|
Mary Abby van Kleeck (1883-1972), was a social
researcher and reformer.
Van
Kleeck attended Smith College, and after graduation in 1904, she
joined the College Settlements Association, formed in 1887 by
Vida Scudder, a teacher at Wellesley. 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. More about Vida Scudder
Van Kleeck began her career as a social researcher by studying
New York City's female factory workers and child laborers.
For
decades she worked for the Russell Sage Foundation and served
as director of the Department
of Industrial Studies.
She helped bring about legislative reform by collecting and publishing
data on the conditions in various jobs.
The
Russell Sage Foundation (external link opens in a new window),
one of the oldest of America's general purpose foundations,
was established in 1907 for "the improvement of social
and living conditions in the United states." In its early
years, the Foundation played a pioneering role in dealing with
problems of the poor and the elderly, in efforts to improve
hospital and prison conditions, and in the development of social
work as a profession. The Foundation was also responsible for
early reforms in health care, city planning, consumer credit,
labor legislations, the training of nurses, and social security
programs.
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 (external link opens in a new window).
Van Kleeck
returned to the Russell Sage Foundation after the
war and 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. (Read "Coal
at the Cross-Roads" by Merle D. Vincent in Survey Graphic,
vol. 23, no. 4 (April, 1934), p. 181.)
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.
|
