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Protecting Soldiers and Mothers
Chapter 9: Statebuilding for mothers and babies: The Children’s Bureau and the
Sheppard-Towner Act
Summary: Among the early advocacies for a welfare state, paternalistic social insurance did not
fare as well as maternalistic social insurance programs. America’s first explicit federal welfare
programs, the Children’s Bureau and the Sheppard-Towner Act were the political achievements
of women reformers and associations of married women. The political process was very similar
to the mothers’ pensions created in most of the states during the early 20th Century.
The Creation of the Children’s Bureau (482)
The ideological foundations of the Children’s bureau were developed by Florence Kelley and
Lillian Ward in 1903. Once the idea came into being, legislative proposals for a federal bureau
to protect Children were pushed by Kelley into the national spotlight. Some opposition came
from legislators fearful of child labor reform. President Taft was also against the legislation, but
accepted it following public agitation from women’s organizations. The General Federation of
Women’s Clubs became involved in the campaign for the Children’s Bureaus; however, the
battle to create the bureau dragged on for many years.
In 1912 Congress signed the legislation necessary to create the Children’s Bureau into law.
Following the creation of the Bureau, associated American women continued to push for the
expansion of its budget and activities, while extending the Bureau’s reach into local
communities. Julia Lathrop, the Bureau’s first chief, chose to wage a cautious campaign for its
expansion intentionally avoiding questions of child labor, in order to avoid a costly war with big
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business. She stressed that the Bureau would follow strict civil service principles and promised
that the Bureau would gather expert information and disseminate it to the public. From 1913
onward, the Children’s Bureau relied upon Women’s organizations to perform tests of the
accuracy of birth registration statistics. The Bureau relied upon the efforts of 1,500 individual
club women to gather the statistics.
The Children’s Bureau continued to pursue the involvement of local communities and women’s
groups and steady progress was made in persuading local and state authorities to collect accurate
information regarding birth statistics. Eventually, the Bureau released a report that infant
mortality was directly related to low income families. The report concluded that mothers and
children should be supported by an adequate family wage paid to husbands. This conclusion
predictably drew criticism from business; however, it drew support from federated labor.
Lathrop’s use of statistics paid off and she lost little time in organizing the report into support for
a major new federal welfare program to be administered by the Children’s Bureau.
A Federal Program to Save Mothers and Babies (494)
Launching the campaign for a major new federal welfare program, Lathorp invoked the model of
the Smith-Lever Act, which authorized the USDA to distribute matching funds to the states for
extension work by county agents. She suggested that the federal government could provide a
powerful financial incentive for the states to provide social insurance to families. Lathorp’s plan
was not immediately introduced into Congress, due to US involvement in the First World War.
Her plan was first submitted to Congress in July 1918 by Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin of
Montana. After several variations were debated, all of which enjoyed popular support, President
Harding signed the Sheppard-Towner Act into law in 1921.
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Several factors account for the Sheppard-Towner’s success in Congress. First, it escaped the
misfortune that befell many acts passed during the war, which were labeled as emergency
measures and were enthusiastically dismantled following the war. It also benefitted from the
well-organized support of women’s associations across the country. The General Federation of
Women strongly supported the Sheppard-Towner Act and coordinated endorsement efforts
across all levels of the polity. The largest single factor was the enfranchisement of women.
The National League of Women Voters lobbied strongly for the Sheppard-Towner Act. Many
members of Congress began to voice support for the legislation in fear of “being punished at the
polls”. Many women began to believe that the values of women may begin to reshape the public
realm. The passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act represented concentrated efforts of millions of
women voters for the first time in US history.
Institutionalizing a New Program and a Long Standing Vision of an Expanded Feminine
Sphere (506)
After the passage of Sheppard-Towner, the Children’s Bureau was faced with the task of creating
the bureaucracy that would exist within the states to support the legislation. The Bureau once
again mobilized women’s groups to persuade state legislatures to establish Sheppard-Towner
programs; they were successful in persuading all but three states—Illinois, Connecticut, and
Massachusetts—which all resisted the federal programs. For the remaining states, the act had the
effect of reinforcing and spreading a nationwide system of “permanent administrative unit that
would promote child welfare reforms”
The application of the Sheppard-Towner programs places an emphasis on delivering public
health information and service to small towns and rural areas. The enhancement of these
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services was noteworthy in the southern and western states ignored in other welfare movements.
Volunteer women provided much of the official and professional personnel for SheppardTowner programs. Women were empowered to expand their sphere of political influence and
their civic duties.
The Defeat of Sheppard-Towner
The programs created by Sheppard-Towner were so successful that it was anticipated that they
would be easy to renew in 1927 when it expired. Many groups, however, opposed the extension
of the Act. Groups such as advocates for limited government, former anti-suffragists, and above
all the American Medical Association condemned the Sheppard-Towner Act as a socialist
scheme. By 1926 the opponents of the Act were highly mobilized and determined to let the Act
expire. A few ultra-conservative Senators conducted a running filibuster of the bill until it’s’
January 1927 deadline. Senator Sheppard, the author of the original bill, consulted the leaders of
the Children’s Bureau and the Women’s Committee for the Extension of the Maternity and
Infancy Act. Reluctantly, due to the political climate, they agreed to an extension of the Act
until January 1929, at which time it would be removed from the books. The Children’s Bureau
rallied its supporters to forestall a takeover by the Public Health Service. In the wake of the
Great Depression many state’s cut funding to maternity and infancy programs, and the
Children’s Bureau found itself powerless. It also found itself at the center of a debate over
federal welfare programs that preceded the programs created in the New Deal. The Children’s
Bureau never regained the power it lost with the expiration of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1929.
Questions

How did the Children’s Bureau extend the political influence of Women?
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
How should the impact of the Women’s organizations in organizing the Children’s
Bureau be viewed?

Did social stagnation lead to the defeat of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1927?

What changed between 1921 when Sheppard-Towner was signed into Law and 1927
when it was defeated? What forces were at work in both years?

How did the Children’s Bureau foreshadow the role that New Deal programs would
have?

Can the Children’s Bureau serve as a model for a modern materialistic welfare state?