Skip to main content

Perkins, Frances, Change Agent

In 1913 Perkins married Paul Caldell Wilson. He was handsome, rich and a progressive. She defied convention and kept her maiden name. After several attempts at conceiving a daughter was born. Life did not treat Frances well. Both husband and daughter were depressed and institutionalized for long periods. While she had some help with living from her wealthy friends Frances paid their bills until they died. She also dealt with a myriad of stresses they introduced into her life. She did not believe in divorce. Despite her personal miseries Frances continued to develop her political skills.

Continue Reading »

Impressions of Great Britain

Drawn together by their common dangers, the people of Britain have discovered that they have problems common to all classes. This discovery, together with the sharing of suffering, has tended to lessen somewhat the gaps between rich and poor, nobleman and commoner. The British are centering much of their thinking, too, on how to provide full employment and adequate housing when war has ended. The principal recommendations included in Sir William Beveridge’s Report on “Social Insurance and Allied Services” are being enacted into law to give Great Britain full social insurance coverage under a system far more complete than that now in operation in this country. A Ministry of National Insurance, incorporating the present Assistance Board, has been formed to administer the new plan which will provide for everyone without exception against sickness, unemployment, accident disability, maternity, old age, and even death. Included in the plan also is a system of family allowances whereby every family, regardless of need or station in life, will receive five shillings or one dollar weekly for each child, after the first, until the children become wage-earners.

Continue Reading »

Women at the Helm

Let me now sum up why I think these three women were great and, as or forebears, worthy of admiration and emulation. First, a caveat. They were not great because they were women. We can be proud they were women, but the qualities that marked them for greatness are not sex related. They were great because they had powerful minds, which they never ceased to sharpen with new knowledge and new experiences….They were great because they cared about what happened to people and they believed in the worth and dignity of ever living creature….They were great because they were fighters. They preserved against great obstacles – obstacles they faced as women and obstacles generated by their advanced ideas.

Continue Reading »

Social Work: What is the Job of a Community Organizer? – 1948

Community organization must never be seen as merely a job. We are working with the materials out of which a community is built, a cooperative society is fashioned. We are in the thick of the personal, group, and inter-group relationships that make up modern social life. The community organization worker needs a sense of vocation. He is performing an essential function. He is a producer and conserver of social values. He has a vital and crucial role to play in the social drama of our time-the role of a servant of democracy.

Continue Reading »

Social Work: Community Organization Process – 1947

Urban League finds it easy to talk about the principles of good housing for all the people, but when steps to attain that housing contravene the purposes of profit interest groups, threaten to change the racial character of a given neighborhood, or run into the cross fire of opposing citizen interests, the League finds that principles constitute one thing and practice something entirely different. Thus, in organizing the community for social action, it must be remembered that frequently all the community cannot be organized, and a choice, therefore, must be made as to with which groups the agency will work. It mut be remembered, also, that even when over-all community support is essential, the cells of hidden or open resistance must be located and either isolated or dissolved before the organizing process can gain its full momentum.

Continue Reading »

Social Work: Community Organization

If we define community organization in its broadest sense, as a recent writer has done, as “deliberately directed effort to assist groups in attaining unity of purpose and action… in behalf of either general or special objectives,” it is clear that a substantial part of community organization falls even outside the broader field of “social welfare,” of which the whole of social work is an integral part. But it is also clear that another substantial part, whose function has been described in a recent report as that of creating and maintaining “a progressively more effective adjustment between social welfare resources and social welfare needs,” certainly belongs within the “social welfare” field. But does this practice of community organization for a “social welfare” purpose conform to our criteria of generic social work practice?

Continue Reading »

Schiff, Philip: 1958 Memorial

The Metropolitan Washington Chapter of NASW held a special memorial meeting for Philip Schiff on September 25, 1958, at which Dean Inabel Lindsay of the School of Social Work of Howard University presented this paper.

Continue Reading »

Madison House and the Great Depression

This retrospective view of Madison House highlights the contributions of Felix Adler and the Ethical Culture Society. Madison House was funded by the Ethical Culture Society but was governed democratically by club members and staff who planned activities and programs for all ages. By Jeanne Talpers, Daughter of Philip Schiff, Headworker of Madison House 1934-1939

Continue Reading »

Madison House in 1938

“A Day in the Life of Madison House – 1938.” This entry about Madison House was contributed by Jeanne Talpers, daughter of Philip Schiff who attended Madison House as a youngster from the age of 10 and grew up to become the Headworker in 1934.

Continue Reading »