CHILDREN'S BUREAU

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 43, 5 November 1952, Page 3

CHILDREN'S BUREAU

GRAND U.S. ORGANISATION ^ N early f if ty years ago in New ' Toik City, two social workers opened their morning mall together as they shared a steaming pot of coffee. They were seated in the Henry Stieet Settlement, one of America's most famous social welfare centres. One of the women was Miss Lillian Wald, the Settlement's founder, who had just established the world's first nonsectarian public - health nursing system there. The other woman was Mrs Florence )Kelley, writer and general secretary of the National Consumers' League, an ororganisation to promote fair labour standards. As the two friends talked and traded letters, they learned that both had them from mothers concerned with their children's welfare. Mrs Kelley handed Miss Wald a letter from a woman who asked: "Why is it that so many children die like flies in the summertime? Is there something I can do to help?" (Miss Wald read one of j her own from a widow worried over having* to send her children to an institution because she was unable to support them. "There must be thousands of mothers all over the United States in the same situation," Miss Wald said. "I wish there were some agency that would tell us what could be done about all these problems." As she spoke, she looked at the glanced at an item stating that the newspaper lying on her desk. She United States Goveniment was planning to speiid large sums to help farniers combat the boll weevil \ which had hurt their cotton crops that year. This gave Lillian Wald an idea. "If the Government can have a department to take such an interest in what is happening to j the Nation's cotton crop, why can't | it have a bureau to look after the Nation's crop of children?" With out much delay, Miss Wald

communicated her thoughts on the subject to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He promptly wired back: "Come down and talk to me about it!" Miss Wald came to Washington and won the enthusiastic support of the President. Bills were introduced into the 'P. S. CongTess, and the U.S. Children's Bureau was created on April 9, 1912, by Congressional degislation. For forty years the U.S. Children's Bureau has worked for the we-1 fare of children of all classes .of peoples. It stimulated the enactment of laws controlling child labour and later administered many of them. The law setting 16 years as the minimum age for general employment was almost unknown when the Bureau was established..