1912

Establishment of Federal Children’s Bureau within the Dept. of Labor, a female agency imitating on a national scale the technique of the settlement house (M-S, 296, 299-301; Stevens, 136, 144; Leiby, 152-55; Muncy, 141ff.). A 1909 White House Conference on Dependent Children requested it, and TR endorsed it. President Taft appointed Hull House’s Julia Lathrop as its chief. Its first publication was the booklet Infant Care (1914), a product of investigations that revealed that one baby in eight died in its first year – much higher than in most European nations. Women in Children’s Bureau believed that maternal and infant health were more than a medical problem: they “believed that education in its broadest sense should lie at the center of the federal response. As a result, the programs funded by the Maternity and Infancy Act were more educational than medical. After all, public health nurses . . . taught nutrition, the importance of basic hygiene, sterilization techniques, methods to prolong breastfeeding, and the warning signs of complications during pregnancy” (Muncy, 144). “The emergence of the Children’s Bureau and the establishment of the Community Chest system had subordinated maternity homes to the decisions of an alliance of secular social agencies. Once independent, maternity homes were now closely scrutinized and evaluated according to the standards of the social work establishment” (Kunzel, 121, 123). By the 1930s, “Evangelicals might edge social workers off their conference programs, but social workers, with the aid of Community Chests, could close a maternity home down if they chose” (134).