Relationship and Leadership: Sophonisba Breckinridge and Women in Social Work

According to an article published in Affilia more than two decades ago, “social work history and women as leaders are inextricably intertwined” (Kendall, 1989, p. 23). Social work was “a woman’s world” when Kendall entered the field in the 1930s; “women ran the show” (p. 23). Yet by the time this veteran social worker published her observations in 1989, women had lost their leadership role in the profession. Social work remains a predominantly female profession, yet a “pestilent and persistent gender gap” plagues social work salaries (Gibelman, 2003). Both because women are concentrated in lower paid areas of the profession, such as direct services instead of public administration, and because of continuing pay inequities based on gender, there is a significant wage disparity—up to 30% according to some estimates—between male and female members of the profession (Koeske & Krowinski, 2004). Moreover, while women are dominant in terms of numbers, men are dominant in terms of leadership, in part because of a concerted effort beginning in the 1930s and accelerating in the 1950s to “defeminize” the profession and attract more men and, in part, because of a persistent tension between codes of professionalism and ideals of womanhood that renders female professionals “unequal colleagues” (Glazer & Slater, 1987; Koeske & Krowinski, 2004; Leighninger, 1996; Walkowitz, 1990). In addition, the underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of social work education (as administrators, tenured faculty members, full professors, and in graduate programs) and the underrepresentation of women in social work education (60%) compared to the profession as a whole (80%) perpetuate broader inequalities in the profession (Sakamoto, McPhail, Anastas, & Colarossi, 2008).

This article explores the career of Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge, a pioneering social work educator and a prominent member of the “woman’s world” of social work in the 1930s, to suggest how contemporary female social workers may reclaim their historic leadership role in the profession. Women’s relationships were the key to female leadership in the formative decades of the social work profession. Throughout her long career, spanning the first half of the 20th century, Breckinridge formed close relationships with other women. Women mentors, female friends, and feminist colleagues advanced Breckinridge’s successful career as a pioneering social work educator, promoted her vision of social work as social reform based on social research, and collaborated with her in creating institutions and crafting policies to advance social justice. At the same time, Breckinridge used her growing influence within the emerging profession to disseminate her definition of social work, train students to conduct research and make policy, and promote women’s leadership in the social work profession. By embracing the reform-oriented, female-centered social work that Breckinridge espoused, contemporary social workers may also reinvigorate feminist and activist visions of social work and revive a forgotten tradition of female mentorship, collaboration, and leadership.

Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (1866–1948) was the driving force behind the establishment of the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration (SSA), the first graduate program in social work affiliated with a major research university in the United States. As a social work professor, a prolific author, the founding editor of the Social Service Review, and a president of the American Association of Schools of Social Work (AASSW), Breckinridge helped to professionalize social work and to establish high standards of academic rigor for the field. At the same time, she was involved in virtually every reform—including legal aid for immigrants, civil rights for blacks, protective legislation for women workers, and juvenile courts for youths—of the Progressive and New Deal eras. A member of the female reform community based at Hull House, Breckinridge was also part of an international group of social justice reformers who were dedicated to promoting international cooperation and world peace. Breckinridge reached the height of her influence in the 1930s, when she represented the United States at the 1933 Pan-American Conference, at which 19 countries signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, and the United States formally declared its “Good Neighbor policy,” and served on an advisory committee for the Social Security Act, which laid the foundations for the modern welfare state. Although a handful of scholars of social work and women’s history have devoted some attention to Breckinridge (see, e.g., Fitzpatrick, 1990; Leighninger, 1987; Muncy, 1991), surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to Breckinridge’s long life and life work as a social work educator and social justice reformer. A search of her name in Affilia, for instance, brought up only three articles that referenced her (Abrams & Curran, 2000; Kemp & Brandwein, 2010; Kennedy, 2008), none devoted primarily to Breckinridge.

One reason for scholars’ neglect of Breckinridge may be that her career contradicted dominant interpretations of the social work profession. Most histories of social work (see, e.g. Specht & Courtney, 1994; Walkowitz, 1999; Wenocur & Reisch, 1989) have suggested that the reform impulse waned after World War I and instead have emphasized the rise of casework methodology, a reliance on narrow technical training, and the turn to the “psychiatric persuasion” (Lunbeck, 1994) in social work in the 1920s and 1930s. A few scholars have insisted on the persistence of a social reform tradition, sometimes described as a commitment to “social justice” (Costin, 1983) or as a “radical tradition” in social work (Andrews & Reisch, 2001). Several histories of the professionalization of social work (Leiby, 1978; Lubove, 1965; Trattner, 1974) have pointed to the University of Chicago as an exception to the rule of a narrowing focus on casework and an abandonment of reform. Most, however, have indicated that the New York School of Social Work, dominated by Mary Richmond’s casework model (Agnew, 2004) and closely affiliated with the Charity Organization Society, dominated the field until the Great Depression prompted renewed attention to the structural causes of poverty. Leighninger (1987) offered a more complex account but emphasized the limitations, rather than the possibilities, of Breckinridge’s vision of professionalization, which defined the profession’s membership narrowly even as it defined the field’s mission broadly.

With only a few exceptions, then, histories of social work have indicated that the professionalization impulse sounded a death knell for social justice commitments, in part by dividing the field into two opposing camps: the settlement house movement, which sought to analyze and eliminate structural causes of inequality, and the casework model of professionalization, which emphasized individual adjustment to existing circumstances (see, e.g., Chambers, 1963; Davis, 1967; Kunzel, 1993; Margolin, 1997; Tice, 1998). As both a settlement house resident and a leader in the professionalization of social work, Breckinridge fused reform and professionalism into a distinctive version of social work. Her career challenges the notion that the professionalization of social work was antithetical to a commitment to social reform. For four decades, from 1908 until 1948, Breckinridge consistently advocated a social justice approach to the social work profession, using social science research as the basis for public policy recommendations. At the same time, she both benefited from and helped to perpetuate an influential network of women educators, social workers, and public officials that positioned women as leaders in the emerging profession of social work.

There have always been competing approaches to the professionalization of social work (see, e.g., Ehrenreich, 1985; Leighninger, 1987; Shoemaker, 1998). Implicitly or explicitly, social work scholars who have emphasized the reform tradition and who have seen more continuity than discontinuity in social work and social welfare between the Progressive Era and the New Deal have often linked the “macro” approach to social work to feminism and the “micro” approach to paternalism (Chambers, 1986; Kemp & Brandwein, 2010). In this, they have agreed with some historians of social policy and feminist activism in the interwar period, who argued for the rise of “a female dominion in American reform” (Muncy, 1991) between 1920 and 1935, manifested most fully in women’s leadership in the U.S. Children’s Bureau (Lindenmeyer, 1997), their prominence in New Deal agencies (Ware, 1981, 1987), and their instrumental role in establishing the welfare state (Gordon, 1990; Koven & Michel, 1993).

Muncy (1990) argued that for many pioneering women social workers, “professionalization itself sustained reforming commitments.” Examining the distinctive program of first the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP) and then the University of Chicago’s SSA, she traced the linkages among Hull House, the CSCP/SSA, the Children’s Bureau, and the New Deal to demonstrate the continuities between a 19th-century women’s reform tradition and the 20th-century origins of the American welfare state.

Building on Muncy’s insights but focusing on Breckinridge, the subject of my current research, in this article, I highlight how Breckinridge’s experiences with relationship and leadership offer insights into contemporary women’s role in social work. Personal, professional, and political relationships with other women helped Breckinridge to become a leading social work educator and a central figure in the professionalization of the field. Female mentorship, same-sex relationships, and women’s networks also enabled Breckinridge’s former students, female colleagues, and fellow reformers to assume positions of leadership in social work education and public policy making. For Breckinridge and other early social workers, female relationships and women’s leadership were closely connected and mutually reinforcing.

Female institution building, feminist activism, and friendship were inextricably intertwined for women of Breckinridge’s generation. Although women’s historians have devoted considerable attention to the role that relationship played in the lives of feminist activists and female professionals in the Progressive and New Deal eras (see, e.g., Cook, 1979; Faderman, 1999; Freedman, 1979; Ware, 1981, 1987), social work scholars only recently have begun to call attention to “the power of relationship” (Quam & Whitford, 1991) for early female social workers. A more recent article in Affilia (Fredriksen-Goldsen, Lindhorst, Kemp, & Walters, 2009) called on social workers to recognize “social work’s ‘lesbian’ foremothers,” while another called attention to the historic connections between feminism and social work (Kemp & Brandwein, 2010)

Responding to these challenges and looking at social work through the lens of Breckinridge’s career, I contend that female circles of friendship, same-sex partnerships, and single-sex political networks facilitated women social workers’ political effectiveness, professional success, and personal fulfillment in the formative decades of the profession. An examination of Breckinridge’s personal, professional, and political relationships suggests that same-sex relationships and single-sex networks fostered not only a social justice orientation toward social work but also a tradition of female mentorship and leadership in the profession. Breckinridge certainly cooperated with male public officials and policy makers to effect change. But her primary relationships were with other women. For Breckinridge, supportive same-sex relationships were essential to personal fulfillment, professional growth, and political success. Although Breckinridge had significant relationships with several women, she formed her most intimate and enduring relationships with her mentor and colleague, Marion Talbot, and her former student and fellow professor, Edith Abbott.

Breckinridge met Talbot, a pioneer in the field of domestic science, at a critical period in her life. Born in 1866 to a politically prominent Kentucky family, Breckinridge was eager to add to the family tradition of public service, but, like many other women of her generation, she struggled to find an acceptable outlet for her intelligence and ambition. She attended college first at the University of Kentucky and then at Wellesley College, graduating with distinction from the latter school in 1888. She then returned to Kentucky, where she studied law and qualified for the bar but failed to establish a successful practice. Breckinridge’s postcollegiate years were difficult ones, marred by her mother’s early death and her father’s scandalous sexual misbehavior. Breckinridge taught high school mathematics, traveled in Europe, kept house for her father, and struggled with poor health and poorer spirits until, in 1894, she visited a Wellesley classmate, May Estelle Cook, in Chicago. There she met Marion Talbot, dean of women at the University of Chicago (Fitzpatrick, 1990).

Talbot encouraged Breckinridge to pursue graduate study at the fledgling coeducational university and helped her finance her education with a graduate fellowship in political science and a special position as Talbot’s assistant. With Talbot’s support, Breckinridge earned an MA in political science in 1897 and a PhD in political economy in 1901. Passed over for faculty appointments in favor of her male colleagues, Breckinridge enrolled in the University of Chicago’s new law school. As the highest ranked member of the first graduating class in 1904, she became the first woman to earn a doctor of jurisprudence degree at the University of Chicago (Fitzpatrick, 1990).

Still unable to find a faculty position in any of her fields of expertise, Breckinridge stayed on at the University of Chicago as assistant dean of women and head of Green Hall, a women’s dormitory—both positions she gained through Talbot. She also accepted appointments first as an instructor and then as an assistant professor in the Department of Household Administration, created and chaired by Talbot. In this capacity, Breckinridge offered a course entitled “The Legal and Economic Position of Women,” arguably one of the earliest courses in women’s studies. One of the students in this course was Edith Abbott, a former schoolteacher and brilliant statistician, who came to the University of Chicago in 1903 to pursue a PhD in political economy. Breckinridge and Abbott immediately formed a close emotional and intellectual bond. As Talbot had done for her, Breckinridge helped Abbott obtain employment after graduation in 1905, helping her return to Chicago in 1908 after stints in England, Boston, and Washington, DC. From that point forward, Abbott supplanted Talbot as the most important person in Breckinridge’s life (Costin, 1983; Fitzpatrick, 1990; Muncy, 1991).

Despite some initial tension created by Breckinridge’s new relationship, Talbot and Breckinridge maintained a lifelong relationship. In the early 20th century, the two women shared a vacation home in New Hampshire, where the pair collaborated on a book published in 1912, The Modern Household. As dean and assistant dean of women, respectively, Talbot and Breckinridge also worked together to direct women’s education and social life at the University of Chicago until Talbot’s retirement. Talbot continued to support Breckinridge’s career. In 1925, the same year in which she retired and established a trust fund, creating a fellowship in Breckinridge’s name, Talbot finally succeeded in her long-standing campaign to promote Breckinridge to a full professorship. Breckinridge reciprocated with loyal comradeship. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Breckinridge accompanied Talbot on vacations, exchanged affectionate letters with her, and worked with her in the American Association of University Women, an organization that Talbot founded. As her onetime mentor aged, Breckinridge visited her daily, helped her with medical expenses, and kept her family members informed about the state of her health. Although Talbot was 10 years Breckinridge’s senior, both women died the same year, 1948 (Deegan, 1996).

Although Breckinridge maintained an affectionate relationship with her former mentor throughout both women’s lives, by the teens, it was Abbott, rather than Talbot, who most frequently traveled with Breckinridge for professional conferences and family vacations, and it was Abbott, not Talbot, whom acquaintances and family members solicitously inquired about in letters to Breckinridge. Somewhat ironically, Talbot facilitated both Abbott’s professional career and Abbott’s personal relationship with Breckinridge by offering Abbott and Breckinridge a contract that she originally obtained to conduct a statistical study of women’s work (Fitzpatrick, 1990; Muncy, 1991).

This project led to a lifelong collaboration between Abbott and Breckinridge. Although the two women did not share a residence until the last years of Breckinridge’s life (Breckinridge lived at Green Hall, and Abbott lived at Hull House), they were clearly life partners. After Breckinridge’s death, Abbott received a flood of condolence letters acknowledging—if not naming—the significance of their 40-year relationship. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins reflected on how much Abbott would miss “the daily contact, the faithful loyalty, the shared experiences, [and] the tender friendship” that she and Breckinridge had shared for so long. (F. Perkins to EA, August 19, 1948, Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge Papers, hereafter SPBP).

Breckinridge and Abbot’s relationship furthered—and, in turn, was strengthened by—their successful effort, in 1920, to transform the CSCP from a private training school into the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Social Service Administration, or SSA (Muncy, 1990). The SSA became the power base from which Breckinridge and Abbott promoted the professionalization of social work, shaped public policy, and advanced women’s leadership. But they did not do so alone. Rather, the partners worked within a larger network of fellow reformers, social workers, and governmental officials who shared—and shaped—Breckinridge and Abbott’s commitment to social work as a tool to achieve social justice and their belief in social science as a basis for public policy.

Hull House has deservedly received scholarly attention as a focal point of women’s relationships and female reform activity (see, e.g., Sherrick, 1980; Sklar, 1985; and Stebner, 1997). Breckinridge’s relationships within and beyond the famous Chicago settlement house remind us that Hull House was connected to other important—and interconnected—groups of women. Building on Fish’s (1986) analysis of what she dubbed the “Hull House circle,” I suggest that a fruitful way to conceptualize the personal relationships, professional associations, and political alliances of Breckinridge and other social workers and social reformers in the early 20th century is as a series of overlapping circles of female friends, professional colleagues, and political allies who were engaged in higher education, social reform, and public policy. In simplified form, it may help to envision four large circles: Hull House, the SSA, the Children’s Bureau, and the women of the New Deal. Several of these circles contained important dyads, including mentors and their protégés (such as Talbot and Breckinridge), sets of siblings (like Edith and Grace Abbott), and romantic partnerships (such as Breckinridge and Edith Abbott). In addition, the circles often revolved around one or more central figures: Jane Addams at Hull House; Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott, and Katharine Lenroot in the Children’s Bureau; Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge at the SSA; and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Democratic Party Leader Molly W. Dewson in Washington, DC. Finally, the circles frequently overlapped or intersected, with individual women inhabiting multiple circles either simultaneously or sequentially, sometimes in multiple roles. For instance, Grace Abbott was a Hull House resident; a student at the SSA; chief of the Children’s Bureau; a professor in the SSA; and a member of the New Deal’s Committee on Economic Security, which designed the Social Security Act of 1935 (Costin, 1983; Muncy, 1990; Ware, 1981, 1987).

For Breckinridge, Hull House was the entry point into these overlapping circles of remarkable women, connected in personal, professional, and political relationships that crossed the boundaries among reform, academia, and government and fostered women’s activism and achievement. At some point between 1905 and 1907, Breckinridge’s publications on legal aspects of women’s work—which grew out of the research that she conducted with Abbott thanks to Talbot—called her to the attention of the community of women reformers at Hull House. Addams invited Breckinridge to become a part-time resident during university holidays, and Breckinridge who, as head of Green Hall, resided on campus until the 1940s, spent all her vacation quarters (3 months each year) from 1907 to 1921 at Hull House (Muncy, 1991). Abbott resided at Hull House full time from 1908 until 1917 before she moved to an apartment near campus; she later shared a residence first with her sister, Grace Abbott (from 1934 to 1939) and then with Breckinridge (from 1940 to 1948).

At Hull House, Breckinridge, inspired by the “settlement spirit,” founded the Immigrants Protective League, joined the Women’s Trade Union League, and served on the board of directors of the Juvenile Protective League. Using her background in law, she quickly became Hull House’s resident expert on legal matters. In 1910, she testified on behalf of public assistance for single mothers, a policy adopted in 1911 as the first “mothers’ pension” law in the United States and a precursor of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Breckinridge also formed a close relationship with Jane Addams that fostered her interest in women’s suffrage and world peace. In 1911, Addams and Breckinridge were elected vice presidents of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Breckinridge also cofounded the Women’s Peace Party with Addams and attended the women’s peace conference at The Hague in 1915, which resulted in the creation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Addams may also have introduced Breckinridge to the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, of which both women were members. Certainly Addams made a habit of calling Breckinridge’s attention to race relations and civil rights, and Breckinridge, who had evinced an interest in such matters while still a student at Wellesley, became a lifelong advocate of African Americans (Fitzpatrick, 1990; Goodwin, 1997; Muncy, 1991).

In addition to introducing her to a panoply of progressive reforms, Hull House also offered Breckinridge new professional opportunities. Impressed by her research, Hull House resident Julia Lathrop invited Breckinridge first to deliver lectures at the CSCP and then, in 1908, to direct research funded by the Russell Sage Foundation as the head of the Chicago school’s Department of Social Investigation. After 6 years as director of research, Breckinridge was named dean of the school in 1914. As director and dean, Breckinridge raised funds from philanthropic agencies that allowed her to hire Abbott, with whom she conducted research on immigration, housing, juvenile delinquency, and compulsory education. At the same time, she coordinated a 7-year effort to transform the privately funded CSCP into the university-affiliated Graduate School of SSA (Fitzpatrick, 1990; Muncy, 1991).

The SSA officially opened in 1920. Although Breckinridge was instrumental in the years of behind-the-scenes politicking that established the school, she insisted that Abbott be named dean, perhaps to avoid charges of self-interest, or perhaps because she wanted her former student to mark her coming of age as an equal colleague. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, “A and B,” as the power couple was popularly known, shared responsibility for guiding the University of Chicago’s social work program. Abbott and Breckinridge seamlessly merged their personal and professional lives. They coauthored numerous books, cofounded the Social Service Review, and coedited a series of books on social service for the University of Chicago Press. They also occupied adjoining offices, passed each other correspondence and memos with hastily scrawled notes and queries, and consulted with one another frequently throughout their long workdays. Abbott and Breckinridge thus worked as a collaborative team to advance their shared vision of producing not simply social work practitioners but public policy experts (Fitzpatrick, 1990; Muncy, 1990).

Indeed, Breckinridge and Abbott even collaborated in producing the annual reports that announced their intention to make the SSA the premiere social work program in the country and asserted their belief that the SSA’s emphasis on academic research and public policy was the way to do so. Rejecting “the old theory that social service work called only for good intentions and a kind heart” and dismissing “early experiments with professional education in this field … along narrow lines giving the so-called ‘techniques’ of family casework,” Abbott and Breckinridge insisted that “a sound disciplinary education in fundamental principles” of “social legislation and social politics” was necessary “to train the liberally educated leaders of this important professional group” (“School of Social Service Administration, 1925–1926,” hereafter SSA Report, 1925–1926).

Clearly, for these two highly educated women, a solid background in social science facilitated effective leadership in social policy. Abbott and Breckinridge successfully transformed their personal and professional partnership into a political powerhouse. They worked together closely on local, state, and national advisory committees and in public agencies on crime and law enforcement, child welfare, and public welfare administration. Ultimately, both women (together with other members of the SSA, Hull House, the Children’s Bureau, and New Deal circles) helped to shape both the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Paying tribute to the women’s political effectiveness, as well as their personal and professional partnership, Frank Bane, of the American Public Welfare Association, reflected, “In setting up the various relief administrations and Social Security, it was Edith Abbott with Sophonisba and a few others … who gave us the greatest help in organizing government for the administration of welfare programs. Edith and Sophonisba—as the University of Chicago called them, A and B—what a pair!” (Frank Bane to Arlien Johnson, copy enclosed in Frank Bane to Wilma Walker, October 24, 1957, Abbott Papers)

Breckinridge and Abbott also facilitated women’s leadership in the second generation of social work. As Shoemaker (1998, p. 188) observed, Abbott and Breckinridge believed that “all social workers should be prepared to evaluate and formulate social policy, to administer social agencies, and to lead. This included women as well as men.” Muncy (1990) suggested that the two women successfully inculcated their students with a commitment to social change and prepared them for social work leadership through their rigorous curriculum of social science research. Moreover, Breckinridge and Abbott connected the SSA’s graduates to multiple circles of female activism and introduced them to a vibrant world of women’s reform, policy making, and social work leadership.

At the SSA, Breckinridge and Abbott provided their students with the academic preparation they regarded as essential both to professionalization and to policy making. As Abbott (1941, p. 672) explained, from the very beginning, “we were clear … that only in a university, and only in a great university, could a school of social work get the educational facilities that advanced professional students must have if they were to become efficient public servants of a democracy.” Both women insisted that their students obtain “a broad conception of the field of social work.” The SSA’s interdisciplinary curriculum included courses in the departments and schools of political economy, commerce and administration, political science, law, education, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and public health on such topics as labor relations, statistical research methods, and social psychology, as well as SSA courses on the history of social welfare, public welfare administration, and social work and the law (SSA Report, 1925–1926).

The SSA also strove for a “principle of unity in social work” by combining fieldwork with classwork. An essential part of the SSA curriculum was “the Chicago plan” of combining scholarship with social services by supervising graduate students in agency job placements and associated research projects, using data collected in the process of delivering social services to produce social scientific scholarship (SSA Report, 1925–1926; “Report of the Dean to the Alumni,” 1934). Only by distinguishing carefully designed and closely supervised field-based instruction from “learning on the job” and insisting that practitioners obtain “a reasonable knowledge of the causes of the inequalities” that affected their clientele, Breckinridge believed, could fieldwork justifiably be assigned “university credit” (Breckinridge, 1911, p. 367; Breckinridge, 1936, p. 128).

In addition, Breckinridge offered an alternative definition of casework by publishing a “case book”—based on the materials she used in her own classes—in which she modeled casework on law, rather than on psychiatry or medicine. Family Welfare Work in a Metropolitan Community (Breckinridge, 1924), a monumental collection of 44 case records with an extensive appendix on public welfare agencies, went through three printings between 1924 and 1932 (see also Breckinridge, 1911; Tice, 1998; Wright, 1948). Breckinridge’s particular version of casework distinguished her from the dominant psychiatric casework model at the same time that her publication of a popular classroom textbook spread her ideas beyond the SSA. Breckinridge’s classroom instruction and casework textbook alike prepared “the caseworker of today [to] become later … the Secretary of a Commission to redraft the poor laws of a State,” as Abbott once described the SSA’s vision of social work (Quoted in Muncy, 1991, p. 83).

Breckinridge and Abbott socialized subsequent generations into a social reform mind-set at the same time that they groomed them for social work leadership. Close faculty guidance was an indispensable part of the SSA experience. As Abbott explained, the SSA hewed to a strict policy of “direct supervision” of fieldwork by faculty members (Abbott, 1929, p. 7). Moreover, students had “frequent conferences” with their faculty advisers and weekly seminars “for presentation and discussion of plans and results” (Abbott, 1929, p. 12). Breckinridge was a dedicated teacher. One former student (Wright, 1948, p. 450) recalled the familiar sight of “Miss Breckinridge sitting at the long table in Cobb 112 spending countless hours on student papers and apologizing for going to sleep over them at 2:00 a.m.” This type of close faculty–student interaction socialized SSA students to the founders’ public policy orientation, maintained high standards of social scientific scholarship, and fostered women’s leadership in social work.

The Local Community Research Committee (later the Social Science Research Committee) facilitated both the connection between scholarly research and social reform and Breckinridge’s and Abbott’s ability to fund and train women policy makers and social work leaders. Based at the University of Chicago, the committee drew its support from a variety of sources, including philanthropic agencies and individuals, such as the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and Julius Rosenwald; private charities, such as the United Charities and the Illinois Children’s Home; and public agencies that requested particular studies, including the Cook County court system and the Illinois Department of Public Welfare. The committee funded empirical research in the social sciences. Taking its cue from its funders, it also promoted interdisciplinary cooperation, applied research, and a local emphasis, countering the postwar trend toward more rigid disciplinary boundaries and a more “objective” attitude of detached scholarship. The Local Community Research Committee also provided fellowships for SSA graduate students and thereby prepared them for a future as social science scholars, public policy makers, and social work leaders (Bulmer, 1984).

Funding from the Local Community Research Committee facilitated the Abbott–Breckinridge team’s penchant for combining research with reform and fostered their relationships with their students. Typically, a private or public agency would commission Breckinridge or Abbott—frequently both—to conduct a study of a particular aspect of social service. Funding provided by the requesting agency was matched by the University of Chicago and outside grants. Breckinridge and Abbott shared responsibility for selecting fellowship recipients and supervising the fieldwork of social work graduate students who collected the requested data; the two professors then wrote a final report for the agency’s use and/or publication. In many cases, students published portions of their research in the Social Service Review before using it to complete their degrees (Muncy, 1991).

Studies undertaken through the Local Community Research Committee and directed by Breckinridge and/or Abbott included a study of family welfare work for United Charities; a study of the Chicago Orphan Asylum; a study of foster care for the Illinois Children’s Home; a survey of all public social services in small town and rural Cook County; a similar study of public social services within the Chicago city limits; the first comprehensive census of Oak Forest, the county poorhouse; a study of adoption in Illinois; an investigation of the employment of disabled youths; a study of African American domestic servants; a review of homelessness in Chicago; an analysis of mothers’ pensions in Cook County; an evaluation of the Inferior Courts of Cook County; a report on probation practices for adult offenders in Cook County; and a statistical survey of unemployment and evictions during the Great Depression (see e.g., Memorandum to Mr. White and Members of the Sub-Committee on Research Projects for 1929–30, February 28, 1929, SPBP).

In all these cases, reform and research were closely linked. Empirical research on social conditions was undertaken for the express purpose of reforming social services. One project that eventually fell under the purview of the Local Community Research Committee—the study of social services for dependent black children—casts this relationship between research and reform into sharper relief. For nearly 20 years, between 1913 and 1932, Abbott and Breckinridge worked to extend social services to the needy black children who were usually excluded from private orphanages and whose mothers were less likely to receive mothers’ pensions than were white women (Goodwin, 1997).

In collaboration with the Illinois Children’s Home (a private agency), the Council of Social Agencies (now known as the United Way), and the Joint Service Bureau (a coalition of child care institutions) and with the financial backing of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and the Local Community Research Committee, Abbott and Breckinridge helped establish a foster care placement agency for black youths. “In effect, the School of Social Service Administration operated the program.” SSA students, including the University of Chicago’s first black social work students, staffed the program; both Breckinridge and Abbott served on the Local Community Research Committee, which oversaw the project. Breckinridge also served on the weekly case review committee (Stehno, 1988, p. 491).

In addition, Breckinridge and Abbott obtained funds from the Local Community Research Committee and from private donors to fund the project. Breckinridge explained the logic of providing services for children with funds earmarked for research: “So little was known about the needs of the negro [sic] child and the problem presented by their care that it was felt necessary to do the work for them after the method of a research project” (SPB to Jacob Kepecs, May 4, 1929, SPBP). Despite constant fundraising efforts, the program was perennially short of cash. Breckinridge repeatedly justified the expense of the program to the executive secretary of the Local Community Research Committee, basing her arguments on both practical considerations (i.e., using the committee’s funds for dispensary fees because public hospitals refused to serve black children) and scholarly ones (i.e., the “interesting facts” that the program revealed, which “will be an extremely valuable addition to our body of social-case-record material,” as well as students’ use of the project as a basis for their degree requirements (SPB to Leonard White, November 23, 1928, and March 29, 1929, SPBP).

Finally, in 1932, the county assumed responsibility for the program, financing it through state and federal emergency relief funds and renaming it the Children’s and Minors’ Service, which served children regardless of race. The project thus facilitated both the education (and employment) of the University of Chicago’s black social work students and the creation of Chicago’s first public child welfare agency (Stehno, 1988).

With a rigorous academic curriculum, carefully supervised fieldwork closely tied to policy making, and dedicated mentors and fundraisers, the SSA was strikingly successful in producing social work educators and leaders and mentoring public policy analysts and administrators. A report boasted that former students “frequently occupy ‘key positions’ in social work largely because of the broader educational preparation they have had” (“Report of the Work of the Graduate School of Social Service Administration,” 1926, hereafter SSA Report, 1926). Throughout the 1920s, more than half the SSA graduates held positions in higher education or public welfare administration (Muncy, 1991).

Breckinridge and Abbott’s close relationships with other women reformers and feminist policy makers facilitated both the employment of the SSA’s graduates and the effectiveness of female leadership. This was particularly evident in the relationship between the SSA and the Children’s Bureau, based on both shared principles and personal relationships. The bureau’s modus operandi—investigate, educate, legislate—meshed well with the SSA’s emphasis on social science scholarship as the basis for social welfare legislation (Lindenmeyer, 1997). Breckinridge, Abbott, and their students conducted numerous studies on behalf of the Children’s Bureau, headed successively by Julia Lathrop, Breckinridge’s former employer; Grace Abbott, Edith Abbott’s sister; and Katharine Lenroot, Grace Abbott’s former assistant. Both by giving their students the opportunity to conduct research for the bureau and by modeling the SSA curriculum on the bureau’s civil service examinations, Abbott and Breckinridge gave their students a significant advantage in seeking postgraduate employment with the Children’s Bureau, which functioned practically as an employment service for SSA graduates (Muncy, 1991).

Although the first-generation social workers have been justly criticized for racism (see, e.g., Kemp & Brandwein, 2010), Breckinridge and Abbott, who challenged racism in their professional publications and were committed to providing social services to African Americans, also fostered African American women’s leadership in social work. One of Breckinridge’s special interests, shared with wealthy benefactor Julius Rosenwald, was to provide educational and professional opportunities for African Americans, especially as social workers in the black community. Birdye Henrietta Haynes was one of the first beneficiaries of this collaboration. A 1914 graduate of the CSCP, Haynes became a prominent settlement house worker first in Chicago and later in New York. Both her education at the CSCP and her position as head of the Wendell Phillips Settlement were underwritten by Rosenwald at Breckinridge’s urging. Sophia Boaz, another early African American student, also attended the CSCP with Rosenwald’s financial support under Breckinridge’s mentorship (Carlton-LaNey, 1994; Diner, 1970).

After the CSCP became the SSA, Breckinridge and Abbott continued to provide African American students with extraordinary educational opportunities and to prepare them for social work leadership. The Local Community Research Committee’s project on the care of dependent African American children provided fellowships and research projects for African American students (Stehno, 1988). Several African American SSA graduates went on to take leadership positions in social work research and education. In the first official address to alumni, delivered in 1929, Abbott identified 1928 graduate Myra Colson as a research associate at Tuskegee Institute and Alice Quan Rood as a member of the faculty of the Loyola University School of Sociology. Both women wrote their master’s theses on topics related to African American social welfare (Abbott, 1929).

Although African American graduates assumed leadership positions, most appear to have been funneled into (or have chosen) race-specific careers, a common career path for African American social workers—and African American professional women more generally—in the early 20th century (Carlton-LaNey & Alexander, 2001; Shaw, 1996). Abbott’s 1929 report to the alumni indicated that white graduates took on a wider range of leadership positions as professors of social work and sociology; directors of governmental and charitable agencies; researchers at policy think tanks in the United States and abroad; and superintendents of detention homes, guidance offices, and hospital social work departments. Other white graduates, while not yet in positions of leadership, were being groomed for policy-making positions as research assistants for the Children’s Bureau in both Washington, DC, and state field offices. For example, in 1929, Helen Wright, an SSA graduate who returned as a faculty member after a stint at the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, was conducting a study under the aegis of the U.S. Children’s Bureau with three other former SSA students. At a local level, Ethel Verry, another SSA graduate, had taken charge of the Chicago Orphan Asylum and relied on four other SSA graduates and students to help her reorganize the institution along the lines suggested by an SSA study conducted under the auspices of the Local Community Research Committee (Abbott, 1929).

Tracing SSA alumnae over the long term reveals the lasting impact and broad reach of Breckinridge’s influence. Catheryne Cooke Gilman, who studied with Breckinridge, went on to become a settlement house worker and advocate of suffrage. In 1916, she served on the Minnesota Child Welfare Commission, which produced the Children’s Code of 1917, which codified and revised all state laws related to children. Throughout the 1920s, she played a leadership role in the Women’s Co-Operative Alliance, a political pressure group that represented more than 20 women’s organizations and, with the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted research on public health and city services and promoted sex education and municipal reform (Hanley, 1992).

Breckinridge solidified Chicago’s leadership of social work in the 1930s. As president of the AASSW from 1933 to 1935, Breckinridge closely supervised curriculum requirements and professional standards, pressuring schools of social work throughout the country to adhere to her vision of social work as a profession grounded in social science scholarship and dedicated to social change. In particular, Breckinridge was instrumental in crafting the “minimum curriculum” required of all AASSW schools, which fell into four groups: medical and psychiatric casework; community organization and group work; public welfare administration; and research, statistics, and the law (Breckinridge, 1936). Thus, the majority of the approved curricula reflected Breckinridge’s emphasis on social science research, locally based reform, and public welfare policy.

Breckinridge expanded the AASSW’s influence during the Great Depression, when she convinced Josephine Brown, an official of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), to fund training of emergency social workers only in member schools. By insisting that FERA funding be limited to schools approved by the AASSW, Breckinridge ensured that new social workers throughout the country would at least approximate “University of Chicago standards of instruction” (“Memorandum to the President of the University …,” 1933).

The FERA training program is just one example of the ways in which women’s social work and social reform circles constantly expanded and multiplied, creating a “ripple effect” that reinforced existing connections. In 1935, 1,133 social workers in 32 states participated in a 6-month FERA training program in 21 AASSW-approved schools, roughly one fifth of all social work students in that period (Breckinridge, 1936). Trainees praised the program for giving them more perspective, helping them develop a “professional attitude,” and providing supervised fieldwork, while their supervisors praised their “keener grasp of social problems,” administrative potential, and “professional attitude.” According to one state administrator, the trainees gained a “sounder interpretation of the spirit and purpose of the [Federal Emergency Relief Administration]”; another opined, “The training program has been a contribution to professional social work.” The comments of students, supervisors, and administrators thus all suggested that the trainees absorbed Breckinridge’s values in the course of their training, wherever they attended school (Brown, 1935, pp. 241–242).

Although the FERA program was short-lived, Breckinridge’s influence persisted. Along with Edith and Grace Abbott and other women reformers who were affiliated with Hull House and the Children’s Bureau, Breckinridge was central to the design and implementation of the Social Security Act (1935), which created new employment opportunities for social workers and (in 1939) implemented civil service merit hiring throughout the new federal welfare system (Wenocur & Reisch, 1989). Both because the SSA had a long tradition of tailoring its curricular requirements to the Children’s Bureau’s civil service examination and because Breckinridge advocated the adoption of similar civil service requirements at the local and state levels, SSA graduates and graduates of AASSW-affiliated schools, who were broadly educated in the social sciences, imbued with a commitment to social justice, and oriented toward policy making, enjoyed a competitive advantage in public agencies at the local, state, and national levels (Muncy, 1991). In addition, Breckinridge continued to serve on a joint advisory committee of the Social Security Administration, the Children’s Bureau, and the AASSW to supervise the training of all public welfare workers throughout the 1930s.

In effect, a new circle of “second-generation” female social workers developed and disseminated Breckinridge’s vision of social welfare and women’s leadership around the country and across the generations. As one of these second-generation members asserted:

As an educator … [Breckinridge] has left an indelible stamp upon the development of the professional schools of social work. The rich knowledge and the discipline of mind gained from her study of economics, political science, and law, which she brought to bear upon the emerging formulations of social work education from its inception, were not limited to one school but have permeated the whole fabric of professional education (Johnson, 1948, p. 442; see also Andrews, 1990)

Breckinridge’s personal life, professional career, and political connections all suggest the important connection between women’s relationships and women’s leadership in social work. The beneficiary of women’s mentorship, companionship, and networking, Breckinridge used her role as an educator and her influence in governmental agencies to advance the careers of other women in social work and related fields. These women then went on to advance the profession of social work and women’s role in it, perpetuating a productive cycle of relationship and leadership in social work. For example, Elizabeth Wisner, who received her PhD from the SSA in 1929, went on to become the first woman dean at Tulane University, presiding over that institution’s new School of Social Work from 1933 until 1958. Wisner also held leadership positions in national professional organizations, including the educational organization, the AASSW, in which she succeeded Breckinridge as president. Following in Breckinridge’s footsteps, in the 1950s she developed a code of ethics for the professional association, the American Association of Social Work, and influenced the model curriculum ultimately adopted by the Council on Social Work Education. Also like Breckinridge, she maintained a lifelong relationship with a fellow social work professor, Florence Styz; the pair held open houses in their home in which they mentored the next generation of social workers (Trattner, 1986).

At the national level, Breckinridge and Abbott, their colleagues, and their students effectively constituted the female leadership of the social work profession for approximately 40 years. Of the 14 female presidents from 1910 to 1950, an overwhelming majority (11 of 14) had a close relationship with Abbott and/or Breckinridge, the SSA, Hull House, the Children’s Bureau, and/or the New Deal. (These women were Jane Addams of Hull House in 1910; Julia Lathrop of Hull House and the Children’s Bureau in 1919; Grace Abbott in 1924; Gertrude Vaile, a University of Chicago graduate, in 1926; Katharine Lenroot of the Children’s Bureau in 1935; Edith Abbott in 1937; Jane Hoey of the Social Security Board in 1941; Elizabeth Wisner, another University of Chicago graduate, in 1944; Ellen Potter, a correspondent of Breckinridge and a prominent New Dealer, in 1945; Arlien Johnson, yet another University of Chicago graduate, in 1947; and Martha Eliot, a Children’s Bureau colleague, in 1950; Stotzer & Tropman, 2006).

Breckinridge, her colleagues, and her students provide a still timely reminder that social work was founded by, and largely for, women (Andrews, 1990; Chambers, 1986; Kemp & Brandwein, 2010; Kendall, 1989). The personal, professional, and political relationships among these women social work leaders offer a vivid example of the vital link between relationship and leadership in the early decades of social work. They also suggest the strong connection between reform-minded, policy-oriented social work and women’s leadership in the social work profession. For four decades, Breckinridge promoted social work as social justice, prepared students to be policy makers, and paved the way for women to become leaders in the social work profession. Breckinridge’s vision of social work was a minority view—although a highly influential one—in her lifetime. After her death, an increasing number of social workers, seeking higher status for the field and higher pay for themselves, rejected her reformist sensibilities, redirected their efforts away from the poor, and repudiated female leadership (see, e.g., Andrews & Reisch, 2001; Leighninger, 1996; Lowe & Reid, 1999; Specht & Courtney, 1994). Perhaps in part as a result of these developments, today, few social workers or social work scholars have even heard of Breckinridge. By rescuing Breckinridge from obscurity and recognizing her as a pioneering social worker, I hope also to resurrect her example of feminist activism and female leadership for contemporary social work educators and practitioners. Not simply by honoring women’s pioneering role in the profession, but also by reviving the tradition of women’s relationships and female leadership, we may once again realize Breckinridge’s vision of social work as a feminist profession that advances social justice both for its clients and for its practitioners.