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Proceedings of Conference
on Day Care of Children of
Working Mothers
With Special Reference to Defense Areas

Washington, D. C.
July 31 and August 1, 1941

Children’s Bureau Publication No. 281
United States Department of Labor

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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
F r a n c e s P e r k in s ,

Secretary

CHILDREN’S BUREAU— Katharine F. Lenroot, Chief

Proceedings of Conference
on Day Care of Children of
Working Mothers
With Special Reference to Defense Areas
Held in Washington, D. G.
Ju ly 31 and August 1, 1941

Bureau Publication N o . 281

UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1942

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C.

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Price IS cents

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CONTENTS
Page

Letter of transmittal________________________ ________________________

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION
Opening statement by the Chief of the Children’s Bureau______________
British experience— Martha M. Eliot, M. D __________________________
The problem in Connecticut—N. S. Light___________ ..._____ ____9
Employment of women:
Mary Anderson________________________________
Col. Frank J. McSherry____________
General discussion____________________________________
The program of the Work Projects Administration— Grace Langdon____

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11
14
17
39

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941—AFTERNOON SESSION
Program of the Office of the Coordinator of Health, Welfare, and Related
Defense Activities— Charles P. Taft________________ _____ _________ _
General discussion______________________________ __________________
Appointment of conference committees_____ . . . __________ ________ ____

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1941— MORNING SESSION
Reports adopted by the conference:
Statement of principles____ _______,_____________________________
Plan of committee work____ ____________________________________
Discussion of next steps in planning__________________________________

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APPENDIXES
Appendix A.— Material submitted to the conference as a basis for dis
cussion :
Tentative statement of premises___ ______________________ _______
Suggested topics for discussion._____________________________
Appendix B.— Members of discussion group___________________________
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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
U nited S tates D epartment of L abor,
C hildren ’s B ureau ,

Washing ton, December 191±1.
There is transmitted herewith Proceedings of the Con
ference on Day Care of Children of Working Mothers. During the
summer it became evident that needs of defense industries in various
parts of the country were likely to bring about increasing employ
ment of women, many of them mothers of young children. Com
munities were becoming aware of the urgent need for special care
and protection of children whose mothers are employed in defense
industries and of children living under the crowded conditions which
prevail in other areas affected by defense activities. In response
to many requests for information and advice, the Children’s Bureau
invited a group of 43 persons representative of various types of
interest and experience in this field to meet in Washington on July
31 and August 1, 1941, for discussion of day care of children in
relation to the emergency needs.
The conference adopted recommendations which have been sent
to State departments of health, labor, and welfare and to other
State and local agencies especially concerned with the problem of
providing necessary resources for safeguarding children affected by
these emergency situations. The Bureau of Employment Security,
Social Security Board, Federal Security Agency, has sent a com
munication to all State Employment Security Agencies informing
them of the recommendations of the conference and asking their
cooperation with local agencies planning community programs of
day care.
,
As a means of effecting coordination among the Federal agencies
most concerned, the U. S. Office of Education, the Work Projects
Administration, and the Children’s Bureau have organized an in
formal joint planning board made up of two representatives from
each of the three agencies. It is intended that the Joint Planning
Board for Day Care of Children will (1) plan steps which the three
agencies can take to help the States to meet emergency needs as they
occur, (2) consult and advise concerning maintenance of accepted
standards of day care, especially under emergency conditions, and
(3) give assistance and counsel in developing various day-care
services as these are needed in relation to the defense emergency.
Conditions revealed by the discussions at the initial conference and
later committee meetings led to the recommendation that the Chil
dren’s Bureau should add to its list of advisory committees a com
mittee on day care of children. With your approval an Advisory
Committee on Dav Care, composed of 22 members representing
various phases of The problem, has been appointed to assist the
Bureau in giving service in this field.
Respectfully submitted.
K atharine F . L enroot, Chief.
M adam :

H on . F rances P erkins ,

Secretary of Labor.

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Conference on Day Care of Children of
Working Mothers
Katharine F. Lenroot, Chief, Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor,
Presiding

Thursday, July 3 1, 1941— Morning Session

Miss L enroot. First of all, I want to express my very great appre
ciation of your prompt response to this invitation in the middle of
summer and vacation periods and plans. I know that you regard
it as the kind of thing that is to be expected in the present situation,
and you have responded to this as I know you are responding to
every call with which you can possibly comply. We felt that it was
important to have a group together to consider problems relating
to the employment of women as it affects the welfare of children
in the home and the provision needed for the care of those mothers
who are at work, in a period of our defense program when the prob
lems in many communities are not yet acute. In some places, however,
we are already finding indications of a rise in the employment of
women, creating needs which have led to committee work, the devel
opment of standards and policies, and reinforcement of existing
resources.
The Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor is very deeply
concerned with the problems of employed women and has been accu
mulating information and considering with others the general situ
ation of women in regard to defense employment and the related
employment which flows out of the recruiting of people for work in
the defense industries. The Bureau of Employment Security in the
Social Security Board likewise has a great deal of information and
experience, and also the Office of the Coordinator of Health, Welfare,
and Belated Defense Activities [now the Office of Defense Health
and Welfare Services] and the various committees working in rela
tion to that program; the Work Projects Administration, which is
of course vitally concerned with problems of daytime care of children,
and which in May had a conference on this subject that several of
you attended; the’Office of Education; the National Youth Adminis
tration; and a number of other governmental agencies which have
either active interest in programs related to the problem under con
sideration or information of value. The Office of Production Man
agement also comes into this picture. Before we went ahead with
plans for this group discussion we conferred with representatives
of several of these agencies.
Because it seemed that Connecticut had already experienced many
of these problems in an intensity which other communities undoubtedly
1

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

will experience in the next 6 or 8 months, it was suggested that we
should get some first-hand information about the situation in Con
necticut before going forward with plans for this meeting, which we
proceeded to do. Connecticut has had a State committee, and we are
fortunate in having with us Mr. N. S. Light, the chairman, and other
members of the committee, and also people who have been working on
community surveys in New Haven, Hartford, and Waterbury and have
given a great deal of thought to this question.
I want to emphasize that this is a discussion group and that one of
the functions of this group will be to consider what type of com
mittee organization will be needed for continuing exploration of the
problems presented, and how that committee organization might be
effected. Also it was our thought that this group might consider and
possibly adopt before adjournment tomorrow a statement of basic
principles, some of which in very tentative form have been included in
the mimeographed material which is in your hands and which was
sent to you in advance of this meeting.
Undoubtedly many other points will come up for consideration and
there will be modifications of these statements, but we have thought
that if some sort of statement could be adopted which could be made
public at the close of tomorrow’s session it might be of some help to
States and communities dealing with these problems. Our thought,
therefore, was that after today’s discussion, which will be for the
most part informal, with some reports from representatives of vari
ous agencies, we appoint two committees to meet at the close of today’s
session. We thought that one committee might deal with the ques
tion of how to set up continuing committees to work on standards and
policies and suggestions that may be of value to States and local
groups, and that the other committee might work on the policies or
principles that this group might wish to adopt. Both committees
would report back to you tomorrow morning for consideration and
action on their recommendations.
I want to emphasize that in making plans for this discussion we have
had the fullest cooperation with the Office of the Coordinator of
Health, Welfare, and Related Defense Activities,1 and Mr. Taft will
be here during part of the conference. The conference, while called
by the Children’s Bureau, is a part of the whole program of the
Coordinator’s office. The Coordinator has asked me to serve as Child
Welfare Consultant. I shall read excerpts from a letter he wrote
to me on May 29, asking whether in that capacity I would be
responsible—
for assisting in formulating and executing plans, policies, and programs
designed to assure the protection of children during the national-defense emer
gency. This work, of course, will be carried on in cooperation with the
advisory committees functioning under the Program Planning Branch of this
office and with other agencies of the Federal Government and nongovernmental
agencies concerned with the health and welfare of children. Although the
well-being of children is closely related to the health of the general population,
the security of family life, and provision for nutrition, recreation, and legal
and social protection, children present special problems which must be considered
in reference to all aspects of their welfare.
1 On September 3, 1941, the name of this office was changed to “Office of D efense Health
and Welfare Services,”

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 194 1 — MORNING SESSION

Adequate consideration must be given to such subjects as the follow ing:
Provision for the infant and preschool child in families where the mother
is employed in an occupation related to national defense;
Protection of the health and welfare of children in military or industrial
defense communities;
Planning wholesome recreation for children in such communities;
Maintaining and enforcing child-labor standards;
Preparing plans and material for training volunteers to serve in childhealth and child-welfare agencies, or in child-care centers;
Anticipating needs for additional trained personnel for child-health and
child-welfare work.
The Children’s Bureau, being the agency in the Federal Government charged
with special responsibility for child welfare, is the appropriate agency to de
velop for the Coordinator’s office comprehensive plans for assuring proper safe
guards to children whose health and well-being are of primary importance in
the program of national defense. Many aspects of child welfare do not fall
within the scope of any of the present advisory committees, and all phases of
health and welfare under the defense program need to be reviewed to make
sure that they are properly coordinated in relation to child welfare, and that
adequate emphasis is given to the protection of children.
When general policies and plans have been .developed they can be translated
into action with the assistance of regional advisory councils and cooperating
State and local agencies. In order that close cooperation with other services
in the Office of the Coordinator may be maintained I suggest that you assign
a member of the staff of the Children’s Bureau to serve in my office as liaison
officer in matters relating to children.

In response to that letter I indicated that the Children’s Bureau
would be very glad to be of service to the limit of our ability along
the lines indicated, and that we would assign Charles I. Schottland,
Assistant to the Chief, responsible for the social-service aspects of the
Bureau’s work, as liaison officer. Mr. Schottland has been serving
in that capacity, has been attending staff meetings and meetings of
regional coordinators, and is in daily touch with the office.
We have plans for a series of very brief leaflets on the subject of
child defense. The first leaflet, which we have now in preparation
in rough form and which is to be submitted to our general advisory
committee for their comments before it is printed, outlines in simple
and general terms the fundamental aspects of child-defense programs.
I t is our plan to follow this with a series of leaflets on various aspects
of child defense.1
We had thought originally that for the first group discussion in
this program of child defense, we might call together a group that
would give consideration to the over-all problems of children in the
defense program. But time was pressing and this subject of children
of working mothers seemed to be one' on which there was need for
very prompt consideration and action, so that although we realize
that it is impossible to consider the problem of the child of the work
ing mother apart from considerations of the community resources
1 The Defense of Children Series, “Children Bear the Promise of a B etter World,” in clu d es:
1. What Are We Doing To Defend Them?
2. Are We Safeguarding Those Whose Mothers Work?
3. Are They G etting the Right Start in Life?
4. Have They the Protection of Proper Food?
5. Are We Defending Their Right to H ealth?
6. Their D efense Is the Security They Find at Home.
7. Their Education Is Democracy’s Strength.
8. Through Play They Learn What Freedom Means.
9. Our Nation Does Not Need Their Toil.
10. Are We Helping Those With Special Needs?
11. Protect Them From Harmful Community Influences.
12. Is Their Safety in Wartime Assured?

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

available for the health and education and protection of all children,
nevertheless it seemed to us that there were some advantages in con
sidering a very specific problem rather than in trying to consider
all aspects. We hope that this meeting can be followed by other
group meetings that will consider from time to time other phases of
the defense program as it relates to children.
Those invited to this group discussion included some people who
are vitally interested in the program but were unable to be present,
and some of them certainly will need to be considered in relation to
the continuing committee work. Some of these people have sent
representatives; others have not been able to make that provision.
Among those who were invited but who could not attend are Mrs.
Dorothy Bellanca, Vice President of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers of America, and Miss Florence Thorne, of the American
Federation of Labor. We are delighted that Miss Christman, of the
National Women’s Trade Union League, can be with us because we
feel it is very important to have the point of view of those concerned
with problems of working women fully represented in this conference.
Miss Anne Sarachon Hooley, Administrator in Charge of the Wo
men’s Division, National Catholic Community Service, is on vacation
but is represented by a member of her staff; Mrs. Florence Kerr,
Assistant Commissioner of Work Projects, Work Projects Adminis
tration, was unable to be here but is represented by Dr. Grace Langdon. We had hoped that Miss Elizabeth McGee, Executive Secretary
of the Consumers League of Ohio, could be present but that was not
possible. There were others who I know will wish to be kept in
continuing touch with the program.
We are very fortunate in having first-hand reports of British ex
perience from Dr. Martha M. Eliot, Associate Chief of the Children’s
Bureau, who, as I think you all know, spent the month of February in
England and Scotland as a member of a Civil Defense Mission. Dr.
Eliot has prepared material which is in your folders and will report
to you at this time on the British experience.

British Experience
Dr. E liot. I am going to tell you quite informally of some of the
things I learned in February when I was in Great Britain. At that
time Great Britain had practically reached the saturation point. They
were on the verge of announcing a national registration of women
for industry. The announcement of that national registration was
made in March, after I came back to this country. I was fortunate
while in England to be able to see a number of the people at the Gov
ernment offices in London who are concerned with this over-all problem
of the employment of women and the care of children of women in
industry. I found that, as in this country, it was not one agency that
was responsible for this problem, but a number. The Ministry of
Labour, the Ministry of Health, and the Board of Education are all
concerned with this problem.
One of the last things I did was to see Mr. Bevin, after I had had
conferences with a number of people in the Ministry of Labour, in
cluding Mr. Gould, who is in charge of the industrial registration of
women, Miss Mary Smieton, in charge of welfare work of women

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 194 1 — MORNING SESSION

in industry outside of the factories—the problems of the placement
of women, the transfer of women from one town to another, and the
problems of the care of children of mothers at work.
At the Ministry of Health I had conferences with staff members
whose particular concern is the care of children in the residential
nurseries and the day-time nurseries. I saw, among others, several
of the women inspectors who were responsible prior to the war for
the care of children who are placed out in foster families—the Child
Life Protection Service. I talked with physicians and health visitors
who are responsible for the development of the medical standards and
had conferences with child-care workers (comparable to our childwelfare workers) who had been sent out from London to the prov
inces to be responsible for the development of the social services for
children under the Ministry of Health. I also saw representatives
of the Board of Education and discussed with them the special prob
lems of nursery education, as well as the more general problems of
education in wartime.
The Ministry of Food is making a great effort to provide adequate
food for all children who are being cared for in groups such as nursery
centers, residential nurseries, schools, and school camps.
I learned what the Ministry of Labour proposals were for the
industrial registration of women. You probably know that they
planned two types of registration of women. One was the regional
registration in areas where the industrial needs for new employees
were great but where housing was scarce. In those regions their
plan was to register all women between the ages of 20 and 55 in order
that they might list all the unemployed women, whether married or
unmarried, the women who were employed in the essential industries
and those employed in the unessential industries. In those centers
where housing was scarce they expected to have to draw into industry
the women of the community who were older than 20 or 21 years of
age.
The second type of registration was national registration of women
20 and 21 years of age with the object of getting a mobile group of
women who could be moved from one part of England to another.
The philosophy of the Ministry of Labour in connection with this
national registration of women interested me very much. Though
they had registered all young women of 20 and 21 and older women
in certain areas, Mr. Bevin particularly pointed out that he hoped
to be able to recruit women from these lists pretty much on a voluntary
basis, and spoke of the “voluntary discipline” that is necessary in war
time. His workers told me that every woman on the list was going
to have a “selection interview” and after she was selected for industry
she was to get an “inclusion notice.” The whole psychology was to
get the women to feel that they were needed and that it was up to
them to volunteer for the jobs.
Of special interest in connection with the registration of women
for industry is the group of women mostly young and unmarried who
were to be moved from their homes to some other community where
they were needed for work. These women are to be given 10 shillings
for travel and a day’s holiday after arriving in the place to which
they have been sent, and then each is to get a subsistence allowance
for the first week of 24 shillings 6 pence. Married men who are thus

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

moved about get this allowance for every week wherever they go to
enable them to support their families back home. The details for
the women’s group had not been fully worked out, but the Ministry
of Labour was planning some such scheme as that outlined.
Everyone that I talked with, including Mr. Bevin, told me that it
was his earnest desire to avoid employment of married women with
young children, and by young children he meant children, I am sure,
under 10 years of age at least.
They all admitted, however, that in some situations they would have
to take these women, and that in some situations women who had
children wanted to go into the industries. So they felt that they
had to make provision for children of these working women.
Miss Smieton, who was in charge of the welfare of women in industry
and who was interested in this problem of the care of children spoke
of the need for many more nursery centers (which are a compromise
between the nursery school and the day nursery) in the industrial
areas. Then she talked at length about the revival of the “minder”
system. In industrial cities of England for many years there had
been a system of farming out children by the day to “baby minders”—
old women or women who were at home with children of their own
to take care of or other women who were not employed. Before a
mother went to work she would take her children down the street
to the minder, who would take care of them during the day for a very
small sum of money. Grannies developed a habit of taking quite a
large number of children and the children were poorly fed and very
badly taken care of. There was no supervision and conditions were
exceedingly bad. The system fell into great disrepute among all the
people with any interest in children, and it was gradually going out.
When the need for more women in industry developed the idea
began to be revived, but not along the lines of the old minder system;
the idea was to register women for foster day care of children. Of
course there is great opposition from those who fear it will revive
the minder system as it existed before; but I believe it has actually
been put into effect. I t appears in the publications of the various
agencies. The plan proposed by the Ministry of Labour was that
the registered minders should not be allowed to take children until
they had been visited by the health visitors from the Ministry of
Health. These were the workers who had been accustomed to visit
the boarding homes for children under the Child Life Protection
plan; they were presumably free for this new work because when
war was declared many of the children who had been cared for
under the Child Life Protection plan were included under the evacua
tion plan, though many of the agencies that were concerned with
placing children are continuing to place them. The difficulties of
such a minder system was obvious. Since I have been back I have
found many objections to it and suggestions as to how it may be
improved.
In your folders you will find some material which I have put to
gether from several sources on the care of children of working
mothers in Great Britain. In the first section I have quoted from
the report that I prepared on my return to this country on the care
of children under five. In these excerpts I have taken out of the
report some of the information I obtained with regard to the care

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THURSDAY, JULY 3 i , 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

of children under five, chiefly the young children. I have given
you some information with regard to the nursery centers, those cen
ters which are a compromise between a nursery school and a day
nursery. Those of you who know nursery schools and day nurseries
probably know what I mean, because it has been described in the
British literature quite at length. A good deal of what I have put
in here comes from some of the British reports which I have brought
home with me.
Reports published since I came home refer to the opinion of work
ers with respect to the development of this baby-minder system and
the need for increase in the number of nursery centers in the indus
trial areas, as well as in the reception areas for evacuated children.
A circular on the minder system has been issued recently for con
fidential use of the ministry but not for distribution. The magazine
Mother and Child, a London Times, editorial, and other sources
give information on this new type of service and on the development
of centers now called “war-time nurseries.” The nurseries are the
responsibility of the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with the Board
of Education. The local maternal and child-welfare authorities,
which are under the Ministry of Health, are primarily responsible for
health services to children and have been given the major responsibility
for developing the scheme of war-time nurseries in the local commu
nities. The instructions, however, make it clear that the local educa
tion authorities, as well as the Board of Education on the national
level, are to consult with the maternal and child-welfare authorities
in the establishment and development of these nurseries. The stand
ards for these nurseries seem to be very similar to the standards for the
nursery centers which were in existence when I was there and a number
of which I visited. They are proposing to have what they call full
time and part-time nurseries, the full-time nurseries being open 12 to
15 hours a day. During part of each day the children will be under
the supervision of a nursery-school teacher or someone who is super
vised by a nursery-school teacher, so that the nursery-education
methods are being carried forward into these war-time nurseries.
The supervision of the nurseries by the health authorities, I believe
from my own contacts with the situation in February, is essential.
One of the weaknesses of the residential nurseries and nursery cen
ters which had been established, both in the industrial areas and in
the reception areas for evacuated children, was the lack of health
supervision in the early days. The residential nurseries in those
days, were almost entirely under the supervision of the voluntary
agencies that had originally managed the day nurseries in the big
cities. The Government found after a while that it was necessary
to give much closer supervision, especially from the health point of
view. A 24-hour-a-day nursery was quite new to the workers, many
of whom did not at first realize what the full 24-hour care of a child
involves. Health problems arose which were the result of over
crowding; too many children were placed in a single nursery.
The daytime nurseries were better taken care of because they were
established in the local communities where there were maternal and
child-welfare authorities. The expression “child welfare” in Eng
land is used in the sense of health, not in our sense of social welfare.

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CONFERENCE--- DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

The local authorities had some control over the daytime nurseries.
In March and April of this year great confusion was apparent in
publications and in comments in Parliament and the press, as to who
should be responsible for these services to children. The Ministry
of Labour was stimulating daytime nurseries in the industrial areas;
the Ministry of Health was stimulating the development of nursery
centers both in industrial areas and in reception areas for evacuated
children; and the Board of Education was interested in the nursery
centers. Obviously the decision to put the responsibility for these
daytime nurseries in the hands of one ministry, the Ministry of
Health, was the outgrowth of that discussion.
The reports of the debates in Parliament were interesting, espe
cially the debate one day by the women members of Parliament, who
decided they were not going, to have minders; they were of the
opinion that there should be nursery schools or centers available in
all cases so that the children could go to them during the day, even
if they had to go back to a registered minder for the hours when
the nursery school was closed.
The problems of the school child were recognized and many of the
nurseries in the industrial centers were taking children over 5. In
the reception areas recreation centers were being developed for school
children so that a child had some place to go in the afternoon after
school was over if the householder who was taking care of that child
wished it. The authorities were encouraging the householders to let
the children go to these recreation centers between the close of school
and supper time, not only to have the children wholesomely occupied
but also to prevent any friction that might arise in the families from
having the children around for too many hours at a time in the billet,
as it is called.
Miss L enroot. Thank you, Dr. Eliot. You may have more ques
tions after you have had a chance to review this material more
thoroughly, but I wonder if there are questions any of you would
like to ask Dr. Eliot at this time.
Miss A bbott. I would like to ask if it is true in normal times a
great many more women with young children are employed in
England than in this country.
Dr. E liot. I think that is true. Certainly it was my impression
that there were a great many more day nurseries in London than in
any of our big cities. Those day nurseries in London and other
cities were taking care of the children while their mothers were
at work.
Miss L enroot. Miss Anderson, do you know about that point?
Miss A nderson . I think that is true, not only in England but all
over Europe. Then of course there has been established, particularly
in France—I don’t know what is going on now—the family wage.
Because of that system there have always been a great many mothers,
young mothers with young children, that have been employed. Of
course along with that goes a lot of what we call “industrial home
work” and all kinds of things that we think are not what we want
established in this country.
Miss L enroot. We shall undoubtedly come back to Dr. Eliot many
times for comments on the basis of this very interesting experience.
Now as I have said, Connecticut is a State where these problems

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

have emerged early in the defense program and where there has
been a great deal of consideration of them. I think it is very sig
nificant that the Departments of Education, Health, and Welfare
got together very early and associated with these departments others
for the purpose of considering how to deal with these problems.
We are very fortunate in having with us today Mr. N. -S. Light,
Director of the Bureau of Supervision of the State Department of
Education, who is chairman of this State committee. Mr. Light, we
should like to hear from you at this time as to the Connecticut
experience.

The Problem in Connecticut
Mr. L ight . Madam Chairman, it is rather difficult to say just how
this thing originated in Connecticut. It seems to have been more or
less a case of spontaneous combustion in a number of different points
and centers. Early in the winter a group of representatives of the
social agencies in Hartford came to the Department of Education
citing the problem confronting them. They were worried then par
ticularly about their ability to maintain standards that they had
been laboriously setting up during the years previous and wondering
what could be done. The Employment Service in the Department
of Labor also became interested in the problem at about the same
time. A request from various communities came into the State De
partment of Health, and the problem also arose, of course, in the
State Department of Welfare. So all four of these State departments
became concerned about the situation at about the same time. The
representatives of these departments originally came together and
discussed the matter somewhat and decided that the problem was
serious enough so that they invited representatives from various parts
of the State and various agencies to come together.
Some thirty-odd representatives of social agencies, the schools,
health organizations, employment organizations, the manufacturers’
association, labor, and so forth, met for preliminary consideration
of the problem. The group agreed that the problem was serious
enough at that time, that it seemed likely to become much more
serious, and that something should be done to provide some sort of
standards or at least a guide for local communities which were
interested in setting up some sort of what we then referred to as
child day-care centers. A committee accordingly was set up to go
to work on the problem. The committee has been studying the
available data.
We have been hampered from the beginning because we could not
get at the facts. There were all kinds of reports. One small city
in the State reported having made a canvass of the situation to
determine the need. Without any particular increase due to war
industries or defense industries in that city, it was reported that
there were 15 to 18 hundred children who were in constant need of
day-nursery care. That rather shocked us because the State problem
on that scale would be immense. The committee met, organized, and
finally decided that probably the thing most needed at that time
would be a handbook or guide to be furnished to local authorities
indicating some of the problems involved in setting up these child
day-care centers and ways and means of solving those problems.

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

A committee then invited in certain specialists in various fields,
and in turn invited them to organize committees for work on specific
problems. There were committees working on administration and
organization; on admissions in relation to local agencies; on program
and equipment; and on the health aspects of the situation. Those
committees have completed their work. Before we got the work com
pleted, though, the pressure upon us was tremendous. Everybody is
in haste to set up these centers and none of these local groups seems to
have any particular appreciation of the seriousness of the problems
involved nor of what has to be gone through before a group such as ours
could come to any agreement as to what should be done. We still have
some problems on which we are hoping we will get some help in the
course of this conference.
In response to that pressure the committee decided to issue a dodger
printed on one side of one sheet which would give a bird’s-eye view
of the problem. The material on this dodger is a condensation of a
handbook to be issued later for the use of the workers in the centers
after they have gotten under way. The dodger is being printed by an
offset process in favor of speed and ecenomy and is in the printer’s
hands at the present time. I have one copy of it here that may be of
some interest to some of you.
I should say that meanwhile the State Council of Defense has
become interested in the work and has adopted the committee, so we
not only have the joint sponsorship of the departments of health and
welfare and labor and education, but we aré also an official committee
of the State Council of Defense, so that we are gaining prestige there.
The movement in the State, however, seems to be very widespread, and
we are very much concerned with it. We especially welcomed this
conference. I t is going to help us with a good many of the problems
we have met.
Would it be pertinent to suggest two or three of those problems?
One of them is—just what is the nature of this enterprise? A good
many members of the group felt that in view of the fact that these
mothers, a great many of them, are receiving very good wages in
defense industries and in many cases the fathers are working also,
it was in keeping with the general tradition in such matters that
these centers should be self-supporting. Another group felt that was
utterly impracticable; that the costs of maintaining such centers and
operating them would not permit self-support and that therefore
they have to be subsidized from some source or other.
With that in mind we have included in the membership of the com
mittee a representative of the State Manufacturers’ Association as a
possible source of funds sometime in the future, but we have not
settled yet just how this question is to be dealt with. Is the project a
philanthropic enterprise or are we acting as agents, providing the ways
and means by which these parents can provide for day care? The
question of admissions to these centers became acute. Shall we accept
the judgment of the parents that the mother should work if the mother
desires to work, or are we going to be somewhat authoritarian and
say, “No, we will not accept your children in this center because we feel
that you as a mother ought not to be employed.”

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

How far are we going in that direction? How far can we go?
How far are we justified in going? Shall we content ourselves with
advising these mothers but accepting their judgment in the end, or
are we going to decide the matter for them ? There are. of course, a
good many cases about which there is no doubt at all; for example,
children requiring very specific care. We have a nice problem there
upon which the committee is divided perhaps two or three ways as yet,
and we would like some help on that.
Another problem has arisen lately, suggested by the State Defense
Council. One member of the group is a member of the subcommittee
of the State Defense Council on welfare and community services, and
the State Defense Council is tremendously concerned at the present
time about the possibility of evacuating children. Now we are
threatened with two specific problems there. There is. already a
trickle of evacuation from New York City into Connecticut, parents
moving children into Connecticut, anticipating difficult days in New
York. Now you know as well as I know that it would be relatively
easy for that trickle to become a stream, and so the Connecticut author
ities are facing the possibility of a general evacuation of possibly
one million people or children into Connecticut. In fact, they are
working on the problem at the present time of the population of the
State being practically doubled by such means. You can readily
understand all the problems of food, health, service, and so forth that
are involved. We are hoping to get Dr. Eliot’s report—in fact, if
we can carry back a copy of that we are going to be very popular when
we get back to Connecticut. We are hoping to get some help on this
general problem, but the question which has arisen recently is how far
the training program, training personnel for these centers, can be
adapted so as to serve the purposes also of training workers useful in
connection with evacuation. We should like some help on that, too.
Another problem that is bothering us quite a bit and seems likely
to bother us more as time goes on is the question of how far we can
expect to maintain, under the present conditions, the standards of
personnel and so forth. How far can we go ? How many concessions
and what concessions have we to make in terms of this emergency, in
order to take care of these children? Their mothers are going to
work. One of the problems which has precipitated this whole situa
tion is the inability of working mothers to secure domestic help at
a time when they want to go to work, a lot of them. Industry is just
beginning to be interested in employing them, especially those
mothers who were skilled operators previous to marriage. They
would like to get them back, so that is' part of our story.
Miss L enroot. Thank you very much; that is helpful and stimu
lating.

Employment of Women
Miss L enroot. Miss Mary Anderson, Director of the Women’s
Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, has prepared a memorandum on
Trends in Women’s Employment, a copy of which has been given to
each of you.
[The memorandum follows.]
441845°— 42—— 2

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHER®
TR EN D S IN WOMEN’S EM PLOYM ENT, W AGES, AND HOURS

Preliminary figures from the 1940 census show that entrance of women into
the labor market has continued to grow. A larger proportion of the woman
population was in the labor force in 1940 than had been gainfully employed in
1930. The greatest increase occurred among women between 25 and 44 years, the
years when family responsibilities are normally the greatest.
Total 14 years and over
Number
1940 (experienced women in labor force)
1930 (gainfully occupied women)...........................

12,531,931
10,679,048

Percent of
woman
population
24.9
24.3

25 to 44 years
Number
6, Oil, 747
4,546.676

Percent of
woman
population
30.2
25.4

Employment since the defense program.

Women’s employment in October 1940 had increased 4 percent over the pre
ceding fall in identical plants of 24 women-employing industries in 12 States,
including all the major manufacturing employers of women. In a number of
these industries the major part of the increase had occurred after March
1940. During recent months of the defense program employment of women in
defense occupations has been accelerated. The results of visits made by a
Women’s Bureau agent in October 1940 and again in February 1941 to certain
individual munitions and airplane factories showed that in some of these the
force of women workers had increased by almost 50 percent, in some it had
doubled.
In March 1941, the number of women placed by the public employment
services in a selected group of 26 defense industries had increased 13 percent
over February. Total placements of women by the public employment agencies
were 14 percent greater in March than in February.
Hours.

At present hour laws tend to keep women’s average weekly hours down. In
October 1940 the average was less than 37 hours in more than half of 24
women-employing manufacturing and service industries, and less than 40 in
practically all. This still leaves a margin for the general extension of work
ing hours for women before limits set by State law are reached. Already
scattered instances of increased hours are occurring. Furthermore, in a num
ber of States relaxation of hour laws is possible during emergencies or during
war. In one State, Connecticut, the law setting a maximum of 9 hours per
day and 48 hours per week for women in manufacturing industries has been
amended to allow the Governor, in the interests of national defense, to permit
10 hours daily and 55 hours weekly during an emergency. This provision is in
addition to the 10-55 allowance that may be granted by the Labor Commis
sioner for 8 weeks in a 12-month period. In Connecticut also the Governor
has granted exemptions from the night-work law for women, thereby allowing
work until 11 p. m. instead of 10 p. m.
In New Jersey, where girls are now working on the 3-to-ll-p. m. shift, the
legislature has been requested to consider a temporary amendment to the law
prohibiting night work for women. Women are reported to be working over
time or on late shifts in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Iowa.
Wages.

Attention has been focussed on employment of women in unusual defense
occupations, but for the most part expansion of employment has occurred in
types of work customary for women, which are to a large extent low-paid
occupations. Of every 10 women placed by the public employment agencies
nearly 6 have been in service industries, 2 each in manufacturing and trade,

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 194 1 — MORNING SESiSTON

negligible proportions in agriculture, transportation, and so forth. In October
1940 women’s weekly earnings averaged $16.54 in 22 women-employing manu
facturing industries.
Employment of women with small children.

In 1930 in nearly 1,000,000 families having children under 10 years of age
(8 per cent of all such fam ilies), the woman who provided for the home needs
of the family was also gainfully employed.
No data on recent trends are available, but the possibility of increased
employment of homemakers with young children arises due to the fact that
usual restrictions against the employment of married women are being sus
pended and that married women are applying for employment. (These are
not necessarily mothers of young children.) Specifically, it is reported that
in various Connecticut towns employers are relaxing their restrictions regard
ing the employment of married women and that numbers of married women
are entering the labor market; in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in Ohio, and in
Springfield, Mo., employers are showing greater willingness to hire married
women, and in Schenectady, N. Y., girls are continuing to hold their jobs
after marriage where they could not do so formerly.
In 1940, 24 per cent of the experienced workers in the labor force were
women, compared to 40 percent of the new and inexperienced workers. Many
of these new workers are young persons recently out of school; they con
stitute a reserve that can be tapped in preference to recruiting mothers with
young children.

Miss L enroot. We should like to have you review this material,
Miss Anderson, and present to us anything that you would like to
have come before this group at this time.
Miss A nderson . In the preparation of this material there was
very little to go on that really bears upon this present situation of
the care of small children while the mother is at work. We find
from the 1940 census that the increase in employment of women is
nearly 2 million. The 1930 census reported 10,679,048, and the 1940
estimate is 12,531,931. Of course the 1940 census does not show the
increase due to the preparedness program. The women between 25
and 44 years of age are in the years when family responsibilities
are normally the greatest; the number of these women was
6,011,747 in 1940, or 30.2 percent of the total number of employed
women. In 1930 they comprised 25.4 percent, so you see there was
a material increase during the 10 years.
Women’s employment, in October 1940, had increased almost 4
percent over the preceding fall, in 24 women-employing industries in
12 States. I t was, of course, not a very large increase at that time.
However, in the plants visited in February 1941, the number of
women workers in some plants had increased 50 percent and in some
it had doubled. In March 1941 the placement of women by the
Employment Service in selected groups of defense industries had
increased 13 percent over February of that year. The total place
ment of women by public employment agencies was 14 percent
greater in March than in February.
This does not, however, tell the whole story because women are
hired at the gates to a very great extent. The question today is
the employment of women with small children. In 1930 there were
nearly 1 million families in the United States having children under
10 years of age in which the woman who provided for the home
needs of the family was also gainfully employed. In recent years
much has been done and said to prevent married women from working,
but sinbe the defense emergency has started all of. that has been

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHER'S

abrogated and married women are now by some employers taken
in preference to any others because they feel that when the emergency
is over these married women can be discharged much more easily.
We do not know how many of those married women have small
children. It would take a tremendous investigation to find that out
all over the country; it could not be done. But I think the communi
ties themselves ought to know something about it and ought to look
that up. Perhaps the La Guardia committee might in some way take
that situation into consideration. I should want, however, that com
mittee to know what is contemplated by this conference, the standards
set up so that they would know the problems connected with it and
would understand the questions thoroughly.
We would not, for instance, like any community to have the em
ployers set up nursery centers within the factory. We would not
urge, either, that women with small children go to work unless it
was absolutely necessary. We have not arrived as yet at the satura
tion point, so that I do not think that the employment of women
with small children is necessary at the present time. I t may be
in the future; we don’t know. But we are also going to have a
dislocation; a great many persons now working in the industries that
are going to be curtailed can go into the defense industries—for in
stance, the curtailment in the aluminum industry for domestic pur
poses and the curtailment in the silk industry, on which a conference
is being held today with Mr. Hillman in order to find out what
150,000 workers are going to do. So there will be available workers
and it will not be necessary, unless it is because of the needs of the
family budget, that women with small children should go to work
at this time.
Miss L enroot. Thank y o u , Miss Anderson.
There are in the Office of Production Management at least two
services that are directly related to this problem; one the Labor
Supply Committee and the other the Defense Training Branch, which
Col. Frank McSherry is directing. We are very fortunate, Colonel
McSherry, in having you with us and would like to have you speak
to us about some of these problems in employment and supply needs
affecting this question.
Colonel M cS herry . As you know, at the present time the greatest
war machine the world has ever known is on a rampage and that
machine is composed of machines, airplanes of all types, dive bombers,
heavy bombers, light bombers, medium bombers, observation planes,
pursuit planes, attack planes, and cargo planes. This machine is
equipped with automatic guns and machine guns, tanks, and motor
vehicles. I t is estimated that in an army with modern equipment
there is a machine of some sort for every four men. Now, to get
these machines is a job for industry. Industry is playing in this
present war a very vital part, probably more vital than the military
people on the field of battle. As you know, industry needs workers.
At the opening of the war in 1939 Germany had some 12 million
trained workers for their defense industries. Last June when the
Office of Production Management started business under the old Na
tional Defense Advisory Commission we had 3y2 million workers
in our defense industries; in February we had 4,300,000; today we
have just something under 5% million. I t is estimated Germany is

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

spending about $25,000,000,000 a year on its war machines. Appro
priations already made and bills in Congress make a grand total of
60 billions of dollars for national defense. If you use a rough ruleof-thumb that every $2,000 means a man-year of work, we have funds
appropriated now or in sight, for 30 million man-years of work, and
at the present time we only have 5^ million men working. I t is
the desire of the President, the Office of Production Management,
and the Government that this 60 billion dollars be converted into
materials of war as speedily as possible—certainly most of it by
the end of 1942 and surely all by July 1,1943.
This in brief is the labor problem confronting us today. In
certain areas where defense contracts have been concentrated we are
finding it difficult to get male workers. Those areas include Connec
ticut; southern California; the Wichita, Kans., area; Buffalo, N. Y.;
and because of discrimination against Negroes, Baltimore, Md. We
are receiving reports from many other areas indicating that this same
problem^will confront them within the next few months. The
Albany-fechenectady-Troy area of New York is one. I don’t remem
ber the others offhand, but we have quite a number that will fall in
that category. There are tremendous demands for additional work
ers for defense industries in Los Angeles. They will need 100,000
workers during the next year. Industries in this community have
expanded a great deal already. The aircraft companies have grown
from small plants to big factories. For example. Lockheed had 3,000
employees 2 years ago; it has 35,000 today. Douglas increased from
6,000 to possibly the same number as Lockheed. At the present time
the aircraft industry in this community needs 60,000 workers. There
are five shipbuilding companies in Los Angeles. Four months ago
one company had no employees; they are going to build their per
sonnel up to 16,000, and I understand they have a new contract
which will increase that figure.
These are some of the problems that areas such as Los A ngles
have; San Diego is another area having a similar problem. We have
no supply of trainees in San Diego at the present time and the Con
solidated Aircraft alone needs 2,000 additional workers every month
We are importing National Youth Administration boys, Civilian Con
servation Corps boys, and Work Projects Administration workers to
take training courses in San Diego. I have just been informed there
are no more qualified WPA workers available to bring into San
Diego after this month. Obviously, it was necessary for the Office
of Production Management to take some action and it has recently
sent letters to every defense contractor in southern California request
ing them to consider the employment of women.
There are many women in southern California who could be
employed in these industries without creating welfare problems with
out creating shortage of school facilities for children, without’creating a shortage of public utilities, and without creating other civic
problems of similar character. You are all familiar with the housing
problem, and that is another problem which will be very acute in
Los Angeles if we have this immigration of labor from other States.
Furthermore, probably the most critical problem of all to consider
is the one of providing employment for these people after the emer
gency is over. The Office of Production Management hopes that the

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

aircraft industries in southern California which have defense con
tracts and which are not taking on women will employ women m
practically any job they think women can fill. When it comes to
what jobs women can fill there is no limit.
A friend of mine just back from England said he saw some young
girls setting up a gun forging on a gun lathe preparatory to drilling.
They were going to drill this forging and also to hone it. They
were putting the forging in lathe, centering it, and putting in the
rests. These girls were doing all the work necessary in manufactur
ing this antiaircraft gun. In another establishment manufacturing
6-inch shells there was not a single man in the plant; women did
everything from the time the forging was taken into the plant until
the completed shell was packed in a box and shipped away. I don t ;
think there is much in the way of a limit to what women can do in
our defense industries.
In New Jersey Army officials looked around and saw some women
doing very fine needle work. They took a few to Frankfort Arsenal
and found out the rejections were 1 or 2 percent. Since that time,
with proper training, the rejections are almost nothing. Women
are manufacturing mechanical fuses at the ^present time. I t is a
well-known fact that in manufacture and installation of aviation
instruments we have women doing the work better than men. We
have many women working in our aircraft-instrument factories.
In Connecticut they had a head start on defense contracts, particu
larly around Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and a few of the
other manufacturing centers. They have trained unemployed men
and now they are employed. They have been bringing men from
other States for their industries. The employment of men was en
couraged last year because it was thought that men should get the
first chance to go to work. In other words, if we get all the men
to work probably women won’t have to work. Recently some of the
manufacturers have got together with their personnel men and
have agreed to open up new occupations for women in Connecticut.
As a result there is a group of women under training at the present
time for these new occupations, principally machine operators.
This type of training will spread because there is need for a
great number of machine operators in Connecticut. We are to open
our training programs to women. The Office of Production Manage
ment has written, letters to every defense contractor in Connecticut
asking that they consider the utilization of women in their plants
wherever it is possible to use them. The. Office of Production
Management also wrote letters to all the aircraft manufacturers in
southern California and in Wichita, Kans. Also letters are being
prepared ^t the present time for defense contractors in the Buffalo
area in regard to utilization of women.
We shall need some 1,300,000 new workers by the end of the year.
I t seems that the greatest demand for new workers exists in the same
areas where we have had the greatest demand for workers during the
past year. I t seems to me that as the days go by the demand for
women workers will increase by leaps and bounds. Of course when
this comes it will increase your problems of taking care of the
children of these women who are working. We hope that fhe child-

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

less women will be the ones employed, rather than the mothers with
children, but we can’t always control such matters.
This is still a free country and we will have the problem of the
mothers with children working in industry and creating another
problem for you people to solve. Perhaps if you ask me questions
I would talk on the subject you would rather hear about.

General Discussion
Miss L enroot. Thank you very much, Colonel McSherry. Are
there questions you wish to ask Colonel McSherry?
Mr. W ard. D o you find this training of women taking place in
the No. 1 program and the NYA?
Colonel M cS herry . At the present time it is very limited. We
are training I should say possibly 500 in southern California, which
will be increased materially within the next month. This new pro
gram in Connecticut has just started with 104 women. I am telling
you about new training programs for women, not what has been
going on in the past. We have been training women for defense
industries at various places heretofore. In heavy power sewing ma
chines we have 1,500 in southern California, as an example. I am
net including programs that have been going for some time; you are
all familiar with them. The 500 women in training are for the aircraft. industry in southern California, and it is something new in
training. In Baltimore we are training a few; we have instructions
out for Buffalo to train some.
We are waiting for the Office of Production Management letters
to go out before we start the defense-training programs. However,
the extent of training that will be carried on in the No. 1 program
is dependent on the reaction of the industrial concerns to the pro
posal of employing women. I have had two personnel managers
say to me, “The minute you get the Office of Production Manage
ment letters to the boss we will start employing women.” That
was the reaction they had to a proposal to use women on production
jobs in the aircraft plants.
Of course we must watch this proposal with care; we have to
because there is a reaction on the part of labor, where there are men
available, to the proposal of training women. We can’t go too far
ahead of the demand from industry.
Dr. G e s e l l . I s any consideration being given to part-time arrange
ments as opposed to full-time?
Colonel M cS herry . I know of none. There may be such a proposal
under consideration but I don’t know about it.
Dr. G esell I think there are some possibilities.
Colonel M cS herry . We have a lot of women, especially in southern
California, that are available for full-time work and I think that for
some time there will be no need to go on part-time work. I can
readily visualize that possibility in Canada. I know of one instance
where an aircraft plant employed women in equal numbers with men
and where they do have part-time employment for some of them.
Miss N eustaedter. Are you utilizing people in California who
come from other States?

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Colonel M cS hekry. I t is the the purpose of our efforts right now,
to utilize local women for local industries in order that there will be
no immigration of workers to create other problems, or at least a
minimum of immigration.
Mr. B e n j a m i n . It would be very helpful to get a copy of what is
going to Buffalo because we can help in. planning in regard to the
employment of women. Would this be possible?
Miss L e n r o o t . Mr. Benjamin is the Executive Secretary of the
Council of Social Agencies in Buffalo. Perhaps one thing for us to
consider in this conference would be whether there would be possi
bility, Colonel McSherry, of any clearance so that councils of social
agencies or appropriate authorities in various communities to which
these letters are going might be notified at an appropriate time so they
could begin to make community plans.
Colonel M cS herry . I see no objection to that. That would have to
be cleared with the Office of Production Management.
Some of the letters that have gone out are to Waterbury, New
Haven, New London, Norwich, Waterville, Groton, Thomaston, H art
ford, New Britain, West Hartford, Manchester, Bridgeport, Strat
ford, Plantville, Bristol, Saybrook, Middletown, covering nearly all
of Connecticut; southern California, which includes all the suburban
areas of Los Angeles and San Diego; and Wichita. Letters are being
prepared for Buffalo and some other communities.
Miss N e u s t a e d t e r . Connecticut is aware of its problem, but do you
find many communities where there isn’t as yet awareness on the part
of citizens?
Colonel M cS herry . I know that the Consolidated Aircraft at San
Diego is quite disturbed about where it is going to find 24,000 addi
tional workers during the next 12 months. They are worried about
it, and we are worried about it, because we have no funds to transport
workers for training at San Diego. If they are trained in Los
Angeles or elsewhere they work there. It becomes a question of get
ting people to San Diego. Heretofore we have trained people that
were available; we even authorized training of bellhops, working 8
hours a day, who are going to school 3 or 4 hours at night. The
bellhop can’t give up his job because he has to have something to
live on, so we set up these special courses to qualify him for a job.
There are a few Mexicans in San Diego, especially dark-skinned ones,
against whom there has been some discrimination, but I think that
discrimination is being broken down. There are no Negroes there,
hence the only source of raw labor in San Diego is women, and there
is not a large supply of women in San Diego. In Los Angeles and
communities around it, particularly in Hollywood, there are great
numbers of unemployed women that want to work; they are not
there because they are movie struck; they really want jobs, and have
tried to get jobs and the aircraft industry wouldn’t take them.
Miss W h i t e . I s there any problem of that kind in Michigan?
Colonel M cS herry. Michigan has the reverse; through cutting
automobile production we have the problem of finding employment for
workers laid off because of limitations on output of motorcars. We
are trying to meet'this problem in Michigan by training workers as
the production lines close down. We hope to have them trained
either before they are laid off by taking 2 or 3 hours after working

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

hours, which we are doing in some cases, or as in the case of one
company, where the other day 2,000 men were laid off the production
line, we put them over in our training school the next day. After 6
weeks they will be qualified to go -into the defense production side of
the plant.
Miss W h ite . What is going to happen outside of Detroit, in Macomb
County, where two automobile companies—Hudson and Chrysler—
are just building tank plants?
Colonel M cS herry . The largest new plant in Michigan is Ford’s
bomber plant, which will require 45,000 workers. This plant will take
the labor Ford is going to let out of the River Rouge automobile plant.
However, most of these workers are living on the wrong side of Detroit,
and this may cause some traffic problems.
Miss W hite . There is a very large area of Macomb County involved
just outside of Detroit, on the northeast side.
Colonel M cS herry . Chrysler, for instance, with its present contract
for tanks, machine guns, and other items, cannot take care of its work
ers let out because of priorities unless it gets additional contracts.
Hudson needs no more contracts to take care of its load. Briggs of
course has quite a good-sized contract, with a speed-up delivery date.
Murray Body can take care of its workers. Buick Motor Car Co.
at Flint is going to use 5,000 men to work on parts for the aviation
engine it is manufacturing in Chicago. The problem in Michigan
isn’t the same as in California. There are plenty of workers in Michi
gan ; it is a question of getting them into the defense industries without
too long a lay-off. That is our big problem in communities such as
Flint, where time for tooling for defense industries is necessary. We
hope that the automobile industry can operate at a fairly high rate
until the tooling is over.
Miss S titt . May I ask whether the list of defense industries for
which training may be given has been extended, making possible the
training of women for jobs for which the are fitted?
Colonel M cS herry. N o. We have now an approved list of occu
pations put out by the Employment Service and the U. S. Office of
Education, jointly, and approved by the Office of Production Man
agement. This list has about 600 occupations in it and it is the
authorized list of occupations for defense training under the No. 1
program, rather than the 14 industries. We had the 14 industries
originally as the official family of occupations for defense training.
Such a list was rather indefinite and covered a broad field. One
could hardly draw a line on what was a defense occupation. Now we
have specific occupations with a definition and a short description
of each.
Miss S titt . And that includes a good many for which women are
being trained ?
Colonel M cS herry. A good many women are being trained for
defense occupations. Normally General Electric employs a great
many women on winding armatures and in the manufacture of flying
instruments. These are normal occupations for women in those
plants. Western Electric also uses many women.
Miss A nderson. Isn’t it true that in Connecticut women have been
employed in these industries to which you are now sending letters?

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

And that the industries themselves have done a great deal of training
there from the very beginning of the defense program ?
Colonel M c S h e r r y . That is true, but it is a question of opening up
additional occupations in which women are not working at the present
time. We estimate women will continue to work in certain occupations
and if there is an expansion they will be employed. However, there
are certain other occupations that have not been open to women. This
is due more or less to a policy of not employing women. To break
those employment policies of discriminating against women is the
purpose of the Office of Production Management letters.
Dr. C h a m b e r l a i n . Since both personnel officers _and employment
agencies are now putting a great deal of emphasis on the strictly
technical aspects of placement, getting the right person for the right
job, would it be possible to go over forms now used by employment
agencies and personnel? There is nothing in the forms now used in
relation to whether the woman has a child or not, or in relation to
actual dependents of her own—parents she is supporting or brothers
or sisters. The forms do not give any lead at all, so that even a wel
fare agency or a council of social agencies might find it difficult to
discover how many women are employed who have children or where
the children are being cared for.
Miss L e n r o o t . That brings up the question which I was going to
ask, Colonel McSherry, and that is whether it. would be possible to
have information obtained, and perhaps an opportunity provided to
direct women to some sort of individual counseling service at the
point of recruiting for training. I realize it would be very difficult
to do that at the factory gate. We don’t want to put up barriers; we
don’t want to get employment managers to thinking in terms of dis
criminating against mothers with children, because even with refer
ence to such mothers the individual situation determines what should
be done. But perhaps public employment services and possibly
agencies selecting persons for training might give consideration to
this question.
Colonel M c S h e r r y . Under our No. 1 program we get our trainees
from two sources: First from the public employment service, and
second from the Work Projects Administration. Both of those serv
ices are public agencies. I see no reason why we couldn’t make some
arrangements with them to get such information, if you consider it
desirable. I am sure that in general, if you make such a request, they
will cooperate.
Miss L e n r o o t . Mr. Ward, would you want to comment on that*
Mr. W a r d . I made a note to take it up with the Bureau of Em
ployment Security, to see what could be done to follow out that
suggestion.
Miss L e n r o o t . Colonel McSherry, are we keeping you too long?
You have been so generous. I wanted to ask you whether you
could give us any light as to the number of hours the majority of
these women would be working. Would it be as a rule an 8-hour day
and 5-day or 5%-day week, or what would the hours be?
Colonel M c S h e r r y . I presume when women go into industry they
will work the same hours as the men. For instance, Consolidated is
working 10 hours, two shifts; Lockheed is working three shifts, 8
hours each; Douglas is working three shifts, 8 hours each. I t would

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 194 1 — MORNING SESSION

¡?fJery,djfficuI‘ t0 arrange special hours for women, I should t.hinfc
different from hours worked by the men.
’
Miss L enroot H ow many hours a week would Consolidated work,
10 hours a day, for how many days?
Colonel M cS herry . I think Consolidated is working a 6-day week
Miss L enroot. 60 hours a week?
g
J
’
Mr, H opkirk . I was going to ask Colonel McSherry, is there gen
eral acceptance of any top age or any bottom age beyond which em
ployers are not now going?
Colonel M cS herry . I presume employers would apply an age limit
to women the same as they do to men. • Most of the aircraft com
panies for the semiskilled workers or those skilled in a s i n g l e operat56 an a^e
around 35 for the maximum
Miss L enroot. What about the minimum?
l S 0l?nel
Usually 18 years of age; when you get to the
skilled craftsman there is no age limit. The upper age limit has been
removed because of the shortage of highly skilled workers. For in
stance, defense contractors will take toolmakers at any age, and to a
large extent the physical requirements for these highly skilled workers
have become more and more relaxed. I think you will find in the
occupations that women can fit into very readily, after a short period
of training, of the nature of a skill in a single operation or semiskilled
work, that employers will probably have the same age restriction for
women as they have for men, which in the aircraft industry is gener
ally 35 years as a maximum. Of course that varies with different
concerns.
Miss S titt . Y ou said just now that women probably would work
the same hours as men. In California, for instance, there is an 8-hour
law for women. I wonder if in your letters you advise those com
panies that are going to employ women to use the three-shift plan
so that no woman would work longer than 8 hours a day
Colonel McSherry. The companies most likely to employ women
have already gone to three shifts; we want them to go to three shifts,
in certain States they have laws against women working after certain
hours at night. In one State in particular they have made exceptions
to the law. I was ]ust wondering whether they would change certain
features of such laws in case of need in defense industries.
Miss L enroot. Has Connecticut suspended its law?
Miss A nderson, The Governor of Connecticut had the right under
the law to extend the hours and also to give exemption under the
law. He has done that to a certain extent to the individual em
ployer, after investigation has been made to find out whether the
exemption is necessary or whether something else can be done, the
three-shift for instance. In the last legislature they did amend the
hrw so that he has much greater authority in setting aside the law.
We ourselves have asked every State that has the provision—there
aren t many that have it^-that they do not give wholesale exemption
or exemption for the State as a whole; that they give exemption
only to the firms that ask for it and only after a thorough investiga
tion to determine whether there is some other motive than defense
for asking for it. For instance, we found in Connecticut, after we
made an investigation in one of the firms that asked for four shifts
of 6 hours, that it wasn’t a question of hours with them at all; it

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

wasn’t a question of space; they could enlarge if they wanted to.
What they really wanted the 6 hours a day for was to avoid paying
overtime rates. We finally said to them, “People have been getting
overtime pay. Aran’t you afraid of labor trouble if you now put
them on a 6-hour day ? Anyway, how are you going to get super
vision for four shifts and how are you going to train people for
four shifts? That will be just as expensive as if you paid overtime.”
And they said, “Yes, I guess you are right.” Since then there have
been quite a few requests granted, but I think the Department of
Labor in Connecticut is cognizant of the situation and is going at it
very carefully. I know it has denied several requests as well as
given some exemptions.
Miss N eustaedter. Miss Lenroot made the suggestion that some
counseling arrangement might be made for trainees, but is it not true
that there are any number of jobs in these industries where a training
period isn’t required—they simply apply for a job and are taken on?
Colonel M cS herry . That wouldn’t be true of the aircraft industry;
the training might be done by the plant rather than in the school, or
it might be done in private trade schools. There are very few jobs
in which training is unnecessary. There are such jobs as janitor
service and occupations of that sort that would fall into the category
of not requiring training. Riveting is probably the simplest job; it
takes 2 to 4 weeks to develop a riveter; training must be given some
where, either in the plant or trade school, public or private, before
the workers enter upon productive work. I am inclined to think
that the aircraft industry will wait until we train women before
they employ them.
Dr. C hamberlain . In relation to the welfare of children, the report
of the California Employment Security Survey states that 21 percent
of all women applying for work in California are 45 years or older,
and it has come to our attention also that private employment agen
cies have suggested that the women that are too old either to be
trained or to get work that is available take up the care of children.
Miss L enroot. We are very grateful to you, Coloney McSherry,
and we will report back to you the results of this conference.
Now what is your pleasure? I presume we ought to go further
in discussing the probable extent of this problem and ways by which
it can be met. First, not from the point of view of the actual care
of the children but from the point of view of methods of clearance
as to where there is likely to be an increased demand for labor, as to
the possibility of some sort of counseling service for women with
young children, and matters of that sort. I will, then, throw the
meeting open for general discussion. Perhaps Miss Anderson would
like a little further discussion of the night-work laws and the hours
of labor and the shifts, because it seems to me that has a very im
portant bearing on our problem of care of children. Would you
like to comment further on that, Miss Anderson ?
Miss A nderson . There are not very many State laws that have
night-work prohibitions for women; there are a few States, not neces
sarily the most industrial States either. There have been attempts
in the recent legislative session to provide for exemption; but that
has not been granted, with the exception of further exemption in
Connecticut. I t has not seemed, I think, to the people concerned

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

about night work for women, that the emergency necessitates break
ing down any labor legislation for women, or for men either. This
is the time to hold what we have and if the time should ever come
when it was necessary to permit night work then the whole question
should be taken up fully, rather than have States here and there
nibble away some of the legislation and standards now in force.
For that reason I think we—the Women’s Bureau, at least, in the
Department of Labor—want to hold the standards now in effect and
we feel that it is unnecessary at this time to break down any of the
standards; we feel there are plenty of people available for jobs;
there are the reservoirs of the women that can go to work and do the
work, and there are also reservoirs of colored people that can go to
work and do the work. For that reason it is not necessary to abro
gate any labor standards whatsoever until we have gotten to the
point, if we ever will get to that point, where we have no more avail
able employees. I doubt very much if we will get to that point. We
have a tremendous lot of people still unemployed and we will have,
as I said once before, dislocation as in the silk market under the
Japanese restriction. The bottom has fallen out of the production
of silk and here we have 150,000 people, most of them women, that
are working in that industry, who will be out of work.
Surely we must find work for those people before we lower labor
standards.
Miss L enroot. I t may mean transferring across State lines, if not
too far away; we will have to do it if it becomes necessary. I t seems
to me we ought not only to keep the standards that we have but to
add to them. We have many States in the Union that have no stand
ards whatsoever in effect, with the exception of the Federal standards.'
I t seems to me we must hold to what we have and that we should
employ all the people available for employment before we do anything
else.
Miss A bbott. Has any consideration been given to having Govern
ment contracts provide that these standards for women be included
whether they are in the State laws or not ?
Miss A nderson. Yes. Of course the contracts that go through
under the Walsh-Healey Act have certain standards that are keptthen we have the Wage and Hour Act.
Miss A bbott. I mean these new defense contracts. Why shouldn’t
those defense contracts that are being let on such a large scale pro
vide that women shouldn’t work more than 8 hours a day?
Miss A nderson. I think it has been remarkable the way the War
Department particularly has come along in the matter of the labor
standards. I want to say here that when it comes to the women’s
employment, the War Department calls me all the time to find out
what the standards are and what is going on, and we have worked
with the Labor Commission of the Office of Production Management
very closely. The Navy has probably not worked with us so closely,
but it has kept to the standards.
Miss A bbott. I was rather shocked by Colonel McSherry talking
about 60 hours a week.
Miss S titt . May I say to Miss Abbott that most of the contracts
have a provision in them that the State labor laws shall be observed.
You see, the State labor laws are so different.

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS'

Miss A bbott. There could be a standard.
Miss S titt. They haven’t gone that far. They say the State labor
law, whatever that is, shall be observed.
Miss A bbott. I don’t see why they couldn’t have a provision in
placing those orders that women should not be employed more than
8 hours a day.
Miss A nderson. I think 60 hours is far too long. Of course, under
the Wage and Hour Act they can work women any hours a week they
want to, as long as they pay overtime for more than 40 hours, and
of course that covers most of these industries because they are
production industries.
Miss L enroot. Miss Anderson, has any consideration been given
to having inserted in these letters going from the Office of Produc
tion Management a statement at least as to what the State labor law
is, if not a more positive statement as to standards?
Miss A nderson. I don’t think they have given them any considera
tion. They are just starting out with it now and it is supposed to
be understood that the Office of Production Management will not
stand for anything that is against the labor legislation. They will
keep the standards. I was thinking of California and I was wonder
ing what was happening there, if the women are working 10 hours
a day, which is against the law of the State.
Miss C hristman . Madam Chairman, of course there are tradeunion agreements in many of these defense industries which set up
standards with respect to both hours and basic rates of pay. Now
those agreements, of course, would include all workers, and I think
particularly in the airplane industry, which is new. In trade-union
organizations standards have been set up; that is true in some of the
other industries, and the unions have stood firm and been severely
criticized, as you know, for attempting to hold up standards.
I should like to call attention to another matter which has to do
with standards that we have built up. I was quite shocked the
other day at a homework hearing, industrial homework for the
women’s apparel industry, when it was disclosed that homework
is on the increase. Now we know we battled against homework for
so long and many States are trying now to outlaw homework. As
a matter of fact there is a very definite request before the Wage
and Hour Division to abolish homework once and for all, because
it is one of the great industrial evils. It disregards hours; as a
matter of fact there aren’t any hour limitations. Wages are low,
and it has all the other evils that we associate with industry.
Now I am wondering if we draw upon women who haven’t been
in the factory before or if we call out all our people to work in the
defense industries and do a hit-and-miss thing on the nonessential
industries or nondefense industries, whether those industries won’t
go into the home because we are taking these workers who are in the
factories now and shifting them to defense industries. I t is some
thing we have to give attention to; certainly we are not going to
undo the work that has been done throughout the years to abolish
homework only to have it flourish again during this emergency
period. And that brings us to the question of adequate care for
children if mothers go into the shop. We have to do something
about giving the mother assurance that if she goes into the factory,

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

cither under the defense program or in regular employment, her
children would be taken care of.
’
There is another angle in the makeshift housing facilities now
put up m centers which have become boom towns under the defense
program. It is doubly necessary when there isn’t good housing to
see that children are taken care of while the mother is at work.
™
1S a £>reai deal of talk about speeding up production. While
that has to be done, we do have to give a good deal of attention to
some of the other phases which help in speeding up production.
Une of these is the care for children while the mother is at work
if women are to be drawn into industries in greater and greater
numbers as the program goes on; something has to be done about
that.
Miss L enroot. Miss Anderson, when you were speaking about
Connecticut I didn t quite understand your discussion of the 6-hour
shift.
Miss A nderson . The shift was 8 hours, 48 hours a week, which of
course, brought in payment for 8 hours’ overtime, and they wanted
to get four 6-hour shifts in order to get away from the payment of
overtime, and said so very frankly.
Miss L enroot. Miss Papert, do you want to comment on this
question of labor standards?
Miss P apert. We have had some requests which would involve the
breaking down of our night-work provision. The New York State
law provides that women may not work after 10 o’clock WTiile
the industrial commissioner has no power to grant the exemptions
requested, they have been investigated and it has been found, from
all the reports that have come to me, that other adjustments could
be made so that the night-work provision need not be changed
Under our State law an employer can put on two shifts of women
working 7% hours on each shift; that gives him 45 hours, only
3 hours less than our statutory maximum of 48 hours per week
There have been few requests for changes in hours that have not
worked out so far; there may have been some recent ones which
I haven t yet seen, but as far as I know, by and large, it hasn’t
been an hours problem.
Miss L enroot. If we get into 24-hour operation we do get into
the night shift.
8
Miss A nderson. Where there is a night-work law prohibiting
work after 10 o clock you can’t get m two 8-hour shifts. They have
utilized the daylight-saving plan. They have let women work until
11° clock daylight-saving time, saying it was only 10 o’clock stand
ard time. This is not very serious, however, but there is alwavs
some way of doing things when you want to.
J
Miss L enroot. Miss Anderson, I know this whole question of
standards for employment of women is something with which vour
Bureau and the Department of Labor are very much concerned
Ihis particular group would be concerned only as they would want
to emphasize the importance of adequate maintenance of standards
*???} the PT01I1 of view of the mother’s ability to provide for her
children. Is there likely to be some other conference group per
haps under your auspices, that would be taking up this whole ques
tion of labor standards?
H

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CONFERENCE'— DAY CARE, CHELDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Miss A nderson . Oh, yes. We have now an advisory committee
of many of the women in the trade-union organization that meets
with us rather regularly. We want to enlarge that committee to
take in many more of the new trade-union organizations in defense
industries, and have a very much larger meeting m the tall. It
might be very interesting if this group, for instance, or similar
groups could meet with us in discussing the maintenance ot labor
standards from the standpoint of the young child and the mother
and other problems that arise when the mother has to go to work-—
and the problems involve more than young children at times. 1 think
that it might be very opportune if in the fall wo would have a joint
meeting and take up this whole question with the social workers ot
the States, and labor, and thrash out the whole thing and set up
some real standards that we ought to stand by.
,.
Miss L enroot. I think there would be no disagreement that this
would be most desirable, and if we work out a plan for some con
tinuing committee work on these subjects we shall have at hand
resources for cooperating in such an undertaking.
Miss W hite . I would like to ask also about the problem ^ot edu
cation. You have other forces involved behind the home situation.
I think education and educational standards ought to be included
in such discussions.
.
. I
Miss L enroot. I should think so, too, and ! think that any
these committee discussions of ours should include education. 1
am sure that special effort would be made to have that represenAnother problem arises and that is the question of
tendency to weaken the enforcement of child-labor provisions.
Miss L enroot. Y ou are noticing that already?
Mr. L ight . Oh, yes.
, «
,
Miss L enroot. I understand from reports of our held stall that
there is quite a strong feeling among employers against bringing
people into the State as well as against employing certain groups
within the State; for instance, people from New York who were
hosiery workers are out of employment. Would there be a feeling
against absorbing them in Connecticut industries •
Mr L ight . That has been more a problem of fearful local govern
mental authorities who are anticipating the situation that may
develop at the end of this defense program. They havent forgotten
some of the things that happened following the World War A
large population migrating into Connecticut, possibly _establishing
residence within the meaning of the law might precipitate upon
the State and its municipalities a very heavy load, ihey have
been very much concerned about that and there has been a good
deal of opposition to importing any more labor than was absolutely
necessary. They would prefer to use every resource they have rather
than bring in any more.
H f ,
lyfiss L enroot. X presume that if there were some Federal programs
for bearing part of the cost of general relief, that feeling might be
modified, might it not?
_ , .
...
Mr L ight . I think it would. Of course, the local authorities are
going to face terrific problems of governmental management and so
forth, even then.

^M r!* L ight .

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

Miss L enroot. Certainly it is going to be a limiting factor on the
ability to transfer from industries that are tapering off to defense
industries if we have to observe all these State lines. It is going to
be exceedingly difficult, but of course we all appreciate the problems,
too.
Mr. L ight . There are a good many thousands of workers eoming into the State in a stream all the time; the pressure is so strong
at the present time that it is breaking down the opposition in certain
industries to the employment of Negroes, and it is also breaking down
certain prejudices, if you want to call them such, against the employ
ment of certain national groups.
Miss L enroot. Would this group like to refer to the committee
which will be appointed to meet this afternoon to consider a statement
of principles, the possibility of including some sort of statements about
the importance of the maintenance of adequate labor standards from
the point of view of the welfare of the child, and the desirability of
joint discussion with a group considering standards of women workers?
Would you like to have that referred to the committee which will be
discussing basic principles ?
Without objection, that will be done.
Miss N eustaedter. I suppose, Madam Chairman, that this group
will also be considering some way of preventing wholesale handling
of this problem of the mothers; that is, individualizing where possible.
Miss L enroot. That is one of the next points we want to discuss.
I think we might pass to the second question, the possibility of further
informational service to communities as to where we can expect an
increase in employment, and then following that, to the subject of
individual counseling service and individualization of our approach,
which I think has to be taken up from the point of view of the service
to the mother, rather than from the point of view of labor standards
and legislation.
I thought the question that was raised by Mr. Benjamin was very
interesting; that we might work out some way by which some agency
here, perhaps the Children’s Bureau, could get from the Office of
Production Management information at some point that would be
within the policy of the office as to where there was going to be an
attempt to encourage the employment of women, and that we might
function as a clearing agency to get information to local councils and
social agencies, and perhaps to State departments. Would you think
that would be desirable, to try to work out something like that?
Mr. B e n ja m in . Might I comment on that? As I listened to the
discussion this morning it impressed me very much as a community
problem. When a letter comes into Buffalo our various agencies
should know that the implications in the letter are very far-reaching,
and if possible we should have advance notice so that the proper
committee can be considering the problem with relation to the needs.
Miss L enroot. The question is much more than women workers
making guns; it includes factories making uniforms and silk thread
and things that you don’t think of as defense.
You would think we ought to rely on community action and stimu
late community action, rather than try to work out anything with
the Office of Production Management ?
441845°— 42------3

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Mr. W ard. I would say the local employment office is the original
source of information about anticipated requirements of employers
and would be the logical place for the community people to go. They
would know it before the Office of Production Management because
the information goes from the periphery into the center.
Mr. L ight . If our experience in Connecticut is any index here, you
are going to get more unreliable information from industry than from
any other source; they just haven’t known. One firm on Thursday
afternoon informed us they wouldn’t need any trained workers; on
Tuesday morning they requested 600.
Miss L enroot. Dr. Chamberlain, what do you think about this
question of how we can get information, or how local organizations
can get information ?
Dr. C hamberlain . I t is true a great deal of the information orginates in the local community. Then too, there are the people who
stimulate the reporting of information. Others who go out and get
contracts come back with additional items. I noticed two such items
here just yesterday. One was an item in the paper from the National
Association of Manufacturers, which reported a shortage of skilled
labor in 21 key defense cities in which a survey has been made. The
other item records that the training of women is to be grouped along
with the training of physically handicapped men. So there you have
to go back to the local areas.
Miss L enroot. Miss Moore, do you have any suggestions from the
Office of Education ?
Miss M oore. A s a rule a program is made with the public employ
ment service. I t is true that industries don’t always know, because
contracts are let suddenly and it takes everybody studying the whole
picture, including contracts, to know what is going to happen. You
are going to have to anticipate it; they are doing it in Connecticut.
There aren’t any women wanted quite yet; they only know they may
want them, so they are training a few, for instance, in each case. But
the schools are doing their best, the vocational people are doing their
best, to anticipate the demand and getting a few people ready any
way, even before the need arises. As for getting authentic infor
mation in advance, I don’t know how you do it. We have never been
able to.
Dr. L angdon. I was thinking it would be a very simple matter to
get a certain type of information, probably from the workers that
are recruited from that source, and it is almost safe to assume in the
beginning that all of them have children.
Miss L enroot. I wasn’t thinking so much of the workers who have
children as I was of advance information as to where there is to be a
drive to encourage the employment of women.
Dr. L angdon. I t certainly would be very useful if that could be
done.
Miss L enroot. I should think that this is something for us to work
out with the Bureau of Employment Security and the Office of
Production Management and other agencies in Washington, as to
whether there would be any way of channeling through, either
through putting welfare agencies and educational agencies, if not
on already, on the mailing list of the Bureau of Employment Secur
ity for the information they might issue, or getting special considéra
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

tion given to the possibility of additional information from the
Bureau of Employment Security. You do get out bulletins very
frequently, dp you not?
Mr. W ard. Yes, although those are more general in nature. The
specific information about localities still stays in the hands of the
State agencies or the local office. Reports from Washington are
much more general in nature.
Miss L enroot. Would you think we might explore, together and
with the Office of Production Management, the possibilities?
Mr. W ard. Yes, the possibilities.
Dr. C hamberlain . A large number of people are employed who
wouldn’t be connected with any factory. How could local welfare
agencies learn about them? We may be certain that there are many
laundresses, waitresses, and others not connected with any organized
defense industry as such. Communities don’t know how many there
are, nor where they are; they just know they are around. Many
agencies, however, outside the local area are making and receiving
reports about them.
Mr. B e n ja m in . May I make this plea, that State and Federal
agencies do two things—keep us informed and when their repre
sentatives are in town, have them drop in to see us. Recently two
people came to make a recreation survey and we had many of the
facts in our office. Apparently it didn’t occur to them to come near
the Council; they would have benefited by the studies we had made
in the recreation field. Now on this information, it is a two-way
matter. We have a lot of information to give.
Miss L enroot. That is right. I was going to say that some of this
can only come through local agencies, such as have had experience
with the problem. Some can come through the public employment
service, some possibly through the Office of Production Management;
but there will be a large residue that can become available only
through your special surveys or general experience on a community
basis.
Miss A nderson. I want to say, Mr. Benjamin, that that doesn’t
happen only with the State; it happens right here in Washington.
Those of us that have a lot of information on these subjects are
never consulted.
Miss L enroot. Mr. Schottland, we might refer some of this dis
cussion to the proper channels, with reference to getting information
to councils of social agencies.
Mr. S chottland. I would like to say, Miss Lenroot, that I agree
thoroughly with Mr. Benjamin’s suggestion; on the other hand, I
think the local people should also take into consideration that when
a Federal agency representative goes into a community sometimes 15
or 20 local agencies all feel that he ought to consult them before
going out into the community. There are situations where it has been
almost impossible for some people to operate because they have had
to check with so many local groups ; so it would be important at local
levels to get together and clear the channels.
Mr. B e n ja m in . We have 96 public and private agencies in our
Council; now instead of seeing those individual agencies the repre
sentative would clear through the central organization; just as with
labor, you don’t go to the individual labor union but you go to the

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE--- DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

central labor council. I t would seem to me that you don’t go to an
individual women’s club, you go to the federated women’s clubs.
There are certain organizations, federations of organizations, that
should certainly be seen.
Mr. S chottland. That is what I said, where there are well-estab
lished councils of social agencies it is much simpler.
Dr. G esell. Just a word about this question of family-counsel
mechanism, unless that is to be considered later.
M iss L enroot. W e w ill g et to th at now.

Dr. G esell. It seems to. me it ties in because it would help to
point up the information which is most pertinent at the immediate
time, and if you have such a sincere mechanism operating in the
community that ought to help to mobilize the right kind of informa
tion and to short-circuit useless and obsolete information.
Miss L enroot. N ow I would like to go back to the point that
Dr. Chamberlain made about the information on the forms of Em
ployment Security.
Dr. Chamberlain . I referred to the fact that the personnel officers
of these large companies do not have information about dependency
on the forms used.
Miss L enroot. I t seemed to me we might discuss the question of
what information could be obtained and what service could be of
fered to women who are applying for employment or for training,
and who if given a chance to discuss the problems of their children
with someone might in some instances decide not to go to work, or
if they decided to work they might be given some advice as to what
provisions, what resources there were for care of the children. I
should like some discussion of that. Who wants to open that up ?
Dr. C hamberlain . I should like to say that some of the aviation
companies have already established practices in relationship to their
health service, which in some instances is hurriedly organized for
safety and emergency needs only. They consider that those they
recruit are primarily healthy and after the initial examination, if
accepted, the laborer’s output is all important. Practically all the
companies have established a “welfare division.” These “welfare
divisions” so far have been drawn up to help a new employee get
money, largely through the Red Cross, until his first pay check
comes. In addition to the personnel office we ought to be in contact
with both the health and welfare services to find out what the situa
tion in family responsibility and child care might be.
Miss L enroot. Miss Anderson, do you have any feeling that it
might be undesirable to encourage personnel departments of plants
to try to get this family information, or do you think there would be
no reason why they shouldn’t?
Miss A nderson . I don’t know whether the companies would want
to get it or whether the workers would want them to. I wondered
whether or not the woman might think the supervision by a public
organization might jeopardize her chance of employment and for that
reason not want to give the information. That is particularly true
because of the fact that there has been so much done to prevent their
getting employment until all the men have employment. We must
remember that the women work for the same reason that men work.

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

They work to live. They work to get bread and butter not only for
themselves but for dependents, and they are not all child dependents,
either; there are older people in the families. For that reason I am
not at all sure that we ought to be so very strict and try to do all of
these counseling things, because I don’t believe we could do them
anyway, and I wouldn’t set up any more barriers than there are
against women’s working.
Miss N eustaedter. Are we setting up barriers or thinking of ways
of offering an opportunity to women who might need this service?
Miss A nderson . Suppose here was a woman who had to go to work
to support herself and small children. If you could say to her,
“Well, now, if you have to go to work and you want to go to work,
it may be arranged for someone in the community to look after these
little children while you are at work.” I am sure she would wel
come that suggestion absolutely because I think leaving her children
is a terrific worry to her. But approaching the matter in that way
is quite different from asking, “Do you have children? How many
children do you have? How old are they?” and so on.
Miss L enroot. Would you think a woman would object if she
were asked at a public employment office or Work Projects Admin
istration—making reference to the training program—-“Mrs. So-andso, do you have children and have you made provision for their care,
or would you need any service as to what can be done for the
children?”
Miss A nderson. That depends upon the woman. I am sure there
are some that would object to it, and some that probably wouldn’t,
some that are in dire need of the help. But the others will' say, “They
won’t take me if I tell them those things.”
Miss C h ristm an . There are two answers tt> that question. I think
that in times of emergency you can probably do things that you can’t
do in normal times. Every woman who has small children and who
feels, whether she is inspired by dire need or patriotic fervor, that
she wants to do something in the emergency program might feel very
assured during the day if she knows that those small children are
going to be taken care of. This is true especially if workers move
from one community to the other or leave their families in one com
munity where the mother or the sister or some other relative'couldn’t
take care of the children. We have to think of the shifting of labor,
going to where the defense program is in operation and where the
mother will be drawn in. From the figures we got this morning on
the number of workers needed, if that is correct—and I want to say
I am absolutely with Miss Anderson—we ought to absorb the labor
supply available. I think there are a lot of mechanics and men and
women, white and colored, who have certain skills or who with a
little retraining could fit into some of our industries. Then I think
some of this talk about all the labor shortage might dwindle.
Miss A nderson . I think probably it depends upon how the ques
tions are asked. They can be told in a sympathetic way, “We are
asking these questions only to help you to decide these things.”
Mr. WABD- I know some offices have established definite relation
ships with day nurseries and women come in and say they need
employment. They don’t know about certain facilities in the com-

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

munity and the employment office aids them in getting work and
getting day nurseries to take care of the children. I think it is all a
matter of approach.
Miss C lark . I think the problem is enormous and w e can’t possibly
meet it all, but in well-organized cities where there are councils of
social agencies I am sure that a community plan can be made. I
think it is a very delicate thing to do. None of us in the Day
Nurseries Association stands for putting any obstacles in the way
of defense, but we do want to make sure that we are not creating a
lot of emotionally ill and neglected children in the process. Some
of us know a little bit about that. I don’t know whether Dr. Eliot
met it in London. It seems terrifically important. I think it is a
very delicate question to ask, and asking the question isn’t enough,
we ’feel, for mothers with children, under 2. I t is a very serious
situation to take those mothers out of the home. Some problems of
counseling could certainly be worked out under the leadership of
social agencies.
Miss N eustaedter. Isn’t it a point not to lose sight of the fact
that not only the mother but the rest of the community has a stake
in the welfare of the children and it isn’t so much a prying into her
affairs as pursuing a common interest?
Miss L enroot. I t seems to me what we want to emphasize very much
is that question of counseling. Naturally it does not relate just to
what to do with preschool children, but to the whole range of prob
lems of school-age children who need some supervision after school
and some home care. I think that in considering a community plan
we must consider that whole range. Dr. Langdon, the Work Projects
Administration was mentioned as one of two sources of people for
training. Of course the Work Projects Administration is in
a position to know the individual circumstances of the women whom
it refers, is it not ?
Dr. L angdon . Yes. I think for the most part the referrals so
far have been men for training, rather than women.
Miss L enroot. But it would be possible to work up some policies
if the Work Projects Administration is to be a referral agency for
women for training?
Dr. L angdon. Yes. I have some question as to how large a per
centage of referrals would be made there because of the conditions
within the Work Projects Administration and the women who are
employed. I was thinking in connection with this counseling, Isn’t
it true that the areas in which a great deal of this is going to take
place are areas where, if there are any social agencies, they are already
heavily overloaded? The requests that are coming to us for services
for young children are from these crowded areas surrounding in
dustrial plants where there are no agencies to turn to or if there
are any within a radius of many miles, they are so overloaded that
they can’t give much help. Isn’t that general?
Miss A bbott. Isn’t it very important to get in mind the fact that
this should be a public service; that is, something that can hold over
after the war. It has been needed for a long time anyway in con
nection with the schools, and if the schools aren’t willing to do it
there has to be some other kind of local public agency that will have
child centers of the proper kind. I believe the women would be

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

much more willing to give this information if they knew there was
public service available for them that they weren’t going to have to
pay for, any more than they pay to send their children to the public
schools.
Dr. L angdon . I would like to follow up just a little what I started
to say about the referral of women in the Work Projects Admin
istration. I would guess that in the majority of the areas where
there would be women needed for training in industry, the Work
Projects Administration women have already been taken off and
that the heaviest part of our load would be in the areas where there
are not the industries and where the women couldn’t be transferred.
There is a fallacious assumption that industry is taking up our Work
Projects Administration women on the rolls and it isn’t true because
they aren’t where the industry is and because they have dependents
they can’t move.
Dr. C ham berlain . In connection with the housing projects,
wouldn’t that be one way at the Federal level of having the question
introduced? At the present time, other than for recreation, there is
scarcely any provision for or discussion of the care of children. This
is true at least in the housing projects being considered in California.
Miss L enroot. That is a very important thing to take up, the pro
vision that might be made for the care of children in connection
with the housing projects. As I understand it, there are certain
funds available.
Mr. S chottland. Three percent is available for services, but one
of the difficulties is, Miss Lenroot, that services have been interpreted
to mean stores, offices, and all other facilitating services, and you get
recreation and care for children and other things way down the list.
Miss L enroot. And haven’t they also tried to husband those re
sources for emergencies and not draw on them very fully for any
kind of service ?
Mr. S chottland. The first priority has been for stores to serve
those communities.
Miss W h ite . If we could get State employment agencies to feel
that along with their vocational service there might be placed some
person who is interested in the problem it would be a public service,
and it seems to me that such a service would offer a beginning
with education. Of course it is true that there are many areas where
there are not such employment agencies, but if we could permeate
those State and local urban offices and as many rural offices as there
are with that idea it seems to me you begin to educate them to the
feeling that the State does have a concern and they would do some
thing about it.
Miss L enroot. Would the employment services be, able to undertake
some individual counseling projects of that kind, Mr. Ward?
Mr. W ard. Well, the attitude of the Bureau of Employment Se
curity toward counseling has changed quite a bit in the last year or
two to the counseling of all problems coming into the public employ
ment service—all age groups, the handicapped, the older worker, and
so on. About one-third of our offices do have counselors on either a
part-time or a full-time basis, and there is a trend toward covering
more of the type of problem that has been discussed here this morn
ing, so that, while we haven’t 100 percent coverage in the way of

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

counseling, there is a very definite advance on the part of State agen
cies in providing this service to all applicants coming in who need
counseling about day nurseries or this, that, and the other socialagency services.
Miss L enroot. Then you would be an excellent channel for any
suggestions that could be developed by groups of this kind, or stand
ards that could be worked out by which the counseling service in this
area could be made more effective, I presume. Then the questior
would be where you have counselors in some cases, would they have
sufficient time to add somewhat more intensive counseling service ?
Mr. W ard. That is the big problem. The employment offices have
been swamped with all these defense activities; they are overloaded,
so that there are questions of personnel and various other factors.
Miss W hite . Mr. Ward, if we could get some of the councils of so
cial agencies in the cities to see the importance of counseling and to
demonstrate by offering to supply the worker, I suppose there
wouldn’t be too much objection to that.
Mr. W ard. I shouldn’t think so.
Miss W h ite . It seems to me we have to get a wedge in here; you
can demonstrate in a few areas, a few outstanding places.
Miss N eustaedter. I t seems we have to think about the kind of
counseling that would presuppose on the part of the counselor some
familiarity with problems of family life in general. I t is that kind
of counsel that is extremely important. Family agencies where there
are any have a tremendous stake in this.
Miss A bbott. Aren’t there family agencies everywhere ? There are
assistance agencies everywhere, public assistance agencies.
Miss N eustaedter. I have a suspicion that we are asking them to
spread themselves pretty thin when they cover this problem.
Dr. C hamberlain . The employment agent in Vallejo is reported to
have said that it took considerable time to get some clients to go to
the welfare office if they had once been on relief, and were now off.
They didn’t want to go back again if it could be avoided. Many of
them responded favorably, however, when it was explained that a
specialized service was available with a trained worker in child-wel
fare services.
Miss L enroot. Would there be a possibility of working out some
cooperative arrangement between a welfare department and the em
ployment office whereby if there were money, qualified workers from
the welfare department could be. stationed in the employment office ?
Miss W hite . Let’s call them “family workers” and not tie the proj
ect up with welfare.
Miss L enroot. We have to recognize that the local welfare de
partment has a tremendous stake in this program and we aren’t
going to solve our social problems by just relegating the welfare
department to a type of service which is associated entirely with relief
giving.
Mr. B e n ja m in . Couldn’t the problem be worked out in accordance
with your local situation? I can see a committee—the public-wel
fare department should be represented, the private family agencies
should be on it, and the employment service—thinking this through.
In some places it would be under the public-welfare department; in
other places in the private family agency; you can’t just have one

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

pattern that will suit the whole United States. It will be different in
different communities, it seems to me.
Miss A bbott. The only thing is you have to have a pattern of a kind
and you do have now a very wide spread of welfare organiza
tions, such as we didn’t have at the time of the last war at all. if they
are not doing what they should do, then we should find it out and
tell them they have to come across. We have a defense program, and
everybody rallies to that.
Dr. L angdon. I was referring to such situations as that which I
saw recently near a large munitions dump. It is not within a city
limit anywhere; it is surrounded by ever-increasing groups. I found
in one unit 60 children under 10 years of age, and there are no agen
cies there to do the work; family agencies are well aware of the
situation but are completely overloaded.
Miss A bbott. There is a county agency there ?
D r. L angdon . Of a sort.
Miss A bbott’. The thing to do is to find some way of bringing those
public agencies, those county agencies, to understand what their
responsibilities are.
Dr. L angdon*. I t is not much of a county agency, but it under
stands fully what the problem is but can’t touch i t ; it hasn’t facili
ties and is completely at sea.
Miss A bbott. There is a chance for a Federal agency.
Miss J etek. I think Miss Abbott is right; there are public agencies
of a kind all over the United States, but in some eases they are
restricted to administering old-age assistance, and it does take a
Federal and State plan to meet the situation. Texas is an example.
Miss A bbott. They now have aid to dependent children.
Miss L enroot. They also have child-welfare programs.
I jumped to the counseling service because the question had been
raised, but I think we do want to discuss the character of the com
munity plan needed for these problems.
Miss C lark . I don’t know whether it is practical at all, but many
of these problems are really an extension of the school program for
children if the mother’s hours don’t coincide with the school hours.
We might look there for a public agency which could include coun
seling and welfare and which wouldn’t have for many of these
families the connotation of relief, which they might object to.
Mrs. S m it h . There is something we might look to in the close
relationship between the Bureau of Public Assistance and the
Employment Service whose regional representatives are in the
regional offices of the Social Security Board. Certainly their
philosophies are growing side by side, and if there are troubles
those two people would be so closely associated every day that they
ought to be able to assist communities in making plans.
Miss L enroot. I t really is a problem for the public-assistance
division, the child-welfare worker, if there is one, the Employment
Service, the health department, the education department; you have
to bring in all of these agencies and the private agencies where they
exist. Of course in a community plan it seems to me that that is
probably the most important thing for us to direct our attention to,
because the other questions as to the child-care centers and particular
type of provision that is needed can be well determined only if you

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

have some over-all community planning. I would think it was
absolutely essential in the community plan to make provision for
the counseling or directing service as well as for actual care of
children.
Mrs. S m it h . Nobody has mentioned Charlestown, Ind. I dare say
a good many of us have been through that community lately on the
train. I was shocked last week when I rode by a 4-mile stretch just
30 miles north of Louisville, where there are thousands of trailers
just sitting side by side a few feet apart and a good many children
in evidence. Charlestown is the kind of place I suppose Dr. Langdon is talking about, where there is nobody to organize and do that
which needs to be done on the local level, and where you need
planning from the State office. Money,- lots of it, needs to go into
that community to give them even ordinary decencies of life.
Miss L enroot. I s there a child-welfare worker in Charlestown?
Dr. L angdon. There has been planning there because from the
very beginning, from the time the first 20,000 workers went in
there, a worker from the Work Projects Administration nursery school program has sat in with the State planning committee and
has tried to do the little bit she could. We have one nursery school
there; there aren’t people to do the work that is needed.
Miss F leming . Might I say that they are finding the trailers aro
moving out at the rate of about 900 a week; construction workers
are going on to other areas. We feel that the situation is settling
down..
Dr. L angdon. I t is coming up somewhere else.
Dr. G esell. I think this discussion brings out a fact that we
musn’t overlook, especially when we are thinking in democratic
terms. The fact is that the families themselves can develop spokes
men, and if this is done, then even these highly exceptional situa
tions are partially met. At least you have something to begin with,
and it seems to me in a preliminary way one can envisage an arrange
ment in which you have such spokesmen for the parents, for
the families. You may have also a federation of local agencies, and
certainly an advisory relationship with the State and Federal au
thorities. This should culminate in a community committee which
will develop counseling functions and utilize the best information
obtainable.
Miss L enroot. Y ou must have been going through all these dis
cussions in Connecticut, Miss Bogue; do you want to comment fur
ther as to how you do it?
Miss B ogue. Our committee has had a very interesting discussion
of that subject, how we were going to get counseling service and
the nature of the counseling service. So feeling that the counseling
service might be classed as undemocratic by the clients themselves
it does seem to me that it would be a very valuable thing if the
Federal Government could put in money and service in connection
with the Employment Service and the Social Security Board. As
we think of it in Connecticut, we realize that the welfare depart
ments are in towns; that there is no really well-developed public-wel
fare program; that old-age assistance is just about to take over aid to
dependent children. One can’t quite visualize that the time is ripe for
Miss Abbott’s suggestion to work out at the moment. But as public

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

welfare does develop the psychology of service—not that we associate
it solely with investigation and relief, and so forth—it would seem as
though something like that might be worked out. For the present I
can’t see but that there would have to be a variety of approaches, as
Mr. Benjamin said, in terms of what resources are available. Our
committee thought that they should utilize family agencies where there
were such agencies, as has already been done in New Haven by the day
nursery—or, councils of social agencies, as is done in Hartford. A
variety of approaches can be worked out, the most difficult problem of
all, of course, being the small communities that don’t have any expert
service available.
Mr. L ight . I would like to endorse very strongly the note Hr.
Gesell sounded here.
Hr. L angdon. I mentioned an item in connection with this same
problem that happens in the city where there is a great deal of
planning going on and where there are a great many different
agencies. Hr. Chamberlain can probably tell many more details, but
in one housing project alone, which houses 3,000 families, we were
asked to give some assistance through a nursery school. We were
also asked to give some help on a Farm Security Administration
trailer camp, which I believe houses about 450. We were also asked
to give nursery-school service out around the aviation factories,
where I believe about 600 are housed; also at the marine base, for
about 500. But because of quota cuts, we didn’t even have enough
staff to staff the two nursery schools that we already had in San
Hiego, and of course a nursery school on any one of those projects
wasn’t the answer at all.
We did have two workers who were suitable for that work, all
that were left on the Work Projects Administration rolls in San
Hiego, and we said we would be glad to work with the community
agencies there in putting those two workers on this one 3,000-home
project to work with the parents, to help them develop cooperative
neighborhood care for themselves. These two leaders will merely
act with others who have been put on by other community agencies
and will work with parents to help them to provide cooperative
care for their children. I t is in no sense the establishment of a nur
sery school. That is a community as you say, where the agencies
were doing everything possible and were completely swamped. This
adding of two workers is only the bit that we can contribute to
what others are doing.
Miss L enroot. Hr. Gesell, I think we will come back to this im
portant point. It seems to me that one of the subcommittees which
I can see getting to work as soon as possible to consider this question
further would be a subcommittee on community planning, which
would include the counseling and which would include consideration
of the point Hr. Gesell has made, the participation of parents in de
velopment of this program on the democratic basis as much as pos
sible. We must remember that we are dealing with parents who have
resources and have intelligence and are skilled people, and that
the object is certainly not to create the attitude of dependency, but
quite the reverse.
Much of the morning has been devoted to getting a picture before
us of various problems and the work of various agencies. I should

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

like to have Miss Jeter tell us a little about the work of the Family
Security Committee. I think we should know that and have it in
the picture.
Miss J eter. The Family Security Committee is composed of repre
sentatives of all the Federal agencies that are concerned with family
problems—Work Projects Administration, Children’s Bureau, Social
Security Board, and so on—and all the national social-work agencies
that are engaged in family welfare—the Family Welfare Association
of America, Child Welfare League of America, Community Chests
and Councils, Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds,
and so forth. I t is a large committee; I think there are something
like 35 members. The committee has organized subcommittees on a
few problems that have already been discussed. There is a sub
committee on personnel, which is considering the problem of training
social workers for defense purposes; there are subcommittees on
financial assistance and on information. The committee has made
several general recommendations including a recommendation for a
general public-assistance category.
I was interested in your suggesting a subcommittee on community
planning in this group because the Family Security Committeé has
established recently a subcommittee on community organization
which has had one meeting and is preparing suggestions for the kind
of local organization that might be effected in some of these areas.
There is also a subcommittee on Red Cross relationships. The com
mittee, of course, is entirely advisory, has no administrative powers
whatsoever. I t is advisory to the Coordinator of Health, Welfare,
and Related Defense Activities. I would be glad to answer questions.
Dr. G esell. I s the membership of that committee official?
Miss J eter. The agencies were asked to designate representatives.
The members of the committee were not appointed as such. We are
trying to make subcommittees include State and private-agency
people who are not included in the main committee.
Miss L enroot. Miss Clark, would you like to comment at all
on the indications that are coming to your organization of need for
planning, or any of these more general aspects of it?
Miss C lark . Y ou asked if we could have some statistics; the thing
is happening too fast and too confusedly for statistics. We have
such things as perhaps three times a week letters from Chambers
of Commerce in little towns, saying: “We used to have about 4,000
people living here; now we have 25,000. What are the possibilities?”
In Atlantic City 8 or 10 of the State supervisors of child welfare
met at tea with us and what they said to us was, “Caij’t you get out
some central letter to councils of social agencies throughout the
country and call their attention to the fact they should know what
is happening to little children in their community, because they don’t
know it, and some of them are baffled ; they don’t know where to take
hold of anything.” There certainly are a lot of them ; I think of one
city with 400,000 people where they are just now discovering that
something ought to be done about children—a city you know very
well. There are, I think, as you probably all know, less than half
the States with any protection at all for children in the area of day
care, and we have evidence of place after place where there are half
a dozen little private, mostly commercial, efforts. Some well-meaning

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

group of people starts a little day nursery; The council of social
agencies may never hear of it because the day nursery doesn’t know
that the council should know about it. We get letters from people
who have been on relief, “I have brought up four children and I
haven’t had any work, but I could take care of children. What must
I do?”
I think that the nursery-school field has the same problem, except
that it is growing much greater in our field. I t is so baffling that we
don’t know what to take hold of and where to attack it. At the present
minute we send our information direct to the State, but nine times out
of ten the State can do nothing anyhow; I think this is a place for
pressure by the Children’s Bureau and by all of us. Then we feel, too,
that there are places where no private agency could deal with the situ
ation ; there aren’t enough of us. I t is a small part we can play, but the
Work Projects Administration could play a large part. We feel that
there should be tremendous pressure for the Work Projects Adminis
tration to be free to operate on a defense basis, to have people teaching
children who don’t have to be on relief, so that you can move people
where they belong, where the need is. We feel so strongly that there
should not be any unit anywhere without at least one person trained
in child development.
Miss L enroot. Dr. Langdon, we should like to have you tell us some
thing of the recent developments in the nursery-school program under
the Work Projects Administration. Dr. Grace Langdon is specialist in
Family Life Education, Work Projects Administration.

The Program of the Work Projects Administration
Dr. L angdon. We have in the Work Projects Administration pro
gram at the present time about 1,500 nursery schools, operating in each
of the 48 States and the Virgin Islands. The Family Life Education
program, which is closely related to that, had until the first of July
about 150,000 parents enrolled in classes. That is exclusive of the
parents of the nursery-school children, because work between the
parents and the teachers is an integral part of the nursery-school pro
gram. I said work between the parents and teachers because I don’t
want to say parent education; we feel that it is parent-teacher educa
tion and is a two-way process. The whole program has been curtailed
as of the first of July because of the quota cuts made necessary by the
decreased appropriation provided for in the relief bill for the next year.
The nursery-school program, however, has not been materially
affected because the administration considered the care of children an
important contribution to defense and has given the nursery-school
program priority with some other programs having similar priorities.
That means that within the limits of the personnel available in any
State the program can continue to operate. However, practically it
means that a good many nursery schools have been closed; for instance,
in the State of Connecticut, where there are many defense industries,
workers who were eligible for work relief have gone into private
employment.
You will all understand, I presume, that all our nursery-school pro
gram, like all the rest of the educational program under the Work
Projects Administration, is under the sponsorship of public education

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

authorities. Practically all our nursery schools have advisory com
mittees which operate in one way or another to keep the program, as
we believe it should be, supplementary to other community activities.
Our advisory committees have changed considerably in the past few
years and many of them have now become subcommittees of councils
of social agencies.
We have had in the past few months many requests for new services
and for extension of the old services. Our nursery schools have always
been limited to service to the low-income groups and we have never
been able to have as many as have been requested in the States in any
time of acute emergency of any sort in a community. We always get
requests for more services because for any emergency affecting children
they naturally turn to the service they have for more service. In ad
dition, there have been requests recently for the care of children of
working mothers. As many women have gone into industry they have
turned to us. I t has been interesting to me that many of these requests
have come from groups such as the chamber of commerce or the mayor
of a city or other public groups who are interested in providing proper
care for children.
We have many instances cited, such as 800 women going to work in
a factory one morning and 40 children being found locked in parked
automobiles. That is very common and those are the children of the
parents who are more concerned about their care. The children of the
parents who don’t care for them are running the streets. It is the ones
who really care who lock them in the parked automobiles so that they
will be sure to know where they are. That is really true and that is
not at all uncommon, because there just is no place for them to go in
many of these communities.
A great many of the requests for services have come from the
dislocated population groups. There isn’t time to tell about the dif
ferent types of those and you are familiar with them anyway; but
most of them are population groups that are away from the services
of the established agencies, even if those agencies were able to take
care of them were they near. They just aren’t there to do it and we
have been called in for consultation a good many times with the repre
sentatives of the established agencies who were trying to do com
munity planning and have asked us for help.
Now we have recognized that we are only one of many community
agencies, and we have had to be very careful to be sure that we
define the area in which it is our function to try to work. We
have tried to work intelligently with the community agencies so that
we would not be undoing with one hand what we had built up our
selves with the other hand or what someone else had built up and had
taken a long time doing. I will tell you just a little about the types
of services which we can give now, within the limits of our personnel,
but before I go to that I would like to tell you what we are trying
to do to supplement our personnel.
We, of course, have a limited number of employees on our own
project. ^Increasingly the parents of the nursery-school children are
helping in the nursery school in a regular program of parent par
ticipation. I have always felt that one of the blessings of a limited
staff was the fact that we were more or less compelled to have
parents participate, which I think is thoroughly sound. Parent

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

participation includes not only the mothers but the fathers. In many
of our nursery schools fathers come in for regular service 2 hours
a day, 1 day a week, or whatever time they can give.
We have been using boys and girls from high-school and college
home-economics classes. The work furnishes a laboratory for them and
gives needed assistance for us. We have always had National Youth
Administration helpers in the nursery school and still do. Now we
are using many more professionally trained volunteers than we ever
have before. In almost every community there are college women
who are trained in this field or allied fields who are glad to give that
service as part of their service to the defense program. In going
on with our services for this next year, one of the first things that
we are doing is recommending that all our nursery schools be re
viewed in terms of the need which they are serving. We want to be
sure that the nursery schools we have are serving the group that
most needs the service, and are in areas where they are most needed.
The economic level of many of our families has changed now and
we need sometimes to move the nursery schools or to change the
personnel of the group being served within the limits of our own
regulations. Then we are proposing a new service, or rather an
extension of an old service, which is called “public child-care cen
ters,” for the children of working mothers in low-income groups,
particularly in defense areas and areas of greatest need, because we
have to be pretty selective with a small personnel. I don’t think there
is time to go into details of that service. We are suggesting that
of course it will be, as all our services are, under the auspices of the
public-school system and that the child-care centers certainly should
be co-sponsored by the public-health and social-welfare groups, who
incidentally sponsor many of our nursery-school projects, too.
Another service which we can give on an emergency basis we
are calling “child-development defense groups,” which will be for the
children of two groups of people, the children of enlisted men in
Army, Navy, or aviation bases, and the children of industrial work
ers who are unmistakably connected with defense industries. Then
we have developed a service in connection with our classes in familylife education, and for want of a bettter name we have called it “co
operative neighborhood groups.” They really are not groups at all;
the service is merely using the leadership of the family-life education
leader in helping the parents to organize themselves for the coopera
tive care of their own children within a neighborhood; that is, a
half-dozen parents will group together in a cooperative way to fix
up one or more backyards or one or more sun porches, or whatever
the facility may be they can use for play, and then divide up the
time so that among them {hey can supervise the play of their
children.
The thing which has interested us particularly in that connection
is the great amount of well-trained energy which has not been used
in the care of children. That is, we find so many parents who are
thoroughly well trained; all they need is just a little leadership in
organizing to use all that training and experience that they have
had in the organized care of their own children. We have felt that
that is one area where probably we needed to do much more work
than we have done.

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Some different kinds of units have been developed in response to
new needs. We have one mobile nursery school in one Farm Se
curity mobile camp where the nursery school has a tent; like all the
other tents, when the camp folds up the nursery school folds up and
goes right along. One of the first tents opened, they tell me, is the
nursery-school tent. They get the children into the nursery school
and get the other tents and health units set up after that. I think
probably we shall have more of those.
There is another type of service which we have talked about and
haven’t yet developed. I think it has possibilities. That is an
itinerant nursery school. You see, in the mobile school the children
go along with the school; it all goes along together. But this would
be an itinerant service with a staff and certain skeleton equipment
which would go around the circuit, as the old circuit riders used
to do; perhaps a week in this town, giving leadership to a group of
people there who are interested in establishing some kind of group
care, leaving them to carry it on and moving on to the next town, per
haps coming back in a 2-month period to pick up that supervision
and give some more care. I t would be one way in which we could
spread our services, one which I have tried to talk some States into
trying. I almost got Virginia talked into it, and then it changed
its mind, but we are still hoping.
Miss L enroot. Dr. Langdon, you are, I believe, the president of
the Nursery School Association as well as the specialist in Family
Life Education for the Work Projects Administration. Would you
like to comment on any general aspects of this problem before we
break up?
Dr. L angdon . The National Association for Nursery Education is
an organization made up not only of nursery-school workers, but of
workers from many other different fields related to child care—childwelfare workers, public-health nurses, pediatricians, children’s den
tists, housing officials, and all manner of people concerned with the
care of young children in one form or another. The governing board
of the organization is very eager that the association be of what help
it can in this emergency, both in maintaining standards for the care
of young children, with which we are gravely concerned because of
some of the things that we know are happening, and in trying to help
in meeting the acute needs, many of which we recognize as being only
aggravated everyday needs that now are becoming a little more highly
dramatized.
The association has been interested in trying to find throughout the
country the trained workers in the field of child development, parent
education, and child care who might .be willing to give voluntary
service. There are in some of our colleges and universities many
trained workers who are not now employed; people who are married
and perhaps have their own families, or who for one reason or another
are not employed. The association feels that a great amount of
trained energy is not being utilized which might very well be and
has offered its services to do what it can to locate these people. So
far we have been unable to find out the way volunteer service is to be
handled on a national basis; we seemed to be stymied at nearly every
turn, but we still think it is a good idea and are open for suggestions

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— MORNING SESSION

and ready to do anything possible, particularly in the maintenance
of standards.
Miss L enroot. Thank you very much, Dr, Langdon.
I take it this morning’s discussion might be summed up very briefly'
by saying that certainly the need for doing something about this
problem has been clearly established; that there are some communities
already gravely affected, and others that will be in the near future;
that it does involve over-all community planning, which must be of
a flexible character and as democratic as possible, with inclusion of
parents in policy-making wherever possible. We would agree that
we should attempt to develop methods as flexible as possible and that
there is need for Federal and State service in this general field. I
assume that there will be no difference of opinion as to these points.
This afternoon we expect Mr. Taft to be with us. We shall also
want to discuss specific ways of caring for children, the nursery schools
and the day nurseries under various auspices, and other forms of
provision for both children of preschool age and children of-school
age.

441845°— 42-

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Thursday, July 3 1, 1941— Afternoon Session

Miss L enroot. We are very fortunate in having with us, for a while
at least, the Assistant Coordinator of Health, Welfare, and Related
Defense Activities, with whom we are working so closely and to whom
we look for so much help and guidance and inspiration in every way,
Mr. Charles P. Taft.

Program of the Office of the Coordinator of Health,
Welfare, and Related Defense Activities
Mr. T aft . I think perhaps there is some use in giving you just briefly
a picture of the Government organization that is working in this field,
if you haven’t had it already, because it does change a little from day to
day and it is helpful to get it explained again so that you do get the
relationship. After all, you are starting an activity in a field that is
not adequately covered and that means that you want to mobilize all
resources and you want to avoid duplication. The Coordinator was
appointed by the President in December 1940 for all these various
fields.
That applies, of course, primarily to Federal agencies and the group
that has been working most closely on these problems that are asso
ciated with family welfare or family security, or the Public Assistance
Bureau of the Social Security Board, our office, and the Children’s
Bureau. Employment comes in through the Social Security Board.
Defense training comes in largely through the operations of the Office
of Education and the National Youth Administration and the Civilian
Conservation Corps, and the Government now has designated Frank
McSherry as the Director of Defense Training. He is in the Co
ordinator’s office, although he has a relationship also to the Office of
Production Management; he is in both, which is sound, and he has
pulled the two together now through committees that are headed in
each region and to some extent locally by the person who is in charge
of the Employment Service for the Government, in that region.
Ewan Clague, Director, Bureau of Employment Security, Social
Security Board, therefore, working with Colonel McSherry at this
level, has his men in the field as the chairmen, the leaders of all the
groups, which means National Youth Administration, Civilian Con
servation Corps, Office of Education, and Office of Production Manage
ment, considering the field of defense training. I might say Colonel
McSherry is directly under Governor McNutt. I might add that
M. L. Wilson has recently become Director of Nutrition and he also
reports directly to Governor McNutt, so that I am not charged
with responsibility either for defense training or for nutrition
programs, although we all work very closely together.
In the field of family security we have had a committee operating
covering the general field, advising the Coordinator, whose discussions
44

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESISION

have covered all the various subjects that are involved in family
security and have touched on some of these in which you are interested.
In addition to that the Coordinator has designated the Children’s
Bureau—has issued a mandate so to speak—charging it with special
responsibility for all matters that affect children. Miss Lenroot in
turn has designated Charles I. Schottland as the liaison officer, over
with us, so that he is there perhaps half or a large proportion of his
time, which assures that the two operations win stay very closely
integrated.
Besides that, the Coordinator has designated the regional directors
of the Social Security Board as regional cordinators and has started
a plan which for the first time, so far as I can find out, in the opera
tions of the Federal Government has begun to secure some integra
tion of Federal programs in regions. The need of that was brought
very forcibly to our attention almost as soon as I got into this thing
because in many of these communities you have as many as 15
or 20 or even 25 field representatives of Federal Government agencies
coming into the same town and generally within the same week or
certainly within the same month, and asking all the same people
the same questions. There is the story of some official in Connec
ticut who finally adopted the policy of refusing to answer any more
questions and referring the inquirer to the last person for whom
he had answered all those questions. You can’t blame them; they
become terribly confused.
The regional coordinators, therefore, under instructions from the
Governor, called together the field representatives of these various
Federal agencies in a regional advisory council. Those advisory
councils have worked very successfully. They discussed this question
of field visits, for instance. They planned for the exchange of
itineraries, so that in many cases when an agency had some minor
question that it wished to find out about in a community, the practice
has developed of asking a field person who is going into that com
munity on a major job to look it up and let them know, or perhaps
even to handle it for them.
That may sound as if it were fine theoretically but maybe didn’t
work actually. I t does work and the number of impacts of the
Federal agencies on these communities has been very substantially
reduced. I wouldn’t say that the difficulty has been completely elimi
nated ; we still find every now and then that some new agency we
didn’t think had anything to do with our fields has gone out and
started something. Generally. we find ourselves able, by pressure
and continuous effort, to rope them in and they finally fit in and find
real value in coordination.
That means also that you get a relatively coordinated approach to
the States and to the local communities, which means obviously that
you get better over-all planning with reference to any of those com
munities so far as Federal action and perhaps even State action are
concerned. In the field of family welfare in general and children’s
welfare in particular we have been somewhat slower to get going
than we have in some of the other fields. That doesn’t mean that in
certain circumstances the problems are not pressing, because they are,
but in volume they are not so great as some of the others.

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3:6

CONFERENCE--- DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS1

The family problems are reduced because of the fact that married
people have been not excluded but certainly limited in numbers among
the selectees, and you are going to have a somewhat further reduction
by the fact that if the present proposal for the extension of selective
service or anything like it goes through, General Marshall does plan
to get rid of anybody that is married so that the Army program
definitely, so far as selectees is concerned, is to have them under 28
and without dependents. What will happen if we get into war ob
viously is something you must plan for, because then they won’t be
able to do that, won’t want to, but that is what they are doing so
far as this current stage of the emergency is concerned.
In the Navy you have a very different situation and I think the
difference in emphasis ought to be made quite clear because in the
Navy they are not only without such policy but they encourage the
families of enlisted personnel to come to the station which, is nearest
where the husband or wage earner is located. You have, I think,
8,000 families of naval enlisted men in Norfolk, for instance, who
require a service in connection with all their activities in the com
munity, but I would think especially in connection with their chil
dren, which certainly is a pressing problem.
That would apply equally for a place like San Diego; it would
apply for any of the places where you have any substantial number
of naval personnel. However, the regions are becoming more con
scious of the portion of their problems involved under the general
heading of family security and we are just getting up a memo
randum—Miss Jeter prepared it yesterday, and it is going out I
trust very promptly—which reports the kind of items that have come
in to us in the whole field of family welfare, and urges the setting up
by each of these regional coordinators of committees on family se
curity working especially with the field staffs that are engaged in
that kind of activity.
That means the field representatives of the Children’s Bureau, of
the Bureau of Public Assistance of the Social Security Board, and
probably greater representation from the States, and perhaps even
from the localities and private agencies, than have been included in
some of the activities in other fields. There are, I think, 4 regions
out of the 12 in which there is already such a committee active and
organized. This memorandum will undoubtedly secure the prompt
setting up of committees in the other 8 regions and it will serve to
make them conscious of some of the types of problems that those 4
existing committees haven’t really begun to touch. I think I can
say that our formal organization will be set up so that when you
work something out here we will have something in the regions
through which you can expect to get it pushed and get help at least
in having it carried out.
That gives you something of the general picture of our operations.
I can omy say that our service, if it is worth anything, is in putting
on pressure m the places where we can do so, after our subcom
mittees or any groups that are working on our program decide to
work out plans which need some push in order to get them across.
When you get to that point I know that Miss Lenroot will call us,
and I assure you we will do our best at that stage to give whatever
push we can in supporting well-thought-out and intelligent programs
to secure the aims that we are all interested in.

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'THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

General Discussion
Miss L enroot. Thank you very much, Mr. Taft. I am sure this
picture has helped very much to give us a framework for our delib
erations. I wonder if there are any questions. Would you be willing
to answer questions if anyone has any, Mr. Taft, about the organiza
tion or the program ?
Mr. T aft . Usually when I get through telling about our general
organization and set-up everybody is simply speechless.
Miss L enroot. That seems to be the effect today. I t certainly is
a huge program for which you are responsible and it is very interest
ing to see it beginning to take shape. Now I think we will go on
to the discussion. We hope you can stay for a while, Mr. Taft. We
are very grateful to you for coming in.
We have had a brief review from Dr. Langdon of the plans of
the Work Projects Administration and we ought to have a similar
review from the National Youth Administration. Mrs. Givan, could
you review for us anything you think we ought to have?
Mrs. G ivan . I think our program—I have been listening to all of
your plans for the morning—fits into the general program insofar as
we can aid with the nursery schools of the Work Projects Adminis
tration and with the school lunches. We can assign our youth per
sonnel in the out-of-school work group to these projects and any of
the other services that we can give lie in the field of program plan
ning by the administrative staff and working with other agencies
participating in the general program.
Miss L enroot. Y ou don’t have any nursery centers o f your own
not related to the Work Projects Administration?
Mrs. G ivan . Not at this time. Our budget has been terrifically cut
on the other-than-defense program. Our nursery-school projects all
contemplate the assignment of youth workers to nursery schools
which are under the supervision of the Work Projects Administra
tion or other public agency. Under the school-lunch program youth
are assigned to projects operated and supervised by the National
Youth Administration or to projects of the Work Projects Adminis
tration.
Miss L enroot. Certainly you have a very interesting resource for
service through the young people.
Mr. T aut. I should like to add a word about the Work Projects
Administration. I should have mentioned it. In nearly all the
fields in which we operate we find, with some variation but pretty
uniformly, resource in Work Projects Administration personnel with
out^ which we couldn’t get a good many things done. We find, es
pecially in a good many of the smaller towns, recreational resources
that have been taken on before the United Service Organizations
came in and that have continued under the United Service Organiza
tions. They are, of course, operating in the nutrition field very
widely and helping very greatly there in health. They are frequently
staffing some of the health operations in communities where we just
can’t ‘get them started on any substantial scale without that assistance,
and of course in education, working on school lunches and some of
those things.
Miss W hite . Hasn’t that been definitely curtailed since the last
appropriation ?

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Mr. T a ft . That would only be to the first of July and I am frank
to say I haven’t caught up with the reports as to what has happened
just afterward. I am afraid it is somewhat curtailed.
Miss W h it e . Locally we are very conscious of the fact it is very
definitely curtailed. There is practically no education program, ex
cept the nursery schools.
Miss C hristman . Mr. Taft, I should like to be clear on this question
of coordination because I am for coordination. For example, the
project we are now discussing about the children. Will that be under
one particular agency? Who will be doing that job? Or will a
Government agency be doing that same thing?
Mr. T aft. I think the answer to the last part of your question is
definitely No. That is to say, we have designated the Children’s
Bureau to do any jobs specifically for children, and Miss Jeter, who
is on my staff, is the secretary of our Family Security Committee
and is working very closely with Miss Lenroot and her staff in con
nection with this. The cooperation with the Work Projects Admin
istration is ordinarily in the localities rather than here; that is to
say, when you get your project down and something needs to be done
locally or within a State, then it is worked out with the State super
visor of community activities for the Work Projects Administration
in connection with our people, so that I would say universally that
any possible overlapping or duplication is cleared with them there.
The Public Assistance Bureau of the Social Security Board is always
represented on our regional committee. In fact its person is often
the chairman of the committee, and I don’t know of any other Gov
ernment agencies that would be operating specifically in that field.
Miss C hristman . I want to be sure of that. I am not against
cooperation because that is the way we get our work done, but I think
certain projects ought to be under the agencies where they belong
and then all the other groups that do related work should cooperate
with those agencies.
Mr. T aft . N ow the program for this meeting was first discussed
with me by Miss Lenroot 2 months ago, at least. She planned a
meeting at that time which was interfered with by something or other
and now is set up here. She and I discussed it before she sent the word
out, and Miss Jeter of course knew about it in our office, handling
the detail, so that this is worked out with our complete cooperation
and support, and we figure that this agency is doing this job.
Miss L enroot. Miss Goodykoontz, do you have any comments to
make before we get into detailed discussion of some of these various
methods of care? We have been having some over-all reports from
various agencies that have been concerned with this program.
Miss G codykoontz. I think possibly what I have to say might come
in later when we discuss some of the things different agencies might
do in regard to taking up the slack where there are needs for addi
tional care and provision for young children.
Miss L enroot. Miss Batjer, do you have anything you would like
to say in a preliminary way?
Miss B atjer. I think the housekeeping-aide project, operating un
der the Work Projects Administration, is worthy of mention, and
comes under this discussion very definitely, as does the school lunch.
When we get into a more detailed discussion of what these various

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

services are I would be very glad to give a general statement on the
programs, but perhaps the discussion had better come later.
Miss L enroot. When we come to housekeeping aides and service
and school lunches.
Now I think we should discuss the question of the place of the
various types of care in a community plan for meeting the needs
of working mothers, and we have listed here some things as merely
suggestive. There are other things that will come up in the course
of the discussion.
I suppose there would be no question that an expansion of the
nursery-school program is essential in many areas. I wonder whether
before we come to a discussion of the auspices under which the nursery
schools should be conducted, we ought to discuss perhaps a definition
of the nursery school and raise the question as to whether we would
include in the term “nursery school” a set-up that gave care over a
very long period in the day, as well as the set-up which gives care
usually for a limited number of hours in the day, and also the question
of the ages of the children. Dr. Langdon, you have now three cate
gories of centers or schools. You have given us a general review of
them, but would you like to discuss this question of what we mean
by a nursery school and what we mean by a day nursery, and whether
we need other terminology for the center that takes care of young
children ?
Dr. L angdon . Maybe I could mention first the things which are
similar among them all. As the operating procedures are set up for
the three types of care under the Work Projects Administration, the
qualifications of the workers are expected to be exactly the same.
The type of educational emphasis is supposed to be the same. By
that I don’t mean the information which the children get, of course,
but the practice of trying to make every experience that the children
have in the day educational for them. For example, when a child’s
face needs washing it is not a matter merely of getting his face
washed; it is a matter of the child’s learning how to do such parts
of it as he can for himself and to be willing to do it, and so on through
all the other activities of the day. We would expect as the program
is set up that those experiences would be equally educational in all
three.
The difference probably lies in the type of service given, and there
it is very hard to define the differences. The nursery schools are set
up for a minimum of a 6-hour day, but that does not show the maxi
mum. Many of our nursery schools run on a 10-hour day, with stag
gered staff. In some of the migrant camps the nursery schools begin
at 7 :30, when the women go to the fields to work, and run through
until 5 in the afternoon, when they come in. They would have some
nursery schools that run on an even longer day, when there is some
need for it.
The age in our nursery schools is 2 to 4. That, however, is not
characteristic of all nursery schools, of course. It just happens to
be 2 to 4 with us for reasons that I won’t go into unless you want me
to particularly. In the public child-care center, which I mentioned,
the service is planned more on the day-nursery type, with a little
wider age range and an effort to provide for the before- and after
school care of children who would be in school.

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Because of limited personnel and limited facilities, we have re
stricted that service to children under 6, but that is purely an expe
dient measure. We are trying to be realistic about what we can do
with the facilities we have.
We recognized fully the need for the care of older children, but we
didn’t feel we could give it in child-development defense groups,
which I described. The service will be essentially the same as in the
nursery schools for children of the same range, 2 to 4. The reason
for giving the different name to it is not that it is a different type
of service nor carried on differently, but that it is the one instance
in w’hich we have ever gone into an income group other than the low.
We named it child-development defense group to indicate that it is
temporary and emergency in nature. In these units we are saying
a fee may be charged, which shall be decided upon jointly by the
sponsor—which is the State Department of Education—the Work
Projects Administration, and a recognized social-service agency in
the community.
I might say that our policy of serving only the low-income group
has been due to factors which we believed were inherent in a relief
organization. On the advice of our National Advisory Committee
this policy has been reviewed again and again and adhered to, not
because we do not think children, all children, should have oppor
tunity for nursery-school services, but because in our particular
organization it seemed that we should hold to that limit.
Miss L enroot. Miss Clark, would you like to comment on this
question as to the day nursery and the nursery school and the child
care center ? Do we need some sort of common definition of terms
here ?
Miss Clark . I think that we have used the terms for a long time
without sufficient clarity and content, and perhaps we have let them
be barriers when they don’t need to be at all. I think we are at the
point where we think it doesn’t matter what a thing is named; it is
the job that ought to be done that is important, and maybe not de
fining it will keep us closer together and not separate us at this
time. In private day nurseries our chief distinction is that we have
an intake and discharge policy and these have implications for us
as social agencies which you don’t have in nursery schools.
Miss L enroot. Connected with social-service functions ?
Miss W h ite . No, I don’t think so. I think to this set-up here
we might add nursery schools, day nurseries, informal groups. I
have a feeling that when you say “day nursery” and “nursery school”
you have always in mind a longer span of time than is necessary.
If you had informal groups such as the neighborhood play groups
that were described, all of which we would endorse if they were
properly supervised, I should like to see them included.
Miss L enroot. I s there a difference between the organized nursery
and the informal neighborhood group that should be kept in any
discussion?
Miss W h ite . I think the point Dr. Langdon made is that we would
say that a standard personnel must be maintained in every case, and
the standards would be somewhat different, of course, with a small
group. We would also expect that in a neighborhood group of that
kind we would probably make more use of parents than we do in the

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

other groups, properly supervised always. But you will find a very
definite opportunity to make use of intelligent parents. That, per
haps, doesn’t exist to quite the same extent where you have the
children over a longer span of hours.
I think there is another point, too; in private agencies or private
groups, you can be much more flexible than you can in Government
groups, and the place where you need flexibility I would say was
your place in the whole scheme of things.
Miss L enroot. Miss Eliot, do you want to comment on this?
Miss E liot. I don’t think there is anything to add. I think that
is a good point of view.
Miss L enroot. We would agree, then, I take it, that the nursery
school and other forms of group care of young children should all
maintain as far as possible the same standards as to qualifications
and number of workers and so forth; that there are differences, pos
sibly, as to age and as to intake policy that would distinguish what
we might call a school from what we might call a center or nursery.
Would you agree to that? Perhaps one of the most useful things
for us to discuss at this point is our philosophy back of these centers
for the care of children. Are they to be regarded as schools open to
all comers on a free basis where you do have a selection according
to the educational needs of the child, or are they to be regarded as
a service function where you do have requirements as to admission
for service related to the need of the family? Is there to be a mix
ture? Is that purely a theoretical thing?
I think it has a bearing on the question of free care that Miss
Abbott raised this morning. If we regard them as schools, part of
our educational system, no matter under what auspices, we are com
mitted to the theory of free public education in this country. If
we regard them as a service agency with standards of admission
somewhat related to the need of the family, then it seems to me
we are led into a consideration of whether the parents should be
expected to contribute toward the cost of the care. In my own
mind I have had a good deal of trouble thinking this through be
cause it seems to me that whatever we do we don’t want in any
way to break down the idea that education, free public education,
has responsibility for the preschool child, and on the other hand I
don’t know whether we would want to accept a philosophy that
parents earning good incomes have a resource for the care of children
over 10 or 12 hours of the day without any cost that has to include
meals and other things.
Is it possible to accept the theory of free education and, if we
get into the recreational aspects of the program, free recreation, and
at the same time recognize the fact that when a mother is out of
the home and supplementary service is needed, either in the form
of a caretaker in a home or a group which could be the center for
the child’s activities over a much longer period than is characteristic
of a public-school program, that for that part of the program there
might be some contribution from the parents? I would like to have
discussion of these points.
Miss E liot. I should think the parents would be expected to pay
for the food at least, and possibly something for care, the cooking
of the food perhaps, or part of it.

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CONFERENCE'— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Miss W h ite . Y ou actually do that in a public school, where you
have a lunchroom; you expect the children under ordinary conditions
to pay.
Miss A bbott. We hope the time is coming when that won’t be
necessary.
Miss G lass. I have been astounded at the number of young par
ents, of working people, who have come in to me willing and anxious
to pay $10 and $12 a month for care for their child; they knew they
were not eligible for Work Projects Administration help; they
hoped they were able to pay the private tuition, which unfortunately
was twice the amount they could pay. They were very disappointed
and they all went away saying they thought the public schools could
open nursery schools if they were allowed to pay a supplemental
fee of $8 to $10. I don’t think anything was done about it, but it
is surprising how many asked for that opportunity.
Miss A bbott. I t seems to me you defeat your own ends when you
make this a matter for which the parents will pay. We are really
doing whatever we are doing for the sake of the children, and I
think that, as Miss Anderson said this morning, the great bulk of
the women who work need the money desperately for other things;
that is, they are people of small incomes and they wouldn’t be work
ing if they didn’t need the money. I was shocked to hear that the
Work Projects Administration was running a fee business, even on a
small scale, because I think that all these public things should be
on the basis of the needs of the children, and that would include
proper care after school, just as we tried to do to some extent through
our recreation centers. I think it is a great mistake to start these
things with the idea of the children paying. These women aren’t
going into these factories now to buy a few luxuries; most of them
really need that money; that is, the great mass of them. For the few
that can pay there are some private organizations; they can go to
them if they prefer, but I wouldn’t put a means test on them. If
they are willing to send the children, let them do as they do in the
public schools.
Miss E liot. I have found in our nursery school, which is a philan
thropic nursery school in Boston, that the parents feel more selfrespecting when they pay a small fee regularly which they know
covers the cost of the dinner, the very excellent food which they
get and which they would have to provide if the child wasn’t there.
I think they feel then that they are doing their part in it and feel
more self-respect than if you give it to them free.
Miss A bbott. D o you think we would feel more self-respecting if
they took school fees to school, the way they used to?
Miss E liot. I feel it distinctly in my own nursery school, which
is where I have my experience, the Buggies Street Nursery School,
in Boston.
Dr. C hamberlain . Several of the school programs in California
have the line that pays and the line that doesn’t pay; I don’t advocate
this, I am just reporting.
Miss B atjer . Providing free lunches for children attending nursery
schools is comparable to the problem we have in the school-lunch
program in the public-school system in elementary and secondary

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

schools. Of course one of the biggest problems we have to meet, and
I think I speak for not only my own agency but for all the groups
interested in the welfare of children, is the philosophy that most
people hold, that a child is being pauperized if he receives a free
meal. Of course that isn’t true, as Miss Abbott says, about the tuition
or about the free bus ride that he gets, or about the books he gets.
So in the Work Projects Administration we are attempting to do
our part to break down the philosophy that the educators, many of
them, and many other people hold, that Johnnie and Susie are being
pauperized because they accept a free lunch. If Johnnie’s and Susie’s
mothers feel that they are making a contribution of a penny for the
meal that that child receives, and if they wish to make that contri
bution, all very well and good, but if they are requested or required
to make the contribution, then it becomes a different problem. It
would seem to me that the thing we are coming to, as far as feeding
children in schools is concerned, is a definite part of the educational
set-up, that the school is responsible for the child’s physical develop
ment in order that his mental development may show proper growth.
So I think it is a problem, if there is contemplation of making a
fee or charge for the food which the. children need in the nursery
schools. I know how terrific a problem it is in the public-school
system. As the gentleman from California said, I know things like
the two lines do exist, horrible as they are, and I think all of us
who are working with the school feeding program are attempting
desperately to break them down.
Mr. H opkirk . I am wondering if there aren’t two factors here that
favor payment by the parents. Miss Lenroot pointed clearly to
one of these—the conventional attitude we have had in foster care
of children that there is something that goes with economic bonds.
I t helps in other ways to keep the parent and child close together,
and in this situation that, I think, is a reality in spite of the state
ments somewhat to the contrary. Then there is the other idea that
each industry should pay the mother enough so that she can partici
pate in it. We have all seen the situation where 5-and-10’s and other
establishments have encouraged the development of shelters for young
women where they can get board at ridiculously low rates.
I think that factor, as was suggested along with the other, probably
argues for a contribution. I should imagine there-were situations
where you couldn’t support the project, too, without such contribu
tions. When you think of the magnitude of this job if we become
involved in war I don’t know just how it would be supported.
Dr. E liot. In England private funds such as those from the
American Red Cross help out with many “extras.” All the nursery
centers and all the residential nurseries are supported very largely
by Government.
Mr. H opkirk . I am sorry; I heard otherwise. I was thinking
there was a part payment by the parent.
Dr. E liot. Y ou are right, Mr. Hopkirk, for the evacuated children
who are boarded in homes. The parents, if they can, pay back to
the Government up to a certain proportion of the cost for care; 6
shillings a week is the fixed rate, 9 shillings is the maximum rate.
The nursery centers, however, to which I thought you were referring,

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

and most of the residential nurseries are supported largely by the
Government. The Government may recover something from the
parents for care of the children in the residential nurseries.
Miss N eustaedter. Apropos of the point made this morning, the
desirability of leaving with the parents as much responsibility as
possible, might there conceivably be a very natural heed of having
this a matter for discussion with a parent about to place a child
for day care? In some cases I would think it would be impossible
to pay; in other cases this might be something a parent would wish
to accept as a responsibility. Is there possibly a value there?
Miss L enroot. Mr. Light, you have been threshing out this ques
tion in Connecticut, have you anything to offer?
Mr. L ight . There are two or three problems involved in this that
we have skirted around that bothered me quite a bit. Miss Abbott’s
position, for example. Basically X go along with, it, but"I want to
know where you draw the line.
.
Miss A bbott. IVell, Mr. Light, at the present time 1 would say
that we have to move along as we can. Now meals is one of the next
things undoubtedly, that we will get free for all children; that is,
the noon meal in the schools, as a part of the educational system.
I t has been coming. A child in a good private school gets his meal
there, and it doesn’t destroy family life, and it is part of the educa
tional plan. Now it will come sooner or later in the public schools.
They have had an excellent system of school meals, as you know, in
England for 35 years. I think that we are hung up now on this old
tradition that the parent has to pay this and that or the child will
be pauperized. We can shed that just as we shed the payment for
the education itself, which, after all, happened not so long ago, and
payment for books, where the school-book companies haven’t inter
fered with it in a large number of States.
There are other things that will undoubtedly come along. 1
wouldn’t mind a bit if they also got their shoes. The point is this,
there are two ways of increasing wages; one is the direct method,
which is the slow method, but it is one that the workers themselves
are always using; and the other is the indirect method whereby you
take off the budget some of these community services which can be
given just like taking care of old age or something else that they
should get, and I think in a democratic country we are undoubtedly
going in that direction. We can’t be a democracy unless we do; if
we go on with what we have in the past, we aren’t democratic. There
is no freedom from want or fear, either one.
I think this is a good time just to set a few principles that we can
perhaps learn to live up to afterward.
Mr. L ig h t . Of course the basic question underlying that is whether
public agencies and so forth in the long run wouldn’t be getting larger
returns if we directed our energies toward raising the standard of
living so that family could maintain itself.
■ .
,
Miss A bbott. Well, you raise the standard of living in part if
you give the child a decent meal at noon at school; that is done edu
cationally, so that he learns something about what a decent meal
should be and how it should be served.
Mr. L ight . Of course at the same time you have increased the de
pendency of that family.

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

Miss A bbott. I wouldn’t agree to that at all, any more than you in
creased the dependency of the family when you have a child in a
private school that doesn’t go home for lunch.
Mr. L ight . They pay for that.
Miss A bbott. They pay out of taxes anyway. You might just as
well say that in education you are increasing the dependence of the
family when you give them free schools, bathing beaches or free
recreation centers, or anything else. You can just as well say you
are increasing the dependence of the families; they ought to bring their
pennies to go on the playground or to the bathing beach.
Miss H arper. A s long ago as 1870, I think, the Young Women’s
Christian Association discussed whether residences should be self-sup
porting. We came to the conclusion they should be; if they were
not, we should be subsidizing employers and wages could be kept at a
very low level. I agree with Miss Abbott, if we have a different kind
of economic system such a scheme might be undertaken. But under
the system in which we live now, it seems to me we are saying we can
deduct shoes and food out of the wage, out of the budget of the worker,
so that the employer may pay less wage.
Miss A bbott. D o you want them to pay for their education, the way
they used to ? Where do you draw the line ?
MisS H arper. We might as well be subsidizing employers if we
do not encourage the worker to budget his wages and pay himself for
the things he needs out of an adequate wage.
Miss A bbott. What we want is a good life for everybody. I am
neither a Socialist nor a Communist; if you want to know, I am for
a Democracy, and we have a third of our population, as the President
has said, who are not living in a democracy.
Miss G lass. The nursery school is very erratic with very peculiar
finances and it does not keep up the standards that it would like to
keep up because it has such erratic finances. The Work Projects Ad
ministration nursery school keeps up to its standards; it uses public
funds, but it can’t take the children except on relief. There ought
to be some combination of those two things, where you have a
public support which keeps up the standard and private tuition
which lets other people in.
Miss A bbott. And excludes some.
Miss C hristm an . I am against subsidizing, whether it be free
shoes or what; I want to buy my own shoes and I want to buy my
own food. I am very puzzled, and I wish some of the experts here
would clarify this thing. I am for free education, free textbooks,
and all the rest of it, so that I would like to separate that from the
question before us, whether in this emergency, when large numbers
of women go into the factory, we will set up something which takes
care of their children in lieu of a helper right in the home. I mean,
instead of their having a maid in the home, which no municipality,
no Federal Government, would pay for, but which they, out of their
earnings, would pay for, whether we are going to have a central
place where the children may be while the' mother is at work all day.
Personally, I feel that when the man and the woman work they
ought to be able to take care of their children. I f they both want
to work, I know they both have a right to work if they want to;
but the children are their responsibility. I think there is a limit to

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS!

how much responsibility for that kind of thing should fall on a lo
cality or on the Federal Government. I am perfectly willing to be
straightened out on that, but if I were a woman with several chil
dren and a husband working I would think that the ]omt earnings
of myself and my husband should take care of the children. And
if I couldn’t afford a maid in the home all day long, then I would do
the next thing; I would put the children where I was assured that
they would be loked after properly, and I would be willing to pay
S°On th?other hand, I would join a union and fight to get decent
Miss W hite . I t seems to me the thing we are interested in is the
kind of care we want these children to have. No community can
take on the care of an indefinite number of children and maintain
the kind of standards with the sort of people we want to take care
of these children unless the parents help us, and they are interested
in doing that. I t seems to me realistically that neither the federal,
local, nor State government can take on the burden and give us the
kind of staff that we want to take care of all our children without
the help of the parents.
, , , .
L i g h t . Xh.6r6 is o n © other thing that bothers me a little.
Isn’t there any place in the scheme of things for an organization of
parents to get together to provide for the care of their children on
a cooperative basis? Dr. Langdon was referring to some things the
Work Projects Administration attempted to do. Or, perhaps we
answer that question in this way, that we set the standards so high
in these institutions that parents just simply cannot afford to meet
them. In other words, our standards we set there are so far ahead
of the standards of living, of the income, of these parents that they
can’t meet them.
,
.
Miss A bbott. Any more than they can meet proper education.
That it what I meant when I said to Miss Lenroot that after all what
we are really thinking about is the children, and many of the par
ents will not have the children go to the centers if they have to pay.
Mr. L ight . I t seems to me we have to be a little more realistic
about this thing and realize if we take that position there are thou
sands of children who are just going to be deprived of the service.
Meanwhile, before we get to that point where the community will
provide everything that the parents need, or the family needs,
haven’t we got to set up some sort of organization which those
parents can afford to maintain, and isn’t our problem to devise an
agency which can be maintained and operated within the ability of
those parents to pay ?
,
.
Dr. E liot. Without any help from Government?
Mr. L ight . Not necessarily without any help from the Govern
ment. I can say from the point of view of education that so long as
the Federal Government, for example, is making appropriations
which go around the school system and are continually creating
agencies which take over or compete with the functions of State and
local systems we are never going to get that school system strong
enough to do the sort of thing you are talking about.
. .
Miss A bbott. Y ou know one reason why that is being done is be
cause the schools wouldn’t do it. We had great arguments at child
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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1041— AFTERNOON SESSION

welfare conferences, at the White House Conference, and so forth, in
which I participated myself 10 years ago. The schools have been
very rigid about refusing to take on some of these additional serv
ices. They add work to the teachers; the teachers haven’t been
willing to assume it.
Mr. L ight . I would say some schools have, but a lot of schools
haven’t.
Miss A bbott. I think some quite high educational authorities
certainly take that position.
Mr. L ight . Yes, they always will. There will always be the con
servative group, but I don’t think that is justification for the proce
dure at all.
Miss A bbott. The result of it is we have these vast numbers—that
is not an exaggeration—of underfed children and poorly fed chil
dren, and the way to meet it is educationally through the schools, or
some substitute for the schools on a large-scale basis. I won’t accept
that there isn’t money to do it; the money that it takes is negligible
compared with the amounts that are going into every kind of gun
and plane, and there is nothing more important than the children.
Mr. B e n ja m in . We had this all rehearsed before; we find it rather
difficult, but in New York State now we are providing busses to take
children back and forth to school. A few years ago we would have
said if a parent can’t get his child to school and we provided a bus
it would be pauperizing. I can’t see much difference between pro
viding school books and bus transportation and a good warm lunch
at midday.
Dr. Chamberlain . The medical service has been restricted, too; a
great many social agencies spend a major part of their time finding
out if the person can pay or not, and look at the rejections in the
selectees.
Dr. A ldrich . Could we have a sliding scale of pay? Are there
enough nursery-school teachers who are competent to carry out the
program for the whole country during this emergency?
Dr. L angdon- Well, that would be a difficult question to answer.
I am certain I couldn’t answer that. I think Dr. Aldrich could
answer it better than I can, but there certainly are enough people
trained in the nursery-school field to have a great many more nursery
schools than we have now, if there were ways of doing it so far as
personnel is concerned.
Miss L enroot. I don’t think we can reach a complete agreement in
every last detail; we want something for continuing committees to
work on. Would you agree that we could make a statement some
thing like this—that at least in this period when apparently the
work of women is needed, to some degree at least, as an essential
part of our defense effort, it is the responsibility of the public,
through community agencies, to provide some means for the care
of children while mothers are at work ?
Miss A bbott. I so move.
Mr. H opkirk. That leaves open the question of who pays.
Miss L enroot. I said the public has the responsibility for provid
ing satisfactory methods. Now I didn’t rule out completely questions
of payment because you have to be realistic as to what we can get
done. As Miss Abbott says, we have to approach toward something,

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

but this puts it positively as the public responsibility to provide
methods of care for children.
Mr. H opkirk. Second the motion.

Dr. G esell. Does public mean the same as community ?
Miss L enroot. I used the word public because I thought we had to
discuss at some later point to what extent there should be Federal
or State contributions, or local public sources ; but if we could get
the principle of public responsibility accepted, then we could con
sider further the responsibility of the various levels of government
in the program. (Motion carried.)
I think we might then go to some discussion of the types of serv
ices, whether the nursery centers or schools should be attached
primarily to the schools wherever possible; whether the industrial
establishments are ever appropriate places for them ; whether the
groups might be developed in housing projects, or under what
other auspices these centers might be developed. I wonder whether
we could dispose very briefly perhaps of the category “industrial
establishments.” Miss Anderson stated this morning that it was
her opinion that industrial establishments should not—except, I
suppose we would say, in very unusual circumstances—be the center
of the type of thing that we have in mind ; that it ought to be a com
munity service and not a service located in industrial establish
ments. Would that be regarded as the sense of the meeting? Is
there any difference of opinion at all?
Miss Clark. Do you think there is any considerable movement
toward industrial day nurseries?
Miss C lark . Not that we know of. You find some in the South ; in
our office we know of only about six and they are in the South—in
industries with low wage scales. They are available only to
employees. The one I have seen has expensive and complete equip
ment but is otherwise inadequate for both the children and their
mothers.
Dr. L angdon. With the Work Projects Administration nursery
schools through the South we have had a pretty well-defined policy
of having the mill, or whatever the factory might be, participating
as would any other community agency, if nursery schools were
needed and desired in the communities surrounding the industry.
After a little experimentation the first year we have definitely kept
away from establishing a nursery school at the factory, even though
we have been offered excellent space many times, and that was after
we had put about two in factories.
Miss L enroot. Of course there is the added advantage, besides the
avoidance of any possible danger of paternalism, that by placing
them in the comr unity they are available to children of mothers
who may be engaged in service industries or other types of industries.
Then I take it, without objection we will agree that they should
not be located in the industrial establishments.
Is there anyone that would discuss the extent to . which these
centers should be placed in the public school, and what are the pos
sibilities there ? Mr. Light, perhaps you had better lead off on that.
Mr. L ight . I had the question down on my pad to ask this group,
as to just what public schools ought to do in this situation. I would

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THURSDAY, JULY

31, 1941— AFTERNOON

SE'SISiON

like to have somebody else answer that question rather than some
one who is in public-school work.
Miss E liot. I was going to suggest that perhaps the Work Projects
Administration experience might tell us something. In some cases
the Work Projects Administration nursery schools have been in
public schools; what success has there been in that?
Dr. L angdon. About three-fourths of our nursery schools are in
public-school buildings, designedly. It has been our policy that we
would rather take poorer space in a public-school building than
better space outside. That doesn’t mean we always get poorer space;
it is often very good, and it has been very interesting to me to see
the responsibility which the public school has continuously taken on
in increasing amounts since the early days. At first in many of the
schools we just had space, often in the basement. We have had the
experience of moving from the basement to the best wing in the
building as they gradually became interested in the kind of care
the children should have. There have been many instances in which
the public schools originally were not open to us in the summer and
we would have to move out, where we now have additional space in
the summer and the school is kept open for us.
That same thing has happened with the meeting of parent groups;
public-school buildings that previously could not be opened after
school hours for any purpose, have even been kept open in the
evening for parent meetings. All this means to me that the public
school has taken on additional responsibility. What it has done it
will be glad, probably, to continue to do, and there are possibilities,
I think, of much more extended use of public-school facilities than
we have ever made.
Miss L enroot. That would include, o f course, the extended day
as well as the vacation period ?
Dr. L angdon. It has already included the extended day, and not
only the extended day but the extended service to parent groups
who could come in the evening to meet; also the extension of school
facilities so that parent groups can use home-economics labora
tories, woodworking shops, and all types of school services. I think
it is suggestive of what could be done in an emergency period in
using public-school facilities to much greater extent.
Mr. H opkirk . Incidentally it has a good effect on the older age
groups. They are drawn together because of the elementary school’s
place in the neighborhood.
Dr. G esell. It is overstratified as far as age is concerned, and at
this particular juncture you would have a situation where those age
cleavages often break down, and it is the older brother and sister
that are involved as well as the preschool child.
Miss W hite . They are always very definitely interested in seeing
how much attention is given to the little children. There is one
elementary school in Detroit where the nursery school happens to
have a whole glass front; there is never a time when noses aren’t
glued to the glass clear down the line and the whole attitude of the
older children toward the younger children changes as they see the
attention these children get.
441845°— 42----- 5

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Dr. L a n g d o n . We have had some big brother and sister clubs
where to be eligible you had to have a brother or sister in the nursery
school, and then they have assisted in one way or another in the
school.
Miss L e n r o o t . Miss Clark, would you -agree to the use of the
public school?
Miss C l a r k . We have not begun to plumb the possibilities of
public-school cooperation. I was in a public school the other day
where a beautiful summer day-care job is being done with a handful
of people—some volunteers—and only such equipment as could be
borrowed in the neighborhood, and waste materials like worn-down
pencils. Older children were sound asleep on newspapers on the
floor because there were not enough cots or mats.
Miss L e n r o o t . Then we agree on public schools, and I suppose
we would include parochial schools. Dr. Langdon, has there been
much experience of the development of nursery schools in parochial
schools?
Dr. L angdon. W e have one out of Detroit.
Miss W hite . We have them in the parochial schools and children’s
hospitals. Yesterday the head of the nursing group of Wayne
University told me there were four places in Detroit where they
wanted to put nursery schools in hospitals.
Miss L e n r o o t . What about the housing projects? I think prob
ably there is an area that we haven’t explored nearly enough. I
wonder who wants to speak on that subject ?
Miss B ogue. Are there not nursery schools established in many o f
the housing projects? I think there are.
Miss L e n r o o t . Mr. Schottland, do you know about the extent to
which facilities are being provided in newer housing projects?
Mr. S c h o t t l a n d . I think by and large they are not being provided.
In some of the newer housing projects provision is being made for
both recreational facilities and care of children, but they are very
few and far between. Most of the housing projects have practically
no facilities at all, even for play or recreation, much less care of
children. Even the model plans that have been drawn up for the
various housing agencies do not contain, for the most part, any
plans for care of children.
Miss N e u s t a e d t e r . I think that around New York the communi
ties are struggling to get and have succeeded in getting nursery
schools.
Miss E liot. Much better than any other part o f the country.
Dr. L a n g d o n . The New York Kindergarten Association is a
private agency. The U. S. Housing Authority has asked us over a
period of yerrs to provide nursery schools on the housing projects
and we have had many, many conferences with them about it. Our
policy, which I think now they are coming more to agree with, has
been, that the nursery school was not the answer to the care of
children on the housing project: that it might be one answer; but
.it was only one and a very small one, and that by putting a nursery
school on the housing project we were not really helping in giving
the final answer because the count in place after place shows we
couldn’t in one nursery school take care of more than 10 percent,
or at the most 15 percent, of all the children on the project, and these

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 194 1 — AFTERNOON SESSION

would be only the very youngest ones, and there would be no pro
vision of before- or after-school care for the others.
Our position has been that we would like to begin at the other end
of the matter and put a parent-education worker on the project to
work with parents in developing supervision of their own play
grounds, developing organized cooperative care for their own group.
This might eventually develop into a cooperative nursery school, if
they wanted it to, but by the time it did it would be only one part of a
total service which would have been developed by their own respon
sibility. Rightly or wrongly, that has been the policy and that has
been the basis on which we have worked in the U. S. Housing Au
thority.
Miss W hite . In the ordinary housing project the amount of space
allocated to the needs of children is entirely inadequate.
Miss C l a r k . There are plenty that have no space at all. I was in
one the other day for very low-wage colored people; there isn’t a
corner in it for common use.
Miss L enroot. That is something I think ought to be explored con
tinuously—the housing end.
Miss N eustaedter. If we feel that space should be allotted in the
projects that are going up, don’t you think the U. S. Housing Author
ity should know how we feel about it ?
Miss L enroot. That needs to be explored with the housing author
ities. We should have in our statement of principles, or whatever it
is, some statement that there should be provision for space for chil
dren and attention given to the needs of young children in housing
projects.
Miss C hristian . We feel it is a definite requirement.
Miss N eustaedter. We had to struggle very hard in individual
communities for it.
Dr. L ancdon . Y ou have to consider this in recommending that
there be space in the project for a nursery school, whether or not we
are standing for segregation of that portion or the community to
give the service only in the project, or whether we have to run the
nursery off the project, so it will be a community- service. We run
into that every time. I think we want to be sure what we want to sav
on that.
Miss L enroot. What should we say ?
Miss C lark . In New York City housing projects are community
projects and the day nurseries are by design used by the neighbor
hood families.
Dr. L a n g d o n . If you put a nursery school on a housing project you
have to make a selection of the children; you can’t begin to serve all
the children on the project anyway. You have a high selection even
on the project; there is no chance for children to come in from the
community.
Miss L enroot. Don’t we have to face the fact we are not going to
provide nursery schools or centers for all children, and that the pos
sibilities of parent cooperation in providing for children need to be
explored and there needs to be space in the housing project for that
kind of activity?
Mr. L ight . We have had no difficulty with them so far as providing
space is concerned, but our difficulty has been in getting the right kind
of space. Their notion of providing space in a good many instances

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

is a very different notion from what some of the rest of us have. I
think that what they need is some help in determining what sort of
space ought to be provided, both outdoor and indoor.
Miss E liot. Doesn’t that all come back to the local situation for
each housing group ?
Miss L enroot. Except that you have the planning done in Wash
ington.
Miss E liot. Washington always tells us to go back to the local au
thority and wrestle with them.
Mr. L ight . The housing people have a recreation man on the staff
at the presnt time, working on the same problems. He worked with
us for a number of years and has just recently gone in on that partic
ular job; I don’t know how much success he is having or is going to
have in getting the kind of facilities we need.
Miss L enroot. I think that there needs to be an effort on both the
Federal and the local level to see that adequate consideration is given
to the needs of children. To what extent is it going to be possible, if
it is needed as a resource, to expand private-agency facilities for care
of preschool children? Do you think there is much margin of ex
pansion there ?
Mr. B e n ja m in . We had a group meet in Buffalo yesterday to talk
it over and our agency said they felt that there was, so far as our com
munity is concerned, room for expansion. That doesn’t commit
others, but there was a possibility there at least in one community.
Miss C lark . I think that in any alert city that is true. There is
expansion of existing day care going on now. We frequently receive
reports from day nurseries that they are expanding their plant and
some even opening extension nurseries under central supervision at
a cost of about $3,000. We have not begun to tap community resources
in personal and financial support to meet this emergency. I am sure
when we make the need known vividly enough support will be forth
coming as it has in other countries.
Miss G lass. In St. Louis one day nursery had 75 children of pre
school age under the care of one person.
Miss C lark . I can’t say that the standards of all the day nurseries
are as they should be, but there are a lot that are very, very good.
Those are the ones we are encouraging to take on more responsibility.
Something could be done about the others if the community made
clear the kind of standards they desire. I find that day-nursery
standards are those the community is willing to accept.
Miss L enroot. In view of our earlier statement that this is a public
responsibility, ought we not to emphasize that any drive for ex
pansion of private care should come only as part of a community
plan in which the full emphasis was given first to the public develop
ments? Then you might have to go to expansion of the private
care, and probably would in many instances.
Miss C lark . Where it has happened it has happened on a com
munity basis because of consultation of everybody interested.
Miss A bbott. I think that the responsibility, as you say, should
be public. There are some very excellent private nurseries, but I
hope the' poor ones will be driven out and that parents won’t be
willing to go and pay if they can get a good service outside without
paying. Only the good ones then will be able to live; the poor ones
will go.:

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 — AFTERNOON SESSION

Miss L enroot. Miss Verry, do you have anything on this point?
Miss V erry. Certainly in Chicago we need not forget that stand
ards are still important, and pretty low in the day nurseries. I would
hate to see expansion take place at the expense of quality of service.
Mr. L ight . Has anything been done to establish public standards
for private day nurseries ?
Miss L enroot. There are a number of State departments of wel
fare and also some health departments that have some supervisory
responsibility.
Mr. L ight . On any other side of the work ?
Miss Clark . N ot nearly enough.
Miss L enroot. That brings m.e to the second point, that certainly
there is great need, in spite of some very fine work that has been
done on standards, to go forward in developing statements of stand
ards that can be widely publicized and used as guides in community
programs. Dr. Langdon, you have been working on standards
recently, haven’t you, or all the time, in your program?
Dr. L angdon. The National Association of Nursery Education has
been working on a new bulletin on standards which should be ready
very shortly.
Miss L enroot. And the National Association o f Day Nurseries
has been ?
Miss Clark . We are.
Miss L enroot. The Child Welfare League is doing some work o f
that kind ?
Mr. H opkirk . In reference to day nurseries it is our policy to keep
in touch with the National Association of Day Nurseries.
Miss L enroot. Would you think that one of the continuing com
mittees that should follow this conference should be concerned with
the question of group care of young children which would include
the exploration of all these various types of care and the assembling
of standards that are available and developing standards? Would
there be agreement to that ?
Dr. L angdon . Could that committee also consider ways in which
standards might be developed? I have been hearing some very en
couraging things; for example, the Toledo Preschool Council is made
up of a group of 15 or 20 organizations, all concerned with different
phases of standards, and they have been trying to develop general
standards for all care of all children in the community.
Miss V erry. I wonder if the same committee might consider the
possibility of conflict between standards of group care from the point
of view of children and standards as a convenience to working
mothers. Excluding the child coming down with a cold from the
group care is fine from the point of view of group-care standards,
but if the mother has to go to work it is not very good as a means
of taking care of the children of working mothers.
Miss L enroot. I think that some of the British experience bore on
that question, didn’t it, Dr. Eliot?
Dr. E liot. In connection with the residential nurseries they had
great difficulties over the infections and colds, and in respect to the
numbers of workers necessary to make it possible to separate children
with infections from the others and keep them under supervision.
Miss L enroot. I should think one thing the committee would have
to explore, and perhaps we can get some light on it this afternoon,

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

is whether if you really began to meet the needs of mothers in a com
munity where a great many mothers are at work and you had a great
many children to provide for, you would probably have a series of
centers, and whether in that plan there should not be possibly a small
residential center with facilities for keeping children overnight.
Dr. E liot. I t has been recommended in England that in connection
with a group of day-nursery centers there should be at least one
residential center a little outside the city to take care of particular
situations, not necessarily just children who are sick, but children
who need special care for any reason. Then of course the British
set up a type of simple infirmary called “sick bays” for children with
minor ailments, which might be considered in this connection. They
are intended not for children who are sick enough to go to a hospital,
but for children who cannot be kept at home and who should not
be mixed in with other children in one of the “temporary hostels”—
in other words, children with colds and minor ailments of various
sorts, skin diseases, and so on.
,|
Miss L enroot. Those sick bays were under the Health Department (
Dr. E liot. Under the local county health unit. In all of this the
health standards have to be worked out in connection with socialwelfare standards and educational standards; the three things should
be done together, and any committee, I would think, should include
persons who could make recommendations in these areas.
Miss L enroot. Certainly you wouldn’t be meeting the needs of the
working mother, and certainly not in a stepped-up defense program,
if she had to take a child back home because he was excluded at the
door of the nursery.
., ,
Dr. E liot. It couldn’t be done. Some arrangement would have to
be made for that situation. Also if she were going to get to work
on time it would have to be arranged so that she herself would not
have to go to another place with a child if he had to be kept apart
from the other children. There are many complications that have
to be dealt with.
., , ,
.
. ,
Miss V erry. In spite of the British bad experience with minders,
foster day care is a better supplement to the nursery school for the
ordinary child than a small institution outside of the city.
Dr. E l i o t . The idea was that y o u might set u p one home where
children went for the day.
|
.,
‘
' ,
Miss C lark . There are many nurseries with two to tour, bucn
homes maybe aren’t used for 6 months. Then there is an epidemic
of flu or something and they are busy all the time.
Miss L enroot. That brings us to this question of day care in foster
family homes. That is a very interesting type of use of day care.
I am sorry that we haven’t anyone from Philadelphia where they
have developed this. Miss Clark, do you have information on that:1
Miss C lark . We have a report of the Toronto demonstration which
we would be glad to send anyone. At Atlantic City recently there
was an informal meeting of day nurseries and others interested m
foster day care. They came to the conclusion that foster day care is
supplementary to institutional care rather than a substitute. Both
kinds of care are needed and both are available in Philadelphia.
In Montclair, N. J., they have only foster day care. In congested
cities where supplementary foster-family day care is most needed

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

the problem of finding suitable homes is especially difficult. I t is not
like permanent placement because foster homes must be near where
people live; in towns or on the edges of cities, as in Philadelphia,
foster-family day care is quite feasible. The National Association
of Day Nurseries invited a special committee of which Dr. Gesell
was a member to make a study for New York City on day care for
children under 2. This was because in 10 nurseries in 10 months
applications for 100 children under 2 were rejected because most day
nurseries do not take babies. The conclusion of that committee was
that there was need to expand foster day care and housekeeper serv
ice, as giving infants the necessary individual care is the only sound
way to meet the problem.
Miss L enroot. Would there be agreement on that last point from
this group, that probably for children under 2 those are the resources?
Mr. H opkirk . I think the Child Welfare League in such standards
as it has drawn up for foster care generally would support that idea.
I certainly concur with Miss Clark on that particular point. I would
suggest that foster day care, however, can go a little farther. We
haven’t had enough experience with it in the United States yet to
give us the assurance as to how far we may go. I should think that
it is auxiliary, probably, to the nursery-school and day-nursery pro
gram just as housekeeper service is. I would suggest that in addition
to infants, where you have considerable range m the ages you may
get a family situation in which a foster day set-up is superior to
parceling the children out. Often an older child has a warm rela
tionship that could be conserved if you have flexibility in your day
program beyond using the home for infants and those in ill health.
Miss Clark . I am not prepared to say foster day care should be in the
hands of day nurseries in general. It is a very highly skilled job* it
takes a lot of time; because in the early stages problems of relationship
of both children and mothers must be carefully guided. We think it
should be done only by highly skilled people.
Miss N eustaedter. Where those foster day homes are used, Miss
Clark, is there licensing or what is the provision for safeguarding
children?
8
Miss C lark. The service is supervised by the case worker in the day
nursery.
Miss N eustaerter. Not like the boarding mother^
Miss Clark I don’t know o f a State that has control over private day
homes except Connecticut, I believe.
Miss L enroot. Mr. Hopkirk, we have been hearing rumors in a few
places of difficulties in getting boarding homes for regular foster
care on account of the increased opportunities for employment of
women. Have you been getting such reports?
Mr. H opkirk . Yes, we have heard of that somewhat. I should say
that we haven’t had enough on it yet to indicate whether it really
reflects the scanty of homes or laxity in home finding. Certainly there
are factors in smaller dwellings that are making foster-home service
difficult. In day care, where you do not have the problem of lodgings
for children, I should say you do not have quite the same restriction in
home finding that you have where 24-hour, care is indicated.
Miss L enroot. Miss Bogue, do you have any experience ?

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Miss B o g u e . Only to corroborate what Miss Neustaedter and Miss
Clark say.
Miss E l i o t . One of the child-placing agencies in Boston, the Chil
dren’s Friend Society, experimented with this, and I think they felt it
was more expensive than care in groups, as well as being so difficult to
find the homes anywhere near the home of the working mother.
Mr. B e n j a m i n . There is a definite shrinkage in Buffalo of foster
homes. I see where this would be a more useful form of care, but it
might in many instances be quite confusing to children and should
be used with discrimination.
Miss L e n r o o t . Miss Verry, have you had more difficulty in getting
boarding homes?
Miss V e r r y . I can’t say that we have; there is always difficulty in
getting good ones.
Miss L e n r o o t . Certainly this is a resource that should be considered
in a community program for various types of supplementary care, and
possibly for other care, under certain circumstances.
Dr. C h a m b e r l a i n . In San Diego they have been complaining that it
is next to impossible to find adequate care for children between the age
of 1 and 2y2; under the age of 1 people seem to think they can place
them in groups better, but between 1 and 2y2 it is next to impossible.
Miss

L enroot.

T o find foster homes?

Dr. C h a m b e r l a i n . Yes, for that specific age group.
Mr. B e n j a m i n . I think the defense-industry towns have such a
demand for rooms.
Miss L e n r o o t . We want to consider this in relation to these very
communities. Let us pass on to housekeeper service. Miss Batjer, do
you want to tell us about that?
Miss B a t j e r . I think for the benefit of the people in the room who
may not be familiar with the Work Projects Administration housekeeping-aides program I will give a broad statement as to how it
operates and I shall be very glad to answer questions specifically re
lated to the program. It operates rather extensively on a State-wide
basis in 46 States, and on June 30 employed 37,000 workers. That
does not include the supervisory personnel of approximately 500;
most of these are home economists, some are nurses, and a few are
drawn from other professions.
The program provides service for about 65,000 families a month.
This figure tells you that even though it operates in 46 States the
problem is not anywhere near met, with 37,000 housekeeping aides,
because the period of service ranges all the way from 1 week to an
average of 4 or 5 weeks, and in the motherless homes it extends over
much longer periods of time. So we haven’t scratched the surface
with the housekeeping service, of course. Housekeeping aides are
assigned to homes which are known to the department of public
welfare or other social agencies; they are assigned to the needy
families, of course, low-income families, borderline families where
acute emergency exists. For the most part those housekeeping aides
work in homes where the mother is not employed. However, when
the mother is the main wage earner for the family and has an older
daughter or an aunt or a grandmother or someone else who is able
to take care of the children during the mother’s working day, we are

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

in that home only when an acute emergency exists—if a couple of
the children are sick or if the mother is called away because of a
death in the next town, or something of the sort. So we provide
service only to the needy families, but there are many borderline
families with emergency needs who are referred to us by co-sponsoring
groups. The project for the most part is sponsored by the State
Department of Public Welfare, the local sponsor being, of course,
the local department of welfare, and the co-sponsors the social agen
cies operating within the community.
Those referrals are accepted by our project supervisor locally as
they come in and are served insofar as we have personnel available.
There are times when the need for the service far exceeds the person
nel that we have, because of epidemics and things of the sort. Winter
need is much greater, of course, than that of other seasons. The
emergency is usually an illness.
Miss L enroot. In the defense areas where the problems of employ
ment of women for defense purposes will be likely to become acute
you would have great difficulty in having a supply of housekeeping
aides, would you not ?
Miss B atjer . As Dr. Langdon pointed out this morning, our
program has been curtailed. However, some of the community
service programs have not been curtailed at all; they have even been
expanded because of their bearing on the defense situation. In some
of the States the housekeeping-aide and school-lunch programs have
been given a certain amount of priority along with the nurseryschool programs. I was in Michigan the other day, Miss White, and
learned there that the administrator had designated those programs
as “untouchables,” meaning that they were not taking any of the
quota reductions that some of the other programs were taking. Of
course in some sections of the country they have been given greater
preference and priority than in other sections.
The housekeeping-aide service we think has done a great deal, not
only in relieving the immediate emergency that exists, but in keeping
the house clean and children going to school cleaner and better fed
because there is someone to prepare the meals. The person who is
ill gets elementary care of the sick. There is no nursing done because
housekeeping aides are unskilled workers who receive in-service train
ing periods of 1 day a week; they work 4 days days and are trained
1 day. That is in addition to their preservice training or induction
training, which is from 2 to 5 days, depending upon the organization
and the community and the facilities the sponsor sets up for
training.
We think the long-range value of the service is very great.
In fact, sanitation standards are generally raised, nutrition standards
sometimes are raised, the physical care of the children is certainly
improved, and we think there is a definite improvement in family
relationships because when the house is clean and the meals are
prepared, obviously members of the family are going to be happier
about it. I cannot give you the figure on the number of families
of those 65,000 for whom we provide service monthly in which the
mother is working, but in a number of instances we do provide
emergency service in homes where the mother is employed and where
there would be no adult to care for the children.

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CONFERENCE----DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Miss L enroot. Y ou wouldn’t be giving full-time care, then; they
work only 4 days a week?
Miss B atjer . Service is on a 6-hour basis and there are many
problems that arise for the local sponsor. In the motherless homes
we stagger service in some instances, and give 12-hour service on
a two-shift basis.
Miss L enroot. Y ou could do that?
Miss B atjer . We do that in rare emergencies. The motherless
home, we feel, is the place where we can make that sort of adjust
ment. Sometimes in other acute emergencies the aides are staggered,
but we have limited personnel, with approximately 30,000 aides
employed on a continuing basis.
Miss L enroot. The school program is closely related to this; if the
children are given a lunch at school it helps.
Miss B atjer. Yes, from the nutrition angle, when you think of
our nursery-school program, as Dr. Langdon has outlined it, and the
fact that the children in the preschool group are getting their noon
day meal. Even before they get to nursery school in some instances
they are getting better food because there is a Work Projects Ad
ministration housekeeping aide in the home during the time of
emergency. Those same children are carried on through the schoollunch program, so I think the nutrition angle of the program is a
very important contribution to the whole development of child
welfare.
Dr. E liot. I think it might be stated that some time ago a sub
committee of the Advisory Nutrition Committee recommended that
free school lunches should be served in all schools.
Miss B atjer . I don’t think we are alone in advocating that, Dr.
Eliot. I am meeting that attitude more and more as I go out into
the field, working in the States. More and more I think people are
beginning to accept a new philosophy concerning that problem. I
will be glad to answer any questions on the program, Miss Lenroot.
Mr. H opkirk . May X ask if Miss Batjer finds that the housekeep
ing aides are somewhat older groups who may be less employable
than women who would be drawn into industry, and is the program
for that reason possibly a little more of a resource to us in the future ?
Miss B atjer . The average age of our Work Projects Administra
tion housekeeping aide is over 45, and many of them are much older
than that. As Dr. Langdon pointed out this morning, our labor is
not mobile, so the labor may be in one spot and defense industry in
another spot, and that makes a difference, of course, in the operation
of our various programs.
Miss N eustaedter. The program is much too small, is it not, Miss
Batjer, to meet the needs now?
Miss B atjer. I t is much too small. We are planning in many
instances to enrich the service and expand it by the use of volunteers,
the lay group, to supplement our supervisory group in which we have
approximately 500, which isn’t enough. Then we feel there are a
number of services that the volunteer group can give to these fam
ilies. For instance, we are requested many times by the sponsoring
agencies to furnish services to the families which we are not per
mitted to give, such as taking small children to clinics, for instance.
The Work Projects Administration housekeeping aide is not per-

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

mitted to leave her project site, which is the home she is working in;
too many things can happen en route to the clinic with a small child.
She is not permitted to take an old person to the park, if she is
serving an aged home or one where there is chronic illness. I must
say all our service is not given around acute emergency because
within the past year and a half we have been able to give the service
to chronically ill and aged persons.
New York City has had a project for that purpose since the be
ginning of our program, but that was over and above the type of op
eration that we had in other sections of the country. So we think
there are volunteer groups—all the women who want to drive ambu
lances—many of whom would be interested in driving their auto
mobiles to a children’s clinic, to take mothers to clinics. And we
think that where a family has no one to purchase the food supply and
it is not possible for our housekeeping aides to use the family’s food
stamps to go to the corner grocery store, although they are not actu
ally handling cash, there are workers who would be interested in do
ing that service for the families. We can see many uses for volun
teer workers in enriching the program, and some ways of expanding
the program. For instance, a number of women who have been em
ployed on this program as housekeeping aides have been absorbed in
private employment. Others have not been taken back after their 18
months’ employment period has expired. We think many thousands
of women will be giving their services—they have been contacted in
many of the communities, especially the smaller communities; they
will come in for their training and give the same tvpe of service that
women did when they were being paid for it as Work Projects Ad
ministration housekeeping aides.
So we have the worker level we are drawing from, and the super
visory group, the lay professional group I mentioned a while ago.
We have plans now to expand the program in all the States; even
though we have reduced personnel, the expansion can be brought
about through these volunteer workers.
Miss L enroot. Miss Hanna, to what extent are housekeeping-aide
services not related to Work Projects Administration expanding?
Miss H a n n a . Practically every month or so we have a new agency.
We have gotten a directory together of about 40 agencies—they are
all social agencies, familv and children’s agencies, primarily—that
are giving what they call supervised homemaker service, service to
children of motherless families, or as Miss Batjer says, in cases of
emergency.
Miss L enroot. D o you think many of them are giving service to
families where the mother is employed ?
Miss H a n n a . I doubt it very much.
Miss L enroot. It seems to me that if we are thinking of the school
child—and we must think of him as well as of the preschool child-—in
the home problem, no matter how much we can look to recreational
programs and a great variety of community resources, in many in
stances you have to have some person either in the home or serving a
small group who will furnish the underpinning for the child-care pro
gram, so that if anything hanpens to prevent the child from going
to a certain place at a certain hour, or if the schedule doesn’t work or
isn’t complete, there would be somebody in the home.

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Of course there is a possibility of expanding the child-care center
to take older children. I think that there has been practically no
suggestion of a day nursery or day center that would take children
above the age of 12. Usually the age is much younger, is it not, Miss
Clark ?
Miss C lark . About 10 is the top age; about one-fifth of the chil
dren in day nurseries are of school age.
Miss L enroot. S o you have this large number of children for whom
the housekeeper plan might offer a method. Would any of you think
that it was something that had possibilities for exploration, beyond
what Miss Batjer has reported?
Miss W hite . Your children over 10 can usually be accommodated
after school in recreation centers better than those under 10. I think
they need a little different type of supervision, but it seems to me the
recreational centers ought to do something toward providing care.
If the child is ill that is another thing.
Miss V erry. It does seem to me that if you think practically about
taking one woman, the mother, out of the home and putting another
woman, a housekeeper, into the house that you really aren’t accom
plishing much in social welfare. I don’t see it practically. I see the
housekeeper where the mother is sick, or in some emergency.
Miss L enroot. I t does seem ludicrous from the point of view of
social welfare. However, from the point of view of the defense
program if you have women who have been skilled workers and are
drawn back into industry we may have a situation, even though many
of us would decry it, where women are going back to work, and there
may be other women in the community who could give a type of
homemaker service.
Miss V erry. Undoubtedly that would be true in some of these
special areas. The day-nursery section in Chicago reported at their
last meeting that they had had a lot of additional applications for
day-nursery care—not, they thought, from mothers going to work for
the first time but from mothers who had worked right along but now
couldn’t get girls to take care of their children.
Miss L enroot. We must bear in mind that it isn’t only the care of
the child but the relief to the mother in the operation of the house
hold that the homemaker affords.
Dr. A ldrich . It would be better to have the women over 45 making
shells and the mothers taking care of their own babies.
Miss N eustaedter. There are women who are better at making
shells than taking care of their babies; they do exist.
Miss L enroot. That is something, I suppose, to be explored further.
Miss B atjer . There is one more thing I should like to add con
cerning this housekeeping-aide program. We have, as of July 1, a
new phase of the program that is being placed in operation in several
of the States. I t won’t develop rapidly; we don’t want it to. We
felt a great need, as our sponsors have felt, for a follow-up service
for these families that receive the housekeeping-aide service. In
other words, we give service for a period of 3 or 4 weeks and we feel
that so much has been gained for the family. Then the service is
withdrawn because the emergency has ended. Our sponsor has
wanted, and we have, too, to develop a type of follow-up service to
augment the service carried on during the emergency.

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 19 4 1 ----AFTERNOON SESSION

So we have an informational assistance service now that permits
the homemaker who has received the service to be referred to the
housekeeping-aide training center by the sponsor or the co-sponsoring
agency for what we call a housekeeping clinic. Her special problem
may be that she cannot follow out a doctor’s dietary sheet. For
instance, suppose she has a couple of diabetics in her family; the
doctor has given her a dietary sheet and she cannot follow it. There
may be a dozen or two dozen women in the community or metro
politan area who have that same problem, and they are referred to
the project to get specific help on carrying out that special dietary
plan. Housekeeping aides can be assigned to their homes to care for
the house and children while they are in receiving the informational
assistance in regard to some special problem.
Miss L enroot. N ow what about this question of after-school
leisure-time programs and vacation programs, the possibility of using
the school for care of children after school hours or of developing
various resources in a community? I am sorry Miss Goodykoontz
isn’t here. I know it is something she is very much interested in and
she has suggested that there might be a special effort to indicate the
importance of consideration of that type of thing by school principals
and school superintendents. Mr. Light, how much will that be pos
sible in Connecticut?
Mr. L ight . It is growing all the time. One school this year has
been operating playgrounds in connection with its public-park system
for children, right straight through. It began in the spring and
operated after school hours. This coming year and possibly before
the season closes this year, it expects to use the school building for
opening up the gymnasium and cafeteria, and so forth, so as to
provide a full program inside as well as outside.
Miss L enroot. D o you think it would be worth while to try this fall
to get some special publicity to school people on this problem ?
Mr. L ight . I think it decidedly would be.
Miss N eustaedter. I have seen this work very successfully with a
few professionally trained people and a group of Work Projects
Administration helpers. Originally people who had progressive edu
cation headed the thing up, and it has worked extremely well.
Miss L enroot. Miss Goodykoontz also, in conversation with me,
raised the question of whether we couldn’t turn a good deal of volun
tary effort into the after-school program as well as into some of these
other programs, provided there is proper leadership.
Mr. L ight . I would like to supplement one other thing before we
leave it. I don’t think that any solution has been suggested here for
the problem of the child of 10 to 16 years of age. The State Youth
Council in Connecticut has been studying the problem for some 2 or
3 years, as it has grown in acuteness. It is worse now; the institutions
receiving delinquents have expanded rapidly in Connecticut. The
report was the other day that most of the increases have come from
families with working mothers. I don’t know whether that is correct
or not; but they have undertaken or recommended the organization
in the local communities of youth councils for the purpose of expand
ing the facilities for taking care of those children. The age group
just above was contemplated by the Child Center Committee.

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

Miss L e n r o o t . I think it is perfectly true that we need to discuss
this problem of the older child for a long time. Probably one of the
committees that should be set up following this meeting should give
special consideration to that age group. I should like to ask Mr. Ben
jamin whether councils of social agencies and private recreational
organizations might not have a very definite contribution to make in
this phase of the program.
Mr. B e n j a m i n . Very definitely so; I put the word imperative on my
outline here.
Miss L e n r o o t . Private character-building and recreational agencies
could give consideration to this special problem in relation to the com
munity plan.
Mr. B e n j a m i n . We welcome that opportunity.
Miss L e n r o o t . Miss Harper, do you feel that it is true in the YWCA,
for example?
Miss H arper. I do.
Miss L e n r o o t . I think that will have to be explored.
I thought we might have a committee on the care of young children
which might include group care and the more informal type of home
and neighborhood care of young children. Then we might have a com
mittee dealing with this older group from 10 to 15, roughly speaking,
that would include consideration of the vacation and day camps and
the school recreation and leisure-time interests.
I understand that Mrs. Cunningham has been getting some returns
of a very interesting survey that has been made in Hartford and I
wonder if we could have a report on that at this time.
Mrs. C u n n i n g h a m . We have been trying to find out how many
children in Hartford are in need of day care at the present time.
We have used a questionnaire which has been distributed through the
social agencies, the playgrounds run by the Park Department, the
labor unions, the Connecticut State Employment Service, and a paid
ad in the newspaper. About 6,800 questionnaires were distributed.
Our returns amounted to 194, and there were 189 we could tabulate.
These showed 84 mothers who were not working but planned to go
to work if care could be provided for their 195 children. There were
105 mothers who replied with “Actually working at the present time.”
Of that 105 we found that 35 had some plan for day care which was
satisfactory to them and were not interested in further help. That
left 70 mothers actually working at the present time who had a total
of 145 children for whom they were interested in day care. That
included 67 children who were under 6, and 76 children 6’ to 14 years
of age.
.
,
By pursuing further what was happening to the children at the
present time we found that 28 children are in some kind of program
which is not wholly satisfactory to the mother. For instance, some
were in institutions or foster homes and the mother said she preferred
to have them at home with day care.
Miss L e n r o o t . Had they been placed in institutions just recently?
Mrs. C u n n i n g h a m . There may be a good many factors other than
the employment of mothers which would make for institutionalization
or placement away from the family. We find that in planning for
this group at the present time we will have to find places for 117
children, and it is possible our existing agencies can’t absorb them.

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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1941— AFTERNOON SESSION

We know that our existing agencies can’t absorb the 195 children of
mothers planning to go to work.
Miss L enroot. Mr. Light, if members of the group wish informa
tion about how these surveys are being conducted and how your work
is organized in Connecticut, would copies of forms used be available
if they would write to you ? Undoubtedly other cities would like to
know how you have gone about this. You have Mr. Light’s address,
so if you want further information about the forms used and the
methods of these exploratory surveys in Connecticut I am sure they
can be provided.

Appointment of Conference Committees
Miss L enroot. Before we adjourn I should like to name a com
mittee on a plan of committee work for carrying on this sort of dis
cussion. I should like to ask Miss Clark to be chairman of that
committee. The other members, who are asked to meet with Miss
Clark immediately on adjournment of this meeting, are Dr. Aldrich,
Dr. Chamberlain, Mrs. Cunningham, Miss Eliot, Dr. Goodykoontz,
Mr. Light, Dr. Stanley, and Miss Verry.
I am asking Mr. Benjamin to be chairman of a second committee
on statement of principles, the following to be members of the com
mittee: Miss Abbott, Miss Anderson, Miss Bogue, Miss Christman,
Miss Harper, Dr. Langdon, Miss Moore, Miss Neustaedter, and Miss
White.

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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Friday, August i, 1941 — Morning Session

Miss L e n r o o t . The two committees appointed yesterday have been
hard at work and their reports are now ready.

Reports Adopted by the Conference
The report of the Committee on Statement of Principles was pre
sented by the chairman, Paul L. Benjamin. Adoption of the report
was moved and seconded. After detailed discussion and revision of
the report the following statement was adopted:
STA TEM EN T OF PR IN CIP LES

We recognize the extreme importance of national defense and the necessity of
maintaining the democratic way of life which makes successful defense impera
tive. Toward this end we believe that every effort should be made to safeguard
home life, to strengthen family relationships, and to give parents a direct op
portunity to participate in community planning.
.. .
1.
In this period when the work of women is needed as an essential part of
the defense program it is more than ever a public responsibility to provide ap
propriate care of children while mothers are at work.
2 The conference group on the ’’Provision Needed for Day-Time Care of
Children of Working Mothers” urges that every effort be made to maintain
standards that have been achieved relating to the employment of working women
and to extend these standards where they fail to provide safeguards generally
recognized as essential; and recommends that a joint meeting of the Labor Ad
visory Committee of the Women’s Bureau and a committee representing this
group be held in the near future to discuss how these standards may be main
tained and extended.
'
.
,
,.
3. The welfare of mothers and children should be given due consideration at
every point in the development of employment policies relating to national de
fense. Mothers who remain at home to provide care for children are perform
ing an essential patriotic service in the defense program.
4. Advance information concerning plans for increased employment of women
should be made available to community agencies in order that parents, public
and private agencies, schools, and industry nay plan togther for the care and
protection of children.
5 Working mothers who cannot make arrangements for adequate care of
their children by relatives or friends must rely upon nurseries, child centers,
and other forms of community day care. Community plans for the care and
protection of children of working mothers should include as many of the forms
of day care as are required to meet needs of children of all ages for whom such
provision should be made. These activities should be integrated with the whole
community program for public and private family assistance, social services to
children, health protection, education,‘and recreation.
Included in such plans individual counseling service provided as part of a
unified community program should be available for mothers planning to enter
employment or already employed. The object of this service is to assist parents
in making plans which will safeguard family life and make adequate provision
for the health and welfare of parents and children.
6.
Nursery schools, nursery centers, and cooperative nursery groups should
be developed as community services, under the auspices of public or parochial
schools, welfare departments, or other community agencies. They should not
be located in industrial plants or limited to children of mothers employed in par-

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1941— MORNING SESSION

ticular establishments. Infants should be given individual care, preferably in
their own homes and by their own mothers.
7. The standards of personnel, equipment, procedure, and care generally rec
ognized as acceptable by health, educational, and social organizations should ap
ply equally to all types of nursery schools and day-care centers.
8. Other forms of care, such as day care in foster homes, housekeeper serv
ice, day camps and vacation camps, leisure-time and after-school programs, and
other types of service which may be developed, should be planned and conduct
ed as part of a comprehensive community program. All such programs should
be conducted in accordance with recognized standards which will assure quali
fied personnel and adequate service.
9. Federal and State agencies and National organizations have a continuing
responsibility for exerting leadership in upholding standards of child care.
These agencies have the further responsibility of stimulating action by local
communities and assisting them in their efforts to meet the increased demands
for care and protection of children which have grown out of or have been aug
mented by the expansion of defense activities.
10. The development of the services needed to promote this program will re
quire greatly increased personnel. We therefore recommend that careful plans
be made for the selection, training, and supervision of competent workers in ac
cordance with established standards.

The report of the Committee on Plan of Committee Work was
presented by the chairman of the committee, Elizabeth W. Clark.
Adoption of the report was moved and seconded. After discussion
and amendment the report was adopted in the following form :
P LA N OF COMMITTEE WORK

After considering the relation of the present problem of day care of children
of working mothers to other problems in connection with children in the
present emergency, such as exploitation of child labor, mental hygiene, health,
the possible evacuation of children and the aftermath of the emergency situa
tion and other problems, the committee recommended that an over-all com
mittee be organized to cover all phases of child care in defense.
The committee further recommended that a committee on care of children
of working mothers be organized, with an executive committee which should
include the chairman of the following subcommittees:
1. Subcommittee on Federal-State Responsibility.
This subcommittee would be concerned with the coordination of services
on the Federal and State levels, and with interpretation, information, and
financing of services.
2. Subcommittee on Community Planning for Day Care.
This subcommittee would be responsible for developing and advising as to
plans for local community organization.
3. Subcommittee on Standards and Services for Day Care.
This subcommittee might wish to set up further subcommittees concerned
with children under 2, children 2 to 6, and children 6 to 16, or to divide on
some other basis.
4. Subcommittee on Recruiting and Training of Personnel.
This subcommittee would be concerned with both professional and volunteer
workers.
The committee suggests that the membership of these subcommittees include
broad geographic representation; that liaison persons relate their work to
the work of the Office of the Coordinator of Health, Welfare, and Related
Defense Activities, the Oflice of Civilian Defense, and committees established
in connection with these offices.

Discussion of Next Steps in Planning
Miss B o g u e . I think that we all feel a tremendous lift and gain
in objective as a result of this conference, and I wonder if we might
have a little discussion as to how these splendid principles can be
441845°— 42----- 6

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

implemented so that we can really get under way with them. We
have the plan for setting up committees, but couldn’t some plan be
worked through, or is there machinery that can be developed,
whereby the fine programs of the Work Projects Administration on
family life and the Children’s Bureau and possibly educational
services can get together? Is there any way by which this group
could stimulate their getting under way on the administrative prob
lems of helping communities and States in actually setting these
things up? We are in a defense emergency and the need is so
very urgent. Could we have a little discussion of that ?
Miss L enroot. Miss Bogue raises a question as to what the next
steps are and how some of these things could be implemented, Miss
Clark.
Miss C lark . I was thinking about this, too, wondering if it was
possible to request, for instance, the Children’s Bureau to under
take some project that would set all this in motion. I t seems too
bad to go home and put it all in a file and not be sure that we have
taken some steps ahead.
Miss L enroot. I s there any other discussion ?
Miss W h it e . The agencies that are concerned, it seems to me,
are the Children’s Bureau itself, the Office of Education, and this
program in the Work Projects Administration. Could we ask that
those people sit down together and formulate a definite recommenda
tion to the Coordinator?
Mr. B e n j a m in . I would make the following tentative suggestion:
The conference recommends that in view of the imperative necessity for utiliz
ing the experience of the Work Projects Adiminstration family-life program and
building upon this experience in the development of adequate community plans
and services for the care of children whose mothers are employed because of
demands for labor growing out of the defense emergency, the Children’s Bureau,
the Office of Education, and the Work Projects Administration jointly explore
the ways by which extended services may be developed.

Miss L enroot . Does that meet what you have in mind, Miss White ?
Miss W h it e . Yes.
Motion for adoption was made and seconded.
Miss L enroot. The motion is now before us for discussion. Dr. Langdon, the Works Projects Administration and the Office of Education
and the Children’s Bureau are mentioned in this motion. I assume
that we would be very glad to explore together the possibilities of co
operation.
Dr. L angdon . I am sure we would be very glad to.
Miss L enroot. Miss Moore, you are the only representative present
of the Office of Education.
Miss M oore. I am sure Miss Goodykoontz would do it.
Miss L enroot . The Children’s Bureau would be very glad to join
with the Office of Education and the Work Projects Administration in
considering what might be worked out.
Mr. H opk irk . I would like to add that some of us are not so familiar
with the operation of the Government—at least I am somewhat un
familiar with it, and I am wondering if you have to look ahead to budg
eting an actual program on this line. Does that call for any short
cuts, or would anything other than this sort of plan for that reason
seem to be necessary?

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 19 4 1 — MORNING SESSION

Miss L enrott. I presume exploration of the possibilities would have
to be centered around wh re the money could be found to do something.
Mr. L ight . I would like to suggest that States be represented in
that group.
Miss N eustaedter. In line with Mr. Hopkirk’s point, you take a
community that has nothing, where an industry is going up and the
children are just sitting around, we recommend that initiative be taken
in supplying resources there for the care of the children, but just
specifically what is going to happen ? What bridges the gap between
us and the recommendation that there be exploration ? And this com
munity that is perhaps going to grow through the summer very fast,
does it ask for help or is some kind of survey to be made ?
Miss L enroot. I suppose this really brings us to the question of what
the present Federal resources are for cooperation with the States and
with local communities. Now in this committee set-up that we have
adopted there is a subcommittee on Federal-State responsibility, and
I presume that some of this exploration would be carried on in relation
to the work of the subcommittee. I presume that the present resources
for work of this kind, which do not by any means cover the need,
would include the Work Projects Administration family-life program,
such help as is available from the National Youth Administration, and
the resources of the child-welfare-service workers in communities
where they exist. Would the Office of Education have resources. Miss
Moore ?
Miss M oore. Yes. Of course the educational resources are always
local, but the Office of Education is cooperating with the Federal
Works Agency in determining the need for additional educational
facilities in those places, of which there are many, where the local
people simply cannot provide them. That is under way. I t means
buildings, teaching personnel, and other maintenance costs.
Miss L enroot. And of course the extent to which you can use
schools for after-school programs depends upon the resources of
the schools.
M iss M oore. I believe th a t w ould follow .
Miss L enroot. On the health side we have child-health services,
but none of these resources of the Federal Government has been par
ticularly channeled toward the care of the children of working moth
ers, except through the Work Projects Administration. There are
no other resources directly channeled toward this problem, except the
resources you are trying to develop now, Dr. Langdon?
Dr. L angdon. That is true, and I could hardly call those being
channeled. It is merely a matter of trying to be a stop-gap until
something can be channeled.
Miss L enroot. Until now you have been dealing mainly with fam
ilies where the mothers are not employed?
Dr. L angdon . I should say probably half and half, because very
often the mother has a priority of assignment for Work Projects
Administration employment, but we feel that what we are doing now
in the defense areas, or for the children of working mothers, is just
trying to do something until something more organized and unified
gets under way, because we can’t stand by and refuse when we can
do anything. But I don’t think you could call it part of a plan.
We are trying to be as intelligent as we can in fitting into com
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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

munity plans, but our program certainly is no part of a definite
over-all plan.
Miss N eustaedter. I s there any way of making communities aware
of the implication of what is happening? Is there any possibility
that the Children’s Bureau could do anything about it ?
Miss L enrgot. There is something we can do in publicity and in
relationship with the State agencies that we work with, and through
the State agencies to the local units.
Miss C lark . A good many of us must be, as our organization is, try
ing to advise local communities which choice to make out of many
possibilities. There must be some way’ of evoking common agree
ments and cooperation so we do not compete or conflict when the
job is so vast.
Mr. L ight . I am wondering whether there are any Federal funds
that could be devoted to the maintenance of a competent supervisor
in connection with some appropriate State agency to advise and
assist these communities in these different States. That might be a
way of getting at some of the problems.
Miss L enroot. Certainly there is needed service from the State
level and service from the Federal level, and both of those joining
in a cooperative program to assist local communities in the variety
of planning which is needed.
Mr. L ight . We have run into that need already in Connecticut.
Now members of the committee have volunteered their services to some
extent, but of course that is very limited, and we have no way of
transporting them around the State when they are needed.
Miss L enroot. I would take it, Mr. Benjamin and Miss White
and Miss Clark, that the functions of this group which have been
suggested would include the exploration of all avenues of service,
keeping very much in mind the relation of the State agencies as well
as the Federal departments to the local problem and having in mind
the experience of the Work Projects Administration, as has been
indicated, because that is the program which so far more than any
other is directly concentrating on some of these problems, though
some of the other programs could be used to develop an over-all
community plan.
I should think that Mr. Light’s point is a good one and that we
might want to consult with representatives of State agencies because
we could talk with one or two people who have seen this from the
point of view of the State. I should think it would be very helpful.
Mr. L ight . I am wondering now how you are going to differentiate
between the functions of this group and functions of the subcom
mittee on Federal-State responsibility.
Miss W h ite . I think that is a different committee, Mr. Light.
We are really asking people directly in the Government to sit down
together and see what they can do about financing channels which
would furnish support and authorization for this work.
Miss L enroot. The situation we find ourselves in is that there is
no one agency of the Federal Government that can serve the whole
field. I t must be a cooperative effort.
Miss W h ite . Y ou are the ones who have to explore the channels,
because outside people couldn’t do it.

Miss L enroot. That is right. Is there further discussion?

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. FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1941— MORNING SESSION

Mr. B e n ja m in . I w ill read th e statem ent as am ended:
The conference recommends that in view of the imperative necessity for
utilizing the experiences of the Work Projects Administration family-life pro
gram and building upon this experience in the development of adequate com
munity plans and services for the care of children whose mothers are employed
because of demands for labor growing out of the defense emergency, the Chil
dren’s Bureau, the Office of Education, and the Work Projects Administration,
in consultation with representatives of State agencies, jointly explore the ways
by which extended services may be developed.

The statement, as amended, was adopted.
Miss B ogue. Before we adjourn perhaps it is in order for this
group to express its appreciation to the Children’s Bureau for calling
the conference.
Miss L enroot. Thank you, Miss Bogue. If there is no other busi
ness the meeting is adjourned.

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Appendix A.—Material Submitted to the Conference as a
Basis for Discussion
T E N T A T IV E ST A TEM EN T OF P R E M ISE S
T h e fo llo w in g g e n e r a l p r e m is e s a r e p r o p o s e d a s a b a s is f o r d is c u s s io n o f sp eciflo
to p ic s :

1. The welfare of mothers and children should be given due consideration
in the development of employment policies relating to national defense. At
the present time so far as possible in recruiting new employees priority should
be given to those who do not have responsibilities for the care of young children,
inasmuch as employment of mothers of young children presents many problems
which require community planning, energy, and expenditures which might well
go into other aspects of the defense program.
2. Individual counseling service should be available for mothers planning to
enter employment or already employed who desire such service. The object of
this service should be to assure proper consideration for the health and welfare
of the mother and children.
3. When mothers are employed in industrial or other occupations, whether
in normal times or in times of stress, it is of primary importance that the
necessary safeguards be provided for their children. Working mothers who
cannot make adequate arrangements for care of their children by relatives or
friends must rely upon nurseries, child centers, and other forms of community
day-time care. Such provisions are an essential part of a community program
for child welfare, in normal times as well as in times of emergency, in all
communities where considerable numbers of mothers are employed outside the
home, and should be developed upon a foundation of recognized standards of
health protection, child care and training, and social service.
4. Provision of day-time care for children of working mothers involves service
to parents with an income. Such care should be provided through utilizing all
available educational and recreational services of the community and supple
menting such services as required, with financial contributions by the parents
toward the cost of supplementary care.
5. Community plans for the care and protection of children of working mothers
should include as many of the forms of day-time care as are required to meet
needs of children of all ages for whom such provision should be made. These
activities should be integrated with the whole community program for public
and private family assistance, social services to children, health protection,
education, and recreation. In each community there should be a central organi
zation to which working mothers could go for advice and help in making plans
for their children.
SU G G ESTED TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What problems are likely to arise in relation to the employment of mothers
of children of preschool or of school age in communities affected by the defense
program?
2. As the situation now appears in such communities, how adequate are the
facilities which can be utilized to meet these problems?
3. What guidance and leadership should be given by the Federal Government
to States and communities in relation to this problem?
4. What should be the place of the following types of care in a community
plan for meeting the needs of children of working mothers:
Nursery schools.
Day nurseries.
Under private agency auspices.
In public or parochial schools.
81

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CONFERENCE— DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS

In industrial establishments.
In housing projects.
Under other auspices.
Day care in foster-family homes.
Housekeeper service.
Day camps and vacation camps.
After-school and vacation leisure-time programs.
Other methods now utilized or which should be developed.
a . Which of these types of care are essential in a community program?
h What redefinitions of functions and services are needed.
c. How can the community develop the types of care needed? What agencies
in the community should exercise responsibility for health, welfare, and educa
tion’ What financial arrangements can be made for these services.
d What are the responsibilities of the State departments of health, welfare,
and education in relation to the community programs?
e. How can activities planned in relation to the defense emergency be related
to services in this field which are needed in normal times?
f. What can be done to promote proper standards of care.
5 How can various types of provision for day-time care of children be made
an integral part of a total community program for families and children?
6 What arrangements can be made for care in small communities where
general community facilities are extremely limited?
7. How can individual family counseling service be developed, which will
route families to the proper community facility for day-time care of children
or for other forms of service which may be needed?
. . .
.
.
8 What policies might be developed with the cooperation of local employment
agencies or industries which would make it unnecessary for mothers with small
children to do night work and which would provide work shifts for such women
compatible with community programs for care of children, and make it possible
for women to be employed in establishments near their own homes or near
facilities for the day-time care of children?

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Appendix B.—Members of Discussion Group
Edith Abbott, Dean, School of Social Service Administration, University of
Chicago, Chicago, 111.
C. Anderson Aldrich, M. D., Professor of Pediatrics, Northwestern University
Medical School, Winnetka, 111.
Mary Anderson, Director, Women’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor,
•Washington, D. C.
Mary Irene Atkinson, Director, Child Welfare Division, Children’s Bureau
U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Katherine M. Bain, M. D., Director, Division of Research in Child Develop
ment, Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Margaret Batjer, Chief, Home Economics Projects Section, Community Service
Programs, Work Projects Administration, Federal Works Agency, Washington,
D. 0«
N p^.ul L- Benjamin, Executive Secretary, Council of Social Agencies, Buffalo,
Mary L. Bogue, Madison, Conn.
^ Chamberiain, M. D., Consulting Psychiatrist and Chief of Division of
Child Welfare Services, State Department of Social Welfare, Sacramento, Calif.
Elisabeth Christman, Secretary, National Women’s Trade Union League of
America, Washington, D. C.
Ewan Clague, Director, Bureau of Employment Security, Social Security
W ar?)
Security Agency, Washington, D. C. (Represented by Raymond
Elizabeth Woodruff Clark, Executive Director, National Association of Dav
Nurseries, New York, N. Y.
,
Martha L. Clifford, M. D., Director, Bureau of Child Hygiene, State Depart
ment of Health, Hartford, Conn. (Represented by Martha A. O’Malley, M. D.)
Abigail A. Eliot, Director, Nursery Training School of Boston, Boston, Mass.
Martha M. Eliot, M. D., Associate Chief, Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department
of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Anita J. Faatz, Assistant Director, State Department of Public Welfare
Baltimore, Md.
’
Arnold Gesell, M. D., Director, Clinic of Child Development, School of Medi
cine, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Christine Giass, Secretary and Treasurer, National Association for Nursery
Education, Bethesda, Md.
Bess Goodykoontz, Assistant Commissioner, U. S. Office of Education Federal
Security Agency, Washington, D. C.
/
Agnes K. Hanna, Director, Social Service Division, Children’s Bureau U S
Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
’ ‘
Elsie Harper, Executive Secretary, National Public Affairs Committee Na
tional Board of the Y. W. C. A., New York, N. Y.
’
Jane M. Hoey, Director, Bureau of Public Assistance, Social Security Board
Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C. (Represented by Mrs. Lucille
Smith.)
Anne Sarachon Hooley, Administrator in Charge of Women’s Division,
R ita F le m 'ath°llC Community Service> Washington, D. C. (Represented by
New°York N Y ^ ’ Executive Director- G h m Welfare League of America,
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CONFERENCE--- DAY CARE, CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS'

Helen Jeter, Secretary, Family Security Advisory Committee, Office of
Coordinator of Health, Welfare, and Related Defense Activities, Washington,
D. C.
Mrs. Marie Dresden Lane, Chief, Service Projects Section, National Youth
Administration, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C. (Represented by
Mrs. Louise S. Givan.)
Grace Langdon, Specialist, Family Life Education, Work Projects Adminis
tration, Federal Works Agency, Washington, D. C.
Katharine F. Lenroot, Chief, Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor,
Washington, D. C.
N. S. Light, Director, Bureau of Supervision, State Department of Educa
tion, Hartford. Conn.
Emma O. Lundberg, Child Welfare Consultant, Children’s Bureau, U. S.
Department of Labor. Washington, D. C.
Beatrice McConnell, Director, Industrial Division, Children’s Bureau, U. S.
Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Col. Frank J. McSherry, Chief, Defense Training Branch, Labor Division,
Office of Production Management, Washington, D. C.
Frieda S. Miller, Industrial Commissioner, State Department of Labor,
New York, N. Y. (Represented by Kate Papert.)
Louise Moore, Special Agent for Women and Girls in Trade and Industrial
Education, U. S. Office of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington,
D. C.
Eleanor Neustaedter, Secretary, Chelsea-Lowell District, Community Service
Society, New York, N. Y.
Ellen C. Potter, M. D., Director of Medicine, State Department of Institu
tions and Agencies, Trenton, N. J. (Represented by Mrs. Elizabeth Morrill.)
Leroy A. Ramsdell, Executive Secretary, Council of Social Agencies, Hart
ford, Conn. (Represented by Mrs. Lucretia Cunningham.)
Charles I. Schottland, Assistant to the Chief, Children’s Bureau, U. S.
Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Louise Stanley, Chief, Bureau of Home Economics, U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
Louise Stitt, Director, Division of Minimum Wage, Women’s Bureau, U. S.
Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.
Charles P. Taft, Assistant Coordinator of Health, Welfare, and Related
Defense Activities, Washington, D. C.
Ethel Verry, Executive Secretary, Chicago Orphan Asylum, Chicago, 111.
Edna Noble White, Director, Merrill-Palmer School, East Detroit, Mich.

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Full text of Proceedings of Conference on Day Care of Children of Working Mothers, with Special Reference to Defense Areas, Held in Washington, D.C., July 31 and August 1, 1941, Bureau Publication No. 281

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