Grace Abbott

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Grace Abbott (1929)

Grace Abbott (born November 17, 1878 in Grand Island , Nebraska , † June 19, 1939 in Chicago , Illinois ) was an American social reformer , child rights activist and university teacher .

biography

After attending Grand Island College , the daughter of a government official was a teacher at Grand Island High School from 1899 to 1907 . During this time she graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1902 and the University of Chicago in 1904. She moved to Chicago in 1907 and a year later with her older sister Edith at the Hull House charity founded by Jane Addams in the 1880s . Both sisters were convinced that not only the humiliating poor laws should be abolished, but poverty itself. In 1909 she earned a Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) in political science from the University of Chicago.

Between 1910 and 1917 she became director of the newly formed Immigrants' Protective League (IPL), which she organized with Sophonisba Breckinridge and others. While working with the league, she worked to develop protective legislation for immigrants , women and children , conducted investigations into conditions on Ellis Island , and stood before Congress against immigration restrictions. In a series of weekly newspaper articles ( Within the City's Gates , 1909-10) in the Chicago Evening Post, she attacked the exploitation of immigrants. In 1917 she published the book The Immigrant and the Community . Between 1910 and 1917 she was also a lecturer at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy , which was later incorporated into Chicago University as the Graduate School of Social Service Administration .

In 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson appointed her head of the Child Labor Department at the US Children's Office . It was responsible for the application of the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, the first federal law designed to curb child labor . The law was declared unconstitutional in 1918, but Abbott continued its principle by adding child labor clauses to all contracts between the federal government and industry involving the manufacture of war goods . Abbott returned to Illinois in October 1919 as director of the new Illinois State Immigrants' Commission .

After the commission's grants were canceled in 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed her director of the Children's Office at the United States Department of Labor in August . During the first few years, their main task was the application of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which guaranteed the individual states federal funds for medical care for mothers and children. The aid program was declared over by Congress in 1929. After a second federal law against child labor was declared unconstitutional in 1922, Abbott fought to win public approval for a constitutional amendment against child labor. Although such a change to the law was presented to the states in 1924, it was never ratified. From 1922 to 1934 Abbott was also an unofficial representative for the United States at the League of Nations Commission against Trafficking in Women and Children .

1934 Abbott resigned from the post of Children's Office and took a call to a professorship of Public Welfare at the University of Chicago, where her sister Edith was now dean. She held this teaching post until her death from multiple myeloma . US President Franklin D. Roosevelt also appointed her to the advisory staff for drafting the Social Security Act of 1935. From 1935 to 1937, she was an envoy to the International Labor Organization (ILO). Between 1934 and 1939 she was the editor of the Social Service Review and in 1938 she published her two-volume work The Child and the State . Her last book, From relief to social security , was published posthumously in 1941.

Fonts (selection)

  • The immigrant and the community . The Century co, New York 1917.
  • Ten years' work for children . Govt. print. off., Washington 1923.
  • The child and the state . The University of Chicago press, Chicago 1938.
  • From relief to social security. The development of the new public welfare services and their administration . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1941.

Background literature

  • Wallace Kirkland: The Many Faces of the Hull House , Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
  • Patricia Madoo Lengermann, Jill Niebrugge-Brantley: The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory 1830–1930 , McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 1998

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Grace Abbott . In: Encyclopædia Britannica .
personal data
SURNAME Abbott, Grace
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American social reformer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Grand Island , Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1939
Place of death Chicago , Illinois