Settlement Women and Bureau Men: Did They Share a Usable Past?

Abstract

In Settlement Women and Bureau Men: Constructing a Usable Past for Public Administration Stivers (1995) highlights important role that substantive as opposed to procedural concerns played in emergence of public administration as a field of inquiry. To increase contemporary knowledge about field's origins she advocates including work of turn-of-the-century settlement women in public administration history because they strove to expand government programs for poor unlike research bureau men, whose primary concerns were procedural. Stivers does field a service in highlighting substantive aims of Progressive reform. Her work on settlement movement shows that both genders gave field progenitors. But her use of New York's Bureau of Municipal Research as a foil for her argument is totally misplaced. From time that William Allen and Frederick Cleveland planned bureau in 1905 until its 1914 reorganization a prime goal of bureau was to increase scope of government action for poor. Allen's opinion on expanding role of state emerges quite clearly in a bit of doggerel he penned to counter arguments that private efforts on infant mortality were sufficient: Won't you move a little faster? said baby to state. I keep right on a-dying, and its getting pretty late; All sorts of folks are working hard to give me half a chance But their work is worse than wasted until you join dance. (Allen, 1911, 201). That this view on private philanthropy dovetails with settlement philosophy stems, in part, from Allen's social work background. From 1903 to 1905 he was general agent for New York Association for Improving Condition of Poor, an organization dedicated to pressuring state to assume new obligations to poor people. The association developed first vacation schools as a charity endeavor and then worked successfully to have them incorporated into budget of New York City Board of Education. In 1905 Allen fought hard to keep board from slashing funds for this service association had invented and institutionalized in an approach to reform similar to that Stivers identifies as settlement movement's strategy (New York Association for Improving Condition of Poor, 1905). Bureau personnel shared a community of discourse with settlement workers. Articles written by people working in both spheres appeared in Charities and Commons, a reform social work periodical; both Jane Addams and Frank Tucker, a bureau trustee, sat on journal's publication committee. In 1907 Allen spoke at a National Conference on Charities. Another speaker was Florence Kelley, identified as a social policy advocate by Stivers. The director of Bureau of Municipal Research chaired a session on increasing programs for poor in health field; settlement woman spoke on child labor legislation. Both reformers pushed a substantive agenda (The Minneapolis Conference, 1907). The original prospectus of bureau indicates that part of its mission was to bring scientific management to public agencies and part was to research the extent and cause of remediable conditions that indicate governmental responsibility for physical deterioration of children... for preventable disease; for pauperism; for crime (Cleveland, 1905). Once incorporated, bureau worked to meet both of its goals. It pressured city and state governments to alleviate conditions responsible for poverty and disease and spearheaded projects to improve accounting and budgeting in public agencies. Although modern writers sometimes score bureau for a concern with economy, many of its proposals actually required outlay of public money. The bureau fought to open a child hygiene section in city health department (Gulick, 1928); campaigned against reducing New York's tenement department budget (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1909); and championed free dental clinics in public schools (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1911, 6). …

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