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Kyle Welling
Dr. Alec Thomson
HIST 153
20 May 2018
The U.S. Children’s Bureau in the Early 20th Century

In the early 1900s, there was a great number of citizens below the poverty level and few

that could classify as upper middle class. There were no federal programs to address this issue,

so those who needed the help couldn’t get it. In 1912, the U.S. Children’s Bureau was formed

and is one of the oldest programs to address the needs of the poor (Sreenivasan, 2009). In its

beginning stages, the Children’s Bureau would collect statistics on child welfare in the United

States, with a special focus on infant mortality rate. In addition to collecting this data, the Bureau

would prove to play a large part in providing many different services to women and children who

needed it.

This program is without a doubt has had one of the biggest impacts on women and the

welfare of their children. At the height of the progressive era, this program was founded on

feminist values and a drive to help those who desperately need it. The founder, Julia Lathrop,

was an active reformer who had a mission to continue the campaign for mothers’ pensions. She

had played a very crucial role in the state of Illinois, were the first law was passed in support of

mothers’ pensions in 1911 (Machtinger, 1999). Being the first female to head a federal agency,

Lathrop was a part of a large social movement that has been working since the turn of the

century to help women and children who have lost a source of income, or a being paid very little.

With the greediness of business owners during this era, it was hard for a single mother to get

ahead in society. With horrible work conditions, schedules, and pay, a mother had to work harder
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than ever before to provide for her family. Many women would get into this position when the

male, who was the main source of income, was incarcerated, had military service, or had passed.

“Pensions are salaries earned by mothers who serve the state in giving al their time to rearing

good citizens” (Machtinger, 1999). This movement for mothers’ pensions was thought to be the

basis for a new form of financial help from the government that would form a minimum standard

of living while also being the largest state-aid program this country has ever seen.

Women in this era were not only struggling financially. The infant mortality rate was

very high and this was a problem that would receive global attention, as the population may not

be able to sustain itself. As this issue was on the rise and gained more attention, Lathrop and the

Bureau would eventually carry out many studies of communities and civilizations in the U.S. to

start to find a solution to the pressing issue of infant mortality. After a series of multiple studies

in rural and urban areas, the Bureau’s results concluded: “a coincidence of a high infant death

rate with low earnings, poor housing, mothers’ work and large families” (Straughan, 2001). This

connection would prove to be the backbone of the campaign for the solution for infant mortality.

This research would also help in the formation of mothers’ pensions, as a low income was

pointed out as one of the most common traits between families that had a high rate of infant

mortality. After this research was presented and made public in a library created by the

Children’s Bureau, the Bureau was sent as many as 125,00 letters a year from poor mothers who

would ask for information about the care of their infants and topics that would relate to the health

and welfare of their children. These letters were replied to personally by Lathrop and her staff

(Straughan, 2001). This data would eventually lead to a decrease in infant mortality and better

postpartum care for mothers through the medium of education and better health care. This was

the change that the Bureau not only wanted, but needed.
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When the mother couldn’t provide enough for her family to live on, it then became a

responsibility of the children to try to provide as much as possible. With the business owners

worry of profit margins, children who attempted to get a job would receive very little, in

exchange for extreme labor for which their young bodies, who were not yet developed, were not

ready for. Exposure to chemicals in the workplace and very unsanitary conditions led to many

illnesses and even deaths in this era. The Children’s Bureau acted on this issue and lobbied for

the Keating-Owen Act, which they would eventually receive the funding and authority to

enforce. This act would “prohibit children under fourteen from mill, quarry, and factory work,

and children under sixteen from laboring at night or more than eight hours per day” (Fitzgerald,

1998). This act was met with opposition from many mothers who relied on their children’s

incomes and the loss of this would only push them further into the hole of poverty. This would

also increase the need for a higher wage for the women’s work, but those requests were almost

always ignored.

The Children’s Bureau played a very important role in the progressive movement of the

early 20th century. They addressed issues that were either too controversial or difficult for anyone

else to address. I noticed that almost every issue they addressed would either directly or

indirectly benefit another, which would overall increase the success of their campaigns. The

work that they did to develop a pension for mothers was very important and possibly their most

successful campaign. Not only was legislation passed as time went on to initiate a pension, but

this could arguably have been just the movement that was needed to be the foundation of the

Social Security Act, which is still in place today, helping hundreds of thousands of workers,

accident victims, and mothers in need of aid. If not for the Children’s Bureau, change may not

have come for a long time, and countless lives would have suffered and eventually been lost.
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Annotated Bibliography

"Children's Bureau." Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia,

Jyotsna Sreenivasan, ABC-CLIO, 1st edition, 2009. Credo Reference,

https://ezproxy.gvsu.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abcpga/child

ren_s_bureau/0?institutionId=222. Accessed 18 May 2018.

This article was very helpful in gaining knowledge of this topic. It summarizes the roles of the

Children’s Bureau in the early 20th century, with a focus on infant mortality and the welfare of

children. It is an article from the encyclopedia of the U.S. Governments responses to poverty

from the colonial era to present day. The author is very credible, with awards such as the

Bellwether prize for socially engaged fiction.

Fitzgerald, Maureen. "Children’s Bureau." The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History,

edited by Wilma Pearl Mankiller, Houghton Mifflin, 1st edition, 1998. Credo Reference,

https://ezproxy.gvsu.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/rcuswh/child

ren_s_bureau/0?institutionId=222. Accessed 19 May 2018.

This article gave me great insight of the troubles of child labor in the early 20th century. The

article focuses on the acts and legislation passed with the help of the Children’s Bureau, along

with the oppositions presented. This is a credible piece, as it is from a book that includes articles

gathered from the nation’s past. This was named an Editor’s Choice by the Chicago Tribune.

Machtinger, Barbara. “The U.S. Children's Bureau and Mothers' Pensions Administration, 1912–

1930.” Social Service Review, vol. 73, no. 1, 1999, pp. 105–118. JSTOR, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/515787
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This piece focused on the struggle for the development of a pension program for mothers and

was very informative. It gave a piece by piece story of how the issue arose and the actions that

were taken to resolve it. This is a very credible article as it was published by The University of

Chicago Press, a very reputable publisher.

Straughan, Dulcie. "Women's work: public relations efforts of the US Children's Bureau to

reduce infant and maternal mortality, 1912-1921." Public Relations Review, Fall 2001, p. 337.

Academic OneFile,

http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy.gvsu.edu/apps/doc/A79562016/AONE?u=lom_gvalleysu&sid

=AONE&xid=75c695a7. Accessed 18 May 2018.

This was a very interesting article, and one I enjoyed reading. The article itself explains all

efforts by the Bureau in the development of the welfare of children and their families but went in

depth of the research done by the children’s bureau on the issue of infant mortality and what that

research accomplished. The author, Dulcie Straughan, is credible as she is a professor from the

University of North Carolina, and specializes in journalism.

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References

1: "Children's Bureau." Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, Jyotsna

Sreenivasan, ABC-CLIO, 1st edition, 2009. Credo Reference,

https://ezproxy.gvsu.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abcpga/children

_s_bureau/0?institutionId=222. Accessed 18 May 2018.

2: Fitzgerald, Maureen. "Children’s Bureau." The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History, edited

by Wilma Pearl Mankiller, Houghton Mifflin, 1st edition, 1998. Credo Reference,

https://ezproxy.gvsu.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/rcuswh/children

_s_bureau/0?institutionId=222. Accessed 19 May 2018.

3: Machtinger, Barbara. “The U.S. Children's Bureau and Mothers' Pensions Administration, 1912–

1930.” Social Service Review, vol. 73, no. 1, 1999, pp. 105–118. JSTOR, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/515787.

4: Straughan, Dulcie. "Women's work: public relations efforts of the US Children's Bureau to reduce

infant and maternal mortality, 1912-1921." Public Relations Review, Fall 2001, p. 337. Academic OneFile,

http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy.gvsu.edu/apps/doc/A79562016/AONE?u=lom_gvalleysu&sid=AONE&

xid=75c695a7. Accessed 18 May 2018.