Mary van Kleeck
Mary Abby van Kleeck was an American social scientist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.
Of Dutch descent, 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, 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 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.
Early life
Mary Abby Van Kleeck was born June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York. She was the child of Eliza Mayer of Baltimore and Robert Boyd Van Kleeck, an Episcopal minister of Dutch origin. On her father's side, she was descended from the Schenck family of Brooklyn. On her mother's side, her grandfather was Charles F. Mayer, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and politician. The youngest of five siblings, including a brother who died in infancy, Van Kleeck was close to her mother, but had a distant relationship with her father, who was often sick when she was young. He died in 1892, when she was only nine. With a strong reputation for intelligence and force of personality among her classmates, Van Kleeck was the valedictorian of her class at Flushing High School in New York City. She wrote in her valedictory address:We are living in an age of disputes, and by no means the least among them is the question of woman and her rights... make one great mistake—they bravely defend woman, but they forget that she needs no defense, they eloquently plead her release from the bonds of slavery, but they forget that she is not a slave.Van Kleeck studied at Smith College from 1900 to 1904, where she flourished—studying calculus, writing poetry, and enjoying popularity among her fellow students. The Smith College Association for Christian Work was the main student organization on campus, and van Kleeck rapidly became involved. She served as president of the SCACW in 1903. Through this organization, she encountered the YWCA, which she remained affiliated with for the remainder of her life. At a YWCA summer retreat in Silver Bay, New York, van Kleeck was drawn to the ideas of Florence Simms, the YWCA's industrial secretary. Van Kleeck became determined to dedicate her career to public service, an ideal to which she dedicated a poem in Smith's yearbook.— Mary van Kleeck, 1900
Beginning of career
A year after graduating from Smith with an A.B., van Kleeck received a joint postgraduate fellowship from the College Settlement Association and the Smith College Alumnae Association which enabled her to perform research in New York City. As part of this work, van Kleeck carried out investigations of the enforcement of the labor law governing the workweek.She also worked for the New York Child Labor Committee and the Consumers League. Van Kleeck's work with the College Settlement Association, along with her role as industrial secretary of the Alliance Employment Bureau, represented the beginning of her research on women in industry and child labor. For the AEB, she conducted a study on the irregular working conditions of milliners and makers of artificial flowers, both major sources of employment for women at the time. Van Kleeck also undertook graduate work in social economy at Columbia University during this time. She studied under the experienced labor economist Henry Rogers Seager and sociologists Franklin Giddings and Samuel McCune Lindsay, but never completed a doctoral degree.
Russell Sage Foundation
Van Kleeck gained support from the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907, shortly after its establishment, the start of a professional relationship which would last for forty years. The organization had been founded by Margaret Olivia Sage to support social activism and Progressive reforms through dedicated scientific research. Mentored and trained by Florence Kelley and Lilian Brandt, prominent older labor activists and social reformers, van Kleeck was hired directly by the Foundation in 1910 to lead its Committee on Women's Work. Her initial salary was $1500 annually. She was instrumental in the passage of New York laws prohibiting long working hours in 1910 and 1915. Van Kleeck and the Sage Foundation published a series of books based on her research: Artificial Flower Makers, Women in the Bookbinding Trade, and Wages in the Millinery Trade.In 1916, van Kleeck persuaded the Foundation to create the Division of Industrial Studies with her as its head. As director of the division, soon renamed and expanded to become the Department of Industrial Studies, she became a well-known figure in the study of industrial labor conditions and women's employment in industry. Van Kleeck's department became an organization known for expertise on industry and labor, for training graduate students and for developing new methods of investigation. Its work was characterized by "careful empiricism, collegial review, and cooperation with state and private agencies," according to the historian Guy Alchon.
Van Kleeck's department frequently recommended labor reforms, such as the establishment of cooperative wage boards. More than once, the Sage Foundation was required to protect the Department of Industrial Studies from reprisals from aggrieved corporations which had been investigated by the department. The Remington Arms manufacturing company, criticized by van Kleeck's department in 1916 for providing substandard conditions for its workers, attempted to suppress the resulting report, but was rebuffed by Robert DeForest, the foundation's vice president.
Alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, van Kleeck was also co-vice president of the Women's City Club of New York, which was founded in 1915. During this period, van Kleeck's output of labor studies and other articles was prodigious, and she often worked closely with the Women's Trade Union League. For instance, she authored an article in the Journal of Political Economy arguing that working girls should be able to access evening school courses without financial barriers, published in May 1915. Van Kleeck also found the time to serve on New York Mayor John P. Mitchel's Committee on Unemployment. In addition, she taught a series of courses on industrial issues at Columbia University's New York School of Philanthropy from 1914 to 1917. At Columbia, Van Kleeck encountered the ideas of Taylorism and rapidly became a proponent, viewing it as a "social science of utopian potential." She was a prominent member of the Taylor Society for several decades. Van Kleeck also belonged to the National Society of Colonial Dames.
World War I and the Women's Bureau
In 1917, the United States entered World War I. By this point, van Kleeck enjoyed "a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation's leading experts on women's employment." At the behest of the War Industries Board and Herman Schneider, van Kleeck investigated the possibility of employing women in U.S. Army warehouses. She recommended the creation of a Women's Bureau in the War Department, and as a result President Woodrow Wilson appointed van Kleeck to lead a new Women in Industry Service group, a sub-agency of the Department of Labor. As such, she became the first woman in the United States appointed to a position of authority in the federal government since the beginning of the country's involvement in World War I. Van Kleeck wrote that the great numbers of women brought into the workforce by the war represented a "new freedom" for women: "freedom to serve their country through their industry not as women but as workers judged by the same standards and rewarded by the same recompense as men".The Women in Industry Service group produced a series of reports documenting wage disparities, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination against female workers, conducting investigations in 31 states. Their recommendations were often ignored, and at an October 1918 conference to discuss women's labor organized by van Kleeck, Secretary of Labor William Wilson declined to take action to address wage inequality. Van Kleeck made it a priority to appoint a black woman to the staff of the Women in Industry Service group, working with George Haynes to find a suitable candidate. Eventually, an experienced researcher named Helen Irvin, a graduate of Howard University, was hired from the Red Cross.
In December 1918, the group published a wide-ranging report entitled Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry. The report was later used as the basis for the groundbreaking Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which applied standards to workplaces throughout the country. After the war, van Kleeck's group became the United States Women's Bureau. Van Kleeck wrote the law enabling this transition in June 1920. On July 14, van Kleeck was appointed as the head of the new agency within the Department of Labor. Although she was expected to lead the Bureau permanently, van Kleeck was called away to help care for her dying mother and resigned after a few weeks. Mary Anderson, her close friend and colleague, became its first long-term director instead.