This section meeting in 1911 describes in detail the progress of social welfare pioneers struggling to define social work and how it could be taught to aspiring students as well as current workers in social agencies and philanthropies. It also includes references to the evolutionary history of the social work profession. In one paragraph Miss Breckinridge says: “…In these meetings we are laying bare before the Conference the elementary stage at which our thought and our practice upon these points still rests. To be sure, a review of the past decade convinces the observer that real progress has been made. In 1897, fourteen years ago, at Toronto, Miss Richmond made her notable statement before the Conference regarding the desirability of establishing professional schools. In 1901, four years later, Dr. Brackett reported somewhat at length upon the establishment of the Summer School for Philanthropic Workers, established by the New York Charity Organization Society….Today the New York Summer School for Philanthropic Workers has lost itself in the New York “School of Philanthropy” conducted by the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York and affiliated with Columbia University, whose purpose is “to fit men and women for social service in either professional or volunteer work.” The Boston School for Social Workers maintained by Simmons College and Harvard University, established in 1904, has completed its seventh year of successful educational work. The Chicago Institute for Social Service has become the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and may be reported as established on a safe pecuniary and a sound educational basis. The St. Louis School of Social Economy, affiliated with Washington University, starting in 1901-2 as a series of Round Table meetings of workers, has passed beyond the experimental stage and has just completed its sixth year of full academic quality and amount….”

At the latter end of the depression, the Quaker community had begun working with professionals in hopes of better organizing their aid to the disadvantaged. In 1879, the contact between the groups culminated in the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicancy (SOC), which later became known as Family Service of Philadelphia. Within two years, SOC had 9,000 contributors.