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“Our arithmetic was unique”: The Sheppard-Towner Act and the Constraints of Federalism on Data Collection Before the New Deal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2021

MICHELLE BEZARK
MICHELLE BEZARK*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, USA
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Abstract

This article reveals how the politics of federalism in the 1920s stifled the U.S. Children’s Bureau’s ability to collect national data on the workings of the Sheppard-Towner Act. The Bureau staff’s reliance on state administrators for data hindered their efforts to collect standardized national statistics on the states’ use of federal dollars. Ultimately, this barrier contributed to Sheppard-Towner’s defeat in 1929. Though the law was short-lived, the problems the Children’s Bureau encountered administering it provide insights into how federal matching grant programs began to shape federal and state relations before the New Deal. As this article shows, Bureau staff learned from their experience administering Sheppard-Towner that they needed to implement more stringent federal oversight over state-level accounting in their administration of Title V of the Social Security Act.

Keywords

Sheppard-Towner ActU.S. Children’s BureauSocial Security ActTitle Vfederalismdata collection
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 183 - 204
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2021

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References

Notes

1. Ora Marshino to Mary Riggs Noble, M.D., 8 June 1927, folder 11-40-1box 337, RG 102, NA-College Park.

2. Mary Riggs Noble, M.D., to Ora Marshino, 10 June 1927, folder 11-40-1box 337, RG 102, NA-College Park.

3. Annie Veech, M.D. to Ora Marshino, 21 September 1927, folder 11-19-1, box 327, RG 102, NA-College Park.

4. Elizabeth Gardiner, M.D. to Blanche Haines, M.D., 4 June 1927, folder 11-34-1, Box 334, RG 102, NA-College Park.

5. Though the federal government had provided pensions to Civil War veterans since the 1890s, Theda Skocpol describes Sheppard-Towner as “America’s first explicit federal social welfare legislation,” in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 481.

6. On matching grants and the expansion of federal-policy intervention in the states, see Clemens, Elisabeth, “Lineages of the Rube Goldberg State: Building and Blurring Public Programs, 1900–1940,” in Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State, ed. Shapiro, Ian, Skowronek, Stephen, and Galvin, Daniel (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Johnson, Kimberley, Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877–1929 (Princeton, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tani, Karen, States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935–1972 (Cambridge, Mass., 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14. “The Children’s Bureau: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” 1937, United States Department of Labor, Washington, DC, accessible at www.hathitrust.org (accessed 12/10/19).

15. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in Reform, Lindenmeyer, A Right to Childhood, Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way, Meckel, Save the Babies, Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.

16. Literary Digest, 5 January 1918, 22.

17. Lemons, “The Sheppard-Towner Act,” 777–78.

18. Quoted from Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 505.

19. In the final version of the bill, the annual appropriation was cut from $4,000,000 to $1,240,000.

20. Sheppard-Towner Act, An Act For the promotion of the welfare and hygiene of maternity and infancy, and for other purposes, 23 November 1921, Adelaide Brown Papers (1868–1939), MSS 20, Box 3.6, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford University Medical Center.

21. Ibid., 5.

22. Meckel, Save the Babies, 205.

23. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 495.

24. Florence Kraker, MD, to Grace Abbott, 24 March 1924, folder 11-1-0–11-1-3-2, box 243, RG 102, NA-College Park.

25. Supreme Court of U.S. Motion to file Original Bill and Original Bill of Complaint, October Term, 1922, folder 11-0-5-3, box 243, RG 102, NA-College Park.

26. Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 US 447, Supreme Court 1923, accessible at www.scholars.google.com (accessed 14 August 2018).

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. W. H. Beazley, M.D., to Anna Rude, M.D., 24 May 1923, folder 11-47-1, box 253, RG 102, NA-College Park.

30. Anna Rude, M.D., to W. H. Beazley, M.D., 6 June 1923, folder 11-47-1, box 253, RG 102, NA-College Park.

31. Dr. French to Anna Rude, 30 March 1922, folder 11-9-1, box 245, RG 102, NA-College Park.

32. Anna Rude to Dr. French, 1 April 1922, folder 11-9-1, box 245, RG 102, NA-College Park.

33. Florence Kraker, M.D., to Grace Abbott, 2 June 1924, folder 11-5-1, box 244 RG 102, NA-College Park.

34. Ibid.

35. For more on better baby contests, see Susan Pearson, “‘Infantile Specimens’: Showing Babies in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Social History 42 (Winter 2008), and Mitchell, Michele, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 2004), 95–101Google Scholar.

36. Grace Abbott to Joe Bowdin, M.D., Director of the Division of Child Hygiene, 2 August 1924, folder 11-12-1, box 245, RG 102, NA-College Park.

37. Extension of Public Protection of Maternity and Infancy: Hearing Before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce House of Representatives, 14 January 1926, accessible at www.congressional-proquest.com (accessed 10 September 2019), 15.

38. S. Josephine Baker, M.D., to Blanche Haynes, M.D., 14 June 1926, folder 11-0-9, box 320, RG 102, NA-College Park.

39. Ibid.

40. S. Josephine Baker, M.D., to Blanche Haines, M.D., 24 July 1926, folder 11-0-9, box 320, RG 102, NA-College Park.

41. Elizabeth Gardiner, M.D., to S. Josephine Baker, M.D., 11 December 1926, folder 11-0-9, box 320, RG 102, NA-College Park.

42. Elena Crough, R.N., to Blanche Haines, M.D., 3 December 1926, folder 11-31-1, box 333, RG 102, NA-College Park.

43. Mrs. Charles Howe to S. Josephine Baker, M.D., 23 October 1926, folder 11-0-9, box 320, RG 102, NA-College Park.

44. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in Reform, Lindenmeyer, A Right to Childhood, Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way, Meckel, Save the Babies, Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.

45. Congressional Record—Senate, 1117, 5 January 1927, accessible at www.congressional-proquest.com (accessed 12/10/18).

46. Ibid.

47. Katherine Lenroot, Memo on Precedent for Matching Grant Diversion, 15 August 1927, folder 11-1-3-3, box 322, RG 102, NA-College Park.

48. L. Manning to Miss Lenroot, 12 August 1927, folder 11-1-3-3, box 322, RG 102, NA-College Park.

49. Ibid.

50. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Chief of the Children’s Bureau to the Secretary of Labor, Fiscal Year Ended 30 June 1930, accessible at www.congressional-proquest.com (accessed 12/10/18), 1.

51. Florence E. Walker, R.N., to Blanche Haines, M.D., 14 October 1927, folder 11-45-1, box 339, RG 102, NA-College Park.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Tentative Draft of Maternal and Child Welfare Measure to be Introduced in the Seventieth Congress, 16 May 1928, Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, folder 7, box 62, University of Chicago Special Collections.

56. Ibid.

57. Katherine Lenroot to Grace Abbott, 16 June 1930, folder10, box 36, University of Chicago Special Collections, Edith and Grace Abbott Papers.

58. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion.

59. Children’s Bureau memorandum. Errors in the Statement of A. Piatt Andrew, which appears in the Congressional Record of 5 April 1926, Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, folder 8, box 36, University of Chicago Special Collections.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid, 8.

63. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion.

64. George Lyon, Huntington, M.D., to Hon. Robert Doughton, 21 February 1935, folder 13-0, box 613, RG 102, NA-College Park.

65. Moehling and Thomasson, “The Political Economy of Saving Mothers and Babies,” 102.

66. Johnson, Governing the American State, 151.

67. Ibid., 152.

68. Edith Rockwood to Malisa Swadley, 24 July 1936, folder 13-0, box 613, RG 102, NA-College Park.

69. Ibid.

70. Ella Oppenheimer, M.D., to Ruth Faust, 17 March 1936, folder 13-0, box 613, RG 102, NA-College Park.

71. Basic Training Course: Outline of Lecture, Maternal and Child Welfare, folder 13-0, box 613, RG 102, NA-College Park.

72. Katherine Lenroot to Honorable Morris Sheppard, 19 June 1935, folder 13-0, box 613, RG 102, NA-College Park.

73. Social Security Act of 1935, “Title V—Grants to States for Maternal and Child Welfare,” accessible at www.ssa.gov (accessed 31 October 2019).

74. Ibid.

75. Canaday, Margot, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76. On legibility, see Scott, Seeing Like a State.

77. Scott, Seeing Like a State.