1 Muncy, Robyn, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1991), 81. On the School of Social Service Administration, see also Fitzpatrick, Ellen, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York, 1990), 166–200. For other accounts of social work education, in which Bryn Mawr is only rarely mentioned, see Lubove, Roy, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Ehrenreich, John H., The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985); Chambers, Clarke A., Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action, 1918–1933 (Minneapolis, Minn., 1963); Brown, Esther Lucile, Social Work as a Profession (New York, 1935); Leighninger, Leslie, Social Work: Search for Identity (New York, 1987); Leiby, James, A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (New York, 1978); Kirschner, Don S., The Paradox of Professionalism: Reform and Public Service in Urban America, 1900–1940 (New York, 1986). Google Scholar

2 Solomon, Barbara Miller, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, Conn., 1985); Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s (Boston, 1984); Treichler, Paula A., “Alma Mater's Sorority: Women and the University of Illinois, 1890–1925,” in For Alma Mater: Theory and Practice in Feminist Scholarship, ed. Treichler, Paula A. et al. (Urbana, Ill., 1985); Clifford, Geraldine Jonçich, ed., Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities, 1870–1937 (New York, 1989); Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, eds., Women and Higher Education in American History: Essays from the Mount Holyoke College Sesquicentennial Symposia (New York, 1988); Palmieri, Patricia, “In Adamless Eden: A Portrait of the Academic Community at Wellesley College, 1875–1920” (Ed.D. diss., Harvard University, 1981); Glazer, Penina Migdal and Slater, Miriam, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions, 1890–1940 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), ch. 2; Gordon, Lynn D., Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven, Conn., 1990); and Kaufman, Polly Welts, ed., The Search for Equity: Women at Brown University, 1891–1991 (Hanover, N.H., 1991). Smith, for example, offered a program in psychiatric social work, beginning in 1919, and eventually expanded it into a graduate program, but did not offer the doctorate; Simmons affiliated with the Boston School of Social Work, but did not sponsor it until after 1915. On Smith, see Glazer, and Slater, , Unequal Colleagues, ch. 5. For descriptions of social work programs by the 1930s, see Lubove, , The Professional Altruist, 118–56; and Brown, , Social Work. Google Scholar

3 Rosenberg, Rosalind, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1982); Fitzpatrick, , Endless Crusade; and idem, “Caroline F. Ware and the Cultural Approach to History,” American Quarterly 43 (June 1991): 173–98; Ware, Susan, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge, Mass., 1981); Muncy, , Creating a Female Dominion; Rossiter, Margaret W., Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore, Md., 1982), ch. 1; Glazer, and Slater, , Unequal Colleagues, 211–22. Superperformance included hard work, exceptional ability, and avoidance of marriage; innovation involved developing new approaches to careers. Google Scholar

4 Haskell, Thomas L., The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana, Ill., 1977); Furner, Mary O., Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905 (Lexington, Ky., 1975); Ross, Dorothy, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, Eng., 1991); Bulmer, Martin, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research (Chicago, 1984); Karl, Barry D., Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, 1974); Ricci, David M., The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven, Conn., 1984); and Converse, Jean M., Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–1960 (Berkeley, Calif., 1987). Haskell and Furner focus on nineteenth-century leaders. Women did not enter social science doctoral programs in significant numbers until the turn of the century; therefore it is not surprising that Haskell's and Furner's studies ignored women's contributions. But, from reading other works, one could conclude that women had virtually no role in social science theory, research, and education in the first half of the twentieth century, with the minor exceptions of Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckenridge, mentioned by Bulmer, and by Mary, Ross. Deegan, Jo, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–1918 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988), raises important questions about the ways historians have explored the development of the social sciences in the United States. Google Scholar

5 Ware, , Beyond Suffrage; Gordon, Linda, ed., Women, the State, and Welfare (Madison, Wis., 1990); and idem, “Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890–1935,” American Historical Review 97 (Feb. 1992): 19–54; Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920,” American Historical Review 95 (Oct. 1990): 1076–108; and Koven, and Michel, , eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York, 1993). Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), explores the political pressure women's organizations brought to bear by the 1920s on state and federal policies protecting women and children. Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “The Historical Foundations of Women's Power in the Creation of the American Welfare State, 1830–1930,” in Mothers of a New World, ed. Koven, and Michel, , 75–78, explores the diminution of women's organizational power in the 1920s and the consequent loss of momentum in instituting the welfare state. I have found evidence that many women conducting social science research in academic institutions maintained a commitment to reform and acted on this commitment in state and municipal agencies in the 1920s and 1930s. Google Scholar

6 Kerson, Toba, “Susan Myra Kingsbury” and Peterson, Florence and de Laguna, Frederica, “Susan Myra Kingsbury,” Susan M. Kingsbury Papers, Bryn Mawr College Archives (hereafter BMCA), Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Watson, Amey E., “A Tribute to Susan M. Kingsbury,” Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin (hereafter BMAB) 20 (Feb. 1950): 12–13. Woodbury, Mildred Fairchild, “Susan Myra Kingsbury,” in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 1607–1950, ed. James, Edward T. et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 3: 335–36; and for one of the most complete short descriptions of her early life and her work, see Keith, Bruce, “Susan Kingsbury (1870–1949),” in Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, ed. Deegan, Mary Jo (New York, 1991), 217–24. Curiously, Keith claims that Mary Simkhovitch Kingsbury was Susan's sister; the Woodbury account does not mention her, and I have found frustratingly little on this matter in the Bryn Mawr papers or elsewhere. Google Scholar

7 For an excerpt of the dissertation, see Kingsbury, Susan M., “A Comparison of the Virginia Company with the Other English Trading Companies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association 1 (1906): 161–76. Kingsbury, Susan M., “Standards of Living and the Self-Dependent Woman,” in The Economic Position of Women (New York, 1910), 72–80; Kingsbury, Susan M. and Allinson, May, A Trade School for Girls: A Preliminary Investigation in a Typical Manufacturing City, Worcester, Mass., United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, no. 17 (Washington, D.C., 1913); and Kingsbury, Susan M. and Moses, Mabelle, Licensed Workers in Industrial Home Work in Massachusetts: An Analysis of Current Records under the Auspices of the Bureau of Research, Women's Educational and Industrial Union, Massachusetts State Board of Labor and Industries, Industrial Bulletin, no. 4 (Boston, 1915); Persons, E. Charles et al., Labor Laws and Their Enforcement, with Special Reference to Massachusetts, ed. Kingsbury, Susan M. (New York, 1911); Kingsbury, Susan M., “Economic Efficiency of College Women,” Association of Collegiate Alumni Magazine (Feb. 1910), 1–20; Kingsbury, Susan M., “The Education of Women as Measured in Civic and Social Relations,” Proceedings of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress, vol. 4, 1915–1916 (Washington, D.C., 1917), pt. 1, 410 (quote). Google Scholar

8 Smith, Hilda Worthington, “The Remembered Way,” p. 415, file 136, box 20, and Journal, Dec. 1915, book 22, and 6 Mar. 1919, book 24, box 4, Hilda Worthington Smith Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Kingsbury established Bryn Mawr's Community Center, a variation on the social settlement, to provide some field experience for students; Smith ran it until 1919; from 1919 to 1921, Smith was dean at Bryn Mawr; in 1921 she was appointed head of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers.Google Scholar

9 M. Carey Thomas to Kingsbury, 28 Mar. 1913, reel 126 (quote), and Thomas to Kingsbury, 26 Mar. 1912, reel 123, M. Carey Thomas Papers, BMCA. Finch, Edith, Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr (New York, 1947); Dobkin, Marjorie Housepian, ed., The Making of a Feminist: Early Journals and Letters of M. Carey Thomas (Kent, Oh., 1979); Meigs, Cornelia, What Makes a College? A History of Bryn Mawr (New York, 1956); and Taft, Barbara Bradfield, “More Steeply to the Heights: The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,” in A Century Recalled: Essays in Honor of Bryn Mawr College, ed. Labalme, Patricia Hochschild (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1987), 135–43. On alumnae and trustee distress, see “Department of Social Research,” BMAB 11 (Apr. 1917): 23. Flexner, Abraham, “Is Social Work a Profession?” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (n.p., 1915), 579. Google Scholar

10 Thomas, M. Carey, “New Professorship in Social Research,” The College News (18 Mar. 1915), 2.Google Scholar

11 Bryn Mawr College, Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy and Social Research (hereafter GDSESR), Graduate Courses in Industrial Supervision to Meet the War Emergency Demand (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1918); Bryn Mawr College, GDSESR, Announcements, 1919–1920 (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1919); GDSESR of Bryn Mawr College, 1915–1925, BMCA. See also Norton, Dolores Griffin, “Harkening to Uncommon Drums: The Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research,” in A Century Recalled , ed. Labalme, , 145–60; Lucy West to Katherine Lower, 9 Aug. 1982, School of Social Work and Social Research Papers (SSWSR), BMCA; Meigs, Cornelia, “History of the Carola Woerishoffer Department of Social Economy and Social Research,” file 2, box 1, Mildred Fairchild Woodbury Papers, BMCA. Google Scholar

12 Mary, Agnes Byrnes, Hadden, Industrial Home Work in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa., 1923); Hughes, Gwendolyn Salisbury, Mothers in Industry: Wage-earning by Mothers in Philadelphia (New York, 1925). Google Scholar

13 Kingsbury, Susan M. and Fairchild, Mildred, “The Carola Woerishoffer Department,” BMAB 25 (Dec. 1944): 5–8.Google Scholar

14 For quotation, see Muncy, , Creating a Female Dominion, xiv.Google Scholar

15 Kingsbury, Susan M., “Brief Historical and Statistical Account of the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy and Social Research,” c. 1924, box 7, Marion Edwards Park Papers, BMCA.Google Scholar

16 Abbott, Andrew, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, 1988). On social work programs, see Adams, Elizabeth Kemper, Women Professional Workers: A Study Made for the Women's Educational and Industrial Union (New York, 1921); and Brown, , Social Work. On academic social science, see Oleson, Alexandra and Voss, John, eds., The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore, Md., 1979); Jarausch, , ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning; Kuklick, Henrika, “Boundary Maintenance in American Sociology: Limitations to Academic ‘Professionalization’,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 16 (July 1980): 201–19. There were exceptions, of course—the Local Community Research Committee at the University of Chicago and the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, both of which received Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial funds for crossdisciplinary research; see Bulmer, Martin and Bulmer, Joan, “Philanthropy and Social Science in the 1920s: Beardsley Ruml and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 1922–29,” Minerva 19 (Autumn 1981): 347–407. Google Scholar

17 On the finances, see Kingsbury to Thomas, 10 June 1920, reel 162, Thomas Papers; and Thomas to Marion Edwards Park (her successor), c. 1922, Thomas to Mr. Wing (trustee), 29 Sep. 1922, Emma Bailey Speer to Rockefeller, John D., 23 Feb. 1923, and Kingsbury, , “Brief Historical and Statistical Account,” box 7, Park Papers.Google Scholar

18 On the school, see Heller, Rita, “Blue Collars and Bluestockings: The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921–1938,” in Sisterhood and Solidarity: Workers' Education for Women, 1914–1984, ed. Kornbluh, Joyce L. and Frederickson, Mary (Philadelphia, 1984), 107–45; and for quotation, see Schneider, Florence Hemley, Patterns of Workers' Education: The Story of the Bryn Mawr Summer School (Washington, D.C., 1941), 67. Most of the workers came from industrial and textile factories; some from domestic work and some from clerical occupations were accepted. The one educational requirement was some grade schooling and the ability to read and write English. Ages ranged from eighteen to thirty-five. On fund raising, see Speer to Park, 26 Mar. 1926, box 7, Park Papers. Google Scholar

19 W. S. Richardson to Park, 26 May 1924, box 7, Park Papers; Thomas to Park, 14 May 1924, reel 28, and Kingsbury to Thomas, 12 Jan. 1925, reel 53, Thomas Papers; Arthur Woods to Park, 8 Apr. 1925, box 7, Park Papers; on some General Education Board administrators' belief that Bryn Mawr was “too small and too expensive,” see also Thomas to Manning, 18 Feb. 1930, reel 34, Thomas Papers. When Martha Chickering, head of the program in social work at the University of California at Berkeley, applied to the Rockefeller Foundation for support in the 1930s, the grant was denied, but the Heller Committee on Research in Social Economy got a one-year grant for research into California's labor market; see Chickering, , “Training for social work …,” file 716, box 1936, and John Van Sickle to Robert G. Sproul, 5 Jan. 1938, file 471, box 1938, Presidents' Papers (Sproul), University Archives, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. On Chicago and shifts in social science research, see Fitzpatrick, , Endless Crusade, 166–200; and on the Chicago case, see Costin, Lela B., Two Sisters for Social Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana, Ill., 1983).Google Scholar

20 Libby, Barbara, “Women in Economics before 1940,” Essays in Economic and Business History 3 (1984): 273–90.Google Scholar

21 Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes (New York, 1910), 94; Lonn, Ella, “Academic Status of Women on University Faculties,” Journal of the American Association of University Women 17 (Jan. 1924): 5–11; Hutchinson, Emilie J., Women and the Ph.D.: Facts from the Experiences of 1,025 Women Who Have Taken the Doctor of Philosophy since 1877 (Greensboro, N.C., 1929); Bernard, Jessie, Academic Women (University Park, Pa., 1964); Pollard, Lucille Addison, Women on College and University Faculties: A Historical Survey and a Study of Their Present Academic Status (New York, 1977), 155–91; Graham, Patricia Albjerg, “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,” Signs 3 (Summer 1978): 759–73; Hummer, Patricia M., The Decade of Elusive Promise: Professional Women in the United States, 1920–1930 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979); Carter, Susan Boslego, “Academic Women Revisited: An Empirical Study of Changing Patterns in Women's Employment as College and University Faculty, 1890–1963,” Journal of Social History 14 (Summer 1981): 675–99. Carter reexamined the data that Bernard and Graham used in their studies and found that contrary to their conclusions, patterns of women's academic employment show that, while women's employment at female colleges declined during the 1930s, it increased in the research-oriented land-grant universities. Bryn Mawr consistently employed women faculty in the social sciences throughout the period. Margaret Rossiter (Women Scientists) was among the first to articulate the kinds of strategies professional women used. Google Scholar

22 Kingsbury, Susan M., “Relation of Women to Industry,” in The Problem of Democracy: Papers and Proceedings, Fourteenth Annual Meeting, American Sociological Society, 1919 (Chicago, 1920), 14:141–58; and idem, “Social Process in Russia,” in Social Process: Papers Presented at the Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society (Chicago, 1933) 27: 68–79; Kingsbury, with Fairchild, Mildred, Employment and Unemployment in Pre-War and Soviet Russia: Report Submitted to the World Social Economic Congress, Amsterdam, 23–29 Aug. 1931 (The Hague, 1931); and Factory Family and Woman in the Soviet Union (New York, 1935); Kingsbury, with Hart, Hornell et al., Newspapers and the News: An Objective Measurement of Ethical and Unethical Behavior by Representative Newspapers (New York, 1937). Kingsbury, Susan M., Economic Status of University Women in the U.S.A.: Report of the Committee on Economic and Legal Status of Women, American Association of University Women in Cooperation with the Women's Bureau, United States Department of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1939). Google Scholar

23 Hart's father worked for the Russell Sage Foundation. Hart finished his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, worked with Helen Thompson Woolley in the 1910s, taught at Iowa State, and did statistical research in juvenile delinquency, parole rehabilitation, and family intelligence using I.Q. scores for data before shifting to sociological method and theory. He left Bryn Mawr in 1933 for a position in ethics at Hartford Theological Seminary; in 1938, he took a professorship in sociology at Duke University. On Hart, see Faculty files, Duke University Archives, Durham, N.C. Google Scholar

24 Thomas to Anne Bezanson, 10 Apr. 1917 (quote), and 12 June 1917, reel 137, and “Memorandum of Arrangement for Miss Bezanson's Work,” reel 169, Thomas Papers. Bezanson received her doctorate from Radcliffe in 1929.Google Scholar

25 Helen Taft to Thomas, 10 Dec. 1919, and Taft to Thomas, 19 Feb. 1920 (quote), reel 162, Thomas Papers. Dulles, Eleanor Lansing, Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1980), 76, on Bezanson's personality and knowledge.Google Scholar

26 “Mildred Fairchild Woodbury,” obituary, Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 Feb. 1975, SSWSR. The Needs of Children in the World (Geneva, 1956) was her last major publication. Woodbury married late in her career.Google Scholar

27 Kingsbury to Thomas, 7 Oct. 1920, reel 162, Thomas Papers. Mildred Fairchild to Kingsbury, 24 May 1925 (quote), Kingsbury to Fairchild, 22 July 1926, and Kingsbury to Agnes Rogers, 24 Dec. 1927, Student files, SSWSR. For Fairchild's dissertation, see Fairchild, Mildred, “Skill and Specialization: A Study in the Metal Trades,” Personnel Journal 9 (June 1930 and Aug. 1930).Google Scholar

28 Beard, Belle Boone, Juvenile Probation: An Analysis of the Case Records of Five Hundred Children Studied at the Judge Baker Guidance Clinic and Placed on Probation in the Juvenile Court of Boston (New York, 1934). For example, Kingsbury to Richard Shryock, 27 Jan. 1936, Student files, SSWSR.Google Scholar

29 “Mabel Agnes Elliott,” and Kingsbury to Elliott, 12 Aug. 1924 (quote), Student files, SSWSR. Elliott, Mabel A., Correctional Education and the Delinquent Girl: A Follow-Up Study of One Hundred and Ten Sleighton Farm Girls (Harrisburg, Pa., 1928).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Leah Feder to Kingsbury, 30 Sep. 1930, Kingsbury to Feder, 6 Nov. 1930, Colcord to Kingsbury, 11 Feb. 1931, and “Preliminary Examination in Labor Organization,” 27 Feb. 1932, Student files, SSWSR. Feder, Leah Hannah, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression: A Study of Measures Adopted in Certain American Cities, 1857 through 1922 (New York, 1936). Feder had studied at Bryn Mawr from 1917 to 1919, worked for the Charity Organization Society in New York in the 1920s, and was teaching at Washington University when she applied to Bryn Mawr.Google Scholar

31 From student files, SSWSR: Kingsbury to Feder, 5 July 1933, 18 Aug. 1933, and 29 Aug. 1933 (quote); Kingsbury to Beard, 10 May 1932; Hornell Hart to Elliott, 25 Feb. 1928; Hart to Arthur Todd, 7 Mar. 1928 (quotes); Kingsbury to Todd, 21 Mar. 1928; Kingsbury to Martha Falconer, 17 Mar. 1928.Google Scholar

32 Student files, SSWSR, have considerable correspondence between Kingsbury and students about these problems.Google Scholar

33 Kingsbury to Beard, 29 Jan. 1934, Student files, SSWSR. Beard's papers are at Sweet Briar College Archives and Lynchburg College Archives.Google Scholar

34 Feder to Kingsbury, 1 Sep. 1933, 21 Feb. 1934, 11 May 1934, and Kingsbury to Feder, 26 Feb. 1934 (quote), 27 Aug. 1934, Student files, SSWSR; see also Koempel file, ibid. Google Scholar

35 Fitzpatrick, , Endless Crusade; Muncy, , Creating a Female Dominion; Koven, and Michel, , eds., Mothers of a New World. The Women's Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics were but two sites for women researchers from the 1910s through the 1930s. Google Scholar

36 Muncy, , Creating a Female Dominion, 45–46. On these characteristics of women's research and social service activity, see Gordon, , “Social Insurance and Public Assistance,” 36–40. Google Scholar

37 On women and professional culture, see Antler, Joyce, “The Educated Woman and Professionalization: The Struggle for a New Feminine Identity” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1977), 1–20; Brumberg, Joan Jacobs and Tomes, Nancy, “Women in the Professions: A Research Agenda for American Historians,” Reviews in American History 10 (June 1982): 275–96; and Cott, Nancy F., The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 217. Sklar's, Kathryn Kish “Hull House in the 1890s: A Community of Women Reformers,” Signs 10 (Summer 1985): 658–77, examines women reformers' sources of power, in using both separate female institutions and male-dominated institutions of higher education, politics, and labor organizations. The Bryn Mawr case presents interesting parallels. Google Scholar

38 Dulles, , Chances of a Lifetime, 75, 94, 87; these distinctions were reduced after President Park appointed a graduate dean and housed all the graduate students in one dormitory in 1929.Google Scholar

39 On the emergence of scientism in American social science, see Ross, , The Origins of American Social Science, 390–470.Google Scholar

40 On the conference, see Robert T. Crane to Park, 2 Nov. 1931, box 28, Park Papers. Libby, , “Women in Economics before 1940,” 275. See also Libby, Barbara, “Women in the Economics Profession, 1900–1940: Factors in Their Declining Visibility,” Essays in Economic and Business History 8 (1990): 121–30.Google Scholar