Mary van Kleeck

Mary Abby van Kleeck (June 26, 1883 – June 8, 1972) was an American social scientist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.

Of Dutch descent, van Kleeck was a lifelong New Yorker, with the exception of her undergraduate studies at Smith College in Massachusetts. She began her career as part of the settlement movement, investigating women's labor in New York City. Van Kleeck rose to prominence as director of the Russell Sage Foundation's Department of Industrial Studies, which she led for over 30 years, beginning in 1916. During World War I, van Kleeck was appointed by US President Woodrow Wilson to lead the development of workplace standards for women entering the workforce, becoming the first woman appointed to a position of authority in the American federal government during the war.

After the war, she led the creation of a federal agency to advocate for women in the workforce (the Women's Bureau), before returning to the Sage Foundation and continuing her determined research into labor issues. By the 1930s, van Kleeck had become a socialist, arguing that central planning of economies was the most effective way to protect labor rights. During the Great Depression, she became a prominent left-wing critic of the New Deal and American capitalism, advocating a radical agenda for social reformers and workers. Retiring from the Sage Foundation in 1948, van Kleeck ran for New York State Senate as a member of the American Labor Party, but lost the election and turned her focus to peace activism and nuclear disarmament. As a long-time advocate of planned economies, she became a defender of Soviet-American friendship, leading to suspicion from the powerful anti-communist movement. She died aged 88 in 1972.

Early life

Mary Abby Van Kleeck was born June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York. She was the child of Eliza Mayer of Baltimore On her father's side, she was descended from the Schenck family of Brooklyn. On her mother's side, her grandfather was Charles F. Mayer, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and politician. The youngest of five siblings, including a brother who died in infancy, Van Kleeck was close to her mother, but had a distant relationship with her father, who was often sick when she was young. With a strong reputation for intelligence and force of personality among her classmates, Van Kleeck was the valedictorian of her class at Flushing High School in New York City. She served as president of the SCACW in 1903. Through this organization, she encountered the YWCA, which she remained affiliated with for the remainder of her life. As part of this work, van Kleeck carried out investigations of the enforcement of the labor law governing the workweek (limited to 60 hours at the time, though this provision was frequently ignored by employers).

She also worked for the New York Child Labor Committee and the Consumers League. Van Kleeck also undertook graduate work in social economy at Columbia University during this time. She studied under the experienced labor economist Henry Rogers Seager The organization had been founded by Margaret Olivia Sage to support social activism and Progressive reforms through dedicated scientific research. Mentored and trained by Florence Kelley and Lilian Brandt, prominent older labor activists and social reformers, van Kleeck was hired directly by the Foundation in 1910 to lead its Committee on Women's Work. She was instrumental in the passage of New York laws prohibiting long working hours in 1910 and 1915.

In 1916, van Kleeck persuaded the Foundation to create the Division of Industrial Studies with her as its head. Van Kleeck's department became an organization known for expertise on industry and labor, for training graduate students and for developing new methods of investigation. Its work was characterized by "careful empiricism, collegial review, and cooperation with state and private agencies," according to the historian Guy Alchon. The Remington Arms manufacturing company, criticized by van Kleeck's department in 1916 for providing substandard conditions for its workers, attempted to suppress the resulting report, but was rebuffed by Robert DeForest, the foundation's vice president. During this period, van Kleeck's output of labor studies and other articles was prodigious, and she often worked closely with the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). For instance, she authored an article in the Journal of Political Economy arguing that working girls should be able to access evening school courses without financial barriers, published in May 1915. Van Kleeck also found the time to serve on New York Mayor John P. Mitchel's Committee on Unemployment.

World War I and the Women's Bureau Van Kleeck investigated labor conditions for women in the workforce during World War I, such as these ordnance manufacturers in Pennsylvania.In 1917, the United States entered World War I. By this point, van Kleeck enjoyed "a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation's leading experts on women's employment." As such, she became the first woman in the United States appointed to a position of authority in the federal government since the beginning of the country's involvement in World War I.

The Women in Industry Service group produced a series of reports documenting wage disparities, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination against female workers, conducting investigations in 31 states. Their recommendations were often ignored, and at an October 1918 conference to discuss women's labor organized by van Kleeck, Secretary of Labor William Wilson declined to take action to address wage inequality. Van Kleeck made it a priority to appoint a black woman to the staff of the Women in Industry Service group, working with George Haynes to find a suitable candidate. Eventually, an experienced researcher named Helen Irvin, a graduate of Howard University, was hired from the Red Cross.

In December 1918, the group published a wide-ranging report entitled Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry. The report was later used as the basis for the groundbreaking Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which applied standards to workplaces throughout the country. After the war, van Kleeck's group became the United States Women's Bureau. Van Kleeck wrote the law enabling this transition in June 1920. On July 14, van Kleeck was appointed as the head of the new agency within the Department of Labor. An indefatigable worker, van Kleeck additionally was a trustee of Smith College from 1922 to 1930 and headed up the National Interracial Conference in 1928.

A 1926 profile of van Kleeck in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, focusing on her prodigy with mathematics and statistics, described her as "an unassuming woman who goes about her work in a quiet manner, who does it primarily because she loves it, and who thoroughly enjoys every minute of her existence." In response to the interviewer's description of her statistical reports as "endless labor", van Kleeck replied "Really, I don't feel I've worked an hour in my whole life... It is something I just love to do."

From 1928, she was also active in the International Industrial Relations Institute, which she co-led with Mary (Mikie) Fleddérus. The next year, she was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Van Kleeck also led the formation of the American Association of Social Workers, which later merged into the National Association of Social Workers. Although appointed to the Federal Advisory Council of the New Deal U.S. Employment Service, she resigned in protest after one day due to her belief that the National Recovery Administration was not sufficiently supportive of unions. Van Kleeck continued to conduct labor studies and write in favor of socialist policies. Her book Miners and Management, published in 1934, was based on a study of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, and argued that all industry should be socialized. Her next book, Creative America, was published in 1936 and opposed continued private control of the means of production, reception at the National Conference of Social Work (NCSW) meeting in 1934. There, she presented her paper "Our Illusions Regarding Government", arguing that social reformers must not allow themselves to be corrupted by a government controlled by capital and big business, which would "tend to protect property rights rather than human rights".

Van Kleeck's speech, delivered to a packed crowd of 1500 in a room designed for 500, was so well-received that she received the conference's top award for an outstanding paper, and was asked to present the paper again to meet the high demand from attendees to hear her work. One journalist wrote: Never in a long experience of conferences has this observer witnessed such a prolonged ovation... to her wearied and discouraged colleagues in social work she brought a new hope and dream when they had ceased to hope and dream, and she came in the person of an undeniable leader, clothed with the courage for a good fight. The effect on her hearers was electric.— Gertrude Springer writing in The Survey, June 1934 This reaction alarmed more conservative members of the NCSW and led its president, William Hodson, to criticize van Kleeck's radicalism and opposition to the New Deal at the organization's annual banquet. She was affiliated with the ACLU from 1935 until 1940, when she resigned in protest after the ACLU expelled Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, one of its own founders, for belonging to the Communist Party.

Retirement Van Kleeck retired from the Sage Foundation at the age of 63 in 1948, having earned a salary of $8,808 in her final year with the organization. In the last year of prominence for the American Labor Party, van Kleeck won 14,284 votes (10.01%), compared to Mitchell's 76,519 and Richman's 51,916. After the loss, she turned her focus to anti-nuclear activism and disarmament work.

Although she never publicly joined the Communist Party, van Kleeck became a defender of the Soviet Union, believing it to represent the world's only viable alternative to capitalism. As a result, she came under government suspicion and sustained FBI surveillance as a 'fellow traveler' and possible secret member of the Communist Party, although no evidence of membership was ever presented. Congressional committees investigating communism listed her as a member of up to 60 different "subversive" organizations that they considered possible fronts for communism. An excerpt from that questioning follows:Mr. COHN: Are you a believer in our form of government today?

Miss VAN KLEECK: Emphatically. I am an American with a long family background going back to the early days, and my whole work is devoted to the United States of America.

Mr. COHN: My question was: You are a believer in the capitalist form of government?

Miss VAN KLEECK: Is the United States essentially and forever capitalist? It has changed its form of organization through the years. I am a believer in political democracy, which is the essence of the United States of America.— Transcript from US Senate hearing, March 25, 1953

Throughout her retirement, she lived with her longtime romantic companion Mary "Mikie" Fleddérus in a "shambling old house" in Woodstock, New York. Described by contemporaries as a serious, brilliant, and quiet person, van Kleeck played tennis and bridge and was a fan of theater and comedy sketches. A lifelong Christian, van Kleeck was a member of the Episcopal League for Social Action and served as a "leading light" in the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, an Episcopal women's organization, in the words of Alchon. Van Kleeck died of heart failure on June 8, 1972, in Kingston, New York. She was 88.