John Mark Glenn was an American social work leader and foundation director.
Background
Glenn was born on October 28, 1858 in Baltimore, Maryland, the eldest of two boys and a girl (who died in childhood) of William Wilkins Glenn and Ellen Mark (Smith) Glenn. His father's family, of Scottish origin, had settled in New York state in colonial times, but this particular branch had migrated to Maryland early in the eighteenth century. John Glenn's grandfather (also John Glenn) was one of four Bank of Maryland partners who were targets of the mob in the Baltimore riot of 1835. The family owned slaves and were ardent supporters of the Confederacy. His mother died when he was six years old, and Glenn was reared by his grandmother and an unmarried aunt. His father was out of the home for long periods of time, mostly in Colorado; he died in Baltimore when Glenn was seventeen.
Education
Glenn attended a small Episcopal school near his home in the outskirts of Baltimore and in 1874 entered Washington and Lee University, from which he received the B. A. degree in 1878 and the M. A. the following year. After an additional year of graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University, he transferred to the University of Maryland, where he took a law degree in 1882; he was admitted to the bar in the same year.
Career
For the next several years after graduating Glenn devoted most of his time to managing the family businesses in Baltimore and Colorado, relieving his blind and aging uncle, John Glenn, of responsibilities he had assumed on the death of Glenn's father. By the 1890's Glenn was free to follow his uncle in volunteering an increasing amount of time to charitable work. Locally, the focal point of this work was the Charity Organization Society (COS), which had been founded in 1881 under the leadership of Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University. As part of the COS movement, the Baltimore agency sought to mobilize all the charitable resources of the city to replace indiscriminate almsgiving by careful investigation and individualized treatment of the needy. Glenn's knowledge of law and his business experience soon brought him administrative positions in charitable work. He became chairman of the finance committee of the Baltimore COS. But unlike many in the movement, he retained an open mind about public charity. In 1898, when Baltimore adopted a new system for administering its public charities, he was appointed one of nine supervisors of City Charities; in 1904 he became president and served until 1907. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time of great expansion and interest in social work, increasing attention was given to professionalization, to social research, and, to some degree, to social reform. In 1907, Margaret Olivia Sage, widow of railroad financier Russell Sage, established the Russell Sage Foundation. Glenn was among the leaders of the charity movement consulted by her while the foundation was being planned and, in May 1907, he was named its director. Glenn quickly concluded that the foundation should acquire a permanent staff of highly qualified individuals organized to permit the foundation itself to carry on social investigative activities. Although the foundation continued to make some grants, within two years, Glenn set the course toward the organization of departments and divisions with responsibility for various fields; child helping, charity organization, industrial studies, recreation, and surveys and exhibits were the most important. Following a survey of the unscrupulous practices of loan-sharks who preyed upon the working classes, a division of remedial loans was set up in 1910 to assist in establishing associations offering loans at reasonable interest rates. Technical aid for all divisions was furnished through the departments of statistics and publications. The staff was small - two to three professionals to a department - but it fully met Glenn's high standards of scholarship and leadership. During the twenty-four years of Glenn's tenure, the foundation published eighty-four books as well as hundreds of pamphlets. Among the projects pursued during his term of office, the child welfare and child-placing services were expanded and a study of women's work in industries was established. After his retirement as director in 1931, Glenn remained a member of the board of trustees of Russell Sage for another sixteen years. Throughout his career, he also saw long service on the boards of such agencies as the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and the National Urban League. After retirement he returned his pension to the Russell Sage Foundation to help support its programs. He died at the age of 91 at New York Hospital and was buried in the cemetery at St. Timothy's Church, Catonsville, Md.
Achievements
Glenn is best remembered as president of various charity foundations, including National Conference of Charities and Correction and Russell Sage Foundation.
Membership
President of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1901-1902); director of the Maryland School for the Blind; member of the council of the state Tuberculosis Commission; trustee of the Johns Hopkins Hospital; director of St. Paul's Guild House; director of the Russell Sage Foundation
Connections
On May 21, 1902, Glenn married Mary Willcox Brown, Baltimore social worker who had headed the Henry Watson Children's Aid Society and was then the general secretary of the COS. The couple had no children and Mary Glenn, who continued active in social work, became president of the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1915.
