Linton Bishop Swift was born on July 15, 1888 in St. Paul, Minnesota, the only child of George Linton Swift and Tryphena (Bishop) Swift. His father, founder of a successful local law firm, Brown and Bigelow, provided amply for the family. Linton Swift's upbringing was conventional.
Linton Swift graduated from the University of Minnesota and St. Paul College of Law.
After graduating from the St. Paul College of Law, Linton Swift then practiced law in St. Paul from 1910 to 1917. Following the American entry into World War I, Swift enlisted in the engineer corps. He was later commissioned and transferred to the infantry. After the armistice, Swift remained in Europe as a translator of treaties and legal documents for the United States Peace Commission and then as the American representative to the Commission for the Protection of Minorities in the Newly Created States.
In this post he observed at first-hand the war's shattering effects upon community and family relationships, especially upon the Jews in Eastern Europe, and determined to devote his life to social service. Returning home in 1920, Swift began his career in social work as assistant general secretary of the St. Paul United Charities.
In 1922, he became general secretary of the Family Service Organization of Louisville, Kentucky, and, three years later, he moved to New York as executive secretary of the American Association for Organizing Family Social Work (renamed the Family Welfare Association of America and then later renamed the Family Service Association of America).
In the 1920's, however, family service groups were only beginning to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, the charity organization societies that had often held quasi-public status by functioning as a clearing agency for all local requests for relief. While not actively disputing the value of the comprehensive supervisory role, Swift urged family agencies to appeal for contributions on the basis of the services they alone could provide. Public funds, he believed, ought to support those who were unemployed through no fault of their own.
FERA reflected the continued influence of private agencies by designating them local administrators of federal funds. This, in turn, meant that the policies of private agency officials, principally the rigid application of the means test to restrict applications for aid, became government policy as well. As a result, conflicts arose between traditional social workers and New Dealers like Harry Hopkins, who favored "public funds expended by public agencies, " an approach that became federal policy with the advent of the Civil Works Administration (1934).
His analysis of changes in welfare disbursement, New Alignments Between Public and Private Agencies in a Community Family Program (1934), became the standard work on the subject. Swift helped to reorient the family agencies to meet the challenges of family and individual dislocation caused by World War II. Congested defense areas often totally lacked organizations to aid servicemen's families or to provide day care for the children of working mothers and recreation for young people.
Swift advised the Federal Security Agency on these problems and served on the American War Community Services Board in order to stimulate development of public and private social services in war boom towns.
He continued to promote increased recognition and benefits for trained social workers through the Social Work Vocational Bureau (1940) and to coordinate the efforts and knowledge of all social agencies through the Social Casework Council of National Agencies (1940) and the National Social Welfare Assembly (1946). Greatly concerned with war-related issues of social justice, he served on the Federal Council of Churches' Committee on Resettlement of Japanese-Americans.
Swift died in Park East Hospital in New York after a brief illness.
Linton Swift began to achieve considerable results pertaining to the area of family welfare problems at the time, when in 1922 he became general secretary of the Family Service Organization of Louisville, Kentucky. Swift began urging family agencies to appeal for contributions on the basis of the services they alone could provide. Public funds, he believed, ought to support those who were unemployed through no fault of their own. About three years later, after moving to New York, he became an executive secretary of the American Association for Organizing Family Social Work (renamed the Family Welfare Association of America and then later renamed the Family Service Association of America). In this position, which he held for the rest of his life, Swift was the chief spokesman for a federation of 230 family welfare agencies in the United States and Canada. Swift soon recognized the permanence of a public welfare bureaucracy and promoted training in social work methods for public administrators. He also helped draft the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933. In the list of his achievements are: increased recognition and benefits for trained social workers through the Social Work Vocational Bureau (1940) and coordination of the efforts and knowledge of all social agencies through the Social Casework Council of National Agencies (1940) and the National Social Welfare Assembly (1946). Swift also served on the Federal Council of Churches' Committee on Resettlement of Japanese-Americans in order to promote war-related issues of social justice.
While serving as the American representative to the Commission for the Protection of Minorities in the Newly Created States, he observed at first-hand the war's shattering effects upon community and family relationships, especially upon the Jews in Eastern Europe, and determined to devote his life to social service.
Linton Swift was recognized for his ability to reconcile differences between various community charities and agencies and to articulate social work policy and the purpose and scope of family social work during a period of social and economic upheaval. Swift characterized family social work as the "mother of specialties" because its practitioners focused their energies upon securing the services of experts from the medical and social sciences according to the particular needs of individual cases.
Well before the Great Depression, he noted that most relief expenditures were coming from government revenues rather than charity funds. Swift's awareness of the extent of public relief made him critical of Herbert Hoover's plea for greater philanthropic effort to combat the depression. Like many social workers of that period, however, he believed that unemployment relief should remain the responsibility of state and local governments.
Throughout his career, Swift opposed radical social workers such as Mary Van Kleeck who wished to ally social workers with other workers' groups in order to create a noncapitalistic social order. At the same time, he remained skeptical about the appropriateness and social value of psychiatric social work, which was much in vogue during the 1930's and 1940's.
Quotations:
Terming federal relief a "ghastly business, " he thought that fixed relief payments, administered on a broad scale, would threaten the existence of private agencies and make "real individualization of human needs . .. impossible. "
In 1939, he wrote, "The range of social case-work treatment lies between but does not include social action and psychiatry at the opposite ends of the scale. "
Swift was a member of the American Association for Organizing Family Social Work.
While serving in France, Linton Swift met and on May 14, 1919 married Marie Louise Arnoux; they had no children.
By 1933, however, Swift clearly saw the need for federal relief; with three other social work executives, Allen Burns, William Hodson, and Walter West, together known as the "Four Horsemen".
