Julia Clifford Lathrop was an American social worker. She served from 1893 to 1909 at Illinois Board of Public Charities and at the United States Children's Bureau from 1912 to 1921.
Background
Julia Clifford Lathrop as born in Rockford, Illinois, the daughter of William and Adeline (Potter) Lathrop, and the eldest in a family of five children--two daughters and three sons. She was descended from the Rev. John Lothropp, who emigrated to America in 1634 and served as minister at Scituate and at Barnstable, Massachussets. Both her grandparents were pioneers in the Abolitionist section of Illinois and were early settlers of Rockford. Her mother was one of the first class graduated (1854) at Rockford Seminary (later Rockford College). Her father, a lawyer, served as a member of the Illinois legislature, and later, 1877-1879, in Congress. Julia Lathrop brought the vigorous pioneer traditions of her family into the social welfare work of her state and of the country.
Education
She attended the local high school and spent a year at the Seminary, then entered Vassar College as a sophomore, where she was graduated in 1880.
Career
Following her graduation, Lathrop acted as her father's secretary and acquired a good knowledge of law from him and her brother. Coming from a well-to-do family, she showed the courage of her pioneer ancestry when, after the Haymarket riots had led to bitter attacks on any movement suspected of being radical, she associated herself with Jane Addams, upon the latter's organization of Hull-House in 1889, in one of the neglected "river wards" of Chicago. Here in 1890 she went to live.
One of her early public services was as a volunteer visitor for the county agent's office, in charge of a tenement area. This work, during the winter of 1893-1894, she describes in "The Cook County Charities, " a chapter in Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895). In 1892 Gov. John P. Altgeld appointed her the first woman member of the Illinois Board of Public Charities, a position in which she served from July 1893 to 1909, with one intermission.
She at once began a thorough study of the best methods of public care for persons in state institutions--the blind, the deaf, prisoners, delinquent boys and girls, and especially the mentally ill. In order that Illinois might profit by the results of experiments that had been made abroad, she went to Scotland, Belgium, France, and Germany in 1898 to study the extra-mural care of mental patients. When she went to Europe again in 1900, she studied the working of the epileptic colonies. She was an early advocate of extra-mural care of the insane and believed that the population of institutions could be greatly reduced under intelligent, competent planning and supervision. She resigned from the Board of Public Charities in 1901 with a ringing letter of protest against the use of the state charitable institutions of that day, the cost of which was nearly one-third of the state budget, for political patronage.
Her father had been an early advocate of civil service in the state of Illinois and in the federal government, and Julia Lathrop was its uncompromising supporter throughout her career. In 1905 Gov. Charles Deneen reappointed her, and she continued on the board, until her plan for an administrative board of control in place of the old advisory board was adopted in 1909. She was an early supporter of the new mental hygiene movement which followed Clifford W. Beers's epoch-making book, A Mind That Found Itself (1908), and became a member of the board of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which was organized in 1909.
She was responsible for some early experiments in occupational therapy for the insane and the training of educated women as occupational therapists. During this period she also took an active part with Graham Taylor in organizing the Chicago Institute of Social Science, the second school of social work in any country. This school, which was later called the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, became in 1920 the School of Social Service Administration of the University of Chicago.
She served as an active trustee from 1907 to 1920 and was also a lecturer and, for a short time, a director of the research department of the school, always without a salary. Other activities included her work in helping to frame, in 1899, the first juvenile court law in the world, and after the law was passed she was one of the group that organized a juvenile court committee in Chicago, which first provided salaries for probation officers. Her work in this connection is described in The Child, the Clinic and the Court (1925), to which she contributed "The Background of the Juvenile Court in Illinois. " Later she was largely responsible for planning the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, the first mental hygiene clinic for children. She was also an active member of the board of the Immigrants' Protective League, a pioneer organization for the care of immigrants in Chicago.
In 1912 President William H. Taft appointed her chief of the new federal Children's Bureau. She began her work with investigations of infant mortality, a subject selected because it was "fundamental to social welfare, of popular interest, " met a real human need, and was at the same time within her narrow budget limitations. Out of these studies came the bureau's crusade for uniform birth registration under federal supervision. The first report issued was Birth Registration: An Aid in Protecting the Lives and Rights of Children. Studies of child labor, juvenile courts, mothers' pensions, illegitimacy, feebleminded children, rural child welfare and recreation followed.
The first federal child-labor law, which was passed in 1916 and was effective from January to September 1917, when it was declared unconstitutional, became the administrative responsibility of the Children's Bureau, and Grace Abbott went to Washington to take charge of its child-labor division. During the war, 1917-1918, the bureau's work was expanded to include recommendations for governmental provision for the care of dependents of enlisted men, soldiers' compensation and insurance, children of working mothers, and studies of child welfare in countries at war. At this time, too, it began its campaign for the protection of maternity and infancy with federal aid, which led to the enactment of the important Sheppard-Towner act, shortly after Julia Lathrop resigned in 1921, and Grace Abbott had become the second chief of the bureau. During the winter of 1918-1919 the two had gone abroad to make plans to bring some of the European child-welfare leaders to the United States for the series of "Children's Year" conferences which were held in important cities from coast to coast under their direction.
After her resignation as chief of the bureau in 1921 she made her home with her sister in Rockford. She did not retire from active work, however, but lectured frequently on various public questions and engaged in numerous services. In 1922 she was appointed by the secretary of labor as a member of the committee to investigate conditions in the overcrowded immigration station at Ellis Island. She was a pioneer suffragist, and she was active in the League of Women Voters. In 1922 she became president of the Illinois league and she was influential in the national league. She was an active member of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (after 1917 the National Conference of Social Work) and served as president in 1918-1919. She continued an active supporter of the new chief of the Children's Bureau in the effort to obtain a constitutional amendment giving Congress the right to prevent child labor, and she worked also for continued support of the bureau's program for child and maternal health. From 1925 to 1931 she was an assessor for the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations. She had statesmanlike vision, ability to work out careful plans, and the patience to carry through constructive programs.
