individual approach which is far more personal in character than any of the others except the racial.

Another point is that most of these segregated individual movements arose first in some single locality, spreading out later to other places spasmodically, and only as a few persons in each place caught the idea sometimes quite hazily. Only after a series of communities had established the same form of service did a national organization of that specialty arise. The net result is a lack of standard processes and an uneven quality.

Still another comment is that many types of service frequently demand more than one agency or institution of the same kind in a community. Settlements, clinics, orphanages, and hospitals are examples of institutions so limited in capacity or by geographical usefulness that several may exist in the same area of population.

And finally we have to recognize that the majority of social workers and board members are not social thinkers. They come at their work looking at a single problem, and not at the social structure, or more frequently yet, looking at a few poor, or sick, or helpless individuals, and not at the community structure. Add to this the extreme individualism of Americans and we find a partial explanation for two settlements nestling close to each other in the same block.

We have then a historic setting to social work, wherever social work is fairly well started, which presents to the person with a community wide vision and a community sense, a situation somewhat as follows. He sees the field already laid out, not on a logical or a modern efficiency basis, but upon a basis of unrelated functional division, each function revolving about an attempt to solve some specific problem. He sees it complicated by religious, racial, political, and personal motivation. He sees that institutions were located geographically not with an idea to distributing service to all parts of a community according to need, but largely by accident. He sees social workers and board members, wrapped up in institutions, case work, dispensaries, feeble-mindedness, all the constituent parts of social work, but not in social work. He sees the group upon whom he must most rely critical of everyone’s work but their own, wonderfully strong in their personal approach, and thoroughly undisciplined in mass action.

He finds that this existing system of organization by motives, by persons, and by problems, until it is supplemented by community organization, and community consciousness, creates waste of human resources and human lives. It generates friction which causes loss of power to the whole system. It breeds littleness of vision and littleness of action. It is the father of prejudice and confusion. It is the mother of selfishness in the house of generosity.

Yet in the face of all this that he sees, the community organizer if he is wise takes the situation as he finds it and attempts, not to destroy what has been done, or to do it all over again, but to accept the conflicting motives and personalities, to treat it with human understanding, and to organize it as it stands. For in spite of the fact that what we have described is really a sort of organized social work. it presents nevertheless a disorganized community.

The community organizer admits at once that the method of growth by organized problems with their three approaches, church, state, and personal, was logical for the times and was the best way to obtain a certain amount of progress. He goes further and admits that this same type of functional organization must be continued, only it must in the future be worked into harmony and be planned and controlled by a community consciousness. One of the approaches to the average intelligence is by specialization, and the human emotion is aroused more often than not by accident. The busy person accidentally discovering a tuberculous child and aroused thereby rallies to a tuberculosis crusade, and by specializing upon this simple problem maintains his interest. The community organizer also recognizes the dominance of religious and racial motives and traditions, and admits without question their rights to a place in the field.

The intention of the new community organization therefore is not to supplant the old but to strengthen and to supplement it. It aims to gather all of these specialized agencies with their different approaches and conflicting personalities together into a single community-wide co-operative society, with the purposes of creating a feeling of comradeship among them, of eliminating waste, of reducing friction, of strengthening them all, of planning new ventures in the light of the organized information held by all, of swinging them in a solid front in one attack after another upon the pressing and urgent needs of the hours. It says to a Protestant, “We know you are a Protestant and have a right to be one. That man there is a Catholic and has a right to be one. And that man there is a Jew and has a right to be proud of that. Stick to the points in your work where race and religion tell you to differ from others but admit the others’ right to do the same and remember always that you are all of one clay, American citizens in this American community, and wherever you can do it without sacrifice of principle, work and plan as one.”

It is the generation of this harmony about points of agreement, of this tolerance about points of disagreement and of this spirit of camaraderie that enables the new community organization to pool common functions of the various problem, religious and racial groups. Joint money raising is not difficult with such understandings as these, joint surveys, joint conferences, joint efforts at standard raising, joint defences of public agencies from political attack, and joint- demands for improved social laws and law enforcement.

One of the weakest points of the old structure is an inadequate public attention. Nothing less than complete friendly attention by all the population in a community should be the goal of social work. Without modern organization methods this cannot be approximated. Without its approximation the social worker’s leadership of ideas in the reconstruction period is futile. Yet through community organization it has been and it can be attained. Community organization does more than knit agencies together. It knits people, multitudes of people, about the agencies. It adds bands of volunteer salesmen. It adds bands of volunteer advertisers. Together with the old groups these new and virile people advertise and sell the wares and the ideas of social service into the most remote corners of a city.

Again community organization is not an attempt to change the focus of attention on special problems through existing agencies and motives and personalities. Instead it aims to keep this focus, while it adds another, through which all problems in a community are reviewed together in their relationships, through the concentrated lens of all the agencies. It pools many visions into one great synthetic view.

Finally the results achieved where real community action is secured are not new results, but larger results and more satisfactory. This is now demonstrated beyond question in such great centers as Cleveland, Cincinnati and Detroit.

To return to our starting point we are confronted with the task of giants. Giants really live today as they did not in ancient times. They are not solitary men and women though. They are great living organizations of many men and women, harmonious and disciplined to act together for great purposes. Foch is a great man but not a giant. Yet the Council of Versailles in creating an inter-allied organized harmonious army under his direction created a giant that was irresistible. And so must we act. Social workers cannot longer remain pigmies to be bowled over by a blade of grass. We must group ourselves into harmony of action until we have become one of these modern giants strong, triumphant, and irresistible in our progress for a better society.

* Norton, William J., (1883-1975) — William J. Norton, a social worker, was born in Maine, April 8, 1883. After graduating from Bowdoin College, he entered settlement work in Brooklyn, New York and later Cleveland, Ohio. In the period 1913-1917, he organized the Cincinnati Council of Social Agencies; and Community Union and Detroit Community Fund. In 1929, he became executive vice president of the Children’s Fund of Michigan, a post he held until the dissolution of the fund in 1954. During the Depression he also served as chairman of the Detroit Emergency Relief Commission (1931), as chairman of the Michigan Emergency Welfare Relief Commission (1933-1938). Norton was also president of Oakland Housing Inc., a low income housing project originally funded by James Couzens and the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. After the 1943 Detroit race riot, Norton was appointed chairman of the Mayor’s Interracial Commission. Other governmental and private social welfare posts he held included president of the National Conference of Social Work (1928); trustee of the McGregor fund; chairman of the Detroit Chapter of the American Red Cross (1944-1945); chairman of the Michigan State Hospital Commission (1938-1945) and chairman of the Michigan Department of Mental Health (1945-1947). Norton died in 1975.

Source: Proceedings of The National Conference Of Social Work Formerly, National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Forty-Sixth Annual Session Held in Atlantic City, New Jersey June 1-8. 1919. pp. 656-670

The post Community Organization Movement appeared first on Social Welfare History Project.

Editor’s Note:  This description of the history of the Child Welfare League of America was prepared by the staff of the Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) grew out of child welfare advocates’ demands for better communication and regulation among agencies and institutions serving children. Its development over more than a decade reflected the gradual professionalization of social work in the early twentieth century and paralleled a period of growing emphasis on the issues of dependent children, child protection, and related problems. During the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, delegates cited the need for a national child welfare agency. At the 1915 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Carl Christian Carstens delivered a paper on the need for standards in child welfare work. In response, delegates from fourteen child welfare organizations founded the Bureau for the Exchange of Information among Child Helping Agencies (BEI). Initially, the BEI operated with funding from the Child-Helping Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. It became an independent agency in 1917.

In December, 1919, attendees at an annual child welfare conference decided to establish a national organization and to seek funding for the project. In 1920, the Commonwealth Fund agreed to provide at least $25,000 per year for four years. The

Carl Christian Carstens, Executive Director
1920 – 1939

BEI accepted the grant and the mission to establish a national child welfare organization to improve children’s services and distribute literature. The Bureau’s members adopted the first article of a proposed constitution in 1920, calling the new organization the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). Carstens was appointed executive director in 1920, a post he held until his death in 1939. The CWLA officially began operations in January, 1921. Organizational details were completed at that year’s National Conference of Social Work. Sixty-five organizations, representing a wide range of principles and practices, became charter members. Ida Curry of the State Charities Aid Association of New York was elected the first president.

In 1923, CWLA adopted a statement of purpose and formalized the services it would provide. These included: studying child welfare in order to develop better standards and methods; providing information and assistance to social welfare agencies and non-social service groups; and promoting community planning for children’s work. The organization took a position on the long-standing debate over institutionalizing and “placing out” of dependent children. Standards promulgated by the CWLA stressed temporary rather than permanent institutional care for dependent children and the preservation of the family. At the same time, the CWLA recognized the continuing need for children’s institutions in the total child care system. In order to improve the institutional system, it conducted surveys of child care facilities and developed standards and guidelines. In 1924, CWLA established a children’s case work department and, by the end of the decade, it was conducting regional conferences for workers in the field and holding training institutes for executives and experienced staff workers.

Following Carstens’ death in 1939, CWLA went through a period of self-evaluation. It established a Special Committee on Reorganization to study its mission in light of emerging government programs. The committee also studied whether the League should disband. In 1940, CWLA affirmed its commitment to national work in all areas of child welfare and stressed the importance of maintaining a major non-governmental agency. The reorganization committee proposed continuing the league’s information exchange, as well as its accrediting and consulting services. It also recommended: establishing a personnel placement bureau, preparing materials for social work training in child welfare, setting standards, promoting child welfare legislation and advising agencies on legislation, and advocating for child welfare issues. Howard W. Hopkirk succeeded Carstens as executive director and served until 1948. Continuity in leadership remained a hallmark of the League. Hopkirk’s successor, Joseph Reid, was executive director from 1953 until 1978. Major reevaluation of League activities accompanied administrative transitions in 1939 to 1940 and in 1953 to 1955 as the CWLA reshaped its program to meet members’ needs and changes in child welfare programs.

Howard W. Hopkirk, Executive Director of the Child Welfare League of America
1939-1948

CWLA operated on an increasingly national level throughout the 1930s and subsequent decades. The league developed ties with governmental agencies, such as the United States Children’s Bureau, and added new program areas, including adoption, minority children, and day care. During World War II, it assumed the work and concerns of the National Association of Day Nurseries in promoting day care for children of working mothers. Work in this field continued to grow after the war, often in concert with the Children’s Bureau and with organized labor. A Ford Foundation grant in 1959 underwrote an important nationwide study of day care. A CWLA study of adoption culminated in a conference in 1955. In the late 1950s, the League worked with member agencies to find adoptive homes for Native American children. In the mid-1960s, it developed a clearing house that subsequently became the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (ARENA). It continued to promote foster care and emphasize the need to avoid placement in an institution, particularly of young children. Research became an increasingly vital part of the League’s total program, as indicated by the creation of a separate research department in 1963.

The institution of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and other federal welfare programs during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in an enlarged research, program development, and advocacy role for CWLA. A committee studied needed improvements in public child care agencies. The League also took particular interest in Aid to Dependent Children, investigating a 1960 incident involving Louisiana’s administration of the program and later joining in an amicus curiae brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case. The CWLA also played an important role in the development of child protective services and in federal legislation aimed at child abuse and neglect. .

During the early 1970s, the CWLA and the Family Service Association of America investigated the possibility of a merger, but, ultimately, decided against the plan. In 1976, CWLA merged with the Florence Crittenton Association of America, a federation of maternity homes and services for unmarried parents. From this merger, the Florence Crittenton Division of the Child Welfare League of America was formed. The League was also instrumental in founding the Council on Accreditation for Services for Families and Children (COA) between 1973 and 1976. The COA, which operated briefly as a joint body of CWLA and the Family Service Association of America, became an independent entity in 1977. CWLA continues to produce standards and other resources, conduct research, facilitate information sharing, and influence public policy and legislation in virtually all areas of child and family welfare, juvenile justice, and children’s behavioral health

Sources for this summary history draw upon:

• Child Welfare League of America Records, 1900-2003, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
• Romanofsky, Peter, ed. Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Institutions: Social Service Organizations . Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 1978. pp. 224-230.
• Gardner, Emily. “The History of the Child Welfare League of America, Inc., 1915-1987″ Unpublished manuscript in the Child Welfare League of America Records, Box 93.
• Additional information was obtained from the Child Welfare League of America website (http://www.cwla.org)

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THE HISTORY OF THE CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, INC.

 1915 – 1920

Beginnings of the League:

The League had its beginning at the time of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (later known as the National Conference of Social Work) in Baltimore in 1915, when a group of executives from approximately 25 children’s agencies met together for the purpose of exchanging information and discussing the needs of the child-caring field. Out of this brief discussion came a cooperative association of child-caring agencies known as the Bureau for the Exchange of Information Among Child Helping Agencies.

In those early days, Dr. Henry W. Thurston (Instructor in Child Welfare of the New York School of Social Work) served as Chairman of the Bureau’s Executive Committee of which Dr. Hastings H. Hart of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York; Cheney c. Jones of the Cleveland Humane Society; George L. Jones, Superintendent of the Children’s Aid Society of Baltimore; Wilfred S. Reynolds, Superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society; and C. C. Carstens, Executive Secretary of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Boston were the other members.

In 1918, and later, Miss H. Ida Curry, Superintendent, State Charities Aid Association, New York;* Mr. Marcus C. Fagg, Superintendent, Children’s Home Society of Florida, Jacksonville; Mr. John P. Sanderson, Jr., Executive Secretary, Connecticut Children’s Aid Society; and Dr. Frederic E. Knight, Superintendent of the New England Home for Little Wanderers**, Boston were added to the Executive Committee. Miss Curry, in 1918, was elected Chairman.

Carl Christian Carstens, First Executive Director of the CWLA

On December 30, 1920 (at the conclusion of the Christmas Conference held at the Russell Sage Foundation Building in New York), the Bureau for the Exchange of Information met and the Constitution was presented. Article I was adopted as follows: “The name – The name of this organization shall be the Child Welfare League of America.” The rest of the constitution was held over for action at the next Annual Meeting to be held in Milwaukee, June 24, 1921. It was at the June meeting that a Constitution was adopted, and an Executive Committee and officers were elected.   H. Ida Curry was elected the first President of the Board of Directors of the new, unincorporated, Child Welfare League of America. Wilfred S. Reynolds, Vice-President; Miss Georgia G. Ralph (Department of Child Welfare, New York School of Philanthropy) Secretary; and Dr. Frederic H. Knight, Treasurer. The Russell Sage Foundation generously offered temporary office space for the League in its building at 130 East 22nd Street, New York, and on January 2, 1921, the Child Welfare League of America began functioning as a going concern with C. C. Carstens as its Director.

The Problems of Administering and Financing the Bureau:

For two years, from its beginning in 1915, the work of the Bureau had been carried on entirely by the bounty of the Child-Helping Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, which gave not only the half-time service of the Foundation’s secretary, Mr. C. Spencer Richardson, but defrayed all office and clerical expenses, including the publication of two editions of the Directory.

At the second annual meeting in Pittsburgh in June 1917, the future financing and administering of the Bureau was discussed. It was the sense of the meeting that as soon as practicable the Bureau should realize a logical and desirable development by becoming self-supporting and employing the full time service of a chosen chief executive, but that owing to the unusual financial demands upon children’s organizations due to the war, it was inadvisable to raise the question of a budget necessary for an independent organization at that time. The Russell Sage Foundation expressed its willingness to continue its service to the Bureau for a third year, but heartily supported the idea of complete financial independence for the Bureau. The membership voted, therefore, that the Executive Committee consider the question of a membership fee and report upon the advisability of this at the next annual meeting.

Scope of the Work the Bureau Hoped to Undertake:

It had been clearly demonstrated to the Bureau that some of the methods appropriate and effective in the care of children handicapped by destitution, neglect, lack of education or training, or in danger of becoming delinquent could also apply to “normal” children living in their own homes. The Bureau considered that it would be quite within its scope to awaken the interests of parents, schools, and citizens in making such methods more universally understood and in applying them more widely.

As larger resources would become available, the Bureau considered that it might well undertake certain lines of research (not otherwise provided for) which by reason of the Bureau’s strategic relationship to its member agencies would be peculiarly adapted to carry out. As a further contribution to the field of research, the Bureau would expect to encourage the kind of introspection by agencies themselves which would yield material of value to the field as a whole.

 _____________________________________________

Notes:

* Of which Mr. Homer Folks had once been Superintendent.

** Dr. Knight served as the first Treasurer of CWLA. He died suddenly in October 22 by complications following surgery for ptomaine poisoning, and Cheney C. Jones, in 1923, became Superintendent of the New England Home for Little Wanderers.

* ** The NCHWA was founded as the American Education Aid Society (AEAS) in 1883 in Bloomington, Illinois by Martin Van Buren Van Arsdale who had been trained as a minister, and who died in 1893. The Illinois Charter allowed the organization to find foster homes for destitute and dependent children.  By 1892, the organization had 10 state agencies which strengthed the home finding work. Each state had a board of directors of church and prominent community leaders, and now called itself the National Children’s Home Society (NCHS). Agents of the society traveled to communities soliciting funds, searching for orphaned children, and finding foster homes. The agents kept one-half of their solicitations as salaries, which earned a well-deserved outcry and criticism of the NCHS, particularly from the eastern social work circles. Nevertheless, the organization flourished in the midwest because the state services in Illinois did not include child placing, and NCHS through its work helped keep children out of almshouses – which was an important practice. By the mid 1890′s, Rev. Hastings Hart became the Superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society, and was a leading advocate for professional work.  Due to many developments, the structure of NCHS was improved and considered the national leader in home finding work. It was voiced by some at the 1915 Annual Conference of Social Work in Baltimore that NCHS might be the national agency in the field the child-care workers were hoping for.  But by 1920, when the Bureau for the Exchange of Information became the aggressive leader in the field, many NCHS state agencies joined the League. Nonetheless, NCHWA (which.changed its name in 1917) survived feebly as a national child care agency.

 Source: Child Welfare League of America Files, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Library. More information is available at: http://special.lib.umn.edu/

For additional and more current information visit: www.cwla.org/

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Zilpha Drew Smith (1852-1926) – Pioneer in the Charity Organization Movement and Early Social Work Educator

Introduction: Zilpha Drew Smith was a pioneering social worker in the late 19th century.  She served as the general secretary of the Associated Charities of Boston from 1886 to 1903. Under her guidance Boston’s charity network was skillfully organized and efficiently run. She developed and tested the method of using volunteer friendly visitors, an essential component of the charity organization movement. Smith stressed the importance of district committees of Associated Charities supervising and assisting friendly visitors.  She also encouraged the volunteers to aspire to being board members and to sponsor, support and participate actively in other community services.

Using her experiences, Smith developed some of the earliest training materials for staff training courses.  For example, in 1888, Miss Smith organized the Monday Evening Club, an association of charity workers.  Three years later she organized training classes for the professional staff of Associated Charities.  After her retirement from Associated Charities, Smith accepted an academic position in the newly established Boston School of Social Work providing her the opportunity to share her experience and training materials with aspiring social workers.

Career:  Zilpha Drew Smith was born January 25, 1852 in Pembroke, Massachusetts.  She was the third of six children of Judith Winsor (nee McLauthlin) and Silvanus Smith.  When she was still young her family moved to East Boston, where her father, a skilled craftsman in shipbuilding, established a shipyard. Her family instilled in her the basic values of the Protestant ethic and nurtured her interest in social service.  Zilpha Smith’s mother was engaged in a number of reform efforts such as temperance, religious tolerance and woman suffrage.

In 1868, Zilpha Smith graduated from Boston Girl’s School and soon became a telegrapher in the Commercial Telegraph Office in Boston.  While working, she contributed her time as a volunteer in the Cooperative Society, a local relief organization. She then had the opportunity to be a government clerk, and given the assignment to reorganize the index of the Probate Court of Suffolk County. In 1879, Smith was hired to lead the office staff in the newly founded Associated Charities of Boston.  In 1884, she was asked to become the director of the registration bureau.  This was also the year when Smith gave her first presentation about friendly visiting at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections held in St. Louis, Missouri. In her presentation, Smith described how her agency was attempting to organize the various charities in the Boston community by enlisting the cooperation of the churches, public services, philanthropists and other relief organizations. The purpose of this effort and its initial structure was described in her 1884 presentation:

“…The Charities of Boston are associated for two purposes:

First, to exchange information privately between charities interested in the same family, through the records and written reports of the central office; and

Second, to secure personal consultations on general subjects and about particular families.”

 The records of the central office for the last year concerned nearly 11,000 families.

At the general conferences for the discussion of broad questions, there is usually a fair representation from the various charities of the city; but, as few charities divide their work by districts, it is impossible for those working throughout the city to be represented at each of the fourteen district conference meetings which are held each week. Consultations between the charities about individual families, therefore, must usually be brought about by our visitors or agents, who go from one person to another of those interested in a family, until we are possessed of full knowledge concerning it, and can act upon the advice received or give advice in our turn.

We are not a relief society. Under our by-laws, we can hold no fund for relief; and we believe that in Boston our society is better off without one. We are on the best of terms with almost all the relief-giving societies and agencies, and the number of those co-operating with us has increased constantly.

We now have over 600 volunteer visitors, who visit about 1,400 families. As a rule, these volunteers are not almsgivers. The conferences and the visitors possess various degrees of efficiency, but many of them are very successful. Were the visitors left to them selves, a large proportion of their work would be weak and fruitless, and perhaps given up entirely. It is of the organization of our district conferences, which strengthen and encourage the work of friendly visitors, that I wish especially to speak.

When we began, five years since, each conference was allowed to work its own way out, under the general plan of hearing reports of visitors at the conference meetings, and acting upon them there. As the number of families in our care increased, it was found that all the visitors could not be heard, and that each family needed more study than could be given in a conference meeting. Various plans were tried; and the one I now describe, proving the most successful, has been adopted by nearly all our larger conferences, and by smaller ones also, except that the work:of the case committee is by them included in that of the executive committee….”

In 1886, Smith was appointed general secretary of the Associated Charities of Boston and formally launched her professional career in the charity organization movement and social work education.  Under her leadership, Associated Charities was successful in bringing together most of the charities and relief organizations operating in Boston.  Building on the skills she learned earlier, Smith organized a central file of families being served, a system of district offices, paid agents and volunteer friendly visitors. In an 1887 presentation at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Charities held in Omaha, Nebraska, Smith described aspects of the relationship among committees, volunteer visitors and paid agents doing the service of Associated Charities:

 ”…Who shall do this personal work? I think the Committee must bear the responsibility of enlisting visitors and keeping them interested. A wise Committee becomes familiar with the condition of the families visited, shows a constant interest in the visitor’s work, gives information and suggestions, urges the visitor to use his ingenuity, and encourages him to keep on, neither deserting his family when discouraged nor deeming himself of no use when they are prosperous. When a Committee does all this, visitors are glad to bring from time to time fresh recruits to a service they have found helpful and inspiring.

Let the Committee, on the other hand, act chiefly as an adviser of its paid agent, and decide what shall be done in the crises which poverty brings, without any long looks ahead to see what preventive measures may be initiated now, or be led away by general schemes to the neglect of individual work, expecting that each visitor will go on for himself after a family has been assigned to him, and the number of visitors will steadily diminish.

One who holds only the position of a visitor can help to convert a committee which fails on the friendly side of the work, if patient, good-tempered, and in earnest in the desire to strengthen the work of the Conference. Written reports which include direct questions as to the problems in hand and which require an answer make the Committee think about the visitor’s work. They become interested in the constantly changing problem of the family, and the experience gained in one case enables them to offer suggestions to other visitors….”

Smith retired from Associated Charities in 1903 and almost immediately moved into an academic position as the assistant director of the newly established Boston School of Social Work.  Smith’s extensive experience with Associated Charities had convinced her that volunteer charity workers would benefit from some level of professional training.  It was her view that friendly visiting (or case work investigation) demanded the skills of an investigator combined with the objectivity and precision of the social scientist.  She believed that professionally trained charity workers would be better able to help their families but also prepared to educate and inform the courts, legislators and the public.

Zilpha Smith retired in 1918 and died in Boston in 1926.

References:

Encyclopedia of Social Work, 17^th Issue, Vol. 2, 1977. National Association of Social Workers, Washington, D.C. pp. 1272-1273.

Biographical Dictionary of Social Welfare in America, Walter I. Trattner, Editor, 1986. Greenwood Press, Westport, Ct. pp. 681-683.

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 By Zilpha D. Smith

General Secretary, Associated Charities of Boston

Editor’s Note: This is the third entry about Friendly Visitors, an important component of the Charity Organization Movement.  This entry is a presentation delivered by Ms. Smith at the 1887 annual meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. As noted in her biography, Ms. Smith, as a very young woman, had the opportunity to reorganize the index of the Probate Court of Suffolk County, an experience which allowed her to further develop her organizing abilities as well as the capacity to analyze a problem with methodical skill. These traits contributed significantly to her successful career.

I have gathered together in this paper the points which seem to me most important or successful in the relations of our different district conferences in Boston to their visitors; and, if I dwell on little things, it is because I have seen friendly visiting fully successful only where a committee has been patient with details and has recognized their bearing upon the broad lines of our work.

The means used to get visitors may be divided into mechanical and personal. The mechanical means are:- putting brief, pointed appeals in the newspapers, placing placards in the rooms of Christian associations and divinity schools, reading short notices in churches and public meeting anand printing annual reports. A notice read in church will attract more attention if the minister adds a word of his own. A newspaper item asking for a visitor who can speak a certain foreign language almost always brings one or two volunteers; and what better tie between strangers in our land and the friend they find here than a knowledge of their native tongue?

While much may be accomplished by mechanical means, all our conferences agree that personal work is still more effective. Most of our new workers are secured by those already interested. Sometimes it is a help to take to a possible visitor written sketches of a few families, which emphasize their good points as well as their bad ones and tell what a visitor might do.

They who refer families to us can in some cases be secured as visitors; and, as this continues an interest already aroused, it is a natural and helpful arrangement.

Those who are invited to attend the meetings, or asked to help in the clerical work, may in the end become visitors. Either plan brings them under the influence of the Conference, and allows the work they hear about to make its own persuasive impression.

All these methods are worth trying,- the mechanical ones at judicious intervals, the personal in different directions at every opportunity.

Who shall do this personal work? I think the Committee must bear the responsibility of enlisting visitors and keeping them interested. A wise Committee becomes familiar with the condition of the families visited, shows a constant interest in the visitor’s work, gives information and suggestions, urges the visitor to use his ingenuity, and encourages him to keep on, neither deserting his family when discouraged nor deeming himself of no use when they are prosperous. When a Committee does all this, visitors are glad to bring from time to time fresh recruits to a service they have found helpful and inspiring.

Let the Committee, on the other hand, act chiefly as an adviser of its paid agent, and decide what shall be done in the crises which poverty brings, without any long looks ahead to see what preventive measures may be initiated now, or be led away by general schemes to the neglect of individual work, expecting that each visitor will go on for himself after a family has been assigned to him, and the number of visitors will steadily diminish.

One who holds only the position of a visitor can help to convert a committee which fails on the friendly side of the work, if patient, good-tempered, and in earnest in the desire to strengthen the work of the Conference. Written reports which include direct questions as to the problems in hand and which require an answer make the Committee think about the visitor’s work. They become interested in the constantly changing problem of the family, and the experience gained in one case enables them to offer suggestions to other visitors.

Visitors, however, rarely try to improve a committee’s plan or have patience to continue to submit questions, if, in return, they receive no helpful suggestions. So it is to members of committees that we naturally look for a change in methods. One member can accomplish much by patient effort,- by bringing up problems about his own families, by keeping watch of other visitors, and bringing before the Committee questions which these visitors have not asked, because they were too shy or too ignorant of the relations of their work. And, when the right time comes, he will find it easy to introduce a system which shall make sure that no visitor or family is neglected. An earnest member of the Committee who is willing to sow seed through one year is pretty sure to reap a harvest of more visitors and better work the next.

Given a committee very much in earnest, whom do they want for visitors? At first, those who would pretty surely work well together; after that, persons of as varied training and interests as possible,men and women both. Don’t shut the door against the men by calling yourselves “women visitors.” If young women offer, don’t refuse them, but set them to work. At least, let them help at the office, and be sent on special errands to the better sort of dwellings, to the hospitals, etc., till the Committee can judge whether they have the character and courage to fit them for visiting; for it is character, and not age, which decides the question. It is a pity to lose the power of youth. It is only to the young girl that the sad old woman says: “You bring sunshine into my life. You make me think of what I used to be.”

Having got the first visitors, how shall we keep them? Visitors feel the attitude of the Conference and Committee toward them, and are attracted or repelled by it. I have seen visitors’ meetings where the Committee only, and not the visitors, had votes; others where the visitors never saw the directors of the district, although bound by their decisions. I did not wonder that the number of visitors was small.

The true idea, as it seems to me, is that all form one company of workers, who meet to be of service to each other, the Committee being those fitted by experience, leisure, or administrative ability to render the greatest help to other visitors. Their power of leadership will grow out of their helpfulness, and does not inhere in their position.* (*Occasional joint Conferences of District Committees broaden their views. The history of a typical case, with pauses for discussion where a decision was needed, has proved a helpful basis for such meetings.)

It creates sympathy if the members of the Committee are themselves visitors. There are some wise exceptions to this rule; but no amount of desultory work-taking up cases in emergencies, etc.can fit one as well for committee work as continued visiting to one or two families, learning to know them thoroughly and standing by them to the end. If one can add the emergency work, it is better, but by no means omit the continuous visiting.

The visitor should be helped to feel his double responsibility, toward the poor family because it needs his thought and interest, and toward the Conference because he is acting in its behalf.

Another point in keeping visitors is to prevent their getting into difficulties. One of the most dangerous, because it is so subtle, is the giving of relief. The visitor is likely, if he gives aid himself, to be satisfied with that, and lose sight of the real aim of his work. The poor family catches its cue from him,- looks upon him merely as an alms-giver; and very soon he gives up in disgust, and leaves the work, with an opinion of the poor which they do not deserve; he drew out the lower qualities in them. Do not let the visitor give from his own pocket to his own family, but get relief, if really necessary and wise, or show him how to get it, and make sure that it is prompt and adequate, and accomplishes something more than temporary relief from suffering. After several years, when a friendship is fully established, help may perhaps come from the visitor as from a personal friend; but, even then, be cautious.

Sometimes, a visitor will ask approval and help in an unwise plan for his family. When he cannot be convinced that some other method is better, and no serious harm to the family is likely to follow, he may well be allowed to try his own way, with the understanding that it is an experiment to be watched. But there is danger in weak concession to a visitor, simply to keep and encourage him. In undertaking co-operative work, he of course agrees to abide by the decision of the majority; and he will respect the work more, if we are true to our convictions. Indeed, a visitor often realizes that his own nearness to the family sometimes warps his judgment.

The visitor hopes to form a permanent relation; but if, at first, there is some obvious charity work to be done, such as obtaining relief, attention in sickness, getting work, etc., there is danger of his making no tie with the family which will hold when that emergency is passed. The Committee can prevent this by suggesting some simple ways of discovering their tastes,- as by the gift of a flower, the loan of a book, playing games with the children, reading to the old father, an arrangement for some slight pleasure with the visitor, which will let them see that he really cares for them as persons, and not merely as sick or poor. When there is no emergency at first, the Committee can suggest ways of finding the slight excuse which each of the first five or six visits needs. When one must wait a long time before opportunity comes for some most needed action, suggestions of other sorts of work to be done for the family will keep the visitor from growing impatient or down-hearted. It may seem an odd way to help a visitor, but it sometimes works in such a time of waiting,- to persuade him to take another family, where something may be accomplished more quickly. And, in general, it seems wise to give a new visitor two families. The contrast between them helps to keep him interested in both.

Volunteers sometimes lose patience, because other duties prevent their doing all they wish for their poor friends. The committee can help by finding another visitor to aid in an emergency, by asking a gentleman to help a lady in some one part of the work, or vice versa.  But here, again, be careful not to go too far in relieving the visitor’s responsibility for the family, else he loses his interest, and you lose him.

The meetings of visitors, rightly managed, are a great power of education. In these meetings and in talking or writing to visitors, details should not be allowed to hide the principles on which the work rests. The principles should be discussed and the reasons for them given again and again, as new visitors come to the meetings or as new knowledge invites a change of policy.

If visitors report to the agent during the week, the Committee can consider all the cases beforehand, and bring to the Conference those only which are of chief importance for such a meeting, the visitor, of course, being drawn into the discussion. A general opportunity at the beginning and end of the meeting for any visitor to bring up a special case does away with the necessity of calling on each visitor in turn,- a practice which crowds the business and drives away visitors who will not speak before others.

If, as each case is brought up, no matter how well known to constant attendants, some member of the Committee interrupts to say, “This is a widow, struggling with the care of five children, the youngest a cripple,” etc., the problem will be much clearer to all present, and the discussion, therefore, more likely to bring out suggestions. Otherwise, the visitor gives but a divided attention to stories whose full purport he does not comprehend, and is apt to leave as soon as his own problem has been as vaguely discussed.

The Committee should make the visitor feel that, if he is doing his own work with reasonable thoroughness, even for but one or two families, it means that he knows eight or ten individual lives, and many questions will arise in the Conference where his counsel will be of value. Once make the visitor feel that he is really of use to others, and he is pretty sure to keep coming, if he can.

Let the aim be to make the meetings helpful, and they will be interesting. When the attempt is primarily to make them “interesting,” they are apt to degenerate into “entertaining”; and the earnest workers would rather spend their time in visiting.

But committees will ask, “Cannot our paid agent look after the visitors?” An agent alone cannot do much: he can help a great deal. An agent forms a fixed centre for the work, knows the families, – as he has made the first investigation, —is familiar with the policy of the Committee, and at hand for all emergencies and for consultation with the individual visitor about details. He can persuade those who refer families to become visitors, but otherwise he has little opportunity for securing new workers. Once when I asked an agent about this, she answered, ” No: I never got a visitor for our Committee, but I never lost them one.”

If the agent notices in his first visit the little things, especially the good points which the visitor can use in forming an acquaintance, and tries to get an idea of the family as people, and not merely as “a case,” he will be able, even if he never sees the family again, to talk them over with the visitor in a familiar way, which is not possible to any great extent in the Conference meetings. A prompt investigation outside of the home and careful keeping of records make the agent helpful to the visitors. He can show the volunteer clerks, who come for an hour or two a week, the use of the work they do, and inspire in them an interest in visiting. When they become visitors, he must have patience to teach the clerical work to new volunteers. He can discourage the poor people from coming to his office except in emergencies, going to them himself or sending the visitor; thus he makes his relation to them appear more friendly than official, while his office hours are reserved for consultations with the visitors.* (* In one district in Boston during the last year, a “daily committee” of one member of the executive committee and one visitor has met at the office during the office hours (II to i), helping the agent to decide what shall be done in emergencies, talking with the visitors who call, and considering all matters which have come up since the previous day. The more important are put aside, if possible, and marked to come up at the full committee or conference. The assignments to certain days bring the same persons to the office about once a fortnight. The experiment has so far proved successful, insuring prompt action, calling out new powers in visitors, etc. Next season, other conferences may try it; and it remains to be seen whether it will work as well under their conditions.) He can be careful to represent the Committee faithfully to the visitors, and the visitors to the Committee. He can learn from each visitor something that will help him to make suggestions to others. He can study the visitors, and suggest from time to time one who might be added to the Committee. He can propose new methods of work, and especially he can be patient with the visitors’ shortcomings. The results will repay him; for, although there may be more mistakes at first than if he worked alone, he can reach through the visitors a much larger number of people, and exercise a more constant influence over them, and there will be more successes in the end.

In the larger societies there is another paid worker,–the General Secretary,- who can also help on this work of friendly visiting. He has a view of the whole field, and can learn things from one district which will help another.

The General Secretary gets the drift of the work of a Conference from reading the reports of cases as they are sent to the central office; but we all know it is dangerous to judge by that alone. Good work is sometimes poorly reported. I should advise taking one district at a time, and attending all the meetings for a month or more, to learn just what is being done. This is much more fruitful than attending as many meetings at intervals. If he thinks the Conference needs improvement, let him help it along a little, and then watch it without trying to do the work himself. Discriminating praise and suggestions will help far more than criticism which provides no remedy. If he sees a committee content with routine work, he can look for some one among the visitors who always wants to know the why and wherefore, and, when the right time comes, suggest his election on the Committee, in the hope of stirring them to more thought in their work. Whatever the need and however near at hand the remedy may be, he must bide his time, often making his suggestions through others and waiting for the seed to take root. Forcing the matter would only make it worse.

A general secretary, like members of committees, will do better work if he is a volunteer visitor himself. I can testify that it gives a fresh interest to all one’s work. A family that can be visited on the way home does not take too much time, and one need not undertake another till the friendly relation is firmly established and less time is required.

After all, is it worth this trouble to get and keep visitors? I believe it is. Without this personal service, this man to man work, the most generous relief is inadequate, investigation fails to be truly helpful, and co-operation wants the connecting link that shall bring good results out of good intentions. Especially all these things,relief, investigation, co-operation,- excellent as they are, lack the power and even the opportunity of influencing character.

Note:  A profile of Zilpha Drew Smith can be found under the tab PEOPLE at www.socialwelfarehistory.org

Source: Proceedings of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, at the Fourteenth Annual Session Held In Omaha, Neb., August 25-31, I887. Files from Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Library. And University of Michigan: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

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