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Mary Abby van Kleeck (1883-1972), was a social
researcher and reformer.
Van
Kleeck attended Smith College, and after graduation, she joined
the College Settlements Association, formed in 1887 by Vida Scudder,
a teacher at Wellsley. The College Settlements Association was
modeled on John Ruskin’s University Settlements movement.
Such houses were established in tenement neighborhoods and were
open day and night for education, recreation and social services.
Van Kleeckbegan her career as a social researcher by studying
New York City's female factory workers and child laborers.
For
decades she served as director of the Russell Sage Foundation's
department of industrial studies, where her work and that of her
colleagues helped bring about legislative reform by shedding light
on the conditions in various trades. By then an expert on women's
employment, during World War I van Kleeck set the War Labor Policies
Board standards for women working in the war industries and was
appointed head of the Women in Industry Service established within
the Department of Labor. This agency later became the United States
Women's Bureau.
Returning
to the Russell Sage Foundation after the war, van Kleeck broadened
the focus of the Department of Industrial Studies, which began
to investigate the underlying causes of job insecurity and labor
unrest. By the time of the Great Depression, van Kleeck had come
to believe ardently in socialism and to feel that New Deal policies
weakened workers and their unions. In August 1933, she resigned
from a new position with the Federal Advisory Council of the United
States Employment Service after just one day, citing her disenchantment
with New Deal policies. Among her writings advocating industrial
socialization are Miners and Management (1934) and Creative America
(1936). She also became a supporter of Soviet socialism.
Believing
that worldwide problems underlay economic disturbances, van Kleeck
served from 1928 to 1948 as associate director of the International
Industrial Relations Institute. After her retirement from the
Russell Sage Foundation in 1948, she ran unsuccessfully for the
New York State Senate on the American Labor Party ticket. Through
such organizations as the Episcopal League for Social Action and
the Church League for Industrial Democracy she continued to pursue
postwar interests such as disarmament and the peacetime uses of
nuclear energy. Van Kleeck died of a heart attack in Kingston,
New York, on June 8, 1972.
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