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HomeIssuesXV-1Symposia. Pragmatism and Feminism...Beyond Individual Rights

Symposia. Pragmatism and Feminism. Epistemological, Social, and Political Spaces of Resistance

Beyond Individual Rights

Grace Abbott’s Feminist Pragmatist Political Activism
Judy D. Whipps

Abstract

Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and second-generation Hull House activist Grace Abbott were at the forefront of a reconstruction of early twentieth-century American democracy. They worked to reframe U.S. political democracy, expanding its focus beyond individual rights to caring for the social community. The movement away from laissez-faire government toward state and federal legislation protecting children, women, and workers was often halting, sometimes stymied by public opposition, and other times blocked by Supreme Court decisions. Grace Abbott’s social and political philosophy demonstrated her training in law and political science and was influenced by her direct engagement with her Hull House neighbors. Abbott was a skilled social science researcher who saw public research as a way of crossing and blurring epistemological class boundaries, creating pathways for the general population to understand the burdens others faced. Through her leadership of the Immigrants’ Protective League and the Children’s Bureau, Abbott argued that the democratic state should be responsible for extending legislative protections into the social and industrial realms to protect vulnerable and dependent populations. Her work was essential to the continuing evolving supportive structures of governmental programs and social safety nets that are taken for granted by many Americans today.

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1. Introduction

  • 1 See Whipps 2023b.

1Grace Abbott (1878-1939) carried Hull House feminist pragmatist social and political reforms into Washington politics in the 1920s and 30s, promoting legislation that enacted many of the reform efforts of early activists. Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, and Florence Kelley mentored Abbott, introducing her to the political methods developed by the Hull House community. While many Progressive Era reformers were engaged in the work that eventually led to social protections, this essay focuses on how Addams, Kelley, and Abbott created networks and engaged in the political process to institute far-reaching social change. Addams is now well-known in pragmatist dialogue. Kelley was a pragmatist, social scientist, and Hull House resident from 1892 to 1898 before heading the National Consumers League (NCL) in New York.1 She was the linchpin that connected East Coast/Washington activism with the Hull House networks and was active in federal legislative reform until she died in 1932. Abbott benefited from the models that Addams and Kelley provided, and with her training in political science and law, she helped reframe U.S. political systems.

  • 2 See Downey 2009.

2In 1908 Abbott moved to Hull House, taking a six-month position with the newly formed Juvenile Protection Association. Addams recognized Abbott’s potential, taking her to the state capital to lobby for social legislation. In 1908 Addams asked Abbott to become the first director of the Immigrants’ Protective League. In 1921 Abbott became the head of the Children’s Bureau in Washington, becoming the most powerful woman in the federal government in the 1920s and early 1930s. In that work, she articulated the duty of the state to protect the health and safety of women and children. Abbott also helped build the groundwork for the 1930s New Deal legislation, the most successful social reform legislation in U.S. history. After stepping down from the Children’s Bureau, Abbott served as an unofficial adviser to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a Presidential Cabinet. Perkins, also a Hull House alumna, was responsible for legislation such as Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act that finally prohibited child labor.2 These 1930s political reforms helped establish Addams’s, Kelley’s, and Abbott’s political legacies. In all her projects, Abbott worked to expand governmental responsibilities to protect the social well-being of its population. Abbott was asked to succeed Addams as head of Hull House when Addams died in 1935, revealing the extent to which the Hull House community saw her as carrying forward Addams’s legacy.

  • 3 They eventually created the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, considered one of the most power (...)

3There is extensive literature on pragmatism and democracy generally and on Addams’s democratic theory specifically. The literature does not often address the direct involvement of pragmatist women in the U.S. legislative process, drafting proposed legislation, lobbying for laws to support social well-being or “social rights,” and activating wide networks to support specific bills, funding initiatives, and governmental appointments.3 Abbott worked to reframe U.S. political democracy, expanding its focus beyond individual rights to caring for the community. Only gradually did the state respond to the suffering caused by industrialization. The political movement away from laissez-faire government toward state and federal legislation that protected children, women, and workers was often halting, sometimes stymied by public opposition, and other times blocked by Supreme Court decisions. Before 1920, this political work was enacted without women’s right to vote.

  • 4 Addams’s close colleague Julia Lathrop came to HH in its second year. She was one of the first wome (...)

4Addams, Lathrop, Kelley, and Abbott all had fathers who were politicians, which may have given them some familiarity with the legislative process. Addams’s and Lathrop’s fathers were in the Illinois legislature, Kelley’s father was a long-time U.S. Congressman, and Abbott’s father was a lieutenant governor of Nebraska.4 Before and after women won the right to vote in 1920, these women were political and judicial activists. They utilized social science data, women’s networks, as well as their experiential knowledge, to affect legislation. Jane Addams laid the philosophical foundation for this political change.

2. Addams and an Evolving Social Democracy: Setting the Foundations

  • 5 See Fischer 2019.
  • 6 Addams first makes this appeal for an expansion of democracy “beyond its political expression” to i (...)

5In her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams extended democracy beyond a constitutional process to a system of ethics. As an ethical system, she saw democracy as an evolutionary movement transcending individual or family-based ethical standards.5 Addams’s ethical thinking went beyond a theoretical approach to a life of activism, working with the feminist pragmatist women of Hull House and their extensive reform networks.6 Addams called for democratic policies that are developed through “deal(ing) with real people and obtain(ing) a sense of participation with our fellows” (1907/2007: 18).

6The political work that Addams, Kelley, Abbott, and other reformers did in this era required substantially rethinking social contract theory and the enlightenment individual rights philosophies at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Social contract theory imagines the individual in a transactional relationship with the government, compromising aspects of individual freedom by agreeing to social and political laws and, in exchange, receiving the benefits of state protection. The creators of the U.S. Constitution wished to limit the far-reaching governmental powers by protecting the individual from their government, creating a governmental system based on fear of the state. Social contract theory was, as John Dewey (LW.2: 289) said, “a theory which endows singular persons in isolation from any associations.” As Dewey continued, “from these tenets, it was a short step to the conclusion that the sole end of government was the protection of individuals in the rights which were theirs by nature.” Of course, for the eighteenth-century founders, individual political freedoms were limited to a particular group of land-owning white males. It was, as some progressive thinkers pointed out, an insufficient model for the industrial nation.

  • 7 Other feminist-pragmatists, such as Fischer and Hamington, have made this point. See Hamington (200 (...)

7In the Progressive Era, this view of the role of government was shifting. As Addams said, “The American voter is not content with the eighteenth-century formulae of liberty and equality, high-flown as they are, for they do not apply to the situation” (1912: 12). Pragmatists did not disavow individual rights but claimed that rights alone were an insufficient foundation for a progressive democratic community that now understands the individual within his or her social context.7 As Addams said, “We have refused to move beyond the position of its eighteenth-century leaders, who believed that political equality alone would secure all good to all men” (1892/1970: 2). Political equality, even if it were a reality for all people, was insufficient in a society that didn’t protect the health and well-being of the community.

  • 8 See Fischer (2019: 25-7). Addams often talked about society as organic (see, for example, 1892: 4; (...)

8Addams called for a social order that “includes liberty of individual action and complexity of group development” (1907/2007: 116; emphasis mine). For many pragmatists, imagining a person as an isolated, disembodied individual born with “natural rights” prior to or apart from the community is a fictional exercise. Instead, as Addams said, a person is “not […] an isolated individual, but […] a part in a social organism” (1902/2002: 117). This pragmatist understanding of the interdependence between the self and the community reflected the evolutionary thinking of the late 19th century, which framed living creatures as developing out of their physical environments.8 As part of a social organism, individuals continually shaped and were shaped by personal, cultural, and economic environments. For Addams, true democracy functions in a healthy social community that supports individuals and communities.

9As Addams gained national influence, she continued to support social reform legislation, using her influence to intercede directly with politicians in person or through correspondence. She wrote articles for various publications, met with politicians to advocate for appointments, and called on women’s clubs to promote the passage of social justice measures. Along with a vast network of labor and reform activists, Addams, Kelley, and Abbott were often collaborators in promoting democratic communities that created the conditions for social well-being.

3. Florence Kelly’s Fight for Social Rights

  • 9 According to Batlan (2010: 5), Kelley’s use of social science research laid the foundations for wha (...)

10Florence Kelley joined Hull House in 1891, two years after its founding, and became a close friend of Addams. Kelley was trained as a social scientist at Cornell University. She used her expertise to work tirelessly for reforms, including the abolition of child labor, better labor conditions, and racial justice. In her early years at Hull House, Kelley led the investigations that resulted in Hull House Maps and Papers. Drawing on the data they produced, she and Addams helped draft the 1893 legislation that prohibited child labor and limited the hours a woman could work. Addams and Hull House residents vigorously lobbied for this bill (Addams 1910/1990: 201-2). In this early work, Kelley established her activism methods: social science-based investigations, the publication of the results of their research to inform and influence public opinion, convening coalitions to draft legislation, recruiting women’s and social justice networks to lobby for proposed laws, and then helping to create the administrative process that would enforce the laws.9

  • 10 See Sklar (1995: 279), and Whipps 2023b. During this time, Kelley also finished law school.
  • 11 244 Ill. 509 April 21, 1910.

11In 1893 the governor appointed Kelley as Illinois’s first Chief Factory Investigator. When the eight-hour day for women was declared unconstitutional in 1895, Kelley intensified her work to root out child labor.10 Kelley moved to New York in 1899 to head the National Consumers League (NCL), continuing her work on industrial reforms by appealing to consumers to use their buying power to promote safe and equitable working conditions. She expanded her reform networks and recruited other influential reform groups to assist in drafting legislation. For example, the National Child Labor Committee drafted the language creating the Children’s Bureau. Kelley also continued to work on legal cases, such as the 1908 Muller v. Oregon Supreme Court decision that held up laws limiting women’s working hours. After Muller was decided, Addams and Grace Abbott once again proposed an Illinois eight-hour workday law for women, eventually supporting the compromise of a ten-hour workday. This bill passed the legislature in 1909 and was upheld by Illinois Supreme Court in 1910 in W. C. Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman.11

  • 12 See also Sklar & Palmer (2009: xxii).
  • 13 These duties are termed “affirmative” duties, indicates a responsibility to act, in this case to es (...)

12Like Addams, Kelley understood human rights were insufficient for the interdependent democracy they envisioned. Human rights, she said, can’t stand alone since asserting them “invariably brings the experience that they are historically interwoven with the rights of innumerable other people.” Rarely considered are “the weakest and most defenseless persons in the community” (Kelley 1905: 229-30). She argued for what historian Dorothy Sue Cobble later termed “social rights,” the “social support necessary for a life apart from wage work” (2005: 3-4).12 She believed that the government had a duty to promote democratic equality and protect equitable social conditions.13 According to Kelley, the government should provide the conditions that allow people to participate fully as citizens, enabling a true democracy by modifying existing power relations. The ground-breaking labor legislation that Kelley fought for was redistributive, requiring the state to set up material conditions that would foster true democracy (Batlan 2010). Those claims were a radical departure from Constitutional law at the time.

  • 14 These quotes are in reference to Kelley’s legislative activism, but they equally apply to Addams’s (...)

13Yet the state and federal Supreme Courts continued to hold all new legislation to the boundaries of eighteenth-century founders. In a legal culture focused on individualism as a primary value, state and federal Supreme Court judges interpreted the Constitution as protecting individual rights, not social well-being. Addams, Kelley, and Abbott had to overcome, as Sklar said, “constitutional interpretations biased against social rights” and, therefore, “were severely disadvantaged by the absence of any explicit provision for social rights in the United States Constitution” (Sklar & Palmer 2009: xxiii).14 Yet, they continued to argue that the state had a duty to protect and care for its vulnerable people. Kelley approached this work, as Batlan said, by “marry(ing) the philosophy of pragmatism, social science, on the ground reality, and law” (2010: 2).

4. Grace Abbott: Creating the Immigrants’ Protective League

  • 15 Abbott published sixty articles, four books, and two pamphlets. Transcripts of her twenty-one Congr (...)
  • 16 Frances Perkins later described Abbott as someone who “put herself in direct contact with poverty a (...)

14Building on the foundations established by Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, Grace Abbott continued to extend social rights through activism that reframed the role of U.S. democratic institutions. Abbott was a feminist and pragmatist trained in political science and law, skilled in social science research and public administration, and later renowned as a social worker.15 She saw public research as a way of crossing and blurring epistemological class boundaries by allowing the general population to come to know the burdens others faced and to “at least see the size of one another’s burdens” (Addams 1902/2002: 7). Public research served to both inform the public, thereby arousing public support for social rights, and provide an evidentiary basis for policy change. Her approach relied on her political and legal training supported by her social scientific research and was significantly influenced by her direct engagement with her Hull House neighbors.16

  • 17 She maintained this position in her immigrant support work, her work at the Children’s Bureau, and (...)

15Like Addams, Abbott saw the democratic government as necessarily evolving. Earlier American political philosophies were, as she said, “grounded in fear,” which had led people to want to limit governmental responsibilities (1924/2008: 44). Instead of relying on ideas created in the past when current needs weren’t present, she said “(w)e shall have to do our own thinking” (ibid.: 47). In that rethinking process, Abbott expanded earlier interpretations of democracy to argue that the government should extend legislative protections into social and industrial realms to protect vulnerable and dependent populations. Throughout her career, Abbott maintained that programs that addressed major social problems needed a unified governmental response and federal funding, particularly when the issues crossed state lines.17 She enacted her efforts of a more expansive democracy in three areas: immigrant policy, child labor legislation, and efforts to reduce child and maternal mortality. Her work as the first director of the Immigrants’ Protective League (IPL) started her journey from local to national and international politics.

  • 18 Costin (1983: 89). These women disappeared even when they had family or friends waiting for them in (...)
  • 19 The National Council of Jewish Women was formed in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions during the C (...)

16As immigration to Chicago swelled in the early 1900s, so too did the number of con artists, sexual predators, and sweatshop recruiters who took advantage of the new arrivals. Young women were especially vulnerable; they were often met at train stations by unscrupulous people who exploited them financially and sometimes sexually (Abbott 1917). In 1910, 10 to 20 percent of young women heading to Chicago from their port of U.S. entry did not arrive at their destination.18 The National Council of Jewish Women,19 responding to the fervor around “white slavery,” or sexual exploitation of young immigrant women, had created an Immigrant Aid safety program in New York and other East Coast arrival cities. Since many immigrants immediately boarded trains to Chicago and other cities, they saw a need to expand to inland cities and reached out to Chicago reformers.

  • 20 Established in 1903, the WTUL was a coalition of working class and upper/middle class women created (...)
  • 21 Batlan 2018, citing information from “Immigrant Aliens Admitted to Illinois,” Box 47, Immigrants’ P (...)
  • 22 In the “Foreword” to first IPL Annual report, Addams (1910) wrote “a central office is able not onl (...)

17Workplace exploitation and the sexual trafficking of immigrant women also became concerns for the Chicago branch of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL).20 They were appalled at the economic abuse of newly arrived young immigrants who worked for long hours at meager pay. In 1907, they created an Immigration Committee to meet newcomers at Chicago train stations. Then they supported women through a “friendly visiting” program while gathering information about immigrant living and working conditions. In 1907, 104,156 travelers arrived in Chicago, and the needs presented by this influx of immigrants soon overwhelmed the WTUL Immigration Committee.21 They turned to Addams and the broader community for a more comprehensive response. Addams realized this situation required a more specialized approach than a settlement could offer.22 Addams joined the National Council of Jewish Women and the WTUL to create the IPL at a meeting at Hull House in April 1908. Addams asked Abbott to serve as the first director. At the age of 30, Abbott stepped into a potentially overwhelming position. She had to create a new approach from the ground up, responding to arriving immigrants with urgent needs and starting a new organization that required creating an administrative structure and staffing. In addition, she was called to respond to the rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, work that included preparing reports for Congress and testifying in Congress in opposition to immigration restrictions.

18The situation was incredibly complex and multifaceted. The IPL’s first focus was newly arriving women’s physical and workplace safety. Abbott set up an immigrant aid station with a multi-lingual staff from Bohemian, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Russian, Bulgarian, and American backgrounds. She convinced Ellis Island immigration authorities to send the IPL the names and addresses of all unattached female aliens destined for Chicago. In their second year, the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad gave the IPL the use of a building across the street from the central station for immigrant aid. From their new building, the IPL attempted to connect each immigrant with a relative or friend. If the immigrant did not have connections in Chicago, the IPL provided temporary housing and employment assistance. The IPL grew quickly. Abbott reported that in 1913 they assisted 41,332 travelers (Abbott 1917: 20).

  • 23 According to Carol Nackenoff (2014: 130), the IPL was an example of how women bridged private and p (...)

19As early as 1909, Abbott publicly urged a federal response to this issue, saying that the situation “would be greatly improved” if a federal “immigration department would establish a protective bureau” for new immigrants (Abbott 1909/2008: 9). The governmental programs she recommended were modeled on the practices and programs already created by the IPL, such as aid stations.23 IPL engaged in many types of systemic reform, such as advocating for state regulation of banking, improving the state employment agencies, hiring government-sponsored public health nurses who spoke the immigrants’ languages, and licensure of midwives.

  • 24 As Abbott said, many Americans had never encountered the new immigrants in business or social life; (...)
  • 25 Chicago professor George Herbert Mead was chair of the Committee on Publicity and he arranged for t (...)
  • 26 See, for example, Addams (1907/2007: 27).

20Like the early work of Hull House residents, Abbott acted as a cultural translator, attempting to build understanding between cultures and classes.24 She wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Evening Post from 1909-1910, titled “Within the City’s Gates,”25 telling stories about the new immigrants. She told of the new immigrants’ often bewildering experiences, helping the reader visualize the barriers new immigrants encountered and demonstrating the immigrant’s courage and resilience. Her narratives about the confusion and turmoil of non-English speaking immigrants arriving alone at the train station showed how they were often exploited financially and sexually. Her readers may have read Addams’s 1907 book Newer Ideals of Peace, which told similar stories of immigrant men exploited by steamship companies, employment brokers, landlords, and even politicians at every turn.26 Abbott and Addams used these stories and their investigative data to draw the community into a process of inquiry, pose questions about current methods, and urge community and legislative change.

  • 27 Also see Abbott 1911.

21Her daily experience with newly arriving immigrants at the train station and with her Hull House neighbors allowed Abbott to speak from personal experience about immigrants in Chicago. Still, she wanted a deeper understanding of why people emigrated from their home countries. She took a three-month solo investigative trip to Eastern Europe, where she visited small villages in the rural areas of the Austro-Hungarian empire. That trip reinforced the dramatic cultural differences between European rural life and Chicago’s industrial environment, which helped her see the fallacies in most immigrant-support policies. In her critique of immigrant assimilation programs, Abbott said they were designed as if they were serving “only a homogenous Anglo-Saxon population” instead of considering the political, social, and economic lives of immigrants before entering their communities (1917/2008: 19).27 Many of the twenty-five million “new” immigrants were Jewish, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox from southern and eastern Europe who were not considered “white” by many native-born Americans. In the IPL annual report in 1914, Abbott said, “the League was organized not only to serve all nationalities and all creeds but to try and break down all forms in which racial injustice so frequently appears in the United States” (quoted in Petit 2010: 97). As Abbott reported, immigrant women must face “the industrial and legal discriminations which are the common lot of women” but also “overcome the stupid race prejudice” of many Americans (2008: 30).

5. Abbott’s Response to Anti-immigration Policies

22As the director of the IPL, Abbott was called on to respond to powerful anti-immigrant nativist voices, such as the influential Immigrant Restriction League, which explicitly targeted immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Since its founding in 1894, it proposed limiting the types and numbers of people allowed to immigrate. They often stoked racial and religious fears of “diluting” the stock of the northern European majority while promoting a racial hierarchy based on skin color and nationality. Gender also played a role in the rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment. As Petit points out, the debate about who was a suitable immigrant drew on idealized portrayals of manhood and womanly virtues. Northern European males were portrayed as virile and robust, while the masculinity of eastern European men was denigrated. Likewise, virtuous “white” motherhood was compared to an image of new female immigrants as “dangerous breeders” with questionable sexual morality (2010: 3, 51-4).

23In 1907, shortly before the IPL was founded, President Teddy Roosevelt charged the Senate Immigration Commission to investigate the impact of immigration. This commission, also known as the Dillingham Commission, invited both the Immigrant Restriction League and the IPL to submit reports for consideration by the Commission. Abbott submitted information from the IPL’s first annual report, including an introductory letter written by Addams. In the IPL filing, Abbott didn’t directly attack racialized arguments for exclusion. Instead, IPL’s report relied on human empathy, telling the stories of ten immigrants who found themselves in precarious and potentially exploitive situations after arriving in the U.S. Abbott used these stories to argue that the government should adopt a protective function, urging the commission to create policies to curb economic and sexual exploitation.

24Taking a cue from the methods that Southerners were using to restrict African American votes, anti-immigration advocates focused their efforts on a literacy test as a test for immigration. Throughout her time in the IPL, Abbott testified in Congress to oppose the literacy test. She also utilized data from the results of the IPL programs to lobby for proposed protective legislation. When the “literacy test” for immigration restriction passed Congress in 1912 and moved to President Taft’s desk, Abbott’s Congressional testimony helped persuade Taft to veto the bill (Sorenson 2008: xxxi).

  • 28 The organization continues today, albeit under a different name. According to the University of Ill (...)
  • 29 Nackenoff (2014: 214).

25Abbott and the IPL succeeded in convincing the government that it should protect the vulnerable immigrant population. In 1918, Illinois established the Immigrants Commission, with Abbott as its director. It was an important but temporary measure. Three years later, the Illinois governor unexpectedly vetoed funding for the Commission. The IPL had to reorganize suddenly to once again function outside of government support.28 Abbott also eventually lost the battle with those who wanted to restrict immigration. Perhaps because of WWI, the national sentiment against immigration was growing. In 1917, Congress passed a literacy requirement for new immigrants, overriding Wilson’s presidential veto. Yet, the groundwork had been established for non-state entities to develop prototypes that eventually transitioned into local, state, and federal programs.29 Abbott took what she learned from the IPL experience to her next position as head of the Children's Bureau.

6. Children’s Bureau: Feminist Pragmatism in Washington

  • 30 According to Frances Perkins, Kelley believed “the long effort to establish the Children’s Bureau i (...)

26The federal Children’s Bureau, created by Congress in 1912, was a significant arm of feminist-pragmatist social inquiry and activism at the national level. The idea for a federal government division devoted to children’s well-being came from a 1903 breakfast discussion between Florence Kelley and Lillian Wald, head of the New York Henry Street settlement. For over two decades, from 1912 to 1934, former Hull House residents administered the Children’s Bureau.30 Its mission was to investigate “all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people” (Abbott 1952/2008: 34). Support for the well-being of children, including the prohibition of child labor and the creation of a juvenile court system, had been a Hull House priority since its early days. The Children’s Bureau represented a revolutionary moment for social rights. As Edith Abbott said (ibid.), “the Children’s Bureau was the first recognition that the national government had a responsibility to promote the welfare of the children of the nation.”

  • 31 The 1916 Keating-Owen Act was a major victory for progressive reformers. It used the federal author (...)

27Once the Children’s Bureau was finally created, Congress accepted Addams’s recommendation to appoint Hull House resident Julia Lathrop as the head of the Bureau. Lathrop became the first woman to lead a federal agency. Five years later, Lathrop convinced Abbott to move to Washington to administer a new federal law restricting child labor.31 When the U.S. Supreme Court declared the child labor law unconstitutional after only nine months, Abbott’s new department was shuttered.

  • 32 In a letter to Abbott, Kelley wrote that she, Lillian Wald and Addams were advocating for her appoi (...)

28In 1921, Lathrop asked Abbott to consider being her successor as the new Chief of the Children’s Bureau. Although Abbott had the political expertise to step into the role, she was reluctant, particularly given her disappointments with state and federal judicial reversals of reform legislation. When she finally agreed, Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop mobilized Hull House and reform networks nationwide to send letters to the Secretary of Labor and Congress. Abbott was appointed the new director.32 She was now working to evolve the government from within, and once again, she faced conservative political forces. However, she was an inspiring leader. As one of the employees said, “Whenever Grace Abbott walked down a hall […] everything seemed to come alive in her wake. She just infused a kind of spirit into the whole Bureau” (Costin 1983: 127).

  • 33 When the Children’s Bureau started in 1912, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was over 111 per (...)

29Abbott began her leadership of the Children’s Bureau as it assumed responsibility for the first federally funded health program, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act. A wide range of women’s and reform organizations had lobbied for the bill, which aimed to reduce the alarming rate of infant and maternal deaths in the U.S.33 Research had consistently demonstrated that poverty was a causal factor in many infant and maternal deaths. Sheppard-Towner provided matching funds to the states for prenatal and infant health care, including educational childbirth and child health materials, maternity clinics, nurse home visits, and other child welfare programs.

30This new bill, with early drafts by Julia Lathrop, “was radically new legislation in the health field” (Schlesinger 1964: 1037). It marked a dramatic departure from previous political philosophies about the role of government. It was based on the premise that just decades before would have been seen as unthinkable: that federal, state, and local governments share the responsibility for providing support services for children and parents. As Abbott said, “There is no parent, however wise and rich and resourceful, that can rear his children without the cooperation of the community” (1926/2008: 114 n.9). Infant mortality dropped throughout the 1920s, and it continued to drop throughout the twentieth century, partially because of Children’s Bureau work. Recent economists estimate that the work funded by the Sheppard-Towner bill was responsible for 9 to 21 percent of that decline in infant mortality in the 1920s (Moehling & Thomasson 2012).

7. Backlash Against Abbott and Social Rights

  • 34 As one critic said, “[…] practically all of the radicalism among women in the United States centers (...)
  • 35 Women doctors were members of the AMA but their voices were marginalized and rarely had an effect o (...)

31By the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Abbott had emerged as a well-known political voice, and she, along with the Children’s Bureau, was frequently the target of backlash. Attackers denounced the Children’s Bureau and Hull House as centers of radicalism, and Abbott’s work was condemned as socialism.34 While there was little opposition to infant and maternal health funding in 1921, funding needed to be reinstated by Congress every four years. During those years after its first passage, the opposition rallied its forces. The primary foes were the American Medical Association (AMA) and the conservative Woman Patriots. The AMA claimed the Bureau was providing services that should be in the purview of the medical establishment, even though the Bureau had doctors and nurses on staff. They ignored the fact that the Bureau’s work spread across multiple fields, such as social work and education.35 The Women Patriots (formerly the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage) denounced the Sheppard-Towner Act as a communist and feminist plot and as an incursion into the privacy of family life. Opponents attacked free prenatal care and educational services for parents as the beginning of socialized medicine and as a socialist incursion into the sanctity of the home (Abbott 1924/2008: 44). Some conservative leaders claimed that the whole child health agenda, with Abbott as a central figure, was a Russian communist conspiracy (Muncy 1991: 129). Congress eliminated the bill’s funding in 1929.

  • 36 Child labor restrictions were opposed by businesses, conservative women, and even the Catholic chur (...)

32Instead of being devastated by the loss of funding, Abbott turned her attention to a proposed "Children’s Amendment" to the Constitution. Eliminating child labor had been a long goal for Abbott and the progressive movement. When they were able to pass legislation, the Supreme Court repeatedly overturned the measures as an unconstitutional incursion into state’s rights or the rights of commerce.36 After the Supreme Court once again overturned child labor legislation in 1922, Abbott worked closely with Kelley and a long list of women’s reform and lobbying organizations to create the Children’s Amendment. It passed both houses of Congress but needed state ratification. During the ratification process, it encountered broad cultural opposition from manufacturing associations to conservative women’s groups. Some public attacks were aimed at Abbott personally or the “Kelley-Abbott gang,” who were once again portrayed as part of a communist plot to nationalize the care and education of children (Costin 1983: 155). The amendment was never ratified.

  • 37 The Children’s Bureau created opportunities for more professional women in government. Lathrop had (...)

33Some of the attacks on the Bureau, in Congress and the media, were gendered, focused on female professionals, or the “female celibates” who led the Bureau. For instance, ignoring the fact that not all the female staff were unmarried,37 Senator Reed “railed against the absurdity of childless women instructing mothers on the details of childrearing,” calling them “office-holding spinster(s).” Many of those attacks were directed at Abbott personally. She endured and responded to these attacks when she was called to testify at Congressional inquiries. The national women’s networks and reform organizations continued to support Abbott and the Children’s Bureau initiatives. Florence Kelley was a particularly fierce advocate of Abbott’s work in Congress and the media (Costin 1983: 148).

8. Social Rights Revival

  • 38 In a 1933 letter to Lillian Wald. Quoted in Chambers (1963: 250).
  • 39 See Abbott (1941: 199). Abbott continued to work closely with Perkins, offering advice and collegia (...)

34When the federal Secretary of Labor position was vacant in 1930, women’s groups began a letter-writing campaign urging President Hoover to nominate Abbott. A woman had never occupied a Presidential Cabinet position, and given her past political disputes with Hoover, Abbott knew he would not appoint her. However, the popular movement for Abbott laid the groundwork for Frances Perkins’ nomination for that position in 1932. When President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) was elected, Abbott used her considerable Washington influence to support Perkins. Once Perkins, a Hull House, and NCL alumna, took over as Secretary of Labor in 1933, Abbott felt a sense of relief. Since the Children’s Bureau was part of the Department of Labor, Perkins was Abbott’s new boss. Abbott wrote, “I am beginning to feel quite unnecessary […] Now I have the comfortable feeling that my job will be taken care of if I leave.”38 Abbott returned to teaching at the University of Chicago in 1934, but she stayed active as a mentor and “a dollar-a-year” consultant for the Children’s Bureau, often traveling from Chicago to Washington to attend strategy meetings. Abbott continued to advocate for national funding for social services and relief. She worked with Perkins and FDR on new initiatives, serving on the Advisory Council to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Security, which helped Perkins prepare the Social Security plan.39 Amid the Depression, the necessity of legislation supporting social rights was obvious.

  • 40 Edwin Witte told Edith Abbott, “The story has never been told how very near the House committee was (...)

35In 1934-35, Abbott drafted the sections of the Social Security Act that focused on aid to dependent children, services for disabled children, and maternal and infant health (Sorenson 2008: xxxiv). She also actively lobbied for the passage of the Act. When support faltered in Congress, Abbott organized “a small committee to get signatures of prominent people to a public statement” of support.40 That petition marked a turning point in its approval process. After the Social Security Act was approved in 1935, Perkins invited Abbott to serve on the three-member Board to set up the process of administering the new program. Although the pioneering administrative work tempted Abbott, she declined because of health issues. Yet she continued to participate in a range of national and international conferences.

36In the late 1930s, reflecting on economic security, Abbott questioned the proper democratic government response to the suffering caused by the capitalist industrial system. Capitalist industry, she said, “counts on a reserve labor force,” and therefore, unemployment is the “inevitable result of our industrial system.” If we live in “a democracy that supports this system,” the state should make “adequate democratic provision for its victims” (Abbott 1941: 4-5). These social relief measures, she said, should be a public responsibility, not a private, charitable function (ibid.: 11).

37While the Social Security Act codified many of the goals of women reformers, efforts to prevent child labor were unsuccessful until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Once again, Frances Perkins was the primary author of this bill which outlawed child labor, institutionalized an eight-hour workday and minimum wage requirements, and provided numerous relief programs for women and children. According to Perkins, the child labor provisions were added late in the process at the urging of Grace Abbott (Perkins 1946: 257). Like previous attempts to outlaw child labor, this Act was also challenged before the Supreme Court, but in 1941, it was upheld. After over 40 years of incremental successes and partial setbacks, the movement to end child labor was finally victorious.

38Abbott died in 1939 at the age of 60. Unlike Addams and Kelley, Abbott lived long enough to see the successful result of decades of women’s political efforts to institute policies that supported its most vulnerable populations. Five years before her death, she was the commencement speaker at the New Jersey College of Women. Reflecting on women’s political work, she said, “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 a long, hard struggle, I can also promise you great rewards” (1941: 198). Her administrative, legislative, and social activism brought many early feminist pragmatist goals to fruition. The social rights instituted by the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act still benefit many American lives today.

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Notes

1 See Whipps 2023b.

2 See Downey 2009.

3 They eventually created the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, considered one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the 1920s.

4 Addams’s close colleague Julia Lathrop came to HH in its second year. She was one of the first women admitted to the Bar in Illinois (Batlan 2010: 3). Although I will not discuss her in depth here, Julia Lathrop helped to draft legislation for the country’s first Juvenile Court. Lathrop was also the first head of the Children’s Bureau.

5 See Fischer 2019.

6 Addams first makes this appeal for an expansion of democracy “beyond its political expression” to its expression in social relationships (1892/1970: 2-3).

7 Other feminist-pragmatists, such as Fischer and Hamington, have made this point. See Hamington (2009: 81-5); Fischer (2003: xvi-ii).

8 See Fischer (2019: 25-7). Addams often talked about society as organic (see, for example, 1892: 4; and 1910/1990: 76). On Addams and her vision of an interdependent community see Whipps 2004, and Hamington 2004. For an exploration of history of Addams’s evolutionary thinking, see Fischer 2019.

9 According to Batlan (2010: 5), Kelley’s use of social science research laid the foundations for what Roscoe Pound later called “sociological jurisprudence.”

10 See Sklar (1995: 279), and Whipps 2023b. During this time, Kelley also finished law school.

11 244 Ill. 509 April 21, 1910.

12 See also Sklar & Palmer (2009: xxii).

13 These duties are termed “affirmative” duties, indicates a responsibility to act, in this case to establish policies that support healthy societies Rather than affirmative duties, some claim that the Constitution primarily provides negative liberties, the freedoms from government interference.

14 These quotes are in reference to Kelley’s legislative activism, but they equally apply to Addams’s and Abbott’s work. See also Batlan 2010.

15 Abbott published sixty articles, four books, and two pamphlets. Transcripts of her twenty-one Congressional testimonies are also available.

16 Frances Perkins later described Abbott as someone who “put herself in direct contact with poverty and trouble, letting her own experience show her what needed to be done.” Quoted in Sorenson 2011.

17 She maintained this position in her immigrant support work, her work at the Children’s Bureau, and her social relief work in the Depression. As she testified in 1933 in Congress, as transients move from community to community, local relief agencies often do no more than encourage them to move along to a different locale. She was in favor of federal relief funding that was administered by the states (Abbott 1941: 65-6).

18 Costin (1983: 89). These women disappeared even when they had family or friends waiting for them in Chicago. Some were eventually tracked down, some found in brothels, but many were never found.

19 The National Council of Jewish Women was formed in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions during the Chicago World’s Fair (Gonzalez 2004: 18).

20 Established in 1903, the WTUL was a coalition of working class and upper/middle class women created to support trade unions for working class women. It became a powerful force in reform politics.

21 Batlan 2018, citing information from “Immigrant Aliens Admitted to Illinois,” Box 47, Immigrants’ Protective League Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

22 In the “Foreword” to first IPL Annual report, Addams (1910) wrote “a central office is able not only to take care of the exceptional cases much more effectively than a settlement could do without its co-operation,” continuing, “new needs and possibilities are constantly discovered through this opportunity to treat as a whole the Chicago immigrant situation.”

23 According to Carol Nackenoff (2014: 130), the IPL was an example of how women bridged private and public boundaries, “incubating policy initiatives, by nurturing, funding, and staffing model programs, by conducting and disseminating research” which later resulted in policy decisions and new programs.

24 As Abbott said, many Americans had never encountered the new immigrants in business or social life; without first-hand experience, they “were willing to accept sweeping condemnations” and then to “regard [the immigrant] as the enemy of our social order” (1917: 283).

25 Chicago professor George Herbert Mead was chair of the Committee on Publicity and he arranged for this series of articles (Nackenoff 2014: 149).

26 See, for example, Addams (1907/2007: 27).

27 Also see Abbott 1911.

28 The organization continues today, albeit under a different name. According to the University of Illinois, “In 1958, the group’s name was changed to the Immigrants’ Service League. It then merged in 1967 with the Travelers Aid Society of Metropolitan Chicago. The two renamed the joint group Travelers and Immigrants Aid (TIA) in 1980, then in 1995 changed the name once again to Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.” Available at: https://findingaids.library.uic.edu/sc/MSIPL_67.xml.

29 Nackenoff (2014: 214).

30 According to Frances Perkins, Kelley believed “the long effort to establish the Children’s Bureau in the government of the United States was one of her greatest accomplishments” (1954: 18).

31 The 1916 Keating-Owen Act was a major victory for progressive reformers. It used the federal authority over interstate commerce to ban all products made by factories, canneries, or shops that employed children under fourteen. The bill was not popular. Along with the wrath of industrial owners, Abbott faced the anger of working-class families who depended on their children’s wages. Parents often lied about children’s ages since many working-class children never had birth certificates.

32 In a letter to Abbott, Kelley wrote that she, Lillian Wald and Addams were advocating for her appointment, saying that Addams was arriving the next day and “we shall all three have our head together” (Costin 1983: 122).

33 When the Children’s Bureau started in 1912, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was over 111 per 1,000 births, much higher than in most industrialized nations (Moehling & Thomasson 2012). Maternal death rates were also alarming high. The death rate was almost twice as high among the black population as the white population (Costin 1983: 131).

34 As one critic said, “[…] practically all of the radicalism among women in the United States centers about Hull House, Chicago and the Children’s Bureau in Washington – with a dynasty of Hull House graduates in charge since its creation” (Costin 1983: 143).

35 Women doctors were members of the AMA but their voices were marginalized and rarely had an effect on the organization’s positions. The AMA often referred to female doctors who worked in social services as social workers rather than doctors (Muncy 1991: 136).

36 Child labor restrictions were opposed by businesses, conservative women, and even the Catholic church (Costin 1983: 150).

37 The Children’s Bureau created opportunities for more professional women in government. Lathrop had convinced the Civil Service Commission to accept only female candidates for many of the positions that worked one on one with mothers and children. In 1919, Bureau employees included 14 men and 169 women (Muncy 1991: 50-1).

38 In a 1933 letter to Lillian Wald. Quoted in Chambers (1963: 250).

39 See Abbott (1941: 199). Abbott continued to work closely with Perkins, offering advice and collegial support. Perkins found Abbott “an invariable authority on the whole Department of Labor” (Costin 1983: 214). Perkins didn’t have federal experience before becoming a Cabinet official.

40 Edwin Witte told Edith Abbott, “The story has never been told how very near the House committee was to ditching the entire bill” (Costin 1983: 225).

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References

Electronic reference

Judy D. Whipps, Beyond Individual RightsEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XV-1 | 2023, Online since 06 May 2023, connection on 16 February 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/3211; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.3211

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About the author

Judy D. Whipps

Grand Valley State University
whippsj[at]gvsu.edu

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