Grace Burnham McDonald,Founder of the Workers' Health Bureau: “You Have to See it in the Context of Organized Labor's Right to Survive and to Represent its Members”

Grace Burnham McDonald (born in 1889) was a founder of the Workers Health Bureau in New York City in 1921. She started the Bureau after her experience with the Joint Board of Sanitary Control. The Bureau assessed workplace health and safety risks, educated labor unions about these issues, and advocated for laws to ensure the highest degree of workplace protection. Her Bureau colleagues were Harriet Silverman and Charlotte Todes (Stern). Burnham McDonald supported the Bureau with part of her 1923 inheritance from her first husband. After years of effective work, the Workers' Health Bureau shut down in 1929, largely as a result of diminished support from the unions, whose focus had shifted to purely economic issues, and the dissociation of the AFL from the Bureau. In later life, Burnham McDonald moved to California, where she became involved in some of the same causes, especially as they affected agricultural laborers. An interview with Charlotte Todes Stern follows and appears on page 337 of this issue.