Partner
Sophonisba Breckenridge
Queer Places:
Wellesley College (Seven Sisters), 106 Central St, Wellesley, MA 02481
Hull House, 800 S Halsted St, Chicago, IL 60607
Grand Island Cemetery, 3168 W Stolley Park Rd, Grand Island, NE 68801
Edith
Abbott (September 26, 1876 – July 28, 1957) was an American economist,
statistician, social worker, educator, and author.
Sophonisba Breckenridge
was an important academic wealthy spinster, who came from a prominent
Kentucky family and was the great-granddaughter of a U.S. Senator. Unhappy
as a lawyer in Kentucky, Breckinridge went to the University of Chicago
graduate school and became the first woman Ph.D. in political science in
1901. She continued to teach social science and social work at the
University of Chicago for the rest of her career, becoming the mentor and
probable long-time companion of Edith Abbott.
Sophonisba Breckenridge’s closest friends were, first, the sanitary
sociologist Marion Talbot and
then the economist Edith Abbott.
Abbott, born in Nebraska,
had been secretary of the Boston Trade Union League and had studied at the
London School of Economics, where she was strongly influence by the Webbs,
leaders of Fabian Socialism. She lived and worked, predictably, at a
London Settlement House. Then Abbott studied for a Ph.D. in economics at
the University of Chicago, which she earned in 1905. Becoming an
instructor at Wellesley, Abbott soon joined her slightly younger sister
Grace Abbott at Hull House in
1908, where the two sisters lived for the next dozen years, Abbott as
social research director of Hull House. In the early 1920s, Edith Abbott
became Dean of the University of Chicago School of Social Service
Administration and co-edited the school's Social Service Review with her
friend and mentor, Sophonisba Breckinridge.
Abbott was born in Grand
Island, Nebraska.[1] Abbott
was a pioneer in the profession of social
work with an educational background in economics.
She was a leading activist in social
reform with the ideals that humanitarianism needed
to be embedded in education.[2] Abbott
was also in charge of implementing social work studies to the graduate
level. Though she was met with resistance on her work with social reform
at the University
of Chicago, she ultimately was successful and was elected as the
school's dean in 1924,[3]
making her the first female dean in the United States. Abbott was foremost
an educator and saw her work as a combination of legal studies and
humanitarian work which shows in her social security legislation. She is
known as an economist who pursued implementing social work at the graduate
level. Social work will never become a profession—except through the
professional schools[4]
The Edith Abbott Memorial Library, in Grand Island, Nebraska, is named
after her.
Edith was born September 25, 1876 in Grand Island, Nebraska. Her
father, Othman
Abbott, was a lawyer and Nebraska's first Lieutenant
Governor (1877–1879). Her mother, Elizabeth Griffin, was an
abolitionist and suffrage leader. Both parents instilled values of women's
rights, equality, and social reform into Edith and her sister Grace,
inspiring their future work.[5] Grace
Abbott had many accomplishments working as a social worker, child
labor legislation reformer, and chief of the United
States Children's Bureau (1921–1934), also working with Edith on many
different professional projects during their careers.[6]
In 1893, Abbott graduated from Brownell
Hall,[7] a
girls' boarding school in Omaha.
However, her family could not afford to send her to college due to a
drought which struck Nebraska and eventually led to an economic
depression. Instead of going to college immediately, Abbott began to teach
high school in Grand Island, Nebraska.[8] Determined
to receive a college education, Abbott took correspondence courses and
night classes until she was able to afford to fully enroll. Abbott
enrolled at the University
of Nebraska, receiving her degree in 1901. She continued to teach for
two more years and was eventually awarded a fellowship to the University
of Chicago.[9] While
at the University of Chicago working on her doctorate, she met Professor Sophonisba
Breckinridge. She earned her doctorate in political economy in 1905.[10] Later,
Abbott and Breckinridge would publish multiple studies while at the
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. In 1905, Abbott graduated,
receiving her Ph.D. in economics.[8]
In 1906, Abbott received a Carnegie
Fellowship and continued her studies at University
College London, and the London
School of Economics. She learned from social reformers Sidney
Webb and Beatrice
Webb, who championed new approaches to dealing with poverty. The Webbs
influenced the direction of Abbott's career. The Webbs were in favour of
repealing the British "poor laws"—which they viewed as demeaning to people
in poverty—and they supported establishing programs to eliminate poverty.[11] While
studying in London, Abbott lived part of the time in a social reformers'
settlement in a poverty-stricken area of the East End, where she gained
experience in social work.[11]
Abbott returned to the United States in 1907 after her years studying
in London, and took a job teaching economics at Wellesley
College. Though her job at Wellesley was highly regarded for a woman
with a Ph.D at the time, she desired to return to Chicago.
She got her chance in 1908 when Sophonisba Breckinridge, then Director of
Social Research at the independent Chicago
School of Civics and Philanthropy, offered her a job teaching
statistics in the Department of Social Investigation.[8]
Abbott moved into Jane
Addams's Hull House with
her sister, Grace,
when she moved back to Chicago.[11] At
that time, Hull House was renowned as a mecca for educated women, for its
vibrant community of residing revolutionary thinkers. Grace and Edith
Abbott became great additions to the reform-minded community as they
contributed significantly through their commitment to social reform
advocacy and scholarship of statistical research. The long-lasting
professional partnership between Abbott and Breckinridge first started
during their years together at the School of Civics and Philanthropy. They
shared a common interest in detailed statistical investigations of
contemporary social problems which they believed they could use to spark
reform advocacy. As a result of her experience in statistical research,
following a crime wave in Chicago in 1914 Abbott was commissioned to
investigate statistics on crime and criminals in the city. This led to a
ground-breaking report titled "Statistics Relating to Crime in Chicago",
published in 1915.[12][13]
During the first 12 years of their collaboration at the Department of
Social Investigation, Abbott and Breckinridge jointly produced 'The
Housing Problem in Chicago', which consisted of ten articles in the American
Journal of Sociology (1910–15) reporting the results of their major
survey of tenement conditions in Chicago. (A follow-up study, The
Tenements of Chicago, 1908–1935, was published in 1936); The Delinquent
Child and the Home (1912), a study of Chicago's juvenile court; and
Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools (1917), an investigation
which led them to support compulsory school attendance and child labour
legislation. In 1927, in dedication to the "scientific and professional
interests of social work", Abbott and Breckinridge jointly established the
distinguished academic journal, Social
Service Review, published by the University
of Chicago Press.[8]
With the joint efforts of Abbott and Breckinridge, in 1920, the University
of Chicago's Board of Trustees voted to rename the School the
University of Chicago Graduate School of Social Service Administration. It
was the first graduate school of social work in the country affiliated
with a major research university.[14] Abbott
was hired as an associate professor of social economy, and was named dean
in 1924. She became the first US woman to become the dean of an American
graduate school. Abbott, along with Breckinridge, transformed the field of
social work by emphasizing the importance of formal education in social
work and the need to include field experience as part of the training.
They designed a curriculum that heavily emphasized social statistics as
the historical, legal, economic and political root causes of social
problems and public welfare efforts. In addition, they fought for the
professional status of social work. In 1931, Abbott collected many of her
papers, addresses and speeches on social service education and created a
single volume entitled Social Welfare and Professional Education (1931,
revised and enlarged in 1942).[8]
Abbott focused her attention oner her students to portray the basic
principles that can be transmitted to students. She states these
principles must derive from "a critical examination of the methods used to
produce certain results and a searching equally for the causes of apparent
failure and apparent success."[15] Abbott
derived a curriculum for students that desired a career in social work.[15]
Abbott was a prominent immigration expert, working for reforms that
would end exploitation of immigrants. She was appointed chair of the
Committee on Crime and the Foreign Born of the Wickersham
National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (1929–31).[16]
Through her advocacy, Abbott wrote in scholarly articles, book reviews,
and governmental reports in which she discussed issues such as women's and
children's rights, crime, immigration, and public assistance. She also
stressed the importance of a public
welfare administration, the need for a more humane social
welfare system, and the responsibility of the state in addressing
social problems. Many of the contributions during Abbott's career were
dedicated to addressing welfare reform and adopting more humane standards
for welfare treatment. In 1926, Abbott helped establish the Cook County
Bureau of Public Welfare. Abbott and Breckinridge founded the Social
Service Review in 1927, which, still administered by the University of
Chicago, "is committed to examining social welfare policy and practice and
evaluating its effects."[17] Throughout
the Great Depression Edith Abbott worked alongside her sister to combat a
wide array of social ills, from the mistreatment of immigrants to the
abuses of child labor. In 1935, Abbott assisted in drafting the Social
Security Act.[18]
Edith Abbott also had a significant role in the public sphere. Abbott was
known to be a confidante and special consultant to Harry
Hopkins, adviser to President Franklin
D. Roosevelt. In 1950, Abbott was known to have been appointed to a
single case on the California Supreme Court, making her the first woman to
sit on the state's supreme court.[11]
The death of Edith's sister, Grace, in 1939 caused Edith to become
quarrelsome and lonely, and slowly she began to withdraw herself from
public life. In 1941, she published her final book, Public Assistance, and
in 1942 she officially retired as the Dean of the School of Social Service
Administration. Edith Abbott spent her remaining years living with her
family in their home in Grand Island, Nebraska, where she died of pneumonia in
1957. She left the bulk of her estate to the Grand Island Public Library.
She also left a trust for a collection of nonfiction books in memory of
her mother, Elizabeth Abbott. At the time of Edith Abbott's death in 1957,
Wayne McMillen of Social
Service Review wrote, "History will include her name among the handful
of leaders who have made enduring contributions to the field of education.
Social work has now taken its place as an established profession. She,
more than any other one person, gave direction to the education required
for that profession. Posterity will not forget achievements such as
these."[19]
My published books:
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