Table of Contents

OAH Magazine of History
Volume 15, No 4
Summer 2001

Copyright ©
Organization of American Historians

Lesson Plan

Grace Abbott and the U.S. Children’s Bureau

Kriste Lindenmeyer

During its first six decades of work, the U.S. Children’s Bureau designed the most fundamental aspects of twentieth-century child welfare policy. Appalled at the nation’s high infant mortality, Lathrop and her supporters first concentrated on saving babies’ lives through birth registration and preventative medicine. Among other important programs, members of the Children’s Bureau wrote and administered the nation’s first child labor laws, set standards for state juvenile courts, and designed the children’s sections in the 1935 Social Security Act (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Title V, and Title VII). The agency distributed thousands of educational pamphlets on child care, children’s health, and other topics helpful to parents. It also conducted the nation’s first scientific investigations on children and highlighted the problems of poor and neglected youngsters.

At the onset of the Great Depression, the Children’s Bureau worked to make politicians and the general public aware of the special needs of children during the severe economic crisis. Children’s Bureau studies revealed that children suffered most from the economic downturn. Infant mortality rates that had been falling since the 1920s began to rise. Child labor rates also reversed and began to climb. Preventable diseases became more common as “one third of the nation was ill-clothed, ill-housed, and ill-fed.” But Grace Abbott and her staff were often frustrated by a combination of political factors that hindered progress on children’s issues. Some critics feared that the needs of children were not a proper interest of the federal government, contending instead that only parents and the states should serve the young. Others argued that the Children’s Bureau duplicated the responsibilities of other federal agencies such as the Public Health Service and the Bureau of Education. Prejudices held against females working as professionals in government and politics also entered the debate, since the U.S. Children’s Bureau was led and staffed primarily by women. Finally, since children did not vote, it was often difficult to gain political support for programs designed to serve their needs.

In the following document, Grace Abbott expresses some of the problems faced by the U.S. Children’s Bureau as it competed with other federal agencies for political support and funding for children and youth. Such sentiments still ring true for those working on behalf of the nation’s youngest citizens. Distribute copies of this document to students. Once they have read it, lead a class discussion based upon the “Questions to Consider,” which follow the document.

Excerpt from U.S. Children’s Bureau Chief Grace Abbott’s speech in accepting an award from the National Institute of Social Sciences in 1931. Copy located in the U.S. Children’s Bureau Records, RG 102, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

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 Capitol where Congress sits in judgment on all the administrative agencies of Government. In that traffic jam there are all the kinds of vehicles moving up toward the Capitol. There are all kinds of vehicles, for example, that the Army can put into the street—tanks, gun carriages, trucks, the dancing horses of officers, and others which I have not even the vocabulary to describe. 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 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 can command. But there are other kinds of vehicles in this traffic jam—great numbers of them which, coming from Nebraska as I do, do not seem to me to get the attention they should as they move down the street. There are the hayricks and the binders and the ploughs and all the other things that the Department of Agriculture manages to put in the streets. But when the drivers get to the hill they have an argument which Congressmen understand. They say to them when they ask for appropriations for research in animal husbandry, in the chemistry of soils, or in agricultural economies, “Dollars invested on this side of the ledger will bring dollars in geometrical or arithmetical progression”—depending on the enthusiasm with which they speak—on the other side. And, if there is one thing that a Congressman, and for that matter people in general understand, it is a balance on the profit side of the ledger. . . .

Then there are 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 patrols in which the Department of Justice officials sometimes appear. . . . I stand on the sidewalk watching it 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. 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 symbol of the home and the future of America.

1. For most of the twentieth century, few females held any positions of power in the federal government, and women did not receive the right to vote at the national level until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. What gender stereotypes might have led men in Congress to believe that naming women as U.S. Children’s Bureau chiefs was an appropriate action? Was it more likely that Congress would give this job to a woman than to a man? Would it be more appropriate to have a man or a woman as head of the Children’s Bureau today?
2. Congress mandated in 1912 that the new U.S. Children’s Bureau “investigate and report . . . upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people.” What topics do you think pertained to the welfare of children in 1912? Have the needs of children changed?
3. Why was it difficult for the U.S. Children’s Bureau and its supporters to gain the funding and public attention Grace Abbott felt it needed to do its work?
4. Grace Abbott states that some people think her “baby carriage” does not belong in the federal parade. What agencies does Abbott suggest are more likely to get funding than the U.S. Children’s Bureau and why?
5. What does Grace Abbott mean by her statement that some people think the baby carriage “does not belong there at all . . . and there are some who think the baby carriage is the symbol of bolshevism instead of the symbol of the home and the future of America”?
6. Do children have interests different from adults that need a special federal agency to lobby on their behalf? For example, does funding for schools help society in general, or only children? Do laws restricting child labor help or hinder children? Do children have responsibilities to society?

Kriste Lindenmeyer is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her 1997 book, “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children’s Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946, traces the agency’s history from its establishment through reorganization. She is also editor of the recent volume, Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: Women in American History (2001).