Background
William Hodson was was born on April 25, 1891 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Little is known of his background save that his father died when the boy was young, leaving his mother with the problem of family support.
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William Hodson
Edit ProfileEducation
Hodson attended the University of Minnesota, where he edited the college annual, learned the art of persuasive oratory on the debating team, won election to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated in 1913.
Hodson next entered the Harvard Law School, but from the start displayed an interest also in social welfare. A volunteer in the school's legal aid bureau, he spent his summers working for the Associated Charities of Minneapolis. He received the Bachelor of Law degree in 1916.
Career
Hodson served briefly as chief counsel of the Minneapolis Legal Aid Society, and in 1917 was appointed secretary and legal research investigator of the Minnesota Child Welfare Commission. In that post Hodson became the chief architect of a new children's code, enacted into law in thirty-nine separate bills during the legislative session of 1917. For the next four years, as director of the newly created Children's Bureau in the State Board of Control, Hodson gave substance to the form of the code and made Minnesota one of the leading states in the child welfare field.
Hodson moved in 1922 to New York City, where he joined the Russell Sage Foundation as director of its division of child welfare and (1924) of its department of social legislation. In 1925 he became director of the Welfare Council of New York City, a federation of private social service agencies. He left this post at the end of 1933 to become commissioner of welfare under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
A pragmatist in the New Deal tradition, he nevertheless pushed beyond the essentially moderate programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt; his position on social measures was always substantially in advance of that of the main body of social workers.
With a quarter of the city's population on the relief rolls during the Great Depression, Hodson set a standard of humane and efficient administration of relief funds that was to become a model for the nation. His first directive to welfare agents ordered that all clients be treated as though they were relatives, neighbors, and friends. At all times he proceeded from the premise that persons on relief were neither lazy nor dishonest, as was so often charged, but honest folk who wanted to work. Under his direction, too, the administration of welfare was brought under comprehensive civil service. During his nine years as commissioner he managed more than $1, 300, 000, 000, yet there was never a financial scandal and never a charge of playing partisan politics. Though an administrator of relief, Hodson was convinced that the dole was demoralizing both to the unfortunate clients and to society itself. As early as October 1931, in a widely publicized letter to President Hoover, he urged federal action to meet the unemployment crisis. That winter, when a Senate subcommittee held hearings on the problem, Hodson, along with Linton B. Swift, executive director of the Family Welfare Association of America, and Walter West, executive secretary of the American Association of Social Workers, helped mobilize the social workers who testified to the inadequacy of private and local relief--the first coordinated drive of professional social workers during the depression. Through leadership in the American Association of Social Workers (president, 1924 - 26), the National Conference of Social Work (president, 1934), and the American Public Welfare Association (president, 1940) Hodson labored to persuade the profession that it had to move beyond social service to social action--to provide more just procedures of welfare, to broaden security, and to open up new opportunities for disadvantaged groups and classes. Welfare and law were the blend of his personality and career.
Achievements
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As a secretary and legal research investigator of the Minnesota Child Welfare Commission Hodson enacted into law in thirty-nine separate bills during the legislative session of 1917. For the next four years, as director of the newly created Children's Bureau in the State Board of Control, Hodson gave substance to the form of the code and made Minnesota one of the leading states in the child welfare field. As a commissioner of welfare under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Hodson set a standard of humane and efficient administration of relief funds that was to become a model for the nation. His first directive to welfare agents ordered that all clients be treated as though they were relatives, neighbors, and friends. At all times he proceeded from the premise that persons on relief were neither lazy nor dishonest, as was so often charged, but honest folk who wanted to work. Under his direction, too, the administration of welfare was brought under comprehensive civil service. During his nine years as commissioner he managed more than $1, 300, 000, 000, yet there was never a financial scandal and never a charge of playing partisan politics. As early as October 1931, in a widely publicized letter to President Hoover, he urged federal action to meet the unemployment crisis. When a Senate subcommittee held hearings on the problem, Hodson, along with Linton B. Swift, executive director of the Family Welfare Association of America, and Walter West, executive secretary of the American Association of Social Workers, helped mobilize the social workers who testified to the inadequacy of private and local relief--the first coordinated drive of professional social workers during the depression. Through leadership in the American Association of Social Workers, the National Conference of Social Work, and the American Public Welfare Association, Hodson labored to persuade the profession that it had to move beyond social service to social action--to provide more just procedures of welfare, to broaden security, and to open up new opportunities for disadvantaged groups and classes. He thus became one of the foremost proponents of work relief and public works, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, elimination of the means test, and a broad system of compulsory government health insurance.
Membership
Hodson served as the president of the American Association of Social Workers, the National Conference of Social Work, and the American Public Welfare Association.
Personality
Hodson had what one reporter called a "disarming gentleness. " Unfailingly kind, he was also hard-headed and tough, and intolerant of inefficiency and callousness in others.
Connections
On May 4, 1918, in Minneapolis, Hodson married Gertrude Prindle; their three children were Judith, William, and Jeremy.
