N.A.W.S.A.  Subject File  Abbott, Grace

                                                          LEADING ARTICLES OF THE MONTH                                            433
                                                          OUR SINS IN "PUBLICITY'S NAME
     "FRENCHMAN who do not understand the American newspaper get excited over finding from time to time articles or despatches that wound their national pride, and seem to menace the future of Franco-American friendship," begins M. G. Hanet-Archambault  in  the  Mercure de France of August 1st. "There is no need of taking these things in tragic earnest. It is well to study the situation before one acts." The explanation, and the key to the whole development of our journalism, is summed up in the title: " 'Publicity' in America."
     The author quotes, repeatedly, published utterances of Capt. Samuel T. Moore, ex-aviator and correspondent of the Associated Press, who illustrates thus the most mercenary phase of this new art: "A publicity house in Chicago has just accepted a contract to rise a hundred million dollars for a European country in distress: their commission will be 40 per cent." The Congressman who loses his reëlection, and publishes widely gratis, through the Congress Record, his new law partnership and place of business, is more harmless and amusing illustration. The elaborate staging in a New York City hotel of the arrival of a party of nine Turks, bent on recapturing the lovely "Maid of Stamboul," all merely an "ad" for the newest movie melodrama, is described with graphic detail.
     Quite a similar method was also used for so meritorious a cause as the Red Cross. Here the arrival in "Stamboul" of a live Russian princess, devoted to the discovery and rescue of an American war-hero and prisoner, is such a clever mixture of appealing romance, moderately fresh news, and loud trumpeting of the efficient aid every where given her by the U. S. A. Red Cross, that no newspaper can refuse to print it.
     And none of these are regular paid advertisements. The aim is always higher, at the "reading notice," the news columns, or even the editorial page.
     Everybody is in quest of it: cabinet ministers and administrations, political parties and private citizens, ironmasters and contractors, theaters and hotels, railroads and novelty shops, sportsmen's clubs and religious sects.
     A still blither view of ourselves as others see us is afforded in describing how far the up-to-date newspaper has strayed from its original function of gathering news and commenting editorially upon it. Gradually the effort to render the most direct special service to each reader has developed. Special departments undertake, through the columns of the paper or by private letters, "to give advice on legal questions, hygiene and medicine, to furnish sporting, financial, literary, musical, artistic and even religious, information, to advise as to travelers' tours, agriculture, sewing and a thousand other topics." Nowadays a modern newspaper publishes sermons and prayers, cooking recipes, beautifying devices, jokes and caricatures. One is told what orator or preacher to hear, what play to see, what book to skim through, what securities to buy, what picture to admire, what form of sport to follow, what misery to aid. "The daily paper is the universal adviser."
     A Frenchman will probably think his author has caught the familiar Yankee habits of exaggeration and extravagant humor. Even Benjamin Franklin redivivus would be almost startled to see the complete natural developments from the Pennsylvania Gazette and "Poor Richard's Almanac." With a somewhat uneasy laugh, we shall have to confess that the sketch can be criticized only as incomplete.
     It is remarked that of the forty daily papers of Chicago only twelve are in English. The majority are German, Bohemian, Polish, Yiddish, Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovac, Lithuanian—but not one in French. (The curious fact might be added tat there is not a Portuguese publication, daily, weekly, or monthly, discoverable in New York City itself.) "There are in the United States 23,000 newspapers, published weekly or oftener, but only 2,500 are dailies. Before the war, a single issue might reach 100 pages. The average business man devours three or four per day, besides the two or three received at his home."
     The whole article is full of homely instruction as to a giant that, "familiar grown" threatens to swallow up the true reading habit, the consultation of accurate books of reference, the storing of the mind with the best thought. Yet there is comfort in the reiterated assurance that it is all an instinctive effort to meet the ever growing demand fro prompt, practical, personal service.
Oct.—7

434  THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS
THE RETIRING CHIEF OF THE 
CHILDREN'S BUREAU

An article in the Survey (New York)
for September 1, entitled a "Great
Public Servant," pays a remarkable tribute
to the administration of Miss Julia Clifford
Lathrop as head of the Federal Children's
Bureau at Washington. The writer, Mr. 
William L. Chenery, recalls the fact that
during the last year of the Taft Administration,
Miss Lathrop went to Washington to
assume direction of "what might easily have
become an insignificant agency of petty reform."
He declares that the office and organization
which she now leaves, "measured
by far-sighted purpose, instinctive loyalty to
democracy, and capacity to achieve, are almost
without parallel in Washington."
Of the first, and perhaps the most important
work that was undertaken by the Children's 
Bureau, namely, a study of infant
mortality, the Survey article says:

When Miss Lathrop directed the bureau's efforts
into that field some good citizens imagined
that she had abandoned her faith as a social reformer
for the subtleties of statistical research.
A commonplace official would have tripped into
that pit. Not so with the first chief of the Children's
Bureau. Her reports were dry only to the
dull. Infant mortality was studied with the immaculate
passion of pure science. But the inquiries
were not arrows loosed at random into
the darkness of mortuary facts. On the contrary 
they were aimed at discovering important human
relationships. When completed they made apparent 
conditions and tendencies of primary importance
to the entire nation. 
The Children's Bureau sought to ascertain the
facts concerning the
wastage of infant life.
In that pursuit a veritable
unknown land
was charted. The
bureau grappled with
poverty and ignorance
and social maladjustment.
The conclusions
reported were appaling,
but they were curative.
Miss Lathrop
discovered that the
babies of the very
poor perish with
amazing rapidity. Her
investigators returned with the information
that one child out of 
every four born to 
families where the
father's earnings were
$10 or less a week
died within twelve
months. But families

copyright Harris & Ewing
MISS GRACE ABBOTT
(Successor to Miss Lathrop
as head of the Bueau)

copyright Harris & Ewing
MISS JULIA C. LATHROP
(First Chief of the Children's
Bureau)

whose income approached
in the pre-war
days $100 a month
lost only one in twelve.
Community after community
revealed similar
conditions. In time
a social principle as
absolute as mathematical 
logic began to 
emerge.
Miss Lathrop told
the American people
that the lives of tens
of thousands of children
were being sacrificed
to poverty. The 
full import of that
truth has not yet sunk
into the minds and the 
hearts of the millions
of men and women in
whose judgment lies
the destiny of this republic. But the message
came back once and again. Calmly, dispassionately, 
with the detachment of the scientist the
word was uttered. The findings did not stop
there. The death of children was studied in
connection with other social and economic facts. 
Congestion, housing, sanitation, the employment
of mothers before and after their babies are
born were studied in their relationship to
this cardinal fact of infant mortality.

Under Miss Lathrop's direction the campaigns
conducted by the Bureau to enable
women better to care for their children have
been wonderfully successful. At one time it
was reported that 8,000,000 American women
were working with the Bureau, weighing
and measuring babies. The Bureau may, in
fact, be fairly described as an educational
institution. It has done much to make
knowledge available to the people and to
induce the people to act in accordance with
that knowledge.
Besides this work in the educational field,
the Children's Bureau was given responsibility
for the enforcement of the first Federal
Child Labor Law. Miss Grace Abbott, who
now succeeds Miss Lathrop, was placed in
charge of the operation of the law. 

Miss Abbott had already won distinction as an 
authority on immigration and as a practical reformer
in that field. Under her lieutenancy the
Children's Bureau gave an admirable example of
intelligence and vigorous law enforcement. The 
bitterness of the feeling of many Southern textile 
mill operators against the women who were the
agents of the nation in the protection of young
people against premature labor is one measure
of the thoroughness of the service rendered.

THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931

Champion of Women and Children
The Story of Grace Abbott

NONE of the labels attached to Grace Abbott
tells you much about her. As Chief of the
United States Children's Bureau, she is a Government
official. But her breezy Nebraska manner
freshens the stagnant Washington atmosphere and
blows mental dust out of corners in a way somewhat
terrifying to timid bureaucrats.
She is a social worker. Not, however, the slightly
unhuman sort of person conjured up in most people's 
minds by that phrase. She can do good to people
without their disliking her. She can even get after
them for nefarious doings and still keep on good terms
with them. A friend of hers, Ernestine Evans, tells
how, when Miss Abbott was working on behalf of
immigrants in Chicago, she fought pirate cabmen who
fleeced incoming aliens. In spite of her successful 
campaign against them, the cabbies like this downright 
young person so much they used to offer her free
rides whenever she appeared!
Then, of course, she's a spinster. That label, frequently 
used by portly gentlemen who deplore her attempt
to save children from exploitation, is just as
meaningless. Grace Abbott doesn't fit that noun in
appearance or temperament. She has a fine, lofty face, 
with brown eyes that are candid and warm; a wide
forehead, from which dark hair is drawn back 
smoothly; a look of facing with clear, swift directness
whatever life has to bring, and a manner that is unselfconscious, 
frank, eager. She grew up with several
brothers, was somewhat of a tom-boy, and has always
been a woman to whom men talk as easily as women
do. Her own family life is richly happy. She has a
charming home in Washington where she lives with
her school-girl niece, Charlotte, whom she has mothered
for half a dozen years. Boys and girls and children 
spill all over the place, for Grace Abbott likes
children, in the piece as well as the mass, and they 
like her. She will pause in a moment of her campaign 
against infant mortality to send baby turtles to
a youngster sick in the hospital, or an ingenious new
toy to the small child of one of her Children's Bureau
staff. 
That Nebraska breeziness of hers comes from a
childhood spent in the prairie town of Grand Island. 
She was born of a family of New England abolitionists
whose adventuring spirit took them pioneering to
Nebraska. She grew up while the Populist movement
was seething all over the Middle West, and the rights
of the under-dog engaged the public spirit. The
---
*One of a series of sketches of pathfinders to a new society, published anonymously
to permit greater frankness. Reproduction limited to 300 words. 

family were progressive, but not radical. Susan B. 
Anthony was an exciting visitor at the home as were
other pioneers of the liberal cause. Yet the family
stayed within the Republican fold, and her father
served a term as Lieutenant Governor of the State. 
Grace herself was a clever, healthy-minded child
who lived the wholesome life of an average small-town
youngster. Back of her, through all the struggles
of childhood and the problems of young womanhood,
were the warm security of a home and the affection
of a devoted family. Later she was to lead in
the movement to save hundreds of thousands of fatherless
children from the cold efficiency of institutional
life--preserve for them, too, the sanctuary of home. 

After Grace had finished with the A's and B's 
of the little red schoolhouse, she went through
Grand Island College, did graduate work in the University
of Nebraska, and then more or less drifted
into teaching. It didn't satisfy her. There must be
more exciting, more demanding, types of work. Her
pioneer spirit drove her on. 
Her next move was to Chicago. After receiving
her Master's Degree in Political Science from the
University of Chicago, she came into touch with that
vital focus of idealism, Hull House. Here, in the
midst of Chicago's foreign-born population, she became deeply stirred by the immigrant's problems--his
bewildered attempt to adjust himself to American conditions.
While still in her twenties she was made director
of the Immigrants' Protective League. As its
director and later as executive secretary of the State
Immigration Commissions of Massachusetts and Illinois,
she was the friend of these helpless newcomers.
It was in this work that her interest in children first 
began to manifest itself. The American-born child of
foreign parents has an especially bard row to hoe, 
and his problems interested Miss Abbott. His chance 
to get schooling--his freedom from being put to work
at too early an age--these have to be saved for him
by American institutions.
So it was not a far cry to the next job young Grace
Abbott tackled--director of the child labor division
in the United States Children's Bureau. The task of
this division was to enforce the first Federal child
labor law, passed by Congress in 1917. This law
established certain protective standards for all children--
chiefly, that no child under fourteen should do
factory work--and the Children's Bureau was to cooperate
with state labor departments in carrying out
these provisions.

294

THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931
Findings
"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it." - Emerson.
        File for future Reference!
   Unless drastic measure are taken to save it, the capitalist system
throughout the civilized world will be wrecked within a year.
I should like this prediction to be filed for future reference.—
Governor Norman of the Bank of England, in a private letter to
Governor Moret of the Bank of France.
        Humbly with the Under-Dogs
   The economic life of all western nations is primarily devoted to
material advantages and the satisfaction of the profit motive, and
an ethical religion can maintain effectiveness only if it directly
enters into active conflict with such a system and succeeds in
checking the expansion of mere greed and material desire. An
ethical religion must "walk humbly" with the under-privileged,
espouse their cause and make them also torch-bearers of the
spiritual life.—Leo Hirsch, in The Standard, May 1931.
        Atavistic Bogies
   As to the true purpose of the Red Army and the whole gigantic
scheme of military preparation, your correspondent is prepared
to stake his reputation on the fact that at present it is purely defensive,
and for all he can see now will be so in the future.
Europe's nightmares of a "Red horde" sweeping forward to 
world conquest are, in this correspondent's opinion, either anti-Soviet
propaganda tout court or atavistic bogies of Attila, Tamerlane
and the Turks. . . . One must never forget that the Bolsheviki
themselves are still haunted by their own bogey of capitalistic
intervention, and it cannot be denied that the years 1918
and 1920 gave them certain ground for misgivings on the subject.
—Walter Duranty, in the New York Times.
        Routing the Surplus
   In the entire history of business America, every general reduction
of hours and every general rise in wages, however bitterly
fought by business and industrial leadership at the time, has been
followed by a fresh accession of business activity and general prosperity.
It is one of the ironies of history that the very thing for
which labor and liberalism have pleaded thru the generations
on the ground of simple social justice, namely, high wages, short
hours, low prices, are now seen to be the only things that can,
in the interest of the solvency of capitalism, keep our industrial
order a going concern. . . . The key to national prosperity is the 
release of the present inactive social surplus of buying power.
And a score of America's outstanding business men, bankers, and
industrialists have, as I have already suggested, told me that if a
larger share of this social surplus could be wisely routed into the
pockets of the consuming millions who, for personal and family
consumption, both need and desire to buy more, the wheels of
industry and the marts of trade would quickly begin to hum with
new activity, economic depression would become a memory thru-out
the United States, and that, in the long run, the minority now
owning this surplus buying power, would actually be better off 
as far as total wealth is concerned.—President Glenn Frank, in the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine,
May 1931.
        Why Prepare for Suicide?
   The next war will mean the complete end of civilization as we
know it. Everything and everyone will be commandeered.—Field
Marshall Viscount Allenby on his seventieth birthday.
        Keeping Up with the Joneses
   The average American family, according to the calculations of
Dr. Franklin W. Ryan, is now nearly $400 in debt. As individuals
we have run up a bill of some $10,500,000,000 against our
future salaries. This figure—greater than all the gold in circulation
in the world—represents only "consumer credit."—Evans
Clark, in Nation's Business, May 1931.
        Especially Dividends!
   The 1930 depression will be remembered for the general effort
made by our leading companies to maintain employment and
dividend payments in order to avoid curtailing public consuming
power. Statistics of total dividend payments for 1930, according
to a compilation by the New York Times, show, in fact, a total
of $4,638,000,000, against $4,251,000,000 for 1929.—Richard
Whitney, President of New York Stock Exchange, Annual Report,
1391.
        Voltaire's Prayer to God
   Thou hast not given us a heart for us to hate and hands for
us to kill. Make us help each other to carry the burden of a painful
and passing life. Let not the small differences between the
clothes that cover our feeble bodies, between all our inadequate
languages, between all our ridiculous customs, between all our
imperfect laws, between all our silly opinions . . . let not all
these nuances which distinguish the atoms called men be signals
for hatred and persecution.—Louis R. Gottschalk, The Era of
the French Revolution, p.66.
        Socialism in the Churches
   We are confronted in this generation by the momentous task,
not of putting a few patches of reform on an old disintegrating
social system, but of establishing a new social order incorporating
the principles of Jesus. It must be cooperative, not competitive.
It must plan for man-making, not money-making. Consistent
Christianity demands repudiation of the old economic order, together
with the institutions and political parties that serve to perpetuate
it. To that end we should give support and encouragement
to the various movements to launch a third party, to organize
politically for securing a new economic arrangement of life.
And in the meantime we as a church should aggressively and
zealously advocate and urge such social, remedial legislation as
non-contributive old age pensions, unemployment insurance, drastic
reduction of armaments, abolition of tariffs, cancellation of
war debts, increased inheritance, income and excess profits taxes,
and increasing social ownership of public utilities, natural resources
and basic industries.—Report adopted at the last Annual
Conference of the New York district of the Evangelical Synod of
North America.
 293


[*2*]
THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931
   After a short time, however, the child labor law
was declared unconstitutional and Miss Abbott turned
to other activities, including that of adviser on the
War Labor Policies Board, and later, Secretary of
the Children's Commission of the First International
Labor conference. Her work impressed both official
Washington and the social welfare and women's
group whose sponsorship had created and nurtured
the Children's Bureau. Naturally, then, when its beloved
and first chief, Julia Lathrop, resigned in 1921,
Grace Abbott was chosen as the logical candidate to
take her place.
Since then she has given herself so unstintedly to
the Children's Bureau that its story is hers, its
achievements in large share hers, its friend and enemies
are hers. The outstanding fact about Grace 
Abbott today is that she has identified herself so completely
with the welfare of the 43,000,000 children
who are the Bureau's constituents that she interprets
most issues in politics and economics from the point of
view of the child.
   An illustration of this single-mindedness is found
in an interview in the fall of 1930, during which she
was asked to talk about herself as a possible candidate
for Secretary of Labor. "What I really want to talk
about is the disease of unemployment and what can
be done to keep it from inflicting too great an injury
on children," she exclaimed.
   Notice that she speaks of unemployment as a "disease".
Grace Abbott's point of view is that of the 
social economist—she is no sentimental lady bountiful.
She sees many symptoms of an ailing economic order,
and if she cannot cure she can and must shield the child
from their cruel effects. The Children's Bureau first
pointed out—and proved by a study of 23,000 babies
born in eight American cities—that poverty can actually
kill babies. In Baltimore, for example, it was
found that in well-to-do homes only one out of every
27 babies dies during the first year, while in poor
homes one out of every seven fails to survive.
   These facts were sufficiently startling to the smug
complacency which holds a baby's death, like his birth,
"an act of God." But the Children's Bureau did not
rest with stating the case of the 200,000 babies sacrificed
annually. The bureau reports hammered home
the disgrace of our high infant and maternal death
rates until Congress passed, in 1921, the Federal Maternity
and Infancy Act.
This Act permitted the National Government to
give the sort of aid to the states in promoting
the welfare of mothers and babies that it had long
since given in the building of good roads and the raising
of better pigs. A million dollars was appropriated
for a limited period, to be matched by State appropriations
and expended in this work.
   Out in the sheep country of a Western state, young
ranchmen diffidently approached the nurse from the
Bureau and asked: "Tell us, ma'am, where we can get
something to read about mothers. We know about the
sheep—that's our business, but sometimes there is no
one to do for the women and we want to know how."
   The Maternity and Infancy funds were stretched
to their utmost to reach as many of these neglected
mothers and babies as possible. During
seven years a magnificent beginning was made: 124,000
child health conferences were held, attended by
a million and a half children: three-quarters of a million
expectant mothers were reached through prenatal
conferences, classes, literature, etc., and three million
home visits were made by nurses.
   Poverty also affects older children in many
ways, notably by depriving them of their chance for
school and play, driving them during tender years into
industry. The Children's Bureau investigations of
child labor brought this problem before the nation.
Patient, first-hand study of more than 50,000 inarticulate
Marys and Johns, Antonios, Michaels, Rosas, and
Hannahs, told the stories of stunted lives and starved
personalities.
   Again Grace Abbott began stirring people to do
things about it. And from an aroused public sentiment
grew the demand for an amendment to the Constitution
which would make it possible to give boy and
girl workers at least as much protection as had the
former national child labor laws.
   This movement ended in defeat—of which more
later—but its defeat left Grace Abbott's philosophy
unchanged. When well fed gentlemen wailed in the
lobbies of Congress: "Think of the poor homes which
need the money these children bring in," like an avenging
sword came Miss Abbott's challenge: "If you
continue to use the labor of children as the treatment
of the social disease of poverty you will have both
poverty and child labor to the end of time."
   Infant mortality and child labor are only two parts
of the broad program of the Children's Bureau. It
also includes all phases of child dependency, neglect,
delinquency. To cite but one of the fundamental social
movements sponsored by the Bureau in behalf of the 
dependent child, take the so-called "mother's pension"
laws. These laws today keep with their mothers over
220,000 children who might otherwise be in orphanages.
   In all the phases of the Bureau work, Grace
Abbott's academic training has been extremely
valuable. The basic function of the Bureau is that of
a "fact-finding" agency. Her scholarly habit of mind
had made its 200 child welfare studies in 45 states
models of social research. They are standard in their
field, referred to by experts at home and all over the
world.
295

THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931

    But she is more than a good researcher, a skillful
executive.  She has the ability to get direct to the 
Joneses, Browns, and McCoys--the everyday parents
who need her help.  She has sponsored the series of
popular yet authoritative booklets on child care that 
have reached the astounding circulation of 11,000,000,
and have been translated into healthier babies in every
hamlet of the land.  She has sent the Bureau's message 
out through motion pictures, posters, exhibits, 
radio, and the press.
      Her sound practical sense has also led her to perform
an extremely valuable service to the Bureau in
maintaining close contact with the social service and
saved it from being a political football.   The confidence
of these groups was manifested, for example, 
in her appointment--the fifth woman in 50 years--
as President of the National Conference of Social
Work in 1923.  The power of such backing and its 
necessity, Washington being what it is, is illustrated
by this incident. 
     During one of the Harding pencil-saving economy
waves, the Children's Bureau appropriation was cut
in committee.  "It's safe to do that," said a wise
politician.  "We wouldn't dare cut the Bureau of
Labor Statistics and hope to get it raised again on the
floor of the House, but cutting the Children's Bureau
will make the women mad.  They will walk up to Congress
and get it back."

THIS warm support sustained Miss Abbott in the
two bitter attacks she has met during recent
years.  The first of these was the fight against the
child labor amendment.  Manufacturing interests
sponsored a feverish "anti" campaign intended to
throw the country into a panic.  They told the farmer's
wife that the amendment would prohibit her
daughter from washing dishes.  Told the farmer
his son would not be allowed to milk the cows.  Told
Catholics that the Government would, if the amendment
were passed, reach out for control of the schools.
They cried "states' rights"--Bolshevism--communism,
whatnot--anything but the truth: that child labor
control might endanger profits.
      Not only the Children's Bureau, but Grace Abbott
herself, became the object of this anti-amendment campaign.
It was impossible to find grounds for personal
slurs.  Miss Abbott's life is an open book.  So
these opponents resorted to the "meddlesome old
maid" line of talk.
       The "red" argument also did valiant duty.  A publication
would discover that Miss Abbott once attended 
a meeting which was also attended by Rosika Schwimmer
and that Madam Schwimmer had been called a
German agent by the Lusk committee. Such facts
seemed to prove that the Bureau and its chief were
either German, Socialist, Bolshevist, or all three

       It was a tribute to the sound direction of the Bureau's
work by Miss Abbott that no real flaws could
be picked in its child labor reports or in the statements
of its chief.  Grace Abbott herself has a prodigious
capacity for keeping a mass of statistics at her fingertips.
Before Congressional committees she is an effective 
witness.  Her knowledge of her subject is evident
to even the worst of the hecklers and her answers
are so forthright, so free from weazel words, that she
commands her opponents' respect.
        Therefore when the Children's Bureau chief could
--at the request of Congress--meet opposition face to 
face, she won.  Congress passed the child labor amendment.
But in an appeal to the country she and the
friends of children lost.  The amendment has not so
far been ratified by a sufficient number of states to
make it part of the law of the land.
      This struggle was taxing and disheartening.  More
than most women, Grace Abbott has a saving sense of 
humor.  She is not especially thin-skinned.  But neither
is she as impersonal as the average man in political
life.  The attacks hurt, but never for a moment did
Grace Abbott consider giving up the fight for children,
in which she had played so dominant a role.

296


THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931

THE second attack came, ironically enough, during
the White House Conference on Child Welfare
called by President Hoover on November, 1903.
Ironically, because the very creation of the Bureau was
in large measure the result of the first White House
Conference, called by President Roosevelt in 1909,
and the Bureau itself sponsored the second White
House Conference, called in 1919 by President Wilson.
    Hardly had the 1930 Conference convened when
one of its committees recommended curtailing the
activities of the Bureau by transferring its child health
work to the United States Public Health Service.
This proposal went far deeper than the question of
governmental reorganization in the interests of logic
or efficiency.  The Children's Bureau is dedicated to
the theory that all phases of child welfare constitute
an inter-related whole--that child health cannot be 
divorced from social and economic factors, that the
doctor, the social worker, the economist must join
forces.
     The White House Conference committee, however,
apparently represented a more narrowly medical point
of view.  The representatives of the American Medical
Association have actively opposed the work of the 
Bureau under the Maternity and Infancy Act as meddling
interference by the Government in a matter
which is none of its concern.  This opposition does not
include many of the leading physicians of the country,
but its attitude apparently influence the Conference 
committee.
      It was obvious that their report was expected to go
through almost as a matter of routine.  But the news
leaded out, the press seized upon it, the delegates were
aroused. 
      After spirited debate, the anti-Children's Bureau
report was tabled.  This was a victory which it is to be
hoped will be felt in pending legislation.  The Maternity
and Infancy Act, which lapsed in 1929, is again
before Congress.

AND now for the future.  What can Grace Abbott
look forward to?  A man who had carried on
successfully a work of such outstanding importance
and appeal as hers might hope for political advancement.
A woman has little chance for the "glory jobs."
Grace Abbott herself apparently does not even hanker
after them.
     She was asked at a recent Congressional hearing
which of the two bills she preferred.  One made the Chief
of the Children's Bureau Chairman of the Federal
Board of Maternal and Infant Hygiene; the other 
named the Surgeon General.
      "I have no objection to the Surgeon General's being
chairman," she replied.  "I think he would like to be,
and it makes little difference to me."
       She was undoubtedly sincere in saying this.  She lost
no sleep when the movement to promote her as candidate

for Secretary of Labor died the natural death
political observers expected.  It was an amazingly
widespread movement which received the backing no
only of women's organizations but of the labor movement,
of economists and business men.  But it gained
no encouragement from her.  Perhaps her lack of personal
ambition is a fault.  If so, its compensation is
that it gives her a an impregnable strength in the center
of the political swirl of Washington.
       "Sometimes," she says, "when I get home at night
I feel as though I had been in a great traffic jam.  The
jam is moving toward the Capitol where Congress sits
in judgment on all the administrative agencies of the
Government.  There are all kinds of conveyances, 
for example, that the Army can put into the street--
tanks, gun carriages, trucks, the dancing horses of officers,
and others which I have no even the vocabulary
to describe.  But they all finally reach the Hill and they
make a plea that is a very old plea--one which I find
in spite of the reputation for courage that they bear, 
men respond to rather promptly.  The Army says to
them, 'Give, lest you perish'; and fear as a motive is
still producing results on a scale which leave the rest
of us feeling very envious of the kind of eloquence
the Army and Navy command.
       "Then there are the hay-ricks, binders and ploughs or
the Department of Agriculture. When the drivers get
to the Hill they have an argument Congressmen understand.
They say to them, "Dollars invested on this
side of the ledger bring dollars on the other side."
       "Then there are still other vehicles.  The handsome
limousines in which the Department of Commerce
rides, the barouches in which the Department 
of State rides with such dignity, the noisy patrol which
the Department of Justice uses.  I stand on the sidewalk
with a great deal of timidity watching traffic
become more congested and difficult, and then because
the responsibility is mine and I must, I take
firm hold on the handles of the baby carriage and I
wheel it into the traffic.  There are some people who
think it does not belong there at all, there are some
who wonder how I got there with it and what I think
I am going to be able to do, and there are some who
think the baby carriage is the symbol of Bolshevism
instead of the home and future of America."
       Though it's a perilous course this baby carriage pursues,
the woman who guides it has courage, skill--
and impatience.  Is impatience, like discontent, sometimes
divine? In this case, if ever.  "They call me
impatient," she says, "perhaps I am."
       "I've said again and again, the only time we can 
save the babies who are going to die this year is this
year.  If we wait till next year they will be dead.  The
future rests in the hands of the children of today.
What we do for them now is going to determine not
only the future of the United States but the future
of the world."

297

THE WORLD TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER, 1931
The Book End
The World Tomorrow reviews only books which it believes, after critical evaluations, to be 
helpful and interesting. On rare occasions it includes unfavorable comment on a popular 
volume which seems sufficiently misleading to render adverse criticism imperative.
Slag From Our Best Minds
They Told Barron. Edited by Arthur Pound and Samuel Taylor 
Moore. Harper's. $5.00
CLARENCE W. BARRON was for many years publisher 
of the Wall Street Journal and other financial publications 
and was a giant in big business circles. After his death 
the diary and daily notes which he had jotted down faithfully 
for several decades were turned over to Pound and Moore for 
publication. The index of names of persons mentioned in the 
volume reads like a Who's Who of financial and political America,
to say nothing of numerous notables from other lands.
Throughout, the diary is characterized by utter frankness if not 
absolute recklessness. Much of the contents is devoted to a record 
of intimate conversations in homes, clubs, offices and railway 
compartments. The reader is given glimpses of our best minds 
at work and play. The portrayals herein presented do not 
brighten the halo about the heads of the mighty, to say the least.
The profundity of the economic and political wisdom of Edward 
L. Doheny, the oil magnate, is thus revealed: "If you believe in 
democracy you cannot believe in Socialism. Socialism is the 
poison that destroys democracy . . . a majority of the college 
professors in the United States are teaching Socialism and Bolshevism . . .
President Eliot of Harvard is teaching Bolshevism.
William Boyce Thompson is teaching Bolshevism and he may 
yet convert Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Company." Charles M.
Schwab is quoted as saying that "Mellon may be the next President." 
Whelan, the tobacco magnate, said: "Mitchell Palmer 
is to be Democratic candidate for President." Governor Lowden 
told Newell Dwight Hillis: "My one ambition is to free 
labor from the dominion of Gompers. Everybody should be free 
to labor how and when he pleases and not under Gomper's dictation. 
We want to keep this (Chicago) convention sweet and 
clean and engender no hard feeling anywhere." Will Hays 
said: "When the canvass began, a list of 8,000 men who ought 
to give $1,000 each to the Republican campaign was made up and 
when it was compared with the registry, it was found that 5,000
of them had never registered to vote." The Chairman of the 
Seaboard Air Line Railroad thought that "Hoover is the most 
dangerous man in the Cabinet." Henry Ford believes that "the 
great cure for wars is to have all the world speak the English 
language." In response to the question, "Why is it that nobody 
can paint a picture of Coolidge with any expression?" Frank 
W. Stearns, intimate friend and adviser, replied: "He is a tough 
subject in repose; when his face is relaxed, it is blank." J. P.
Morgan said: "Mussolini is a very great man."
The following frank confession was made by a tobacco manufacturer: 
"There is no secret about cigarette making. Anybody 
can analyze a Camel and manufacture it, but the users would 
say it was not the same. Such is the power of advertising." 

William Randolph Hearst is quoted as saying: "You know I 
believe in property, and you know where I stand on personal 
fortunes, but isn't it better that I should represent in this country 
the dissatisfied, than have somebody else do it, who might not 
have the same real property relations that I may have?" William 
B. Thompson said: "Hearst is now willing to support a sales tax.
Am I not doing right to keep in close touch with Brisbane?"
Mr. William M. Wood, President of the American Woolen 
Company, told Barron: "American Woolen Company showed 
$9,000,000 net last year, but really made $14,000,000. Our 
policy this year will be to show as little profit as possible. If 
you show big earnings you never will get them; your employees 
will insist upon an advance in wages." Percy N. Furber, an 
oil producer, declared that revolutions in Mexico were engineered 
by Americans, and to be specific: "H. Clay Pierce put up the 
money behind Francisco Madero and started the revolution." 
The vice-president of the Woolworth Company "tells me that 
Samuel Untermyer has one hundred and sixty-seven men 
employed on his place at Yonkers." In a footnote we read: "George 
Kessler, famous as a sport, high liver, and speculator. At his 
death his collection of fans was said to be worth more than 
$1,000,000." D. J. MacMillan said: "Percy Rockefeller made 
big money both ways. He made $40,000,000 on the upswing of 
stocks and $25,000,000 on the downswing." One entry reads:
"The evening before, I learned from one formerly associated 
with W. B. Thompson that at one time he was worth $60,000,000 
or $100,000,000, I forget which." Sixty millions or one hundred 
millions--- I forget which!
K. P.
Confusion of Tongues
Living Philosophies. A Series of Intimate Credos. Simon and 
Schuster. $2.50.
NOTHING could illustrate the chaos of modern culture 
more perfectly than this symposium of personal credos, 
originally published in the Forum and Century and now 
appearing in book form. The authors are chosen from every field of 
thought and action—novelists, artists, critics, philosophers and 
scientists. Dean Inge and Hillaire Belloc are the only representatives 
of traditional religious faith. The others begin by reporting 
the gradual decay or sudden decline of old beliefs in their 
youth and proceed to elaborate the creed which they have been 
able to work out for themselves. Every shade of faith and 
unbelief is represented. 
Mr. Einstein believes in the orderliness of the universe and 
identifies religion with awe before mystery. He also hates war, 
as does Bertrand Russel and both believe in the possibility of 
building a better world. John Dewey and Lewis Mumford both 
give themselves constructively to the social problem, but Mr.
298


THE
CHILD
Monthly News Summary
Volume 4, Number 2          August 1939
GRACE ABBOTT
NOVEMBER 17, 1878 —   JUNE 19, 1939
CHILDREN'S BUREAU
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR — WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE CHILD       MONTHLY NEWS SUMMARY
Volume 4, Number 2       August 1939

CONTENTS
                                                                                                                            Page
Grace Abbott:  Public Servant, by Hon. Frances Perkins  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ... ..27
Grace Abbott and the Children's Bureau, by Katharine F. Lenroot . . . . . . .. . . . . .. 29
Grace Abbott of Nebraska, by Hon. George W. Norris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Childhood Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
A Good Citizen, by William L. Chenery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
With the Immigrants' Protective League, by Viola Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
Grace Abbott:  Friend of Labor, by William Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
On the Industrial Front, by Sidney Hillman  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Pioneering in Federal Labor Legislation, by Ellen Nathalie Matthews . . . . . . . . . . 39
Grace Abbott:  Crusader, by Edward Keating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Grace Abbott and the Child-Labor Amendment, by Msgr. John A. Ryan . . . . . . .  42
Grace Abbott:  Leader of Women, by Maud Wood Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
Pioneering in Maternal and Child-Health Services, by S. Josephine
  Baker, M.D.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
Grace Abbott:  Administrator, by Hon. James J. Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Grace Abbott and the State Welfare Departments, by William J. Ellis . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Getting the Job Done, by Ludwell Denny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Grace Abbott:  News-Maker, by Bess Furman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Grace Abbott:  Humanitarian, by Homer Folks . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Grace Abbott:  Social Inventor, by Hon. Felix Frankfurter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
Grace Abbott and Education for Social Work, by Sophonisba P.
   Breckinridge  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
Grace Abbott as a Teacher, by James Brown 4th . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
Grace Abbott (from The Nation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  52
Grace Abbott and the International Labor Organization, by John G.
  Winant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  53
Grace Abbott's Work With the League of Nations, by Charlotte Whitton . . . . . . .  54
The Economic Basis of Child Welfare (from a speech by Grace Abbott) . . . . . . . . . 56
Grace Abbott (editorial from The Evening Star) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  57
National Conference of Social Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
International Labor Conference, Geneva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  58
Contributors' Column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  59

For sale by Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Subscription price $1 a year; postage additional outside the United States.


Grace Abbott: Public Servant
By FRANCES PERKINS

GRACE ABBOTT I regard as one of the greatest 
women we have ever produced here 
in the United States of America. Perhaps 
the best answer I could give to a question of 
how women attain real achievements in government 
is to say why and how Grace Abbott 
achieved in government. She held high office
in the Federal Government as Chief of the 
Children's Bureau, and she could have held
higher office if she had desired.
When Miss Abbott could no longer be persuaded
to remain as head of the Children's Bureau 
it was a very great disappointment to me, 
because she was carrying out a plan she had 
had under consideration for several years. Her 
advice and cooperation in treating not only 
the problems of the Children's Bureau but
those of the whole Department of Labor were 
of inestimable value to me in my first year as 
Secretary of Labor.
Our personal friendship was enriched by 
this period of association in work, and I often
called on her for advice and assistance in the 
work of the Department, which she generously 
offered to continue to give. Until her death 
she maintained a direct advisory relationship
to the Children's Bureau.
Grace Abbott was one of the most distinguished 
women in America, with a scope and
authority in the field of public welfare and a 
concentration upon the problems of labor as 
well as of children which made her leadership 
in these fields of great value not only to the
Government, but to private social agencies
everywhere. The competence and integrity 
of her research and the effectiveness and humanity
of her presentation of factual material 
to people who needed it for personal guidance
in the daily life of children and families gave
her a unique position in American life, the results
of which will be felt for many generations.
What was her pattern? First of all it was
a pattern of professional standards and perfection 
I never knew more the sense of a professional 
approach to every problem that she 
had in mind and of a competence, the same
competence and skill that a craftsman has, or 
a machinist has. She new how to do. She 
knew how to analyze social problems. She 
knew where to find the medication or the relief 
for these problems; she knew how and 
when to apply it; and she knew and understood
the human heart and the human brain 
through which it had to be applied.
Grace Abbott had knowledge.  She studied 
to get knowledge; then she went on and kept 
her power of acquiring more knowledge out of 
experience and out of other people's experiences. 
That, of course is one of the great 
advantages of the trained and educated mind
—it can learn not only by its own experience 
but by the recorded experience of others, and 
learn to associate these two phases of developing 
information into one pattern.
The old-fashioned virtues of conscience and 
character were hers. The advance of women 
in government or in the learned professions 
is impossible without conscience and character. 
Women without those qualities, however brilliant
their minds may be, however sparkling 
their personalities, will not make the progress
that we want to see them make.
Grace Abbott had that broad, cultural education 
which expanded the heart and strengthened 
the faith and aspiration; she had professional 
training which sharpened her mind as
a tool; and she had that self-discipline which 
everyone needs who undertakes a responsibility. 
Everyone who takes an oath and solemnly
swears that he will perform certain duties
under the law and within the law, so help him 
God, must impose upon himself a certain self-discipline, 
and persons who have not learned
27
171478—39——1

28     THE CHILD     Vol. 4, No. 2

self-discipline as early at least as their years
of education find it hard to acquire under
later stresses and strains when they bear responsibility.
Then, Grace Abbott had a profound and
steady and unalterable unselfishness:  She had
always the conception that she was less important
than the people whom she served, than
the women and children of this country who
looked to her for the solution of their troubles.
I knew her once to risk her health
against the plea of all of us, for we were
worried about her health.  Her only answer
was, "No person is as important as this program
which we have in mind, and it so happens
that for the moment I am the only person
who can defend it.  The rest of you can stay
outside and shout, and that will help.  But because
I am the only person who can defend it,
to be of help to mothers and of help to infants,
to save infant lives and maternal lives, I am the
one to go forward and fight for it."  She went
with the most extraordinary disregard of herself --
what I call truly scientific and impersonal
unselfishness.
Her ability to cooperate enabled her to work
with all kinds of people.  She could humble
herself.  It is one of the greatest assets which
every woman who, like Grace Abbott, undertakes
to go into public life and public office
must learn -- the art and the grace of humility.
I have seen her -- and she was a proud woman --
with great humility suffer fools gladly, listen to
the most preposterous advice respectfully; and,
if it was kindly and warm-hearted, she thanked
the giver for the advice, and that, of course,
was done with real sincerity.  That was why
she was able to cooperate with all kinds of
people and get the best out of them.  Members
of her staff will tell you that.  Nobody ever
got so much work out of any staff, I think, as
she did, and that was because she knew how
to cooperate with people, not only how to
direct them but how to cooperate and bring 
out of them the best that was in them.
Her manners were what I like to call "equalitarian
manners."  I remember being taught
by my father as to what were the proper manners
for people who lived in a democracy --
how one must never overlook any one, because

the least of these is our brother and, in addition
to that, our fellow citizen; and how one
must have a way, an approach to people with
whom one talked, not subservient, not arrogant
-- I know no better word for it than equalitarian.
That does not mean to have rough
manners.  They are good manners, manners
of dignity and kindness.  Grace Abbott had
those, and every woman who hopes to go into
public office must learn to acquire them.  There
must be no pride of intellect, no pride in experience,
and no pride like vanity if women
are to do the work that they have an opportunity
to do in high public office.
And then she had the capacity to take ridicule
and abuse (I have seen her do it) without
anger or resentment or -- more important --
a sense of degradation and despair.  Many remember
the days when speeches were made
on the floor of Congress asking what right
that "old maid" had to go to people and tell
them how to bring up their children!  Grace
Abbott and her predecessor, Julia Lathrop, had
to "take it," but they walked out smilingly, just
as though nothing had happened.
Because she had flexibility Grace Abbott
could change her mind and adapt her program,
was ready to take the best she could get
at the moment and go forward from what she
had to what she believed ought to be.
In short, Grace Abbott had the qualities
and virtues that I think will help women to
be successful in the administration of government
enterprises of all sorts, for those who administer
government enterprises deal with the
public.  The public must be met on honest
grounds in an honest way, yet with full
insight into the problem and into the meaning
of the problem, and into the agony and
the tragedy of those who hope the Government
will help them solve their particular problems.
Those who have never seen poor people
buckling in their belts, holding their chins up,
and going forward courageously in hope and 
faith that the community they live in is a
community of good and Christian people who
will see them through, those who have never
seen them face disappointment, cannot appreciate
what it is they mean when they say,

August 1939       THE CHILD             29

"This is a free country.  This is a democracy --
isn't it?"  They are not thinking of the form
of government.  They are thinking of the relations
between individuals in whom they believe
because they are fellow Americans.  One
of the tasks of the educated woman is to help
make the relationship among all our people
one of confidence and sympathy and understanding,
not because one has read about trouble
in books but because, like Grace Abbott,
one has known and seen poverty and allowed

one's self to be touched by it and its pity and 
terror.
The example of Grace Abbott's life and 
work is worth following -- insight developed by
direct contact with poverty and trouble.  She
summoned her knowledge, her skill, her discipline
and found the practical solutions.  She 
summoned her courage and her patience and
applied adroitly the solutions to the situation.
"May she go from strength to strength in the
life of perfect service."

Grace Abbott and the Children's Bureau
By Katharine F. Lenroot

How well I remember the August day in
1921 when Julia Lathrop, dearly beloved first
Chief of the Children's Bureau, turned over
the helm to Grace Abbott, strong and able in
the power of wisdom of her 43 years.  Her
Middle-West pioneer heritage, her sister's early
interest in social welfare, her years at Hull
House with Jane Addams, her work with the
foreign born, her experience in training for
social work in the old Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy, her work as director of the
Child Labor Division of the Children's Bureau
when it was entrusted with the administration
of the first Federal Child-Labor Law, her later
work with the War Labor Policies Board, as
secretary of the second White House children's
conference and as secretary of the Children's
Commission on Employment of the first International
Labor Conference, had given her rich
preparation for the responsibilities which she
was to carry with distinction for 13 critical
years.
As we walked over to lunch at the "inn"
from the lath-and-plaster temporary building
which housed the Children's Bureau for many
years, Grace Abbott spoke with humility of
the loss which Miss Lathrop's going meant to
the Children's Bureau, and of the greatness of
the task which she was assuming.  In those
first days in office, she spent many hours going

over the run-of-the-mine correspondence in recent
months, getting a bird's-eye view of the 
services which mothers and those working with
children were asking of their Bureau, of the
problems which were placed before it for study
and recommendation.
The Congress was in session that summer,
and the Sheppard-Towner bill -- the pioneer
Federal-aid measure for maternity and infancy 
-- was under consideration.  At hearings 
and on the floor, the "old maids" at the Children's
Bureau who had what seemed to many
to be fantastic ideas about the Government's
responsibility for human welfare were the subject
of attack and ridicule.  But Miss Abbott's
courage and forthrightness inspired confidence,
and the measure became law in November of
her first year as Chief.  Before she actually
began the administrative duties which the new
act placed upon her Miss Abbott made a hurried
trip to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
to see how work for children was progressing
that had been inaugurated by Miss Lathrop.
The Sheppard-Towner Act was constantly
under attack during the short period of 7 
years when it was in operation, from those
who felt it might interfere with the private
practice of medicine, from women who had
fought against suffrage and now fought
against the extension of government services





30 THE CHILD Vol. 4, No. 2 

for the protection of motherhood and childhood, 
from those who challenged the theory of 
Federal participation with the States in saving 
the lives of mothers and babies, though they 
had no word of opposition to Federal and State 
cooperation to wipe out diseases of cows, pigs, 
or plants. Yet through it all Miss Abbott was 
a calm, steady, and conservative administrator, 
content to follow the long road of gradual 
development through the establishment of relationships 
of mutual confidence and understanding 
between the State agencies and the 
Federal Government, rather than to take short 
cuts of Federal imposition of detailed or inflexible 
requirements. 
     Back of the State programs of public-health 
nursing, prenatal and child-health conferences, 
supervision of midwives, instruction of mothers 
through class work and the printed word was 
the force of public opinion, made effective 
through the inspiration of Grace Abbott and 
under the leadership of women like Maud 
Wood Park. This public opinion was mobilized 
largely through the agency of women's 
organizations coordinated for legislative work 
by the device of the Women's Joint Congressional 
Committee. Above all other Federal 
bureaus, the Children's Bureau in that first 
decade after woman suffrage was achieved represented 
women's stake in government. Miss 
Abbott was the hero and the pride of women 
who were just beginning to find a place in 
public affairs. 
     The genius for leadership which Grace Abbott 
manifested throughout her life was perhaps 
exemplified best in the fight for the child-labor 
amendment-a piece of unfinished business 
which was in her mind and on her lips 
as death approached. To the task of laying 
a foundation for Federal protection of children 
against work, that interfered with health, 
schooling, or that priceless share of freedom 
for play that is to a child what civil rights are 
to the adult. Miss Abbott brought legal training 
and personal friendship with the best in 
the legal profession and the leaders in the 
labor movement. Wisely, the task of drafting 
the amendment was entrusted to a citizens' 
committee working under the chairmanship of 
Samuel Gompers. It was Miss Abbott in Congressional 


hearings who, with unsurpassed 
clarity and quickness of response, discussed 
the many difficult constitutional questions 
which consideration of the amendment presented 
and gave the committees an incontrovertible 
foundation of fact as to the need for 
Federal action. Her intellectual leadership 
was so firmly established in the hearings that 
her judgement as to amendments presented when 
the proposal reached the floors of House and 
Senate was accepted unhesitatingly by its proponents. 
Through roll call after roll call on 
weakening amendments the lines were held, and 
the final vote on submission of the amendment 
to the States was carried by 61 to 23 in the 
Senate, and 297 to 69 in the House. 
     The action of the Supreme Court last June 
in holding the amendment still open for ratification 
brought Miss Abbott, in her final illness, 
the keenest joy. She telegraphed to the 
Children's Bureau that day, saying "it certainly 
was a famous victory." Completion of 
ratification by the eight States whose action 
is needed to place it in the Constitution will 
be the best monument that could be erected to 
the memory of this great friend of children. 
     Miss Abbott lived to have a share in the 
framing of the Social Security Act, which 
placed on a firm and greatly expanded basis 
the work which she began under the Sheppard 
Towner legislation. She would have rejoiced 
in the passage of the social-security, amendments, 
extending the benefits and services provided. 
She was keenly interested in the 
development of the outlines of a national 
health program, and she rejoiced in the enactment 
of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 
with its child-labor provisions. She was greatly 
concerned, in her last days, with the problems 
and future of the United States Department of 
Labor, the department which throughout the 
years has provided the shelter and framework 
within which the Children's Bureau has functioned- 
and she was troubled, yet confident, in 
regard to the future of the International Labor 
Organization. 
     Through all her years of close contact with 
the executive and legislative branches of government- 
in times of reaction and in times of 
advance-Grace Abbott preserved a vigorous 


August 1939 THE CHILD 31
faith in the American people, in representative 
government, and in democratic processes. 
Even when it was most difficult to secure the 
needed legislative foundation for the safe-guarding 
of mothers and children, Miss Abbott 
was always the first, in conversation, to come 
to the defense of the basic integrity and ability 
of the elected representatives of the people. 
She was patient and tolerant in all her dealings 
with her associates and superiors in the executive 
branch of the Government, and she rejoiced 
in the friendship of that great jurist, 
Justice Brandeis. Even when the lines of battle 
were most closely drawn and she was mustering 
all her resources for combat, Grace 
Abbott was never petty or bitter in her attitude 
toward her opponents. She loved to say 
of the juvenile court that it represented "Justice 
with her eyes unbandaged." She herself 
faced life always with vision unclouded by 
anger, annoyance, or vengeful passion. 
     Although Miss Abbott was a great administrator 
and a great leader, it is as a fearless and 
careful seeker for truth that she made her 
deepest impress. With rare understanding of 
the significance of underlying social and economic 
trends, Miss Abbott saw the needs of 
children always in relation to general social 
needs, but unfailingly insisted that the needs 
of children were paramount. 
     Without hesitation in times of crisis or in 
areas of special strain Miss Abbott sent investigators 
of the Children's Bureau to determine 
and publicly report the effect of economic and 
social distress upon the lives and health of 
children. In so doing she was carrying out the 
primary purpose of the Children's Bureau- 
"to investigate and report * * * upon all
matters pertaining to the welfare of children 
and child life." Her studies of the welfare of 
the children in families of maintenance-of-way 
workers and other railroad employees, her reports 
of conditions surrounding children in 
coal-mining towns, in sugar beet fields, in migrant 
families following the crops, have been 
important sources of information needed as a 
basis for a just ordering of economic life. She 
was among the first to show clearly the need 
for Federal unemployment relief, and the Bureau 
studies of the transient boy in the early 

years of the depression paved the way for later 
studies and for remedial measures. 
     With the keenness of her thought, the sureness 
of her judgement, and the convincing impact 
of her forthright American purpose, 
Grace Abbott penetrated large areas of American 
life and of international activity. The staff 
of the Children's Bureau is proud that for 13 
years the Bureau was the chief instrument 
through which she made her leadership effective. 
To the end of her life she thought 
of herself as part of the Children's Bureau, and 
the Bureau staff, on its part, cherished her as 
its "Chief." She fulfilled the promise in the 
closing paragraph of her letter of resignation, 
and the entire letter may be regarded as a 
charter for the future of the work which she 
held so dear. Following an introductory paragraph 
she wrote: 
     In resigning from the Children's Bureau, I want 
to say that year by year evidence has accumulated 
of its importance in our national life. Children are 
so affected by industrial and other basic community 
conditions that a final test of our recovery program 
may well be what it does to remove the injustices 
from which children have suffered in the past. But 
as children are not merely pocket editions of adults, 
special health and protective services for children are 
essential for their optimum growth and development 
as well as measures which will bring security to the 
wage earner and the farmer. 
     The Children's Bureau combines in its staff training 
and experience in the techniques and procedures 
which such services for children require. Pediatricians, 
social workers, lawyers, and labor administrators 
employed by the Bureau are in the habit of 
working out together the programs which are necessary 
for the care and protection of children. Through 
the years the Bureau has developed cooperative relationships 
with State and local departments of labor, 
health, and welfare. As we pass through and out 
of this period of great suffering by many millions 
of children, it is of the greatest importance that we 
made sure that the special health and medical services 
which children require, the community services which 
are necessary to prevent the delinquency and to care adequately 
for all the children who suffer from special 
handicaps are provided. Since these are national 
as well as State and local problems, it is important 
that the United States Children's Bureau he enabled 
to cooperate more effectively, with money and personnel, 
in the development of these services. 
     With your appreciation of these problems and the 
Secretary of Labor's understanding of the special 
measures which are necessary for the accomplishment. 
I leave in the belief that the program of the 
Bureau will be developed and expanded during this 
administration. 
     In connection with this official leave taking. I should 
like to say how greatly I have appreciated the opportunity 
which you have given me of working with and 
under my friend, Frances Perkins, and my hope that 
I may continue as a private citizen that relationship 
with her and with my successor and former coworkers 
in the Children's Bureau. 

32          THE CHILD        Vol. 4, No. 2
Grace Abott of Nebraska
By HON. GEORGE W. NORRIS
I am unable to express the love and admiration
of Nebraska people for Grace Abbott. As
Nebraskans, we are proud of her career, her
life, and her work. She has brought to our
great Commonwealth honor, credit, and distinction.
We are proud, as Nebraskans, to be
represented by the character and life work of
this great woman.
But Miss Abbott was more than a Nebraskan.
While I am proud of her, while I am proud to
say she was born and reared in Nebraska, yet I
think of her, not as being a Nebraskan, but as
being a national character and an international
character. Her life and her life's work went
far beyond the confines of her native State.
Few women in this world have done as much
good for suffering humanity as she has accomplished.
Thousands, yes, millions of little children
have grown up into noble manhood and
womanhood because of her work, her teachings,
and her accomplishments. She brought happiness
to many thousands of little children.
The noblest of all human activities is the
work that preserves the life and adds to the
happiness and comfort of little children. When
we remember that the children of today are to
be the men and women of tomorrow, and that
the future of our country and of the world depends
to a great extent upon the training and
development of these children, we begin to realize
how the greatest accomplishment that can
come, for the benefit of future generations,
must come from the training of little children
for the work, the labor, and the responsibilities
that will soon be theirs.
The work of Grace Abbott never can be fully
evaluated. It is difficult even to comprehend
how the influence of her energy is imperceptibly,
unconsciously, but nevertheless forcefully,
increasing happiness and replacing suffering
and misery with comfort - that wonderful
influence upon men and women everywhere,
that indescribable, silent force that improves
manhood and womanhood from infancy. We
love to honor our leaders, our statesmen, our
jurists, our philanthropists, but too often we
forget the noble men and women who, like
Grace Abbott, have, silently and unknown,
accomplished more for the betterment of humanity
and the alleviation of human suffering
than has often come from the clamor and publicity
which have surrounded the acts of powerful
and influential advocates and leaders.
Upon the brow of this great woman, a just and
righteous history will place a diadem of virtue
and honest endeavor second to none.

Childhood Scenes¹
One of Grace Abbott's friends once asked
why she did not write "the recollections of a
prairie child." Her childhood was spent in
the prairie town of Grand Island, Nebr.,
whither the adventuring spirit of her New England
abolitionist family had taken them. Her
father, one of the State's first lawyers, was a
member of the State's Constitutional Convention,
and served a term as Lieutenant Governor
Governor. Her mother, who is still living, was one
of the early and distinguished graduates of
Rockford College - a pioneer college for women
in the northern abolitionist section of the State,
where her family kept a station on the old
"underground railroad." A few years ago this
college, on the occasion of its ninetieth anniversary,
awarded an honorary degree to Elizabeth
Griffin Abbott in recognition of her services
in behalf of education in the pioneer State
of Nebraska. Mrs. Abbott, who was then over

¹As told to Elisabeth Shirley Enochs, U. S. Children's
Bureau.


August 1939         THE CHILD        33
90, was unable to go to Illinois to receive the
hood, and it was her daughter Grace who received
it for her.
Mrs. Abbott was likewise a pioneer in the
woman-suffrage movement and frequently
entertained Susan B. Anthony. Grace Abbott
often mentioned these visits and laughingly
commented on her father's approval of Miss
Anthony's taste in dress and his hope that his
daughters, when they grew up, would adopt
the heavy, black silk dress with white ruching
as suitable and dignified attire for serious-minded 
young women.
But although Grace Abbott did not adopt
Miss Anthony's fashion in dress, she did adopt
her views on suffrage, and her contribution to
the cause was recognized many years later
when a group of woman-suffrage leaders presented
to her a letter written in 1881 by Susan
B. Anthony urging her coworkers to concentrate
their efforts on Nebraska, where a State
referendum on woman suffrage was in preparation
and where chances for success seemed
particularly bright. The letter was presented
to Grace Abbott as perhaps the most prominent
Nebraska woman who had worked for
suffrage and the woman who had carried on
in our own day and time the fine spirit and
courage of the Nebraska women of the eighties.
In those early days, too, there were grasshoppers,
drought, crop failures, and depressions.
Miss Abbott often described how these
calamities affected her own family and plans
for the children's education. But back of it
all, she had the warm security of a home and
the affection of devoted parents, brothers, and
sister. This background gave Miss Abbott an
understanding of the struggles which parents
are willing to make for their children and
increased her eagerness to see all American
children enjoy a reasonable minimum of opportunity
for pleasant home life, affectionate
care, and good schools. In her early years her
first pioneer victory was won in the field of
letters—literally.
Here is the story in her own words:
One day in September when I was only 4 years old
I visited school for the first time, on a special invitation
from the teacher. I went to the blackboard with
the older children to write the letters of the alphabet
I knew just one, A, so I covered my board with A's.

The teacher erased all my beautiful A's and wrote a
B on the board. "There," she said, "You know the
A's, Grace, now make some B's." But I thought I
knew my limitations, so I made another row of A's.
The teacher returned and explained that I must
learn to make B's. Whereupon I said, "I can't make
B's, I tell you - I can't and I can't!" I put down my
chalk and went home.
My mother said, "Well, never mind, play in the garden
like a good girl, but remember, you'll have to 
learn to make B's sometime."

Grace Abbott as as child

The next year, when I was old enough to enroll in
school, I had learned to make many other letters, but
the B's were still unconquered. And I can remember
my brother warning me, the first day of school, "If
you don't learn to make B's, you'll never be able to
learn to read and write." When I returned that evening
with my lovely new slate bound in red felt, I repeated
to myself, "Well, I've got to learn to make B's
or I'll never be able to read or write." I did not want
to be shown how. I had been shown so often—probably
one explanation of my difficulty. I left the cheerful
porch where the events of the day were being discussed
by my brothers and sister and went into the
parlor to meet my crisis alone. I emerged soon with
my slate covered with B's and the certainty that I
was not to be numbered among the illiterate. And
there was great rejoicing over my victory at supper
that night!

34       THE CHILD         Vol. 4, No. 2

After Grace Abbott had finished with the
A's and B's of the little red schoolhouse, she
went through Grand Island College, did graduate
work in the University of Nebraska, and
then more or less drifted into teaching.

During her college years one of Grace
Abbott's friends was Ruth Bryan, daughter of
William Jennings Bryan. Their fathers had
diametrically opposite political views, but the
two girls were always good friends; and when
Ruth came to Washington as Congresswoman
from Florida, she worked closely with Grace,
the Chief of the Children's Bureau - just as in
the old Nebraska days they had acted together
in amateur theatricals. Grace Abbott used to
tell of one of the plays in which Ruth Bryan
was the leading lady while she herself took the
part of an English butler. There had been
some difficulty in assembling a wardrobe.
Grace finally made her appearance arrayed in
some clothing borrowed from the "great commoner"
himself. The coat and hat, though
many times too big for her, evoked great applause
and amazed comments.

Miss Abbott was as interested in individual
children as in the cause of childhood in general.
After she came to the Children's Bureau
a school-girl niece came to live with her,

and boys and girls spilled all over the place.
She would pause in a moment of her campaign
against infant mortality to send baby turtles
to a youngster sick in the hospital, or an ingenious
new toy to the small child of one of her
Children's Bureau staff. She took a special
interest in the adopted child of Clark, one
of the messengers on the Bureau's staff. On
Sunday afternoons she could sometimes be
found playing ball with the young sons of
another Bureau associate, and on her last
day as Chief of the Children's Bureau she
called for these two boys in order to spend the
afternoon with them in a speedboat on the
Potomac.

Her deep understanding of the child and her
deep understanding of politics are alike revealed
in her comment on the short-sightedness of a
certain mother who could not understand why
her two sons wanted to stay in the garden late
in the evening to keep the boys next door from
tearing down a hut they had laboriously
erected that day. "But you can rebuild it tomorrow,
even if they do tear it down," the
mother had said. "What that mother didn't understand,"
commented Grace Abbott, "was that
it was not the tearing down that mattered, it
was letting somebody else get ahead of them."

A Good Citizen

By WILLIAM L. CHENERY

Grace Abbott was a graduate student of the
University of Chicago when I first knew her.
She had done a brief turn at teaching after
graduation from Nebraska, and she was ripe
for broader fields in which to exercise her great
gifts and qualities. She came of abolitionist
stock, and she inherited the abounding energy
of her pioneer parents. In her a passionate
sense of public right was leavened by a great
good humor and almost initiative perception of
the thoughts and feelings of many sorts of men
and women.

Miss Abbott had not been long in Chicago
when her services were demanded by a group
of men and women whose compassion had been

aroused by the exploitation of immigrants, then
being imported by the hundreds of thousands
to do the work of America's expanding
industry.

Grace Abbott dropped her graduate studies
to defend these helpless strangers. When she
was able finally to return to the university it
was as a distinguished professor and a world-
famous authority on problems of government
involving an understanding of the underprivileged
and of doing justice to them.

Her work in behalf of immigrants was brilliantly
successful because she had the wisdom
to search for the significant facts of their introduction
to America. She had the wit to

August 1939         THE CHILD          35

look for essentials and the patient energy to
drive on until she found the facts upon which
convincing conclusions could be built. When
she approached a problem she scorned to let
her preconceptions interfere with her inquiries.
Quick and flashing as was her intelligence, she
jumped to no conclusions. Consequently when
she made a report she created public opinion.
Her facts were indisputable and her reasoning
sound. Nobody in Chicago and perhaps no
one in America did more to put an end to the
exploitation of immigrants. When she described
the tortuous routes immigrants were
compelled to take from New York to the West
in order that all interested railroads might
share in their fares, public opinion ended peremptorily
the callous abuse.

Immediately on leaving the university Grace
Abbott went to Hull House to live. Around
Jane Addams a group of distinguished women
had gathered. Alice Hamilton was making 
the first of her far-reaching studies of industrial
diseases. Florence Kelley, pioneer factory
inspector, had recently written her influential
book, Ethical Gains Through Legislation.
Julia C. Lathrop had already become
famous for her efforts to civilize the poor-
houses and insane asylums of the country. At
once Grace Abbott took her place among these
older leaders. So it was natural that Miss
Lathrop, the first Chief of the Children's Bureau,
should summon Grace Abbott to take

charge of the Government's campaign to put
an end to the abuses of child labor.

Miss Lathrop and Miss Abbott were a magnificent
team. Both had the courage and the
vigor and the wisdom from the very start to
fight spoils politics and to insist upon the
employment of a highly skilled staff. Both
had profound faith in the results to be derived
from honest, intelligent inquiry and the careful
accumulation of pertinent facts. Both had
generous, discerning minds and the constructive
imagination of true stateswomen.

Miss Abbott was the general in command of
the army combating the evils of child labor.
She enforced the law when there was a law.
She gathered the material that aroused and
nourished public opinion when the law was
ruled unconstitutional. She was always good-
tempered, always compassionate, always driving
toward the great goal of national protection
of children, and always sure of final
success.

She was a worker and a fighter and a thinker
and also a merry companion. Her eyes
sparkled and her laugh was ready and there
was wit at the end of her tongue. She was a
good citizen. Because of her, hundreds of
thousands of Americans have had happier
lives, free from the exploitation and abuses she
challenged and against which she labored successfully.
She was a great woman and a noble
American.

With the Immigrants' Protective League

By VIOLA PARADISE

Grace Abbott launched her social-work career
in the Immigrants' Protective League
(then the League for the Protection of Immigrants)
in Chicago in 1908. A job better
suited to her could hardly have been found, for
it demanded qualities she had in high degree-
a quick sympathy for victims of injustice, fearless
courage, and a gift for intelligent action.

In those years immigrants thronged into
America by the hundreds of thousands. Too

171478-39-2

often they were welcomed as just so much
brawn, to do the hard labor which natives from
elder immigrant stocks no longer chose to do.
That they might also contribute new values to
American life was recognized only by the few.
That they offered a wide field for exploitation
was, unfortunately, recognized by too many.

The Government made an effort to protect
immigrants at Ellis Island, but from the moment
they were jammed into the slow immi-

36         THE CHILD       Vol. 4, No. 2

grant trains, they were anybody's prey. When
such a train reached Chicago, it unloaded its
bewildered cargo of immigrants, few of whom
knew English and many of whom were trying
to find friends by means of badly written or
out-of-date addresses. Because there was no
knowing when the trains would arrive, it seldom
happened that their friends could meet
them.

The immigrants' first experience of Chicago
life was to be grabbed by cabmen and expressmen,
who loaded them into their vehicles, demanded
outrageous fares, and delivered them
to their friends, provided these could be found.
If their friends were not found, the immigrants
were dumped into the street, left to the chance
kindness and ingenuity of some passerby.
Often they were picked up by the police
and taken to jail as vagrants.

Grace Abbott helped to change this. She
persuaded the railroads to take some responsibility
in the matter and the police department 
to shepherd arriving immigrants to the building
which the League established, where their
friends or relatives could call for them, or
from which they could be sent home with due
protection, or where they could stay for a few
days until their friends could be found. It
took courage to fight the cabmen and expressmen,
a tough lot of racketeers, who threatened
to get even but who, finding her unfrightened
by threats, capitulated, and presently began
coming to her with their own troubles. One
cabman, for instance, whose licenses was suspended
for a month upon a League complaint,
came to Miss Abbott with his crippled son,
urging her to have the license restored so that
he could buy crutches for the boy. Miss Abbott
sharply refused, told him that if he repeated
the offense, the League would recommend
a jail sentence, and then, characteristically,
herself lent him the money for the
crutches.

Grace Abbott's service to immigrants was not
limited to preventing the depredations of cabmen;
or to tracing lost immigrant girls; or
to obtaining regulation of unscrupulous employment
agencies, which took large fees and
sent their victims half way across the country
to nonexistent jobs; or to organizing an em-

ployment service to help immigrants find work;
or to working with the leaders of the various
foreign groups in Chicago to better the conditions
of their countrymen.

Along with these and scores of other services,
Grace Abbott began from the first to add
up the individual instances of exploitation
within the League's experience and to put
the facts before the public, so that the community
could take steps to prevent the recurrence
of abuses. Her study of the practices
of employment agencies brought about improvements
in the Illinois law regulating such
agencies.

The experience with incoming immigrants
was used to persuade the Government to take
over this work and establish a socially serviceable
immigration station in Chicago. And although
the results of some of her other
studies - such as The Immigrant in Chicago
Courts - could not be measured so tangibly, she
and the group of workers she gathered about
her were responsible for many subtle but farreaching
changes in the attitudes toward immigrants
as well as for the helping of many
thousands of them through difficult and
dangerous situations.

Grace Abbott was an indefatigable worker
and a fearless crusader, unafraid to make enemies.
But though I worked with her for years
and thoroughly enjoyed working with her, the
pictures which come most fleetly to my mind
now have to do not so much with her zest for
work - one took that for granted - as with her
hearty vitality; her savoring of life in general;
her whole-hearted enjoyment of the theater;
her pleasure in a good novel; her ready wit -
sometimes a sharp, slashing wit; her heat in an
argument - and yet it was possible to differ
with her and argue a matter out with directness
and vigor without fear that the difference
of opinion would be carried over into personal
relationships; her warm interest in the people
she chose to work with her; her affection for
them - which, however, never blinded her to
their shortcomings nor let them feel for a moment
that they could allow the quality of their
work to sag; her real kindness; and the fact
that she was an interesting and fascinating
human being.

August 1939.          THE CHILD         37

Grace Abbott: Friend of Labor

By WILLIAM GREEN

There have been few persons in public life
who have so completely earned and held the
confidence and trust of the members of the
American Federation of Labor as did Grace
Abbott. As Children's Bureau head, Miss
Abbott dealt with matters close to our hearts
and consciences. Beginning with its first convention
the American Federation of Labor has
worked to provide for the children of America's
workers good homes, good schools, with
free textbooks, and protection during premature
years through child-labor and compulsory
school-attendance laws. The American Federation
of Labor joined with those civic groups
which sought the creation of a Federal agency
to become the administrative center for the
promotion of child welfare. As the second
chief of this Federal agency, Miss Abbott kept
in close touch with our organization upon
policy making and administrative principle.
She was by nature a true democrat who respected
practical experience equally with academic
and technical training and who valued
human achievements in proportion to their
service to human welfare.

Grace Abbott believed the Children's Bureau

should be located in the Department of Labor
in order to perform its work most effectively.
The Children's Bureau serves the children of
wage earners' families and families with small
incomes. In order to serve these children
policies must be formulated in the light of an
understanding of the homes and work-lives of
the families of these children. Grace Abbott
knew the representatives of labor and was a
regular and helpful consultant on problems
which concerned child welfare. She sought
to coordinate the practical experience of the
workers with the technical information of the
experts. Never was her administrative ability
better tested than in our struggle for Federal
legislation to regulate child labor - a struggle
yet unfinished. Our completion of this task 
will be our most fitting testimonial to her work.

On behalf of the American Federation of
Labor, it is my privilege to pay tribute to the
soundness of Miss Abbott's planning, to the
wisdom of her administration, and to the dependable
honesty that characterized her relations
with the American Federation of Labor.
She could at all times be counted on to point
the way to human rights and welfare.

We should have a Federal minimum standard for the protection of children, and 
without that, if we wait for the time to come when it will be brought up to any particular
standard, we may have to wait for a whole generation for the protection which science
indicates is needed at the present time. And if we enact - phrase it how you will - an
amendment which establishes a minimum standard, and allows the State to establish
higher and not lower standards, we shall be giving to the children the real advantage of
our Federal form of government, and higher local protection.

I cannot see why any State wants to ask to be able to exploit its children, or why it
should claim that its rights have been infringed if that is denied them. And we do have
throughout the country, changing from time to time, a certain consensus of opinion as to
what is the minimum standard. - Grace Abbott, Hearings on Child-Labor Amendment,
January 1923.

38                                              THE CHILD                                                   Vol. 4, No. 2

On the Industrial Front
by Sidney Hillman

I have had the privilege of knowing Grace
Abbott for some 30 years, and know that her 
contributions toward social betterment have
affected the American people at many points.
As Chief of the United States Children's Bureau,
she promoted the welfare of mothers and
children and helped to crystallize what is now
universally recognized as an imperative social
responsibility.  As a fighter for social legislation,
she had a large share in the writing of
progressive laws on our statute books.  As a
practical social worker, she enhanced social
values and directed activity along basic economic
reform.  As a teacher and writer, she 
did much to mold public opinion and train
workers in the field of constructive social effort.

I first met Grace Abbott during the memorable
strike of the clothing workers in Chicago
in 1910.  We have met since on numerous occasions,
at the birth of the organization with
which I am associated--the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers of America--and other landmarks.
One occasion was during the most
dramatic struggle of the Chicago clothing
workers.  Conditions had been intolerable; our
organization had just then been launched--its
treasury was empty, its friends few, the newspapers
biased, the police hostile, the employers
set upon its destruction--and the workers
found themselves in a desperate conflict against
formidable odds.  Grace Abbott, then a resident
of Hull House, together with Jane 
Addams and other prominent women, joined
the fight.  She joined our picket line, helped
to collect funds for food and shelter, spoke at
our meetings, presented our case to the public,
and appealed to the city administration to 
arbitrate the strike.

Grace Abbott had recognized the basic issues
of the struggle and realized the need for the
introduction of orderly industrial-relations 
machinery in the clothing industry, which had
at that time just been making its initial steps
and needed support and encouragement.  Thus,
back in 1910 and later during the strike in 1916,
Grace Abbott helped to show that labor disputes
are not private encounters between workers
and employers, but that they are of profound
social and economic import and affect
the entire community.  She, moreover, helped
to show that industrial relations must rest on
a firm basis of better understanding and the
extension of responsible labor participation in
determining the condition of work.

My last association with Grace Abbott was
as a fellow member of the Textile Committee
of the Wage and Hour Division of the United
States Department of Labor.  She served with
distinction, just as she had served as social
worker in Chicago, as Children's Bureau head
in Washington, as member of the numerous
social and economic commissions here and
abroad, and upon her return to Chicago, during
the last 5 years of her life, as teacher and
writer.  Throughout these varied activities,
Grace Abbott came in direct contact with hard
facts and root issues which she faced with deep
understanding and integrity of purpose.  We
are all indebted to her for a life devoted to
vitalizing our human and social resources 
and strengthening the movement for a better
living.

August 1930                                        THE CHILD                                              39

Pioneering in Federal Labor Legislation
By Ellen Nathalie Matthews

On May 1, 1917, Grace Abbott was appointed
director of the Child Labor Division that had
just been created in the Children's Bureau to
administer the first Federal Child-Labor Law.
The law had been passed in September 1916, to
become effective a year later. Only the most
general provisions for its administration were
contained in the act itself, under the terms of
which detailed rules and regulations for carrying
 out its provisions were left to be worked
out. Upon Miss Abbott rested the chief 
responsibility for evoking these plans as well as
for putting them into effect. When she took
office only 4 months remained of the period
between the passage of the law and the date
when it was to become operative; on June 3, 
1918, 9 months after it went into effect, it was
declared unconstitutional.

During this period of only 13 months was
planned and set into motion the machinery of
the Federal Government's first attempt at a
Nation-wide regulation of labor. With no
precedent in the way of any previous Federal
labor legislation, and with no opportunity during
 the short span of its existence to revise the
program in the light of experience, methods
and procedures for the enforcement of the first
Federal Child-Labor Law were developed with
such promptness in decision and sureness of
judgement that in the few months of its operation
 the program received a thorough test. So
effective, indeed, did the methods and 
procedures devised for its enforcement prove that
they were made for basis, so far as legislative
provisions allowed, for the enforcement of
both the later Federal measures for the regulation
 of child labor.

In the words of Julia C. Lathrop, then Chief
of the Children's Bureau, Miss Abbott was 
"responsible for the cooperative basis upon which
the whole work was founded. the methods of 
administration, and the clearness and human
understanding of the record of the administration
 of the law." From a distance of 22
years it is easy to overlook the difficulties 
confronting this pioneer administrator. That
she herself was entirely without experience in
the field of labor legislation makes her achievement
 the more brilliant.

The Federal Child-Labor Law of 1916
embodied what was then an entirely new 
principle in labor legislation, that of the 
enforcement of a Federal Nation-wide minimum
standard in a field formerly controlled by the 
divergent standards and administrative 
practices of the different States, some of them far
below the standards set up in the Federal act.
Moreover, since the Federal act was, strictly
speaking, a regulation of interstate commerce
rather than a child-labor measure, it required
the development of techniques of enforcement
quite different in a number of particulars from 
those that had been developed in the 
administration of child-labor laws by the States.
Finally, because of Children's Bureau policy
 in employing in the administration of the
law only qualified persons selected through
special civil-service examination, it was not
until the spring of 1918 that lists of persons
eligible for appointment became available, and
the staff had not been completed when the law
was declared unconstitutional.

In numerical terms alone, the record of
achievement is impressive. With the small and
necessarily inexperienced staff at its disposal
the Child Labor Division in the brief time in
which the law operated examined the applica-
tions for certificates of age of more than 25,000
children in 5 states. The difficulties encoun-
tered two decades ago in obtaining evidence of
age in States where the most usually accepted
records of age--transcript of birth or bap-
tismal certificate--were practically nonexistent,
are vividly described in Miss Abbott's report.

40                                                      THE CHILD                                                  Vol. 4, No. 2

on the administration of the law.  They can
hardly be imagined.  In addition, during this
period more than 700 manufacturing establishments
and mines in 25 States had been inspected,
in which 1,500 children were found
employed in violation of child-labor standards 
of the Federal act.  In eight cases employers
pleaded guilty and had been fined for
violation of the law, and in most of the other
cases where violations had been found prosecution
of the employer had been started or was
in preparation at the time the law was declared
unconstitutional.  Persons knowing only
the problems involved in obtaining proof of
violation of State child-labor laws can have
little idea of the difficulties of obtaining
evidence of violation of the Federal act, which
required not only proof of the illegal employment
of children but proof also of the removal
and shipment in interstate commerce of goods
manufactured in establishments where such
children were employed.  The record of 
successful prosecution in the short time of the
law's operation is proof of the success with 
which this problem had been met and solved.

More important achievements in the administration
of the act than those numerically
measurable are the working out of procedures
and practices which the activities listed above
served to test and which were destined to provide
of permanent value in the administration of
future child-labor legislation.  Basic to these
procedures was the recognition of two principles, 
first, that the successful enforcement of
any child-labor law depended primarily upon
the existence of a well-administered system of
certifying the ages of employed children, and,
second, that the enforcement of a Federal labor
law could not succeed except through a genuine
working cooperation between Federal and
State officials.

All possible use of State enforcement machinery
was made in the administration of this
Federal statute.  State employment or age certificates
were accepted for the purposes of the 
Federal act in all States where the certificates
measured up to the standards set by the Federal
Government, and all State officials charged
with the enforcement of State child-labor laws
were commissioned by the Federal Government
to assist in the administration of the Federal
act.  Both of these basic principles of administration
have been recognized as far as legal limitations
have permitted in the administration 
of the Federal measures that subsequently have
been passed for the control of child labor--
namely, the Child-Labor Law of 1918 and the
provisions relating to child labor of the Fair
Labor Standards Act of 1938 now in effect.
Rules and regulations and administrative practices
followed in the administration of these
laws have been patterned closely upon those
promulgated in the administration of the Federal
Child-Labor Law of 1916.

The influence of the experience under the
first Federal Child-Labor Law did not stop
with the various Federal laws.  There can be
no doubt of its effect, though incalculable, upon
the general level of administrative practice in
the enforcement of child-labor legislation,
especially in the more backward States, in the
decade that followed its enactment.  This resulted,
when the law was in effect, from a desire
to bring State standards up to the Federal
standard and later from the wide dissemination
of knowledge as to the better standards of
administration based on the experience under
the Federal law.  The dissemination of this
knowledge was due in large measure to the
writings and speeches of Grace Abbott herself
and to her enthusiastic support of measures
tending to result in the reenactment of a Federal
child-labor law or in improved legislation
and administration in the States.

All who knew Miss Abbott as an administrator
know how much the success of any enterprise
for which she was responsible was peculiarly
her own.  Always alert to take advantage
of what the knowledge and experience of others
had shown to be the soundest policies and
methods and to choose the best from what
others had learned and tried out, her ability to
meet new and unsolved problems promptly and
surely with new and sure solutions was an
equally basic part of her genius in planning
and execution.  In no other of her many 
enterprise were her exceptional creative and
administrative powers given a better opportunity
to function together, I believe, than in her 
administration of the first Federal Child

August 1939                                                 THE CHILD                                                           41

Labor Law.  In no way were some of her
most outstanding qualities more clearly
demonstrated--her sureness of judgment, her
promptness in decision, her exceptional ease and
competence in execution, her effortless ability to
impart her own enthusiasm to those who
worked with her and to inspire them to their
best achievement.

Grace Abbott:  Crusader
by Edward Kearting

The Children's Bureau has been peculiarly
fortunate in its Chiefs.  My Irish mother would
have described Julia Lathrop as "a saint on
earth."  Gentle, cultured, and blessed with a
wit with only her intimates were privileged
to know, she also had high courage, 
determination, and marvelous tact in 
emergencies.  She "mothered" the Bureau
until it had gained a definite place in
public esteem.

Perhaps I am giving my imagination free
rein, but, to me, there was something about
Grace Abbott which always suggested Joan
of Arc.

I recall distinctly the first time I saw and
heard her.  It was in the Belasco Theater in
Washington, in the brave days when we were
battling to give women the right to vote.  The
place was jammed; we were all bubbling over
with enthusiasm; and most of the speakers
were top-notchers.  Then came one 
comparatively unknown, at least to eastern
audiences.  Before she delivered half a dozen
sentences, we knew an authentic star had popped
above our horizon.

Grace Abbott spoke easily but with the fire
of the crusader.  She did not underestimate
the strength of the barriers that barred the
road to success, but she was determined to
plow through them, whatever the cost.

She was not in Washington when the battle
for the first Federal Child-Labor Law was being
waged.  To Julia Lathrop and the National
Child Labor Committee, led by Owen Lovejoy
and the able, devoted, resourceful Dr. McKelway,
goes the lion's share of credit for that
achievement.

Fortunately, after President Wilson had
attached his signature, Grace Abbott assumed
the arduous task of administration.

With infinite patience and understanding,
she laid the foundations for what was then a
unique experiment--to secure the cooperation
of the States in the enforcement of a Federal
statute which ran counter to the traditions, the
prejudices, and most formidable of all, the
selfish business interests of a large section of
our country.

That she succeeded to an extraordinary degree
is a matter of history.  That she would 
have achieved the goal so dear to her heart,
if the Supreme Court had not intervened and
nullified the law by a majority of one vote,
cannot be questioned by any candid student of
the record.

I was privileged to know Grace Abbott for 
a number of years, and my admiration for her
capacity and devotion constantly increased.
She was one of the great women of our time.







42      THE CHILD    Vol. 4, No. 2

Grace Abbott and the Child-Labor Amendment

By MSGR. JOHN A. RYAN

When I thought of referring to Miss Abbott
as the ablest and most persuasive of all the
advocates of the proposal for an anti-child-
labor amendment to the Federal Constitution,
the objection occurred to me, "What about Julia
Lathrop and Florence Kelley?" After consideration
of the activities and achievements of
these two devoted spirits, I am still inclined
to stand by my original estimate. Grace
Abbott's devotion to the amendment did not
exceed that of the two just mentioned, but she
exercised a unique influence in her advocacy
of it. In large measure this was due to the
fact that she was Chief of the Children's Bureau
in the years when the agitation for the
amendment became acute and was a matter of
practical politics.

I happened to be a member of the join committee
which endeavored to draft a proposal
for a child-labor amendment for the consideration
of Congress. That was during the first
half of the last decade. Although I did not
attend all the meetings of the committee, and
although my memory of those that I did attend
is somewhat hazy, I have a clear recollection
of Miss Abbott's skill and prudence and
patience during the discussion of the proposed
drafts. Particularly do I recall her objection
to the proposal that the Federal Government
and the States should have "concurrent jurisdiction"
in the enforcement of whatever legislation
should be enacted under the amendment.

I mention this merely as an illustration of her
active and practical intelligence.

After the adoption by Congress of the resolution
for the amendment she applied all the
resources of her remarkable mind and all the
sincerity of her devoted will to the efforts that
were made for its adoption by the States. Although
she did not live to see the proposal
ratified by the necessary 36 States, before
her death she realized that that goal was
much nearer than it had been when she
began the struggle for it in the depressing
1920's.

Peace to her ashes and to her soul! She was
a grand woman. No American carried on better
the tradition that we like to think of as
American - consideration for the common man
and woman and concern for the weak and the
lowly. Grace Abbott came from Nebraska; I
was born in Minnesota. Her forbears had
probably lived in the United States for generations.
My father and mother were born in
Ireland. Nevertheless, we fought together for
many years for the child-labor amendment and
for many other measures on behalf of the
underprivileged. This instance, which can be
duplicated thousands of times in the history
of the last 40 years, is not the least of my reasons
for having faith that we shall solve our
social problems in accord with the principles
of justice and for the enduring welfare of our
beloved America.

Grace Abbott: Leader of Women

By MAUD WOOD PARK

During my years in Washington the group
of women's organizations most closely connected
with Grace Abbott's work were those
represented on two subcommittees of the
Women's Joint Congressional Committee: The
subcommittee on the Sheppard-Towner Act for

the promotion of the welfare and hygiene of
maternity and infancy; and the subcommittee
which was supporting the proposed child-labor
amendment to the Constitution.

Like the other members of those subcommittees,
I cam to know and to depend upon Miss

August 1939          THE CHILD           43

Abbott's power of initiative, her store of accurate
information, and her persistent courage.
Whenever she was to be a speaker in behalf of
one of the measures in which we were interested,
we all sat back, with minds at ease, because
we knew that we could count on her
making a lucid, straightforward statement of
the case, a statement lightened by flashes of
humor and fortified by all the necessary references.
Unexpected questions and obvious opposition
never confused or intimidated her.
Her earnestness and evident sincerity often
brought the doubting to our side and sometimes
convinced even those who had been hostile
at the start.

Among my host of memories of conferences,
meetings, and Congressional interviews and
hearings in which she had an important part,
two are particularly vivid.

The first of these is of the evening on which
the Senate voted for a 2-year extension of the
Sheppard-Towner Act. Throughout the debate,
which lasted for several hours, Miss Abbott
sat with the members of our subcommittees
in one of the galleries of the Senate. Again
and again, Senator Sheppard and Senator
Curtis sent for her and a few of us in order
that they might report some change in the situation
or ask our opinion about a new legislative
possibility. At last it came to the point
when our strongest supporters in the Senate
assured us that the only chance to get favorable
action on the bill was to consent to a
proviso for the expiration of the act at the end
of 2 years. Standing just outside one of the
doors to the floor of the Senate, we women and
the friendly Senators alike turned to Grace
Abbott for the final word. There could have

been no better proof of our faith in the soundness
of her judgment than the unanimity with
which we accepted her reluctant assent to the
proviso which we had hoped to avert.

My other particularly striking remembrance
concerns a hearing on the proposed child-labor
amendment before the Judiciary Committee of
the Senate, a committee usually made up of
Senators who are authorities on constitutional
law. While Miss Abbott was speaking, she was
interrupted several times by questions from
members of the Committee. For the most part
those questions were veiled objections to specifying
18 years as the age up to which the Congress
was to be empowered to legislate against
child labor. Miss Abbott, who was uncompromising
in her advocacy of 18 years as the
age limit, did not hesitate to correct a misstatement
of one of the Senators.

Thereupon another Senator inquired with
mock indignation, "Does Miss Abbott mean to
imply that she knows more about this subject
than one of the Senate's foremost constitutional
lawyers?"

"Yes," replied Miss Abbott, in no wise
abashed, "for the Senator has never had responsibility
for seeing that a child-labor law
is properly enforced, and I have."

The committee fell to laughing at her candid
answer and later, when the majority report
was presented to the Senate, it favored the age
limit of 18. As usual Miss Abbott's straightforward
methods had won support.

"Grace Abbott is as forthright and upstanding
as a field of Nebraska corn," someone wrote
of her at that time. No better description
could be given of the qualities which made
women turn to her for leadership.

If a declaration of independence were to be written today, American
women would ask that in the enumeration of the objects for which governments
are instituted the welfare of children should head the list; and the
American men would agree. It is time that with characteristic American
directness we undertake to realize that object now. - Grace Abbott, Annual
Report of Children's Bureau, 1923.

44         THE CHILD       Vol. 4, No. 2

Pioneering in Maternal and Child-Health Services

By S. JOSEPHINE BAKER, M.D.

The Sheppard- Towner Act will always be
connected with the names of those two great
women: Julia C. Lathrop and Grace Abbott.
Julia Lathrop conceived the plan for Federal
aid to the States for maternal and infant hygiene
and as Chief of the Children's Bureau
saw the bill through until the final stages.
Miss Abbott planned and carried out the
administration of the act.

It was my good fortune to be closely associated
with the Children's Bureau during the
greater part of this time, first as a volunteer
and later as a member of Grace Abbott's staff
with the somewhat ponderous title of "Specialist
in Maternal and Infant Hygiene," and
so those days and years bring back a heartwarming
memory of my association with those
two outstanding figures. They were fighting
days. Days of long and exciting debates with
committees of the Senate and the House; days
of rough questioning and even rougher answers;
days of antagonism on the part of organized
medicine; days of refreshing aid from
individual pediatricians and obstetricians;
and days of great joy when the act was finally
passed and signed by President Harding on
November 23, 1921. The victory was ours!
The funds authorized by the act were not to
be available until March 1922, and then, for
the first time in the history of this country,
mothers and young children were to benefit
through the cooperation of Federal and State
agencies. 

To attempt any adequate summary of Grace
Abbott's work, her unfailing optimism in the
face of great difficulties, and her work for the
health and welfare of the mothers and children
of this country is too long a story to be told
here. Maternity and child-hygiene bureaus or
divisions had been created in 33 States by the
beginning of 1921. During that and the following
year, 14 more were established, and in

1925 Hawaii followed the suit. The total amount
of money made available for distribution to
the States on a yearly basis was approximately
$1,000,000. The act was in force for 5 years
with a later extension for 2 more years. Then,
the Sheppard-Towner Act became a part of
our history, and upon its foundations was
erected the cooperative Federal-State program
for maternal and child health under the Social
Security Act.

The work and efforts in administering this
act were a truly pioneer accomplishment. Advisory
committees were formed, publicity was
stimulated, and State programs were carefully
considered. In all, 2,294 permanent child-health
centers, 311 permanent prenatal centers,
and 373 permanent combined prenatal and
child-health centers were established and the
States reported that 4,000,000 infants and pre-
school children and about 700,000 expectant
mothers had been reached. It was truly a
monumental task, and through it all Grace
Abbott stood out as the inspiration and the
final arbiter.

To pay a proper tribute to Grace Abbott for
the part she played in helping the mothers and
babies of this country is difficult and yet, in
the surety of its purpose, it stands out as one
of the most magnificent accomplishments in
our history. I have lost a dear friend in her
passing; the country has lost an outstanding
pioneer whose life was dedicated to the welfare
of all children. None of us who knew her
doubt her unique quality of keen foresight,
her administrative ability, her vast and secure
knowledge, her personal charm, and, above all,
her great gift of humanity. With myriad accomplishments
to her credit, I think the one
for which she will be longest remembered
is her successful battle to insure life and good
health to the women and to the children of this
country.

August 1939        THE CHILD         45

Grace Abbott: Administrator

By HON. JAMES J. DAVIS

One of the most important jobs in Washington,
so far as the future of America is concerned,
passed from the able administrative 
hands of Julia Lathrop to those of Grace
Abbott late in August 1921. Miss Lathrop, who
for 9 years had guarded the destinies of
40,000,000 American children, expressed genuine
admiration for Miss Abbott and declared
that she had earned her new position through
sheer ability and merit. Miss Abbott was a
thoroughly energetic and businesslike person --
one of the most capable administrators I have
ever known.

During the period of nearly 10 years that
Miss Abbott and I were associated together in
the Department of Labor I came to have an
increasing admiration for the intelligence and
creative enthusiasm that she brought to her
work. She was among those chiefly responsible
for the planning and successful conclusion of
the great White House Conference on Child
Health and Protection of 1930. Her part in
that conference and her determination to carry
through the work to which she devoted her
life have not been sufficiently appreciated.

Early in the work of the Children's Bureau
the close connection between the welfare of the
child and that of the mother was made clear.
Not only was it found that motherless babies
were much more likely to die in infancy than
babies who were cared for by their own
mothers, but also that motherhood brought
with it in this country greater probability of
death than in any, except 2, of 12 foreign
countries.

Miss Abbott directed the preparation of

scientific studies of child health, child labor
and vocational guidance, recreation, dependency,
delinquency, and neglect. She directed
the assembling and interpretation of current
statistics and information in the field of child
welfare. She gave leadership in the preparation
and distribution of popular and scientific
bulletins on maternal, infant, and child care
and on child welfare. She cooperated with
State child-welfare bureaus, and private
child-health and child-caring agencies through
consultation or joint undertakings.

At the conclusion of this 10-year period of
work, the Children's Bureau under the direction
of Miss Abbott was able to report that
infants born in 1930 in this country had a much
better chance to survive than those born a
decade earlier, that greatly increased resources
for the care of mothers, infants, and preschool
children were available, that marked progress
had been made in regard to the mental hygiene
of childhood, and that education of parents
in methods of child care and training had been
notably developed. It was estimated that
25,000 of the babies born in 1930 and surviving
the first year of life would have died under
the conditions prevailing in 1921.

From this short statement it may be truly inferred
that Grace Abbott was much more than
a Government official. She was the friend and
savior of thousands of little children, a bearer 
of glad tidings for mothers in poverty and distress,
and a national leader whose work will
endure as long as the Nation to which she dedicated
her life shall last.

Children suffer the most serious permanent losses in periods of depression,
and should be the first to be considered in planning remedial measures. -
Grace Abbott, Annual Report of Children's Bureau, 1931.

46        THE CHILD         Vol. 4, No. 2

Grace Abbott and the State Welfare Departments

By WILLIAM J. ELLIS

    We in the field of public-welfare administration
know of Grace Abbott's work to give dependent
and delinquent children a place in a
world which too often forgets that what its
children are today it will itself be tomorrow.
The quality in Miss Abbott which beyond anything
else made her work possible was her
flaming courage.
    Courage is a wonderful thing to behold in
the heat of conflict or under the stress of great
emotion. It is still greater when it is exhibited
as in Miss Abbott's case, in the everyday affairs
of her life's work. It was Miss Abbott's
happy faculty to make the ordinary business of
her life very extraordinary, not by causing herself
to be the center of her world, but by
dramatizing that which lay closest to her heart,
the welfare of children. 
    As public-welfare administrators we know
how she gave us of the fire of her bravery and
determination. We know that that was true in
her post as Chief of the Federal Children's
Bureau as well as afterward in her editorial
work on the Social Service Recipe and her
teaching of public-welfare administration.
Her passion was the pursuit of truth with a
singleness of purpose which revived the spirits
of those who wavered. Having found truth, it
was her joy not merely to defend it but to lead
it into the battle as a weapon of offense in behalf
of children against cruelty, against injustice,
against oppression wherever these might
be found or whoever might be their
protagonists.
    In her relationships with State welfare departments
she had the faculty of securing the
cooperation of the State without the exercise
of arbitrary authority; she infused a new spirit
into the relationships of Federal and State
agencies which continues today in the field of
child-welfare service. Not the least of her
achievements in this field was her great faculty
for seeing the State's point of view and, without
compromising essential principles, of meeting
that point of view in her work. In this

aspect Miss Abbott well knew that true collaboration
was impossible unless there were the
meeting of minds each of which had the respect
of the other and a common goal.
    It was Miss Abbott's great regret that she
was unable to attend the 1939 session of the
White House conference on child welfare, dedicated
to children in a democracy. Nevertheless,
her influence was felt at the conference
and with characteristic insight she sent a message
to the initial session counseling that meeting
not to spend too much effort in defining
terms but to go at once into a discussion of the
many needs yet to be met in order that the lot
of the friendless child be bettered.
    Carrying over that spirit of Federal-State
cooperation which she practiced herself and
required of others, Miss Abbott called at that
conference for leadership from both private
and public agency. Not in her mind could
either agency preempt the field or claim all the
credit.
    Characteristic of Miss Abbott's life was one
of her last achievements. This was the production
of her two-volume work, The Child
and the State. These volumes retrace from
colonial times to today the path along which
efforts have been made to provide for the well-
being of the child. Janus-like, the book looks
not only backward but forward; it is history
with a challenge. It was not Miss Abbott's
purpose to pause for a survey of the field with
any idea of taking satisfaction for the progress 
which the world has made in the treatment of
children from the earliest halting attempts of
the colonists to help the orphan and the poor.
Rather, it was her purpose to have us face the
future with new hope and fresh inspiration,
confident that we, as State welfare administrators
particularly, face a new era in the conservation
of child welfare and happiness.
    To Miss Abbott, perhaps more than to anyone
else, the State public-welfare workers owe
the idea that the child is, after all, their major
consideration and that no law, no custom, no


August 1939    THE CHILD      47

way of life, no thinking which subordinates
the child to any material thing will stand the
test of time.
    Her qualities of courage, of fortitude, of
jealousy for the truth, of cooperation without
essential compromise, defy definition. We

often give them unthinking lip service. And
yet it is exactly to these qualities, no less than
to Miss Abbott's exhaustive knowledge of the
child-welfare field, its history, its techniques,
and its goal that the State welfare administrators
owe a supreme debt of gratitude.

Getting the Job Done

By LUDWELL DENNY

    Washington correspondents, who have
learned with good reason to look down on most
politicians, looked up to Grace Abbott. That
was not strange. She knew her job, her zeal
was selfless, and she played fair. Such a
person gives respect and gets it.
    If there have been public servants with more
vision and courage, I have not known them.
But she had more than those qualities of the
crusader - it was her rare genius to combine
with them a simple humanness. She was not
puffed-up, she was never stiff-necked. She
had the common touch, which is so uncommon.

    Even those virtues of the great public servant 

did not alone explain her effectiveness.
She also had a cool efficiency, a practical sense,
which often was the difference between well-
meaning futility and getting the job done.
    There was nothing of the amateur about
Grace Abbott. She had learned the political
traps. She was never satisfied with mere good
intentions or the emotional glow of heroics. In
purpose and in method she was the skilled civil
servant - one of the greatest in our time. 
    To do the Washington job so well and so
long and then to inspire others in her brilliantly
efficient way was her achievement and
her monument.

Grace Abbott:  News-Maker
By BESS FURMAN

    In the forefront of women's work for the 
public good in the Federal Government was
Grace Abbott, an initiator, a news-maker.
When I came to Washington from the prairies,
it was inevitable that my first and best lessons
in national journalism-and in practical politics,
too-should have been learned in the
various offices which she occupied as Chief of
the Children's Bureau of the United States
Department of Labor.
    Grace Abbott pioneered in the things that
really counted.  She met the press freely and
fairly, and with a great gift of evaluating
facts, a complete common sense, an easy humor.
An interview with her restored my soul like 
a visit home.

48                                                             THE CHILD                                                 Vol. 4, No. 2

Grace Abbott:  Humanitarian
by Homer Folks

In an all-too-short career Grace Abbott held
a number of positions, educational, executive,
and administrative, in public service and in
voluntary agencies, and filled them all with
notable success.  Seemingly varied, they offered
her a continuity of growth and of widening
usefulness in her chosen career of social
welfare.  She succeeded in all these efforts, and
passed quickly and with no loss of momentum
from one to another, because to her they were
all necessary factors in any program of making
life more tolerable for those to whom it seemed
to offer least promise.

She was deeply interested in the education
and training of social workers, in developing
standards and methods of individual service
and community betterment, in rescuing public
welfare from the hands of political (not social)
workers, and in framing and promoting good
social legislation and obtaining adequate public
funds and citizen backing to carry such
law into effect.  But she never made the mistake
of seeing any or all of these things as 
ends in themselves.  The means never
obscured the end to her.  She was a welfare
statesman and never merely a technician.

It was my pleasure in 1931 to be the spokesman
of the National Institute of Social Sciences
in conferring the gold medal of the Institute
upon Grace Abbott.  At that time she had for
10 years filled the difficult position of Chief of
the Children's Bureau with a breadth of
thought, a comprehensiveness of view, and a
humanitarian spirit worthy of the high  intent
of Congress and the President in creating the
Bureau and of the inclusiveness with which
they stated its powers and duties.

She had an eye for reality and an instinct
for achievement.  She showed how to be a chief
of an important bureau without becoming a
bureaucrat.  Though she did not have her ear
to the ground, she had her eye at all times
on the average American family home, in
which the children of today are being prepared
for the terrific responsibilities of tomorrow, and
her constructive imagination, sympathetic 
understanding, and gifted mind were constantly
at work on the removal of the handicaps, troubles,
and misfortunes which limit that home in
its creative work for the citizens of tomorrow.

Sometimes when I get home at night in Washington, 
I feel as though I had been in a great traffic jam.  The
jam is moving toward the Hill where Congress sits in
judgment on all the administrative agencies of the
Government.  In that traffic jam there are all kinds
of vehicles moving up toward the Capitol.

There are all kinds of conveyances, for example,
that the Army can put into the street--tanks, gun
carriages, trucks, the dancing horses of officers ***
There are the hayricks and the binders and the
ploughs and all the other things that the Department
of Agriculture manages to put into the streets ***
the handsome limousines in which the Department of
Commerce rides.  To be sure, the limousines are looking
a little bit shabbier this year ***

I am not going to describe all the vehicles in this
traffic jam tonight.  I am not going to tell you about
the barouches in which the Department of State rides
with such dignity, or the noisy patrol in which the
Department of Justice officials sometimes appear.
Without my saying more you will agree that it seems
to be a traffic presenting special hazards.

It seems so to me as I stand on the sidewalk watching
it because it becomes more congested and more difficult, and
then because the responsibility is mine and I must.
I take a very firm hold on the handles of the baby
carriage and I wheel it into the traffic. --Grace Abbott
in New Measures of Values, Journal of the National
Institute of Social Sciences, 1931-34, vol. XVI-XIX,
pp. 9-10.

August 1939                                                 THE CHILD                                                         49

Grace Abbott:  Social Inventor
by Hon. Felix Frankfurter

In common with every student of social legislation
and public administration I had to
follow the efforts and achievements of Grace
Abbott as being among the most outstanding
in American sociological endeavors.  But as
one of the counsel of the National Consumers'
League, engaged in helping to draft social 
measures and to support them in the courts,
and an official concerned with industrial relations
during the World War, it was my good
fortune to become closely acquainted with
Grace Abbott and to see her in action, as it
were, for nearly 25 years.  As part of my official
duty it fell to me to see her initiate the
administration of the first Federal Child-Labor
Law, while that law was in force, and after its
invalidation continue so much of its application
and practice as was rendered possible by
writing a clause against child labor in all
governmental contracts.

I wish much that the whole story of this
administration by her of protections against
the exploitation of child workers could be 
recorded for posterity by social historians like
the Hammonds or the Webbs.  I do not believe
that American experience would disclose a finer
illustration of the rare art of public administration.
I do not mean to minimize the triumphs
of the human mind as revealed by
mechanical inventions, but social inventions
apparently entail much subtler gifts, for they
are so much rarer.  The manner in which Grace
Abbott translated the blueprints of social policies
into effective operating institutions for the
benefit of society at large made her work, in
every true sense of the phase, that of social
invention.

It is idle to attempt an analysis of the separate
factors of the sum total that produces a
Grace Abbott.  She had, of course, a disciplined
mind; knew that the world did not begin
yesterday and would not end tomorrow;
saw things, in other words, in the perspective
of history; but had a pertinacious zeal which
did not allow her either through cynicism or
comfort to believe that as things have been
they must remain.  She had, in addition, to a
rare degree disinterestedness and indifference
to the share of her own ego in the cosmos, and
the fruitful humor that so often goes with real
disinterestedness.

No matter how long she might have lived she
would have gone too soon.  Happily she lived
long enough to have a real residuum of 
accomplishments in the pioneering field which
she had chosen for her activity.  Above all, she
left an example of the solid regard for details
and of the largeness of spirit in which details
are employed in the service of great human
ends.

At present we pay too much for the care and punishment of criminals
and too little for the prevention of crime.  Scientific research is the foundation
on which a program of prevention must be built.--Grace Abbott, Annual
Report of Children's Bureau, 1926.





    



50                                                         THE CHILD                                         Vol. 4, No. 2

Grace Abbott and Education for Social Work
by Sophonisba B. Breckinridge

Grace Abbott was a great teacher.  She
had exactly knowledge of law, governmental
organization, labor economics, and administrative
relationships.  Everyone recognized the
assurance with which she handled her material
and the scientific exactness with which she
approached and in fact entered into what was
debatable territory in a no-man's land ready and
waiting for development.  This distinction between
the knowledge that had come from the
experience of administration and the further
information needed for developing the work
was illustrated by her reports when director
of the Immigrants' Protective League and the
investigations that supplemented these reports,
a spirit of inquiry related to her work that
took her on her first trip to Europe, to Bohemia
and Hungary, Croatia and Galicia, whence
were coming her clients at the League whom
she wanted better to understand.

A fine sense of humor and an extraordinary
democracy of attitude made themselves felt in
the classroom.  This democratic attitude, together
with an untarnished and unshadowed
integrity, gave life.  The democratic attitude
showed itself toward students (they were fellow
students in new fields of educational
effort), toward the governmental authorities,
local, State, Federal, or international--and especially
toward the individuals in whose behalf
public-welfare authorities, in fact all governmental
authorities, are set up.

Grace Abbott came as professor of public-
welfare administration to the School of Social
Service Administration only 5 years ago, but
she had been concerned with the development
of education for the law and she contributed to
the curriculum of the Chicago School of Civics 
and Philanthropy and the earlier experiment
in the university which was called the
Philanthropic Service Division of the School of
Commerce and Administration of the University
of Chicago.  She had been for 30 years 
interested in the field of education for social
work and in training for social research and
social investigation.  As Chief of the Children's
Bureau, first Julia Lathrop and then
Grace Abbott had found that a school of social
service was an ideal place for training social
investigators who, by civil-service tests, qualified
for work on the Bureau staff.

She contributed to the curriculum of the
school new courses which took the students beyond
the boundaries of welfare and social work 
into fields of health, education, and labor.  One
cannot say that her chief interest here was 
that of the child; yet all the schools of social
work and welfare agencies are grateful that
she was able to complete and publish her
monumental book of documents entitled," The
Child and the State."

The students appreciated what she had to
give.  The limits of the class were the limits
of available space in the classroom.  And an
experience in one of her classes gave the student
a sense of great enrichment.  It gave,
however, something more.  There was always
the question of what was beyond, and so the
student passed directly to an attitude of 
independent inquiry that meant research and
investigation.  These qualities of demanding
exact knowledge, of democratic attitude, of
independence and courage in experience, led
into research and experimentation and gave
students patience and courage and a democratic
attitude toward questions of governmental
organization as well as toward personal service.
It was not an accident that her work and
her student's interest spread into the field of
health and industry and education in relation
to social work and public welfare.  The result
was that topics undertaken under her direction
covered a wide range of public organizations.

In this wide range of interest, too, there was
constant realization that any plan should 
contemplate something that could be 
administered.  Her experience as an administrator
illuminated all her discussion of relationships 
between the 


August 1939                                                  THE CHILD                                                         51
Federal Government and the State and local
jurisdictions, while all topics were likewise
seen from an international or world point of
view.  To her students, the States and local 
units mean departments of public welfare,
directors of labor and industry, medical
experts dealing with questions of concern to 
all the people of the State.  It is an attitude
wholly inconsistent with that of the bureaucrat
and is that of demanding that all agencies of
government be called on to render the special
service required for "the least of these," the
child, the alien, or the destitute and workless
man or woman.  It is an attitude challenging
to all professional education which claims to
prepare for a service in behalf of those in need.

Grace Abbott as a Teacher
by James Brown 4th

At the University of Chicago Grace Abbott
taught three courses to the graduate students
in the School of Social Service Administration;
Public-welfare administration, social insurance,
and the child and the state.  To the
teaching of these courses she brought a
combination of scholarship and experience which
made these classes unforgettable.

Her lectures on the historical aspects of a
movement were as alive and brilliant as those
dealing with the recent developments in which
she so frequently had played an active part.
The student who came expecting to listen
comfortably to a series of reminiscences of
her own experiences in the field was quickly
disillusioned.  Her wide experience was constantly
drawn on, but in a manner much more 
profitable for the student.  This took the form
of a critical appraisal of the legislation and
reports, which constituted the body of the
material of the courses, in terms of whether
the proposed form of organization was
administratively practical.  One of the valuable
results of her training was the development in
the student of an appreciation for well-drafted
legislation and sound forms of administrative
organization.

Students were always eager to gain admission 
to her courses and the classes were very 
large; but although one might occasionally
wish to be, no one was lost sight of.  The
classes were conducted in an old-fashioned way
for graduate courses.  There were regular
assignments, and students were called upon in
alphabetical order to recite.  However this system
might work in other hands, it yielded
remarkable results under Miss Abbott's skillful
direction.  She had the ability to frame
her questions so that they not only tested the
student's knowledge of the material, but at the
same time encouraged discussion which was
of benefit to the class as a whole.  It was never
considered worth while to improvise in Grace
Abbott's class, for exposure was certain to follow.
On the other hand, the student who was 
in possession of the facts, but who disagreed
with her conclusions concerning them always
felt free to express this difference of opinion.
It should be said, however that he usually
emerged from the ensuing debate converted to
her point of view.

One of the characteristics of her classes that
every student will recall was the lively temp
at which they were conducted.  From the time
she strode briskly down the aisle, pausing just
long enough to toss her wraps in the general
direction of a vacant seat before mounting the
platform, until the closing bell which always
came as a surprise, the classes moved along
with vigor and dispatch.  Another feature that
will be remembered was the frequency with 
which the entire class enjoyed a good laugh--
often at her expense.  Once, in the midst of a
discussion of the necessity for including a
broad definition of "delinquent" for a in a juvenile-
court law, she recalled with a chuckle that it 
was fortunate that there had been no such laws
when she was a child, and went on to relate
how she had envied the right-of-way workers

52                                                          THE CHILD                                                     Vol. 4, No. 2

on the railroad who, in their hand cars, sped
up and down the tracks that ran near her
home.  The temptation experiment with this
form of transportation finally proved 
irresistible, and one evening after the crews
had gone home she "borrowed" a hand car
and with her brother made off across the
Nebraska prairie.

Students who had the opportunity to do
research under her supervision were 
particularly fortunate, because they not only
learned the disciplines of scholarly research but
had the inspiration to produce the best they knew.
It is impossible to explain the "lift" one got from
a conference with Grace Abbott, but part of it
was certainly due to the affection in which she
was held.

Those of us who were her students are grateful
for the distinguished privilege we have
enjoyed, and perhaps more than anyone else
realize the loss that her death means to incoming
students in the field of professional social work.
                                           
Grace Abbott - 1

Grace Abbott stood in every way for the American
ideal of what a woman might become and should
become if fate and her own personality and ambition
made it possible for her.  It is true that nature gives
to only a few women such a personality, such quiet
charm, such complete sincerity and honesty, such
courage, and such rare judgment.  The point is not
that we have such women--we shall and should have
more as time goes on--but that we want them, that
the road to preferment is open to them, and that we
do not propose to deprive this country of the best
talent among women because of their sex.

I like to think of Grace Abbott at her desk where
she was for 13 years head of the Children's Bureau
in succession to that other saint, Julia Lathrop.  She
seemed to me, on my all too rare visits to her office,
a remarkably clear and cool-headed administrator,
just the right person in the right place.  She was
a great reformer, but not so much of the propagandizing
type.  She could speak warmly, at times almost
eloquently.  But like Jane Addams her forte was
in quiet, steady spade-work, in laying foundations
and then building upon them.  She did not speak a
lot or make the headlines often--the headlines would
have seized upon her if those who write them had
been aware of what Grace Abbott was accomplishing
and how she was growing herself.  She left office in
1934 to become professor of public-welfare administration
in the School of Social Service of the University
of Chicago.  She was only 60 years old when she
died; plainly she had given too much of herself and
her strength in those long years of heavy responsibility.
Senator Davis of Pennsylvania told the Senate
that he had never known a more capable administrator
and that she was "a benefactor of the entire Nation."
Senator Wagner called her "a remarkable and
great women," and Senator Robert La Follette, Jr.
declared she was one of the country's ablest women
and one of the finest women he had ever known.  And
still these words do not tell the whole story!

Yet it is not as a Government official that I usually
think of Grace Abbott, though I am aware that her
reputation as such had led to her being considered
by the League of Nations for the vitally important
new position at the head of its combined departments
dealing with health, opium, and social service.  I cannot
forget that she was a great authority in her field
of social service, notably in that of the immigrants.
In 1920-21 she was executive secretary of the Illinois
Immigrants' Commission.  Her books on the Immigrant
and the Community and The Immigrant in
Massachusetts are outstanding, but even more so is
her two-volume study called The Child and the
State, which she was able to publish only last December.
The list of causes to which she gave herself
without rest is too long to publish here, but the
debt of the anti-child-labor movement to her is 
beyond acknowledgment, and her contributions
to the struggle against infant and maternal mortality
and juvenile delinquency among the most notable.  
Indeed her pen was extraordinarily prolific even when
she was at the head of the Children's Bureau.  There 
her work was very considerably pioneering--even
after Julia Lathrop.  She put it on a secure and a 
scientific basis by all those years of the most careful
and thoughtful building.

In all this she was a follower and a pupil of Jane
Addams, whom she adored, as did all who worked 
with Miss Addams.  What a great group of human 
beings has come out of Hull House!  The spirit of that
place created by Jane Addams has influenced for their
good a wonderful group of men and women, which
only goes to show again that, if you have anything
worth while in you, devoting your life to the welfare
of the depressed and downtrodden is about the best
investment that you can possibly make.

1. From The Nation, July 29, 1939, "Issues and Men," by
Oswald Garrison Villard, p. 127.

August 1939                                            THE CHILD                                                           53

Grace Abbott and the International Labor Organization
By John G. Winant

In her contacts with the International Labor
Office, Grace Abbott made an indelible impression
as one of the outstanding delegates at the
Conference.  Something of the contribution
which she made to the International Labor
Conferences she attended is suggested in the
following statement.

Miss Abbott's association with the International
Labor Organization dates practically
from its inception.  She was one of the few
Americans who took part in the first International
Labor Conference, which was held in
Washington, D.C., in October 1919. At this
Conference she served as secretary for the
Commission on the Employment of Children
which drafted the first I.L.O. Convention
dealing with the minimum age for the
admission of children to industry.

Later, after the United States had become a
member of the International Labor Organization,
Miss Abbott in 1935 attended the International
Labor Conference in Geneva as a Government
delegate.  At this conference she
served as chairman of the Committee on 
Unemployment of Young Persons, which drafted
a recommendation urging that the minimum
age for leaving school and entering employment
should be raised to 15 years.  Largely 
through her individual effort it received the
support of the Conference.

Although from her position as Chief of the
United States Children's Bureau, her interests
were naturally concerned with the welfare of
children, they embraced a much wider field.
Or, perhaps seeing the problem of children in
its broadest aspects and its relation to other
social problems caused her interests and
activities to extend to those larger spheres of
influence.

She was one of the active supporters of the
resolution concerning workers' nutrition which
became the basis for the work which has since
been conducted by the International Labor
Office in this field.  She championed the cause
of women--their right to work, their freedom
of opportunity for professional and civic
advancement.  She did this not only in their
immediate interest but for the general good.
"The work of women adds to the wealth of the
world," she stated in discussing the report of
the Director of the International Labor Office,
claiming that a richer and more abundant life
is made possible for men, women and children
by such efforts.

In 1937 Miss Abbott again attended the annual
Conference of the International Labor Organization
as a Government delegate.  At this
Conference--the last which she attended--Miss
Abbott served as reporter for the Committee
on Minimum Age, whose duty was the revision
of the two conventions concerning the minimum
age for admission of children to employment,
previously adopted by the I.L.O. with 
relation to industry and agriculture.

Grace Abbott possessed exceptional qualities 
of leadership.  Those associated with her
recognized her ability, her clear, incisive intellect,
and all felt her integrity and force of character.
She was responsible for the resolution 
adopted by the 1937 Conference outlining the
principles which should be recognized in connection
with the legal, social, and industrial 
position of women if they were to protect
themselves against industrial exploitation and
realize the fullest possibilities of individual
development.  In urging this, Miss Abbott
pointed out, "We can hope for peace and
substantial progress only when there is freedom
and justice for all."

Her personality, her broad sympathy, insight,
and understanding won for her staunch
friendships as well as respect and admiration.
To her many friends and admirers in the International
Labor Office her passing brings a sense 
of keen personal loss.  There was something 
heroic about her courage and determination,

54
The Child
Vol. 4, No. 2

her loyalty to the causes in which she believed,
her singleness of purpose, her directness and 
unflinching candor. She gave her life and talents 
unstintingly to help others–the underprivileged 
and the exploited. She was one of
the outstanding social workers in the world.
We are richer, and every child in America has
a fairer chance, because she has lived.


Grace Abbott's Work With the League of Nations
By Charlotte Whitton

The people of the United States knew Grace 
Abbott as one of the most useful women of her
generation, but it is doubtful whether they
realized the degree to which her service contributed
to the betterment of child life
throughout the world of her day. Her vision
knew no boundaries, and in her humanitarian 
sense burned like the patriot's fire in
souls of lesser scope. "The Child and the 
State," she called her work which it was given
her to finish as her own life closed, but the
child and all humanity is more truly the theme
which played its vibrant undertone throughout
that study and throughout her tireless life.
The child of all states and races called incessantly
to her fine, clear mind, in all her years
at the Children's Bureau, and latterly, even in
the kaleidoscopic grasp which she brought to
her work in the public-welfare field, there was
constantly present the fundamental concept so
well phrased by Katherine Lenroot, her friend,
assistant, and successor–"Since the child is the
medium through which civilized life is carried
on from one generation to the next, his well-being
becomes a primary concern of organized
society."
That was the vision which Grace Abbott
saw–all mankind united about the care and 
nurturing of the child as the center of all life–
the restatement and social application of the
supreme truth of Christianity. At the close of 
the war, into which 10 million lives had been
cast as sand into the sea, she was Julia Lathrop's 
first lieutenant in seeking to bring the
nations of the world together in protection of
the child life which would redeem our generation's
loss.
In the face of the impossible the Washington
and Regional Conferences on Standards of 
Child Welfare in 1919 materialized, and no
richer findings have yet superseded those conclusions.
When, following the Treaty of 
Versailles and the Covenant of the League of
Nations, the International Labor Organization
and the Section of the League on Opium and 
Social Questions were set up, these two indefatigable 
women were determined that child
life and social welfare, as they were being 
visualized on this continent, must find their
place within the evangelical of the new brotherhood 
of nations.
With the keen and sympathetic cooperation
of Dr. William F. Snow and the American Social
Hygiene Association, they were able to
assure the participation of the United States
in the committee appointed to supervise the
international conventions for the suppression
of the traffic in women and children. Miss
Abbott, by now Chief of the Children's Bureau,
was a natural appointee to this committee;
but, as any one who knew her would surmise,
she could but shortly abide a negative approach
toward any social problem and early set
about throwing down the narrow limitations 
which had hitherto restricted international
effort in this field. Through Dr. Snow's generalship
and her forthrightness, the League 
Committee became the medium through which
the tremendous world study of the traffic in 
women and children was undertaken, directed
by Bascom Johnson and financed by funds
from the United States to the sum of $125,000.
It has already resulted in effective international
action against the nefarious traffic on


August 1939
The Child
55

this continent, in the Far East, in France, and 
in Central Europe.
Miss Abbott's quick perception, directness of
thought, and forthrightness of speech were always
the dread of certain of the delegates to
the Committee, as they were the joy and hope
of colleagues in a common cause. She was
honest and gave no quarter: Her humor would
stay where she forbore to flay. As a delegate
once said, "Those delegates with a fish to fry
would as soon see the devil come in that door
as Miss Abbott. She calls a spade a spade and
a liar a liar, and doesn't disguise her meaning."
She never made nor sought battle 
unnecessarily at the international table, but
she hated intrigue and despised indirection.
She called the play and played within its
rules.
Miss Abbott drove consistently for the broadening 
of the work of the Social Questions Section.
She strove to have the Committee on 
Traffic in Women and Children enlarged, and
an additional group of experts named to sit
with it as "assessors." When the Council approved
the appointment of one assessor from
the Western Hemisphere she journeyed to 
Ottawa and also interviewed Pan American
representatives, all of whom had been asked to 
nominate.
As a result three assessors were
named to the new Committee, Julia Lathrop
coming from the United States. Almost without
exception, however, the international assessors
came from fields of general effort.
Their contribution was always debated by most
of the Government delegates, and finally the 
Committee was enlarged to take in Canada and
certain of the South American countries. Government
delegates from India and more European 
countries were added and the assessors
dropped, except as temporary appointees in
connection with specific questions. The scope
of the work in the Committee has been broadened,
and its name changed to the Advisory 
Committee on Social Questions.
Miss Abbott lived to see part of her vision
of that brave and unselfish new world of 1919
dwindle into eclipse, but with that courage
of heart which was hers, she accepted rebuff
but not defeat. She looked to a new realinement,
and ultimately to international collaboration
in humanitarian effort, divorced entirely
from the intricacies of international politics.
She and Miss Lathrop both, even to the last
months of their lives, never lost faith in their
vision splendid, that about the central fact
of the dignity and divinity of human life, men 
of all states and races would yet find a common
brotherhood in which peace and wellbeing
would eternally abide. In that belief
each lived and served, not only her own land 
and day, but the children of all nations and 
of days yet to come.
Grace Abbott has passed beyond the sight of
men, and her own country mourns a noble
woman, but in the land to the north and in
nations beyond the seas, there are those who
knew her not, who yet will "praise God for
making her, and her for all she made."

THE CHILD           Vol. 4, No. 2

The Economic Basis of Child Welfare (1)

By GRACE ABBOTT

How are we to insure to children what
should be their inalienable right to health and
physical vigor? I realize this is not an easy
question to answer. It raises many questions
about which there is some disagreement.

Unquestionably a Nation-wide program for
making available to parents the services of
child-health centers is greatly needed, and to
this there should be no opposition. I am not
going to undertake to discuss what the full program
should be. I am, however, suggesting
that at least so far as children are concerned
we must repudiate the theory that health is in
the same category as rugs or cars, of which a
family buys the kind it can afford to pay for,
and accept the doctrine that the interest and
welfare of the children must be our only test
of what we shall or shall not do in promoting
the health of children.

It seems to me reasonable to say that a satisfactory
test of our whole recovery program
is what it will do for children. If recovery
means return to predepression conditions, then
I know what that means for many children.
Let us take the children of coal miners as an
example. 

Long before 1929 the depression came to the
mining villages. This industry furnished a
particularly flagrant example of a planless
economy which took its annual toll of the
health and welfare of the children of the
miners. * * * There was always the greatest
insecurity. The mechanization of the mines
and the importation of more workers than the
operation of the minds required were producing
widespread unemployment before 1929.
War or strikes might increase the local demand 
for coal but, like the wheat farmers, the mine
operators had pushed our production of coal

(1) From the commencement address at New Jersey College
for Women, New Brunswick, N. J., June 2, 1934. This was
the last public speech made by Miss Abbott as Chief of the
Children's Bureau.

far beyond our capacity to sell, and the developing 
use of electric power and oil have
increased the difficulties.

What is finally done about coal in the United
States is a subject of vital interest to the owners
of coal mines and to the miners and to all
who purchase coal, but it is also of vital interest
to the hundreds of thousands of children
whose fathers were miners but who now are
catalogued in our social planning as "stranded
populations."

Other examples are all about us. They
would furnish further proof of the fact that
the burden of poverty which has been laid on
the backs of children is not one but many burdens
which can be removed by different methods.
Housing will be solved one way, milk
and the other protective foods will be assured
in another, health in another. Progress toward
security will require better wages and security
against unemployment. What I am pleading
for is that in our approach to all these problems
the interests of children weigh more
heavily in the balance than individual profits.

The welfare of children requires the development
of social services - and I use that term to 
describe all services provided by the community -
schools, health services, playgrounds,
and child protection, as well as provision for
the dependent and the delinquent. Such services
are costly, but they create social values for
beyond the money outlay.

Those of you who were born just about the
time when the World War began have heard
international good will preached and seen international
suspicion and hatred govern international
relations ever since you can remember.
For 5 years you have seen the destruction of
values which a war against destitution has
brought. * * * Injustice and cruelty to
children are as old as the world. We have
made some progress. We see these ways more
clearly now than in the past; and with clearer

August 1939    THE CHILD      57

vision we can do more, go farther. Without
apology then, I ask you to use courageously
your intelligence, your strength, and your good
will toward children in the progressive removal
of the economic barriers which have retarded
the full development of children in the past.
There will, I warn you, be discouragements
and disappointments. New standards of what
constitutes social justice will develop. But the
cause of children must triumph ultimately.
The important thing is that we be should be "on
our way." Perhaps you may ask - does the
road lead uphill all the way? And I must
answer, yes, to the very end. But if I offer
you part in a long, hard struggle, I can also
promise you great rewards. Justice for all
children is the great ideal in a democracy. It
is the special responsibility of women.

ABBOTT, GRACE, social worker; born, Grand Island,
Nebr., November 17, 1878; daughter of Othman A., and

Elizabeth M. (Griffin) Abbott. Education: Ph.B.,
Grand Island College, 1898; LL.D., 1931; Ph. M. in
Political Science, University of Chicago, 1909; LL.D.,
University of Nebraska, 1931; LL.D., University of
New Hampshire and University of Wisconsin, 1932;
Wilson College, 1934; D.L., Mount Holyoke, 1935.
Delta Gemma. Present occupation: Professor of public
welfare, School of Social Service, University of
Chicago; editor, Social Service Review. Previously:
Illinois Immigrants' Commission (director, 1919-20;
executive secretary, 1920-21; United States Children's
Bureau (Chief, 1921-34); member for United States
of Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children,
League of Nations, 1923-24. Government delegate,
International Labor Conference, 1935, 1937.
Politics: Progressive. Member: National Conference
of Social Work (president, 1924). Author: The Immigrant
and the Community; The Immigrant in
Massachusetts; The Child and the State; contributor
on child welfare to Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, Social Service Review,
Current History, and others. Awarded gold medal,
American Social Science Association [National Institute
of Social Science], 1931. - American Women,
1939-40.

Grace Abbott

News of the death of Grace Abbott, professor of
public-welfare administration at the University of
Chicago, has been received in Washington with profound
sorrow. The Nation's Capital was her home
during the 13 years through which she presided over
the Children's Bureau, and she will be remembered
with gratitude here. But it was to no single neighborhood
that she devoted her genius. The truth is
that she served the whole world. Her qualities of
sympathy, earnestness, sincerity, and efficiency were
pledged to humanity at large. In that notable respect
she was an ideal American.

Yet there is no easy explanation for the vast success
of Miss Abbott's career. She was not a reformer
in the ordinary meaning of the word. Rather, she
was a builder. Her mind and heart had no negative
aspects. With materials readily available, she constructed
new social values in people. To hear her
speak was to catch a vision; to labor with her toward
any useful goal was to share in a dream being made
real. She quickened hundreds, perhaps thousands, by

(2) Editorial from The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.,
June 21, 1939.

the fire of her own spirit. But her enthusiasms were
governed, and controlled by her scientific attitude toward
every problem. She was a gracious and kindly
person because she willed so to be. Her achievements
were practically helpful because of her determination
that they must have direct application.
None of her contemporaries excelled her in knowledge
of human character.

Miss Abbott focused her principal effort upon the
neglected portion of the population. She befriended
the mothers of the United States because she realized
as few other sociologists did that they hold the fate of
the republic in their hands. With similar comprehension
she strove for every conceivable advantage for
children, appreciating the fact that democracy can
survive only with the support of a loyal younger generation.
Her fame, then, was not temporary. She
created immortality for herself. But those who knew
her best always understand that she cared nothing for
honors. The remembrance she wanted was impersonal.
All that she asked was that the task should be
finished, the obligation met, the duty done. She will
have her wish. Her inspiration is a living force now
and forever.

58     THE CHILD     Vol. 4, No. 2

National Conference of Social Work

Our conference stood in silence tonight at its general
evening session in recognition of the loss all of us feel
in the death of Grace Abbott, past president, who was 
elected to that post at our fiftieth anniversary meeting.

It is her life and her creative contribution to many
of the fields which concern us that we have most
vividly in mind. A Nebraskan, she has given greatly
to the whole nation. There was her early work at
Hull House as director of the Immigrants' Protective
League. There were her years at the Children's Bureau
at Washington, first as director of the Child
Labor Division, and for 13 years (1921 to 1934) as
Chief. She it was who administered the first Federal
Child-Labor Law; who organized the impressive White
House Conference on Child Welfare Standards in
1919 - the second of such gatherings; she administered 
the pioneer Federal-aid act for maternity and infancy

(1) Minute drafted by Paul Kellogg, 1939 president of the
National Conference of Social Work, Buffalo, N. Y., and
adopted by Executive Committee, June 20, 1939.

(from 1922 to 1929). She had a major part in initiating
the first Federal measures for relief at the
outset of the depression. Until the end of her life
she was a valued adviser to the Secretary of Labor.
She was chiefly responsible for the organization of the
Advisory Committee on Child Welfare of the League
of Nations and it was at her suggestion that the world-
wide inquiry into traffic in women and children was
made by the League. Only recently she served as a
Government delegate to the International Labor
Conference.

These strokes of leadership were only illustrations
of her inveterate spending of herself for people, from
the Middle West to Washington, to the world.

And through it all her friends in this Conference
and everywhere prize a gorgeous human being, whose
faith in democracy, whose give and take in discussion,
whose fighting spirit in the causes she made her own,
whose administrative capacity, and whose warmth in
everyday relationships made her a living force in
American life.

International Labor Conference, Geneva
TWENTY-FIFTH SESSION, FOURTEENTH SITTING, JUNE 1939

The PRESIDENT. Before proceeding with the next
business on the agenda, I should like to make the
following statement:

Delegates at this Conference will have learned with
deep regret of the death of Grace Abbott, which occurred
recently. Miss Abbott was a well-known figure
in Conference circles. She was a Government delegate
of the United States of America when that Government
was for the first time officially represented at
the International Labor Conference in 1935. At that
same session she was presided over the work of the committee
set up by the Conference to consider the question
of unemployment among young persons. She also
attended the 1937 session as a Government delegate,
when she was appointed reporter of the committee set
up to consider the revision of the Convention's concerning
the minimum age for admission of children to
employment.

Miss Abbott had a long and distinguished career
in her own country. For 13 years she occupied the
important post of head of the Children's Bureau of
the Department of Labor, and was one of the promoters
of legislation for the protection of children in
her own country. She subsequently became a professor
in the social field, rendering great services to her
country. I am sure that all delegates at this Conference
will wish to express their deep sympathy with
the United States of America in the loss suffered by 
that country.

Mr. GOODRICH (Government delegate, United States
of America). Mr. President, the United States delegation
warmly appreciates the speech which you have
made and your expression of sympathy.


CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN

S. JOSEPHINE BAKER, M.D., was associated with
the Children's Bureau, 1926-26, as specialist in maternal
and infant hygiene. She organized the New
York City Bureau of Child Hygiene and was its head
from 1908 to 1923. This was the first bureau of child
hygiene under public auspices. Her autobiography,
Fighting for Life, was published in 1939.

SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE, social worker and
educator, has been a member of the faculty of the
University of Chicago since 1902, and professor of
public-welfare administration since 1929 in the School
of Social Welfare Administration. She was formerly
dean of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
and is the author of numerous books in the
field of social work, including Public Welfare Administration
in the United States: Select Documents.

JAMES BROWN 4TH, of Freeport, Pa., graduated from
Haverford College in 1930, received his master's degree
from the University of Chicago, School of Social
Service Administration, in 1937 and the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago
in 1939. His doctoral thesis was on the history of
public assistance in Chicago, 1833-93. In addition to
taking all Miss Abbott's courses he worked with her
for nearly 2 years as research assistant in the preparation
of The Child and the State.

WILLIAM L. CHENERY has been the editor of Collier's
Weekly since 1925, and prior to that he was editor of
the New York Telegram-Mail and managing editor fo
the New York Sun. He was responsible for the
preparation of the final report of the 1919 White House
Conference on Standards of Child Welfare.

JAMES J. DAVIS was appointed by President Harding
as Secretary of Labor March 5, 1921, and resigned
in 1930 when he was elected United States Senator
from Pennsylvania.

LUDWELL DENNY has been in newspaper work for
many years, having been successively foreign correspondent
for United Press, chief editorial writer and
associate editor of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper
Alliance, and editor of the Indianapolis Times. At
present, he is labor editor for the Scripps-Howard
papers.

WILLIAM J. ELLIS has been Commissioner of the
Department of Institutions and Agencies of New
Jersey since 1926. Among his manifold activities,
Commissioner Ellis has served as chairman of the
Subcommittee on the Physically and Mentally Handicappped
of the White House Conference of 1930, and s
a past president of the American Public Welfare
Association.

HOMER FOLKS has been the secretary of the State
Charities Aid Association of New York since 1893,
except for the year 1902-3 when he was commissioner
of public charities of New York City, and 1917-18,

when he was director of American Red Cross relief in
France. Mr. Folks has taken an active part in three
of the four White House conferences. He is chairman
of the Report Committee of the White House Conference
on Children in a Democracy, which held its first
session April 26, 1939.

FELIX FRANKFURTER, Justice of the United States
Supreme Court, served as chairman of the War Labor
Policies Board, assistant to the Secretary of War,
assistant to the Secretary of Labor, and secretary and
counsel to the President's Mediation Commission. He 
was professor of law at Harvard University Law
School from September 1914 until he was appointed to
the Supreme Court in 1939.

BESS FURMAN came to Washington from Nebraska
in 1929 as a writer for the Associated Press and has
had wide experience in the newspaper field.

WILLIAM GREEN has been president of the American 
Federation of Labor since 1924. He was appointed a
member of the Advisory Council to the Committee on
Economic Security, 1934. He was a member of the
original National Labor Board and served as a member
of the governing board of the International Labor
Organization, 1935-37, and of the Advisory Council of
the National Recovery Administration.

SIDNEY HILLMAN has been president of the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers of America since 1915. He
was a member of the Labor Advisory Board of the
National Recovery Administration in 1933 and of the
National Industrial Recovery Board in 1935.

EDWARD KEATING, United States Representative from
Colorado, 1913-19, has since 1919 been editor and
manager of the newspaper Labor, Washington, D.C.

KATHARINE F. LENROOT, who succeeded Grace Abbott
as Chief of the Children's Bureau, joined the staff of
the Bureau in 1915 as a member of the Social Service
Division. She served under Miss Abbott as director
of the Editorial Division, 1921-22, and as Assistant
Chief of the Bureau, 1922-34.

ELLEN NATHALIE MATTHEWS was with the Children's
Bureau from 1918 to 1934, first as assistant director
of the Child Labor Division while Miss Abbott was
the director, from 192031 as director of the Industrial
Division, and later as consultant on child-labor
problems. She was chairman of the Subcommittee on
Child Labor of the White House Conference on Child
Health and Protection, 1930. After leaving the Children's
Bureau she directed a study of the youth of
New York, made by the Welfare Council of New York
City.

GEORGE W. NORRIS was elected United States Senator
from Nebraska for the term beginning March 4, 1913,
and has served in that capacity ever since. He
served for 10 years in the House of Representatives
prior to his election to the Senate.

     VIOLA PARADISE was associated with the Children's Bureau from 1915 to 1919 as a special agent, She also worked with Grace Abbott in the Immigrants' Protective League. She is the author of three novels and many short stories and articles, for some of which the backgrounds were suggested by her work in the Children's Bureau.
     MAUD WOOD PARK, a leader in the woman-suffrage movement, was the first president of the National League of Woman Voters, 1920-24.
     FRANCES PERKINS, Secretary of Labor, was appointed to that office March 4, 1933, and is chairman of the President's Committee on Economic Security, appointed in 1934. Before her appointment as Secretary of Labor she served as a member and as chairman of the New York State Industrial Board and from 1929, as commissioner of the New York State Industrial Commission.
     THE RIGHT REVEREND MONSIGNOR JOHN A. RYAN is professor of social ethics, National Catholic School of Social Service, Washington D.C., and director of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Council. He is the author of books and articles in a wide field.
     CHARLOTTE WHITTON, executive director of the Canadian Welfare Council, Ottawa, is the delegate of Canada to the Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations, as she was to the committee that preceded it.
     JOHN G. WINANT, Governor of New Hampshire, 1925-26 and 1931-34, was appointed chairman of the Federal Textile Enquiry Board in 1934. He was appointed assistant director of the International Labor Office in Geneva 1935, and later in that year Chairman of the Social Security Board. In 1937 he resigned from the Social Security Board and returned to Geneva as assistant director of the International Labor Office. In June 1938 he was elected Director of the International Labor Office, Geneva, Switzerland, his present position.
CHILDREN'S BUREAU
KATHARINE F. LENROOT, CHIEF
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
FRANCES PERKINS, SECRETARY
Published under authority of Public Resolution No.  57, approved May 11, 1922 (42 Stat. 541), as amended by section 307 Public Act 212, approved June 30, 1932 (47 Stat. 409). This publication approved by the Director, Bureau of the Budget, May 12, 1936.


Grace Abbott

4413 P
Underwood & Underwood
Washington

Miss Grace Abbott, Chief,
Children's Bureau,
United States Dept. of Labor.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.