Partner Mary Fleddérus
Queer Places:
Saint Luke's Church Cemetery
Beacon, Dutchess County, New York, USA
Mary
Abby van Kleeck (June 26, 1883 – June 8, 1972) was an American social
scientist and social
feminist of the 20th century.
The IRI was ‘a two-woman transoceanic operation’ run by van Kleeck and
Mary Fleddérus, a Dutch activist and personnel manager of a glass factory in the
Netherlands. The two women shared their lives as well as their work, directing
the IRI from offices in The Hague and New York. The organization was a
conglomeration of disparate interest groups committed to international
economic planning: personnel managers, factory inspectors and welfare workers;
forward-thinking employers; modernist architects, engineers and doctors; trade
union leaders and ‘Taylorites’. Kerstin
Hesselgren, Sweden’s Chief Factory Inspector, was one of those involved,
and so was Adelaide Anderson,
Principal Lady Inspector of Factories in Britain. The IRI sponsored ideas,
plans, meetings, conferences and publications, acting as a networking platform
for key figures in industrial welfare internationally.
Mary Van Kleeck was the daughter of Eliza Mayer (1844-1920) and Robert Boyd Van Kleeck
(1839-1892).
She was a notable figure in the American
labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific
management and a planned
economy. A Dutch
American, van Kleeck was a lifelong New Yorker, with the exception of
her undergraduate studies at Smith
College in Massachusetts. She began her career as part of the settlement
movement, investigating women's
labor in New York City. Van Kleeck rose to prominence as director of
the Russell
Sage Foundation's Department of Industrial Studies, which she led for
over 30 years, beginning in 1916. During World
War I, van Kleeck was appointed by US
President Woodrow
Wilson to lead the development of workplace standards for women
entering the workforce, becoming the first woman appointed to a position
of authority in the American federal government during the war. After the
war, she led the creation of a federal agency to advocate for women in the
workforce (the Women's
Bureau), before returning to the Sage Foundation and continuing her
determined research into labor issues. By the 1930s, van Kleeck had become
a socialist, arguing
that central
planning of economies was the most effective way to protect labor
rights. During the Great
Depression, she became a prominent left-wing critic
of the New Deal and
American capitalism, advocating a radical agenda for social reformers and
workers. Retiring from the Sage Foundation in 1948, van Kleeck ran for New
York State Senate as a member of the far-left American
Labor Party, but lost the election and turned her focus to peace
activism and nuclear disarmament. As a long-time advocate of planned
economies, she became a defender of Soviet-American
friendship, leading to suspicion from the powerful anti-communist
movement. She died aged 88 in 1972.
My published books:
BBBACK TO HOME PAGE