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Trends in Social Work
as reflected in the
Proceedings of the National Conference
of Social Work, 1 8 7 4 - 1 9 4 6

Trends in
SOCIAL WORK
as reflected in
the Proceedings of the
Rational Qonference
of Social Work
1 8 7 4 - 1 9 4 6
% FRANK J. BRUNO
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
N E W YORK · M C M X L V I I I

Copyright by
The National Conference of Social Work, Columbus, Ohio
Published by Columbia University Press, New York
Published in Great Britain and India l>v
Cicotfrey Cumberlege, Uxtord University Press,
London and Bombay
Manufactured in the United States of America

T o
HOWARD R. KNIGHT
J U N E 23, 1889-OCTOBER 7, X947
Farsighted leader; admirable administrator;
inspiring fellow worker; loyal friend
IN LOVING MEMORY OF A
CHERISHED ASSOCIATION

FOREWORD
CXs HAT HAS COME to be called social work dates back
a long way. The expression in practical ways of the common
human impulse to help another in distress was bound sooner or
later to take organized form; and it did so markedly in this
country during the last hundred years or more. One measure, in
numerical terms alone, is the fact that approximately half the
present annual expenditures of a majority of our states is de-
voted to the various services performed under the boards of
welfare, health, corrections, and care of the insane; and fully
half of the personnel of the states' employment is on these pay
rolls. Including the large numbers in nongovernmental agencies,
the total number of persons engaged in these and similar services
in this country now almost certainly runs above one hundred
thousand. Along with organized religion and education, social
work has taken its place as a major concern of the local com-
munity, state, and nation.
The third quarter of the nineteenth century saw the begin-
nings of organized work in this field on a national scale. Then
it was that national bodies interested in prison reform, public
health, and the application of science to human relations were
formed. In the same period the National Conference of Social
Work came into being. It included in its scope dependency,
mental disease, delinquency, and problems of health; as time
went on it widened its interests to include the whole field of
the public and private social services. That was a period when
population was growing rapidly in the United States, people

viii Foreword
were moving westward; a developing industrial economy was
drawing multitudes of workers to congested population
centers; a period when ideas, social theories, and convictions
were changing rapidly, and when technical knowledge and the
exploitation of the natural resources of the nation speedily ad-
vanced.
The needs of the country, as seen by the small but capable
group of pioneering social work leaders of that day—devoted
men with a strong sense of public service—placed new and
larger responsibilities upon social work and other efforts to pro-
mote the common welfare. They heard the summons for more
efficient operation and a greater return in human values for the
energies and resources expended. The time had come when
problems could no longer be faced by one locality alone; the
outlook, as one leader put it, must transcend the narrow bound-
aries of a state. The times called for a national clearinghouse of
ideas and experience; a national medium for the exchange of
opinion; a national forum in which to debate and appraise dif-
fering theories, policies, and practice; a platform from which
could be presented fresh information on social problems and
methods of dealing with them as the frontiers of knowledge
were moved forward.
The record shows the purpose to have been diligently pur-
sued. Over the years public administrators, leading thinkers in
many fields, social philosophers, moralists, and practical and
experienced workers responsible for day-to-day results dif-
fered, debated, discussed, and presented their factual and other
conclusions on many issues. Among them were questions such
as these: the right of the state to remove a child from his family
because of poverty; the appropriateness of classifications of the
poor as "worthy" or "unworthy"; the merits of the cottage
system of housing insane patients; removal of children from
almshouses; removal of the insane from almshouses; best

Foreword ix
methods of caring for epileptics; the practical value of reforma-
tion versus punishment in protecting society from crime; the
usefulness and workability of indeterminate sentence and of
parole; the relative merits of advisory or supervisory boards
as against boards of control or administration; abolition of
physical restraint of the insane; the possibility of training the
feebleminded; institutional care of children as contrasted with
foster home placement; the advisability of instituting special
courts to try children's cases; relief as a basic right to those who
are poor through no fault of their own; the place of recreation
in a welfare program; the inportance of prevention of poverty,
disease and delinquency as against, or in addition to, correction;
the need of training on a professional level for social work; the
community's stake in eliminating child labor; the community's
stake in the prevention of unemployment and industrial ac-
cidents, and in the elimination of unhealthful working condi-
tions; methods of diagnosing individual and family social
disabilities; the desirability of cash relief; the social survey as a
method of discovering and analyzing community problems and
interpreting needs to the public; effective dissemination of in-
formation on personal hygiene and other phases of individual
well-being; the importance of more reliable statistics and
statistical methods in dealing with social ills and in administering
social agencies; the place of research in advancing the social
welfare. Literally hundreds of problems deeply concerned
these men and women as they came together annually for the
lengthy Conference sessions and later polished their contri-
butions for the printed record.
Thus a new national agency took form. It grew from a hand-
ful of public charity officials to a body of 7,000 members, who
came to the annual meetings to confer over what, in large
measure, they were learning by doing. Some of their experience
got into the Conference Proceedings, and some of it was stored

χ Foreword
away in the minds of workers of the period. It is an important
part of our social heritage today.
One may say with some confidence, therefore, that this ac-
count of the Conference, which winnows out, records, and
interprets this evolution in thought and attitudes, is an impor-
tant segment in the total history of the United States. Much has
been written on the development of our political institutions,
our economic and industrial progress; our social history lags
behind. Until it is more fully set forth, the significant lessons
we may learn for our own sake and the peculiar contributions
of America to world developments cannot be fully understood
or appraised. Toward a more adequate chronicle of one signifi-
cant aspcct of our nation's social experience this reflection of
the National Conference of Social Work is an important contri-
bution.
The Conference has been fortunate in the choice of its
historian. Mr. Bruno has not only been painstaking in detailed
study of the documentary material of the organization, in search
for outside data which would illuminate the record, and in pur-
suit of individuals who could supplement his findings; he has
also brought to his task many years of personal experience as
practitioner in social work and as teacher and head of one of our
leading social work professional schools, his own rich knowl-
edge of contemporary thought and social movements, and a
rare ability to interpret Conference events against their chang-
ing national and world background. His timely labors have put
the Conference greatly in his debt. The Conference, in under-
taking this history, and Mr. Bruno in carrying it through, have
in turn rendered invaluable service to future students of social
work, to students of American history, and, we believe, to the
public welfare.
New York, New York
December 30, 1947
SHELBY M . HARRISON
Former General Director
Russell Sage Foundation

PREFACE
IN THE winter of 1945-46, the Executive Committee of
the National Conference of Social Work, as part of its plan
for the seventy-fifth meeting in the spring of 1948, authorized
the publication of a volume recounting the development of
the Conference. The assignment was accepted by the author
on February 1, 1946, with instructions to have the manuscript
ready by the fall of 1947, and to limit its size to not much
more than three hundred pages.
There is no bibliography on which the book is based, except
the Proceedings of the Conference. Reference to them is made
in the body of the text in two ways: by the date alone, in
parentheses, and also with the name of the speaker, the word
"Proceedings," and a date, e.g. (Edith Abbott, Proceedings,
1940). For influences outside the Conference and for con-
temporary thought and movement, the author was guided by
his own knowledge. Where sources other than the Proceed-
ings are drawn upon, acknowledgment is made by a footnote.
The Executive Committee left the author entirely free as to
method and content. It placed the Editorial Committee of
the Conference at his service as an advisory committee, and
at two meetings, in the spring and summer of 1947, the com-
mittee offered itself freely and helpfully in discussing the plans
and organization of the publication, and the sources of in-
formation to supplement the Proceedings.
In reconciling the puzzle presented by chronological data
that should be organized topically, the device was adopted

xii Preface
of dividing the seventy-odd years into three periods: the first
ending with the twenty-fifth Conference in 1898; the second
ending with the fiftieth Conference in 1923; and the third ex-
tending from 1924 to 1946. In each period those topics are
included which seemed to be prominent in the minds of the
Conference members; but no effort was made to follow any
particular topic into the next period, or through all three of
them.
No one could possibly be more aware than the author of
the limitations of the book. The choice of material, the deci-
sion on what to emphasize and, especially, what to omit were
his own. In this choice the author was not restricted, either by
the action of the Executive Committee or by that of the ad-
visory committee. The limit on the size of the book was an
over-all controlling factor. Even if the limit had been much
less drastic, a choice would still have had to be made. It is a
situation inherent in all historical writings: the volume of
source material is far greater than the writer can use, and his
book becomes a reflection of his interest by which he selects
those data which build up his thesis.
The author has relied heavily on such biographical sources
as the Dictionary of American Biography; the Dictionary of
National Biography; the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences;
Who's Who in America; and Who Was Who in America,
and he wishes to express his appreciation for the exact data
they contain. He also wishes to thank the Maryland Historical
Society and the Wisconsin Historical Society for their prompt
and valuable replies to his inquiries. To the many friends
among social workers whom he has consulted he makes this
grateful acknowledgment of their wholehearted responses to
his inquiries. Especially does he recall with pleasure his con-
sultations with the Boston and New York groups held in the
summer of 1946, and with Howard R. Knight, the General

Preface xiii
Secretary of the Conference, for the gracious way in which
he transmitted the instructions of the Executive Committee
and constantly held himself in readiness to be of service.
Most of all, I am indebted to Louis Towley, of the staff of
the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, at Wash-
ington University, who read the manuscript of the entire book
as it was prepared and made invaluable suggestions. If its
structure is clear and its meaning plain, much of the credit for
the result belongs to him.
It has been my good fortune to spend the two summers
during the preparation of the book at the State College of
Washington, Pullman, Washington, and at Colorado College,
Colorado Springs, Colorado, which placed their well-stocked
libraries at my disposal. Especially gracious have been the
librarian of Colorado College, Louise F. Kampf, and her ef-
ficient staff.
FRANK J . BRUNO
Colorado Springs, Colorado
November 25, 194.7

CONTENTS
FOREWORD, BY SHELBY M . HARRISON Vli
PREFACE ΧΪ
First Period • 1874-1898
1. BEGINNINGS 3
2. THE FOUNDING FATHERS IO
3. THE WORLD IN WHICH THE CONFERENCE WAS BORN 2 5
4. STATE BOARDS TO 1 9 0 0 31
5. CONCERN OF THE CONFERENCE WITH THE INSANE AND
THE FEEBLE-MINDED 4 4
6. THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN 5 5
7. THE ENGLISH POOR LAW IN AMERICA 7 1
8. CONCERN OF THE CONFERENCE WITH THE DELIN-
QUENT 8 l
9. PERSONNEL IN PUBLIC SERVICE 9 1
IO. CHARITY BECOMES ORGANIZED 9 6
I I. THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICA 11 2
12. MIGRATION, IMMIGRATION AND TRANSIENCY I 2 0
Second. Period · 1898-1924
1 3 . THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE SOCIAL SERVICES 13 3
14. TOWARD A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION 1 4 5
1 5 . THE UNITED STATES CHILDREN'S BUREAU 152
16. CHILD LABOR l 6 o
17. THE JUVENILE COURT 1 6 9
18. MOTHERS' PENSIONS I 7 7

xvi Contents
19. THE RECOGNITION OF SOCIAL CASEWORK 1 8 3
20. THE COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES 1 9 2
2 1 . THE COMMUNITY CHEST I 9 9
2 2 . PUBLIC RELIEF BECOMES PUBLIC WELFARE 2 0 7
2
3 · CHILDREN'S CODES 2 1 4
2
4 · CONCERN OF THE CONFERENCE WITH REFORM 2 2 0
2
5 · THE FIRST WORLD WAR 2 3 0
Third Period • 1924-1946
26. CONCERN OF THE CONFERENCE WITH HEALTH 2 4 I
2
7 · SOCIAL INSURANCE 2
5 7
28. SOCIAL GROUP WORK 2 7 0
2 9 . THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL CASEWORK 2 7 8
3 ° · THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON METHODS OF PREVENTING
DELINQUENCY 2 9 1
3 ' · U N E M P L O Y M E N T AND THE CARE OF THE U N E M -
PLOYED, 1 9 2 1 - 3 3 2
9 7
3 2
· SOCIAL SECURITY 3 0 9
3 3 · TRANSIENTS, IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES 3 2 2
34· AMERICA'S MINORITY GROUPS 3 3 1
3 5 · SOCIAL REFORM, I 9 2 4 - 4 6 3 4 2
3 6 . THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK 3 5 3
INDEX 365

A FINE TIME of the year is chosen, when days are long, skies are
bright, the earth smiles and all nature rejoices; a city or town is
taken by tnrns, of ancient name or modern opulence, where
buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty. The novelty of
place and circumstance, the excitement of change, or the re-
freshment of well known faces, the majesty of rank or of gen-
ius, the cnmable charities of men both pleased with themselves
and with each other; the elevated spirits, the circulation of
thought, the curiosity; the morning sections, the outdoor ex-
ercise, the well furnished, well earned board, the not ungraceful
hilarity, the evening circle; the brilliant lectures, the discussions,
or collisions, or guesses of great men one with another, the nar-
ratives of scientific processes, of hopes, disappointments, conflicts
and successes, the splendid eulogistic orations; these and like con-
stituents of the annual celebration, are considered to do something
real and substantial for the advance of knowledge which can be
done in no other way. CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, " W H A T
IS A UNIVERSITY."

I · BEGINNINGS
v y Ν MAY 20, 1874, representatives from the State Board
of Charities of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and
Wisconsin met in New York and organized the Conference of
Boards of Public Charities. Invitations to the meeting were
sent jointly by the Section on Social Economy of the Amer-
ican Social Science Association and the Massachusetts State
Board of Charities.
It was only the short space of eleven years since Massachu-
setts had created the first board in the country to supervise the
administration of the state's charitable, medical, and penal in-
stitutions; but the device was so patently useful that by the
spring of 1874 eight additional states had set up such bodies
and were invited to the meeting to consider the proposal to
establish some sort of clearinghouse of ideas and experiences
between state boards. In addition to the four states represented
at the initial meeting, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Kansas acknowledged the proposal and expressed their
approval; one, the Illinois board, did not reply.
The New York meeting of 1874 was not the first at which
representatives of state boards had met for consultation on their
common problems. Frederick H. Wines, secretary of the Illi-
nois board, and Andrew E. Elmore, president of the Wisconsin
board, spent several days together in February, 1872, visiting
institutions in Wisconsin, and were so impressed with the sig-
nificance of their mutual discussions that they decided to invite
the boards in the upper Mississippi Valley to meet together in

4 Beginnings
May of that year. Representatives from Wisconsin, Illinois, and
Michigan held a two-day session in Chicago at that time. They
were so pleased with the venture that they repeated it a year
later in Milwaukee on April ι j, 1873, representatives from the
same three state boards attending. These meetings attracted na-
tional attention, and the American Social Science Association
embraced the idea and enlarged it to include all the boards of
both charity and health in the United States. Subsequent to 1874
boards of health were not invited. There was then in existence a
national agency through which public health officials could ex-
change information: the American Public Health Association,
organized in 1872. Some loss probably resulted from the separa-
tion of these two closely related fields, although the programs of
the National Conference throughout the years usually included
subjects in the field of health, and doubtless the programs of
the national health organization contained many subjects of
social import. Another earlier project, which overlapped the
field of the National Conference, was the National Prison
Association, organized in 1870. Relations with it were closer
than with the American Public Health Association, since sev-
eral members and officials of the National Conference served
in similar capacity for the National Prison Association, which
in later years became the American Prison Association.
The American Social Science Association, organized in 1865,
was directly modeled after the National Association for the
Promotion of Social Science of Great Britain, organized in
1857, and it functioned through four departments, education,
health, finance, and jurisprudence, to which a fifth was added
in the fall of 1873, social economy. Both the English and the
American associations were embodiments of the conviction
that the application of science to the problems in human rela-
tions would result in new discoveries and improvements in the
field of social relationships. The area of social science was de-

Beginnings $
fined as "whatever concerns mankind in their social rather than
in their individual relations [and] shades off easily and imper-
ceptibly into metaphysics on one side, philanthropy on an-
other, and political economy on a third." It is significant that
its method was defined as the statistical interpretation of find-
ings and their application to the entire social situation, and the
purpose of social science is to promote human welfare. In one
of the earliest statements of purpose of the Association are
these words: "to develop the study of social science—to in-
crease public wealth and to insure its proper distribution—
[and] the diffusion of those principles which make the strength
and dignity of nations." 1
The Association contained in its membership a liberal
sprinkling of the intellectual leaders of the Northern and North
Central states of the Union, with the largest number in or about
Boston and New York. Samuel Eliot was one of its presidents,
as was also George William Curtis, the father of civil service
in the United States. The Association was no stranger to con-
ferences, for although outside its own meetings it had called
none under its own auspices, yet its members were actively
associated with them, and its Journal reports many. Enoch C.
Wines, secretary of the New York Prison Association, was
instrumental in creating the National Prison Association, prob-
ably on the initiation of the American Social Science Associa-
tion, and in calling the First International Penitentiary Con-
gress, which met in London in 1872. The Association's interests
overlapped a wide section of the field later covered by the Na-
tional Conference, such as immigration;2
compulsory school
attendance and child labor; the injury to the insane and to chil-
dren involved in their retention in almshouses; the reform in
penal philosophy being put into practice by Zebulon Reed
1
American Social Science Association, Transactions, July, 1866, p. 13.
2
In 1871 the Association published a handbook for the guidance of immi·
grants.

6 Beginnings
Brockway, then in Detroit; together with many references re-
garding the opportunities of state boards of chanties and the
handicaps under which they worked.
During its first session, held under the auspices of the Asso-
ciation, the Conference of State Boards invited other organiza-
tions and persons to sit with it and to take part in its discus-
sions. Charles Loring Brace, of the New York Children's Aid
Society, was a member of the Association and either sat in the
deliberations of the Conference or was represented. Similarly,
the New York State Charities Aid was invited and seemed to
be a regular attendant as well as having a part in the program.
Up to 1878, however, these representatives from other than
Association members were not numerous, the meetings of the
Conference tending to take on the nature of a section of a
scientific association rather than a conference of professional
practitioners consulting on their common interests, reporting
current ventures, and establishing a common basis of ideas and
philosophy. The Wisconsin delegation felt that this was a mis-
take, that it would be more helpful, if not more dignified, to
meet as an independent body; and so, in 1877, Wisconsin an-
nounced that it would not send a delegation to the next year's
meeting if the Conference were still a function of the Associa-
tion. Consequently, the 1878 Conference was held without
Wisconsin, and at that meeting it was voted to separate from
the parent body. The meeting of 1879, therefore, marks the
date of the first independent sessions of the Conference, and
the name was changed from Conference of State Boards (or
Conference of Charities) to the National Conference of Char-
ities and Correction, a name which it bore for nearly forty
years, or until it was changed, in 1917, to the National Confer-
ence of Social Work to conform to the philosophy of the times.
The declaration of independence from the Social Science
Association was not particularly opposed by the members

Beginnings 7
either of the Association or of the Conference, even though
there was some overlapping of membership between the two
bodies. It quickly resulted in a more vigorous Conference, with
an expanded clientele and broader program. Whereas the Con-
ference of 1878 was attended by only twenty-five persons who
were not members of state boards, by 1880 the number had
grown to over 125, most of whom were representatives of pub-
lic institutions or agencies and delegates of private bodies.
The charity organization movement, appearing in this coun-
try in 1877, at once took an important place with the state
boards in the personnel and programs of the Conference, main-
taining a position both in numbers and in importance that
caused some of the earlier promoters of the Conference to raise
the question whether the original idea of the Conference was
not being smothered and, possibly, should be rescued by a
secession of the state boards.
The Conference changed its direction on its separation from
the Social Science Association. It gradually ceased being a body
interested in scientific inquiry primarily, and shifted its major
emphasis to administration and methods of practice, giving only
secondary consideration to scientific procedure under the gen-
eral title of "prevention." This was both regrettable and in-
evitable. Its leaders were challenged by the insistence of their
day-by-day problems: the numbers of insane were increasing
at an alarming rate; children were being brought up in alms-
houses; the mentally deficient were an increasing menace to the
well-being of society; dependency was placing an ever increas-
ing burden on taxpayers, and efforts to treat it were apparently
waging a losing battle. These were the matters on which its
members had to give an account to their constituents, as well
as to the legislatures of their states. They were pressing exigen-
cies which could not wait long for an answer. Then, too, the
field of practice and the field of science are selective of their

8 Beginnings
own personnel, and rarely do the two interests combine in the
same person. This was illustrated over and over again in the
sessions of the Conference throughout its history; one set of
papers—a minority—deal with theory, need for research, for
examination of the nature of the problems under consideration,
and presentations of possible theories or methods not yet used.
Such appeals were listened to respectfully, but, for the most
part, were not followed up until, at a later Conference, some-
one else repeated the same appeal, with about the same result.
No, the delegates wanted to know and discussed tirelessly such
subjects as: Is it better to care for dependent children in insti-
tutions or foster homes, and why? How can the growing num-
ber of insane be handled? How can pauperism be prevented?
And what to do about it all? N o w of course, the practitioner
has a theory on which he is working; but this is usually a "tacit
assumption" and does not often come into the area of debate or
criticism; rather is it held without questioning. This dichotomy
between theory and practice is not unique to the area under
discussion. Practically all vocations and professions suffer from
it; but it was peculiarly dangerous here because social theory
was as yet tentative, needing the constant corrective of criti-
cism and experimentation, whereas "tacit assumptions" usually
lag behind the best current theory and are not easily amenable
to change. The adoption of the new name, National Confer-
ence of Social Work, in 1917 recaptured the inclusive area of
interest in human relations envisaged by the American Social
Science Association, but the direction of the Conference re-
mained unchanged.
The necessarily close attention given by the Conference to
methods was not without gain, for untrammeled by the control
of theory its members were free to experiment with means by
which the job could be done, and so laid the foundation for the
art of helping. This attention to method or, as it came to be

Beginnings ρ
called, "technique," received reinforcement in the Conference
of 1915 when Dr. Abraham Flexner denied that social work
was a profession because, he claimed, it did not possess a dis-
tinct and educationally transmissible technique. Whatever the
merits of such a contention, practitioners were constantly com-
pelled to develop method from the very first in order to secure
public approval, and it is not strange that, being under a con-
stant fire of criticism in their day-by-day job, they should dis-
cuss its endless variety when they came to share their experi-
ences with their peers.

2 - THE FOUNDING FATHERS
^fPoUR MEN, Franklin B. Sanborn, Frederick H. Wines,
Andrew E. Elmore, and William P. Letchworth, were
early credited with responsibilities for setting the pattern of the
first meetings of the National Conference, and while there were
general, scientific, and economic philosophies stimulating the
thinking and action of the times, which may not safely be ig-
nored, some knowledge of these men—and a few others—will
throw light upon its beginnings.
Franklin B. Sanborn (1831-1917), born in New Hampshire,
a descendant of forebears who came to America in the flood of
Puritan migration in 1640, was a typical New England intel-
lectual, "determined, democratic, liberty loving, positive, pug-
nacious," with a quick and caustic wit. After leaving Harvard,
he moved to Concord to be near Emerson, spending the rest of
his life in that home of distinctly American intellectualism. A
transcendentalist, he showed the independence of judgment of
that group, combined with a sturdy ethical conviction in hu-
man affairs. His lives of Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Emerson
and his description of the Concord School furnish some of the
best records of the personalities and philosophy of that brilliant
group of American literary philosophers.
Becoming acquainted with John Brown, he served as secre-
tary of the Massachusetts Free Soil Association. When John
Brown told him of his plan to seize Harpers Ferry, Sanborn,
reluctant to stand apart from action, even when he thought it

The Founding Fathers u
ill advised, joined the movement. In the troubled times that
followed the collapse of John Brown's project, Sanborn was
summoned to appear before a Senate committee; rather than
face the inquiry, he fled to Canada. On his return he was
arrested on a writ issued to a representative of the Senate, but
immediately released on habeas corpus; the Federal officer was
chased out of town by a posse comitatus, and the next day the
supreme court of the state ordered Sanborn's discharge. To the
end of his life—and he lived to 1917—he was considered a sub-
versive thinker by his conservative contemporaries.
As a member of the editorial staff of the Springfield Repub-
lican, 1868-1914, the outstanding liberal daily in the country,
he had full opportunity to exercise his gift of writing and to
express his deep convictions on the liberal movements of his
generation.
When the Massachusetts State Board of Charities was cre-
ated in 1863, Sanborn was persuaded to take the position of
secretary (or executive) by its chairman, his friend Samuel
Gridley Howe. He became its chairman in 1874, serving for
two years, and in 1879 was appointed by the board to be State
Inspector of Charities, in which capacity he promoted the use
of homes for children, both delinquent and dependent, recruit-
ing a body of local volunteers, mostly women, to serve as visi-
tors. In addition, he initiated the use of foster homes for the
chronic, harmless insane, patterned after homes in Scotland,
Belgium, and France which he had seen in operation. The use
of private homes for the insane aroused considerable opposition
and criticism, which assumed such proportions that he was
forced out of office. The system, however, was not abandoned,
although its scope was considerably curtailed. His retirement
from this project probably delayed by half a century the adop-
tion of the parole system for mental patients, which has had
even to the present only one good demonstration, that in New

12 The Founding Fathers
York State, under Governor Herbert H. Lehman in the fourth
decade of this century.
Sanborn served as the first secretary of the Conference of
State Boards of Charities and was the editor of the first five
volumes of its Proceedings. In 1881 he was elected its eighth
president and up to 1910 continued to be the most regular
attendant at, and consistent contributor to, its sessions. His
papers are models of precise and forceful English; some are
results of wide investigation, showing a firm, scholarly grasp of
subject matter and a logical organization of findings and with
more echo of the classics than is now often heard in Confer-
ence papers. They remain classics of their kind. More concerned
with the theoretical aspects of social questions than were his
co-workers, Sanborn showed an independence of judgment
that at times caused him to differ with most of them, which
difference he expressed without defensiveness or apology.
Although they differed widely, Elmore of Wisconsin and
Sanborn of Massachusetts apparently had deep appreciation of
each other's merits, for Elmore in introducing Sanborn for a
short report said (1888), "Perhaps, all I need to say is that he
is a Boston notion—and taking all in all we shall never see his
like again."
Frederick H. Wines (1838-1912) was also born of early
American colonial stock, his ancestors arriving from Wales
about 1635 and settling in and around Charlestown, Massa-
chusetts. He can hardly be understood apart from his father,
Enoch C. Wines (1806-79), who was ordained as a Congre-
gational minister in 1849 and who undertook several pastoral
and educational projects unsuccessfully. When the elder
Wines became secretary of the New York Prison Association
in 1862 he found himself. Under his leadership, Richard L.
Dugdale made his classical study of the Jukes family; he
warmly backed Zebulon Reed Brockway's progressive admin-
istration at Elmira Reformatory; he promoted the first Inter-

The Founding Fathers 15
national Penitentiary Congress in London and was president
of the second that met in Stockholm in 1878. He is said to have
died as the result of overwork in its behalf. He wrote two of
the earliest American books on the social services: Report on
the Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and Canada
(1867), which contained his findings from visits to every prison
and reformatory in the Northern states and Canada; and The
State of Prisons and of Child Saving Institutions in the Civilized
World (1880), published posthumously, and apparently based
on data gathered in connection with his work on the two inter-
national congresses.
His son, Frederick H. Wines, was graduated at the head of
his class from Washington and Jefferson College in 1857, but
bad eyesight and the Civil War delayed the completion of his
theological education until 1865. He served a church in Spring-
field, Illinois, until 1869, when he was appointed the first secre-
tary of the state board of Illinois; in that capacity he served
continuously until 1898, with the exception of the four years
(1892-96) of the administration of Governor John P. Altgeld,
who as a reforming Democrat could not tolerate a conservative
Republican in that important position. (In 1896 Wines served
as editor for the Republican National Committee.) Twice he
collaborated with the director of the United States Census, as
special adviser on the defective and delinquent classes for the
tenth census (1880), and in charge of the census on crime,
pauperism, and benevolences in the United States for the
eleventh census. He collaborated (1897-98) with John Koren
in writing The Liquor Problem in Its Legislative Aspects for
the Committee of Fifty on the Liquor Problem. After his re-
tirement from the Illinois board and his work with the Census
Bureau, Wines served as secretary of the New Jersey State
Charities Aid Association in 1902-04.
His secretaryship of the Illinois board covered a longer pe-
riod than that of any other state secretary in the country. His

ijf The Founding Fathers
intellectual ability and social heritage fitted him admirably for
a task that called for an unusual combination of qualities:
enough flexibility to make concessions; an objective firmly held
over the years; ability to impress people, including the legis-
lature, with his sincerity and competence; and, like Sanborn,
enormous capacity for intellectual labor combined with some
facility in expression. While he made no claim to be the orig-
inator of the idea which blossomed into the National Confer-
ence, both he and Sanborn crediting Elmore with that honor,
Wines certainly saw clearly that the problems with which a
state board was struggling could not be faced by any one state
alone. In his first report to the Governor, in 1869, after report-
ing on conferences he had called of superintendents of hospitals
for the insane and the county commissioners of public charity,
he went on to say,
the board has a very high appreciation of the necessity and possi-
bility of making a national system of State boards . . . [as] a
thoroughly effective means of interstate communication and ex-
change. . . . The immediate aim and results of any State Board
are local—but its outlook must transcend the narrow boundaries of
a state.
Lacking the philosophical or literary ability of Sanborn,
Wines was broadly interested in his own special field, and not
without creative imagination, although apparently he was not
endowed with a sense of humor. He served as secretary of the
National Prison Association from 1887 to 1889; he was one of
those who worked to separate the National Conference from
the American Social Science Association, and in 1883 he be-
came its tenth president, at which time he made known his
ideas of what the Conference should be and warned of the
danger which menaced it through the accretion of agencies that
threatened to smother its original purpose as a clearinghouse of
state boards. Wines even raised the question of whether state

boards might not have to secede from the Conference in order
to preserve the function for which it was created; for, he said,
if any other body or bodies, such as organized charities, should
succeed in dominating the Conference, it would have lost its
original purpose and have become something else. He was one
of the organizers of the International Congress of Charities and
Correction which met in Chicago in 1893, and on the death of
former President Rutherford B. Hayes, vice president of the
Congress, he took over the task of its administration. In Illinois
he is remembered for the creation of the cottage system of
housing insane patients at Kankakee, solving by that method
some of the difficult problems presented by the need for differ-
ential treatment of patients, by their classification, and by the
growth of the institution.
In contrast to Sanborn, his interests were concentrated in the
field of social welfare; and especially in its public aspects, in
which he had deep confidence although that phase of welfare
activity was then subjected to widespread criticism. Without
specific educational or other preparation for his vocation, un-
less association with his father had provided him with its fun-
damentals, Wines became the first American professional social
worker. He learned from actual experience, but he did leam.
His leadership in Illinois was unquestioned for nearly a third of
a century, a leadership he won by wise, patient, and thorough-
going workmanship. He called himself, when asked what he
did, a "statistician," but he was fundamentally a pioneering
practitioner in the public social services on the level of state
administration. It might well have been with Wines in mind
that the president of the Illinois state board, George S. Robin-
son, a lawyer, said at the Conference of 1881, "The care of the
unfortunate is really a profession; it might almost rank with
the learned professions, so great and varied is the information
on all subjects required for its highest development." This is

the first use of the word "professional" in referring to the prac-
tice of social welfare.
From the printed record of papers, especially of Conference
discussions, Wines leaves the impression that his was a gifted,
well-disciplined mind which perhaps did not "suffer fools
gladly." The early Conferences were tight little oligarchies,
directed by a few men identified with state boards who invited
and tolerated others from the wider area of the social services,
but did not draw them into their councils. It was an aristocracy,
of sorts, and Wines seems to have been the dominating char-
acter. However, one who saw him when he was secretary of
the New Jersey State Charities Aid Association describes him
as courteous and patient, and quite free from the need to im-
press himself upon his listener.
Andrew E. Elmore (1841-1906), of Wisconsin, was presi-
dent of the State Board on the occasion of Wines's visit to
Madison, Wisconsin, in 1872, and a member of the board in
1874 when the organizing meeting of the National Conference
was held in New York, but he did not attend that meeting. He
is credited both by Wines and by Sanborn with first suggest-
ing the organization of a national association of state boards.
In the Conference of 1882 Elmore delivered an interesting re-
cital of the events leading up to its organization; but his out-
standing contribution was as chairman of its Committee on
Resolutions, where his ready wit and his belief in the value of
preserving the open forum character of the Conference enabled
him to ward off the various efforts to introduce resolutions or
controversial subjects, and yet keep everybody happy. He was
a defender of the Wisconsin system of raising the standard of
county care for the chronically insane, in which debate the
Wisconsin delegation stood alone, with only Sanborn of Massa-
chusetts coming vigorously to their defense. Elmore was the
one who gave notice to the Conference at its second meeting

in 1875 that Wisconsin would not continue to send delegates
if the Conference remained a section—a side show, as he said—
of the American Social Science Association. This was the
schism that led finally to the separate organization of the Na-
tional Conference in 1879.
Elmore represented the lay membership of the Conference,
with an interest first created by his membership on a state board;
and from that point of vantage he saw the national implications
of a state's activity. He looked upon himself as representing the
West—even the far West—in the councils of the Conference,
assuming that there would be differences of opinion between
the older and more settled East and the younger and growing
West. Nevertheless, Wisconsin never wavered in its loyalty to
the National Conference, remaining steadily true to the orig-
inal faith in the value of such a medium for exchange of opinion,
even when Wisconsin's opinion varied sharply from that of the
majority of the members of the Conference. This loyalty to the
Conference was equally true of Elmore's fellow members on the
board, Hiram H. Giles, who became its chairman, and Professor
Albert O. Wright.
Those who knew him said that Elmore was a man of broad
vision. To improve the abhorrent conditions he found in Wis-
consin, he sent members of the staff of the Wisconsin board to
the New England states and even to Europe to survey their in-
stitutions and their different methods. He had many plans for
reforming state institutions; he was deeply interested in the
possibility of creating a national conference that would give the
nine state boards that existed in 1872 a chance to exchange ideas
and discuss common and special problems. According to a later
statement by Sanborn, Wisconsin owed the excellency of its
public welfare institutions to Elmore's leadership, as Massa-
chusetts owed its development to the vision and organizing
ability of Samuel Gridley Howe.

William Pryor Letchworth (1823-1910), like Elmore of
Wisconsin, was a layman who, after retiring from business in
Buffalo, New York, at the age of fifty, devoted his life to char-
itable services. Letchworth was a Quaker by birth; his ances-
tors, who had emigrated to America in the mid-seventeenth
century, apparently transmitted to him unspoiled the Quakers'
devotion to service, fidelity to the inner voice of conscience,
and avoidance of all ostentation. His fellow officers and mem-
bers of the National Conference treated him with a respect
touching on reverence. He was a man of kindly sympathy and
simple habits.
Letchworth was appointed a member of the New York state
board in 1873, remaining on it until 1896, serving as vice presi-
dent from 1874 to 1878, and president from 187810 1888. Three
major interests absorbed his energies during his nearly a quarter
of a century with the New York board: the removal of children
from the almshouses and securing for them suitable and well-
supervised placement in homes and institutions; learning the
best possible way to handle the care of the insane; and, toward
the end of his years of service, securing proper and specialized
care for those afflicted with epilepsy. At the 1875 sessions of
the Conference, Letchworth gave expression to his earliest in-
terest by reading a paper by Mary Carpenter, of Bristol, Eng-
land, written on the basis of her visits to almshouses, prisons, and
jails, where she saw the plight of children held in those destruc-
tive environments. He then proposed a resolution recommend-
ing that state legislatures pass laws that would remove children
from almshouses and make provision for their suitable care
under conditions as nearly like family life as possible.
In pursuit of his interest in the care of the insane, Letchworth
visited institutions in Great Britain, as did also Wines and San-
born at later dates, where he found that Europe had advanced
quite beyond America, both in an understanding of insanity and

The Founding Fathers ip
in methods for its care. On completing this study he wrote The
Insane in Foreign Countries (1889). Eleven years later, when
his interests were centered on the care of the epileptic, Letch-
worth brought out his second book, The Care and Treatment
of the Epileptic (1900). He urged the segregation of epileptics
from the insane as well as from the feeble-minded.
He was elected president of the Conference in 1884, and
served in almost every capacity during his long association with
it. He was also the first president of the New York State Con-
ference of Charities and Corrections (1900). Although not a
graduate of a college, Letchworth had the real student's capac-
ity, as many of the papers that he presented at the Conference
and his two books demonstrate. In 1893 New York University
bestowed on him the honorary degree of LL.D., "for distin-
guished service to the State."
Although they were not so intimately connected with the
National Conference as were Sanborn, Wines, Elmore, and
Letchworth, the stories of three other men belong here so that
we may have a more adequate picture of its first membership.
Theodore Roosevelt (1831-78), father of the President of
the United States of the same name, was a descendant of a
Dutch settler who came to New Amsterdam in 1649. A suc-
cessful businessman, Theodore Roosevelt left his mark on the
city and state of New York although he died before his forty-
seventh birthday. In addition to his membership on the first
New York State Board of Charities, and on the first board of
the State Charities Aid Association of New York, he was one
of the organizers of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of the
Museum of Natural History, and of the Union League dub,
all of which still occupy a place of prominence in the cultural
life of the metropolis. He also aided in the organization of the
Sanitary Commission, which served the Northern armies in
the Civil War in much the same way that the Red Cross has

functioned in modern wars, and he was its representative in
New York. Roosevelt suggested to Congress a policy of sol-
diers' allotments for their families that was similar to that
adopted in the first and second World War. He stayed in
Washington for three months, much to the dismay of Congress,
until the bill authorizing such a plan became a law. He was
offered an appointment as Collector of the Port of New York
by President Hayes, but the nomination was defeated in the
Senate by the influence of the Tweed machine. Williams Col-
lege granted him the degree of LL.D.
The late President, Theodore Roosevelt, held his father in
great reverence and credited him with furnishing a strong moral
influence on his life. George William Curtis said of him that
"he had the convictions of a reformer, with courtesy, courage
and omnipresent tact of a gentleman. He was neither spoiled by
good fortune, nor soured by zeal and his death, therefore,
diminishes the active moral force of the community."
John V. L. Pruyn (1811-77) was president of the New York
state board of which Roosevelt and Letchworth were members
and which served as the host of the first Conference in 1874.
He had recommended the organization of a state board to the
Governor of the state, and became its president on its creation,
holding that position until his death. In many ways his life
paralleled Roosevelt's and Letchworth's, for he too spent much
of his latter years in civic, educational, and philanthropic activ-
ities. He too was a descendant of early settlers, his Dutch an-
cestors having settled in Albany by 1665. A lawyer by pro-
fession, he laid the legal foundation for the consolidation of
many of the small railroad lines in New York State that now
comprise the New York Central System; he was elected to the
state senate in 1861 and to Congress in 1863 and again in 1867.
A stanch, old-fashioned Democrat, in Congress Pruyn worked
for freeing the slaves and healing the wounds of the Civil War.

As state senator he promoted the erection of the State Capitol
at Albany, much of whose splendor was due to his work on
the Capitol Commission, from which he resigned in 1870 when
the Tweed gang gained control and made of it a fruitful source
of political plunder. Quite early in his career, in 1844, he was
appointed a regent of the University of the State of New York
and in 1862 became its chancellor, a post he retained to his
death.
The name of Glenn runs throughout the entire period cov-
ered by the Conference: John Glenn of Baltimore; John M.
Glenn, his nephew; and Mrs. John M. (Mary Wilcox) Glenn.
John Glenn (1829-96) was the son of a judge of the Federal
District Court. Due to impaired eyesight, which resulted in
blindness in his last years, he abandoned the study of law and
became a successful real estate operator. His interest in the less
fortunate led him to become identified with the Maryland
School for the Blind, the Friendly Inn Association, the Provi-
dent Band, and the Charity Organization Society of his native
city. President Daniel C. Gilman, of Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, said of him, "it is no exaggeration to say that the Charity
Organization Society of Baltimore today is very largely a
monument to John Glenn."
John M. Glenn (1858- ) is an attorney. Among other civic
activities he served as a member of the Board of Supervisors of
the City Charities of his native Baltimore from 1888 to 1907,
when he was appointed director of the newly established Rus-
sell Sage Foundation of New York City. He served in that
capacity until 1931. Glenn is a member of the Social Service
Commission and of the Executive Committee of the Federal
Council of Churches; but he will be best remembered for his
kindly advisory services to all sorts of national agencies and to
an endless number of persons engaged in the social services. He
was president of the Conference in 1901. He has been a faithful

member of the Conference; but rarely has he appeared before
it in a formal manner, and he is the only president who did
not feel called upon to deliver a presidential message.
Mrs. John M. (Mary Wilcox) Glenn (1869-1940), also of
Baltimore, was secretary of the Henry Watson Children's Aid
Society from 1897 to 1901 and of the Charity Organization
Society from 1900 to 1901. After her removal to New York
with her husband, she became a member of the board of the
Charity Organization Society (later the Community Service
Society); chairman of the Home Service Section of the New
York and Bronx chapters of the American Red Cross during the
first World War; president of the National Council of the
Church Mission of Help, 1919-37, and of the Family Welfare
Association of America, 1920-37. Mrs. Glenn was president
of the National Conference in 1915, the only woman president
whose husband had also served the Conference in that capacity.
A devout member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, her
contributions as a member of various committees and as a fre-
quent speaker were suffused with deep religious feeling and a
rugged faith in the democratic way of life.
Letchworth, Roosevelt, Pruyn, and the three Glenns repre-
sented a class early drawn into the orbit of public welfare.
There were many others like them in different parts of the
country. They combined a high intellectual capacity and the
practical wisdom of the market place with a passion for social
justice that made them public servants of rare quality; a com-
bination and a result that have not been often duplicated since
that first decade of the Conference's life.
Quite different from these pioneers of the National Confer-
ence was Zebulon Reed Brockway (1827-1920) whose name
is synonymous with prison reform. He spoke before the Con-
ference only four times in his extraordinarily long lifetime; he
was not an officer of the Conference or its president at any

time, and his speeches do not seem particularly significant as
one reads them now. He did serve as president of the National
Prison Association in 1897-98, and as honorary president of the
International Prison Association in 1902. His biographer, de-
scribing his various and unsuccessful ventures in the business
world, quotes a friend of Brockway as saying that "he will
never become forehanded, for he has not the money getting
instinct."
His road to his famous post at Elmira, New York, was a long
and checkered one. In 1848 he was clerk in the Weathersfield
(Connecticut) prison; in 1851, deputy to the warden at the
Albany County Penitentiary; in 1853, superintendent of the
Albany Almshouse; the next year, superintendent of the
County Penitentiary at Rochester, New York; seven years
later he was in charge of the House of Correction at Detroit.
Then followed an interval of four years in business in which
he showed his unfitness for meeting the demands of a com-
petitive society; finally, in 1876, he took charge of the newly
erected Elmira Reformatory. It would be interesting to know
by what means the New York board, and specifically Pruyn,
Roosevelt, or Letchworth, found Brockway or decided that
this middle-aged man who had tried many projects with no
particular success was the man to put in charge of this new
venture in treating adult first offenders.
Toward the end of his twenty-four-year stay at Elmira, the
state board preferred charges against Brockway on the basis of
his cruel treatment of the prisoners under him, and recom-
mended his dismissal. The Governor refused to follow the rec-
ommendation of the board and appointed a special committee,
which exonerated Brockway. He remained for six more years
as warden at Elmira, or until 1900, when he had reached his
seventy-third year. Five years later he was elected mayor of
Elmira and served for two years.

Brockway was not the originator of the idea of reform in
place of punishment as the only treatment of the delinquent,
but he was the first to have written into the statutes the inde-
terminate sentence and parole. While at first depending upon
emotional appeals, he abandoned that method. Influenced by
the contemporary philosophy of the European school of crim-
inology, his method involved the education of the whole man,
his capacity, his habits, and his tastes, by a rational procedure
whose central idea was "the ennobling influences of established
industrial efficiency."
Although Brockway did not often appear before the Confer-
ence in person, his name occurred many times in papers and in
discussions, and the Elmira Reformatory became the symbol
of the best example then existing of the incorporation of the
principles of advanced penology, not only in this country, but
also internationally.

3 · THE WORLD IN WHICH THE
CONFERENCE WAS BORN
Ε THIRD quarter of the nineteenth century marked
a phase in the transition of ethical philosophy, from the mysti-
cism of medieval theory to a more scientific explanation of hu-
man behavior and motives. In a short space of time Buckle had
written his history of Civilization in England, using the method
of statistical correlation between economic data and social
change to establish his thesis that historical direction could be
understood by discovering the fluctuating factors occurring in
the economic situation of an age. The social philosophy of
Auguste Comte was made available to the English-speaking
world by the translation of Harriet Martineau, developing the
same theory of the possibility of discovering the causes of social
change, on a wider front than Buckle had explored. In that
same ten years (1850-60) Darwin's Origin of Species was
published, concerned not primarily with social questions, but
establishing on an enduring foundation the theory of the unity
of living matter, that all changes occur in understandable ways
and in response to causes that can be discovered. This theory of
evolution was immediately seized upon by his contemporaries
Huxley and Spencer to apply to social phenomena, with the
result that Darwin's theory of evolution was the catalyst that
broke up the old form of ethical philosophy as well as the more
popular ideas of the dynamics of human behavior.
It is not to be assumed that these theories received instant or
general acceptance. Of course, they did not. The "monkey

2 6 The World of the New Conference
trial" in Tennessee of only yesterday demonstrated that there
is even yet a determined intellectual and assumed ethical opposi-
tion to its theory, and for the general public it is a good subject
for a jest. The point is that the theory greatly reinforced the
basis of intellectual liberalism, saving it from the charge of senti-
mentalism and wishful thinking. There is not much direct evi-
dence that its implications were discussed by leaders of the
Conference. Sanborn dealt with them at length in his papers
before the Social Science Association, with which he remained
in an official capacity through the rest of the century. The
Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch, president of the Indiana Board of
Charities and later of the National Conference (1891), was
vitally interested in their connotations and is said to have spent
much of his available time in discussing Spencer and the later
writers, such as Henry Drummond and John Fiske, who were
attempting to reconcile biological evolution with our ethical
heritage.
It is significant, however, that most of the leaders of the
Conference accepted the implications of a scientific approach
to social problems. They acted on the tacit assumption that hu-
man ills—sickness, insanity, crime, poverty—could be subjected
to study and methods of treatment, and that a theory for pre-
vention could be formulated as well; that they were not the
results of "sin" or of fate, to be borne with such patience as their
victims could muster, or that they existed to give opportunity
for the exercise of the charity of their fellow men. This attitude
raised these problems out of the realm of mysticism into that of
science. Of course, there were exceptions among the Con-
ference members to this generalization; but not among the first
few great leaders of the Conference.
As a result of the adoption of the scientific attitude, Con-
ference speakers and programs looked forward toward progress,
not backward toward a golden age. They believed in the future;
that it was possible, by patient, careful study and experimenta-

The World of the New Conference 2η
rion to create a society much better than the one they lived in.
They thought of this improvement, for the most part, in nega-
tive terms: elimination of sickness, crime, mental ills, and
pauperism. They were not thinking particularly of the creation
of a sounder social structure that might slough off such ills.
This limitation of imagination probably was the cause of the
disillusionment characteristic of liberal thought at the turn of
the century. But that was still twenty or thirty years off. The
stimulus of hope given by the new social science spurred early
workers to a degree of application and zeal that has not since
been duplicated.
Coming more closely to the task in hand in the English-
speaking world, the attitude toward poverty was that of the
reformers of the English Poor Law of 1834: that the plight of
the poor was evidence of moral weakness to be eradicated by
severe administration of relief. It is significant that the first com-
mittees of the Conference, its papers, and its declared purposes
spoke of the elimination of pauperism, not of poverty. It was the
weakness of the victims of destitution that called for study, for
treatment, and even for cure, and not much attention was paid
to those situations, external to the dependent, which might
throw some light upon the reasons for their dependence. There
were hints from time to time that moral factors might not be
solely responsible for the existence of need, especially in the
dependency of children and widowhood. But they remained a
minority, and not an influential minority, throughout the nine-
teenth century.
In regard to other social ills, there were less definite obses-
sions. Mary Carpenter's work in England in substituting ref-
ormation for punishment was generally accepted by the Con-
ference considerably in advance of its acceptance in practice,
which even today receives little more than lip service in many
institutions for juvenile delinquents. Brockway's work at El-
mira in applying the same principle, plus parole, to the young

28 The World of the New Conference
adult offender was defended. The experiment at Mattrey,
France, where juvenile offenders were cared for by what was
there called the "family system," and in this country the "cot-
tage system," was early advocated and gradually introduced.
Men like Sanborn, Wines, and Letchworth, studying at first
hand European methods with mentally ill patients, reported
their findings without opposition in the Conference itself, al-
though the adoption of a scientifically valid method of care for
such patients has been blocked by many factors outside the
power of the Conference to master.
In practically all the scope of the Conference's interest—
poverty, crime, insanity, and sickness—contemporary society
was exploring with considerable freedom the ways and means
whereby the challenge of these ills could be understood, except
in poverty. There, practically alone, the fixed idea—or obses-
sion—blocked an untrammeled search for the roots of its wide-
spread occurrence. There may have been some remnant of the
caste system in such an attitude, a system that divided society
into two groups, workers, or the poor, and the leisure class,
with the parallel idea that the worker, who was the potential
dependent, was only held to diligent labor by fear of poverty.
Even Josephine Shaw Lowell, one of the wisest leaders in
American philanthropic effort, said at the National Conference
as late as 1890:
No human being will work to provide the means of living for
himself, if he can get a living in any other manner agreeable to
himself; . . . that the community cannot afford to tempt its mem-
bers who are able to work for a living to give up working for a
living by offering to provide a living otherwise . . . and the way
to [avoid] this, is to provide [relief for the able-bodied] under
strict rules inside an institution.
This is almost precisely parallel with what the essayist Bernard
de Mandeville said in The Fable of the Bees over a century

The World of the New Conference 29
earlier (1714): "The Poor should be kept strictly to work; and
[that it was] prudence to relieve their wants, but folly to cure
them."
By 1870 the office of the overseer of the poor, or its equiv-
alent, was in charge of public outdoor and indoor relief in
local political units; the almshouse in some form served as the
catchall for the community's outcasts; hospitals for mental dis-
eases were gradually assuming responsibility for the custodial
care of the insane; and, of course, local jails and state institu-
tions had been established for delinquents, with only a promise
of the coming separation into special institutions for women
and children. In the private agency field there had been an in-
creasing number of institutions for children, both dependent
and delinquent; the New York Children's Aid Society had been
sending children to homes with families in the Mid-Western
states for the previous twenty years; and associations for im-
proving the condition of the poor (provident associations, re-
lief and aid societies) had been established in almost all the
larger urban centers in the United States. Through the years
there has been experimentation with personnel. At first the
workers were entirely volunteers; then the agencies employed
small paid staffs supplemented by large numbers of volunteers.
Then came the period of a wholly paid staff, composed pri-
marily of men; within recent years the social agencies have, for
the most part, employed women, since they have found them
to be more "reliable" (nothing is said about their being
cheaper). There had been, by 1870, a few experiments in the
social services, mostly in methods for the education of the
blind, the deaf, and the mentally deficient.
Chronologically, the Conference was organized within a
decade of the Civil War, and within the year after the begin-
ning of one of the three great depressions 1
suffered by modern
1
1837; 1873; and 1929.

50 The World of the New Conference
industrial nations. The meetings of the Conference took little
notice of these events. No great Civil War figures ever became
identified with the Conference. General Roeliff Brinkerhoff
was in the quartermaster service, and while he was an influen-
tial leader in the Conference and in the National Prison Asso-
ciation, his military experience bore no relationship to his civic
interests. The depression of 1873 is not mentioned in the 1874
papers, and in 1875 it appears only as an episode that is rapidly
passing away.
Outside the recently created state boards of charity, the Con-
ference seemed not to be particularly interested in the general
field of charity. It was only as new agencies appeared in the
field, such as the social settlements and the charity organization
movement, that the Conference gradually broadened its scope
and shared its management with others than representatives of
state boards, as well as included in its programs the presenta-
tion of topics other than those engaging the immediate interest
of members of state boards.

φ · STATE BOARDS TO ipOO
<•73
ROB ABLY as good a statement as any explaining the reasons
for the establishment of state boards is the message from Gov-
ernor Richard J. Oglesby, of Illinois, to the legislature of that
state in January, 1869, based upon the findings of a joint legis-
lative committee of the House and Senate:
It has been earnestly represented to me, in view of the separate
organizations of our various charitable institutions under separate
Boards of Management; the large number of inmates attending each
and the constant demand for more room and accommodations for
the large numbers necessarily excluded from the benefits of each;
together with the important question of the means to be raised by
taxation for the support and enlargement of the present or the con-
struction of additional asylums; and to consider new questions aris-
ing out of experience as to the best modes of treatment and im-
provement of the various classes of patients and inmates of our
several benevolent institutions, that our present system ought to
be thoroughly and carefully reviewed and revised and the whole
subject in its various bearings, placed in the hands of a Board, to
be created, with full powers to investigate and report on all these
questions, to be styled The Board of Public Charities.
The above quotation gives the situation—in subdued colors
—that confronted the states in the seventh decade of the cen-
tury. From time to time, in response to a petition or as the
result of a special investigation, each state authorized the crea-
tion of an institution to care for a specific need: usually a hos-
pital for mental patients, or a state prison, but occasionally
other institutions, such as a school for the feeble-minded or, as

32 State Boards to 1900
in Massachusetts, an almshouse for the state's poor. Each of
these institutions was administered by a board of managers
ordinarily consisting of prominent local citizens. Usually ap-
pointed by the governor, the members of the board were at
times chosen on a partisan basis. These boards were responsible
only to the governor and, indirectly, to the state legislature
from which each institution received its annual or biennial
appropriation. Each institution was a law unto itself. A good
administration would be accidental and unnoticed; a bad admin-
istration would escape criticism unless a public scandal were
created. Each institution had to compete before the legislature
with all the other institutions in the state for appropriations.
Its board might be highly partisan in politics, and the personnel
of the institution dependent for employment upon the political
party in power.
So good a student of the development of public welfare in
this country as Edith Abbott believes that this prostitution of
the services of the state institutions to the whims of partisan
politics was the chief reason for the creation of state boards.
Such were some of the "deplorable conditions" found by El-
more in Wisconsin, and corrected by the Wisconsin state board.
Letchworth in 1882 related two incidents in N e w York State
that led to the creating of the New York board. A woman of
some social standing voluntarily committed herself to the alms-
house at Albany; when she left, she reported the shocking con-
ditions she had found, only to be told to mind her own business.
Appeals to higher authorities in the city brought the retort
that a woman of her position might be better occupied than
interfering with the duties of a public official. Later, a man
badly hurt was refused admission to Bellevue Hospital in N e w
York and later died uncared for, because the hospital admitting
officer had left for the day. Appeals to city officials brought
approximately the same response that had been given to the
complaint in Albany. Word of this incident came to the ears

State Boards to ipoo 35
of John V. L. Pruyn, who took it up with New York's gover-
nor, Reuben E. Fenton, and the result was the establishment of
the state board.
It is to be noted that the Governor's message to the Illinois
legislature called for a board with power to investigate and
report; that is, it was to have only a supervisory function, very
much as the English Board of Poor Law Commissioners estab-
lished a central supervisory authority over the local parish over-
seers of the poor by the reform of 1834. Possibly the intention
was to pattern the Illinois board after this governmental device
for bringing about some uniformity in the local administration
of public welfare and for increasing its efficiency. However,
no uniform pattern was followed in the various states. Rhode
Island, from the first, set up an administrative board, abolishing
separate boards for each institution. Some states, such as Massa-
chusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, had pre-existing state
authorities with limited functions, such as control of immigra-
tion, and these administrative functions were taken over by
the new boards whose major responsibility was supervision.
Nor was there unanimity of opinion, even in the early days, as
to the wisdom of this circumscribed function. Sanborn, in his
second annual report to the Massachusetts board (1865), said
that because "the Board [is] not clothed with power—[it there-
fore could not] make desirable changes in the administration
of several institutions. It could not substitute a single headed
system for the present many headed one." Later (1882), in
discussing the limited executive functions of the Massachusetts
board, such as control of immigration, administration of the
state Poor Fund, and "the recently added administration of
public health laws controlling contagious diseases," he com-
mented favorably on the effectiveness of such centralized au-
thority, contrasting it with the ineffectiveness of control by
supervision.
The conflict between the defenders of an advisory board and

34 State Boards to ipoo
the champions of an administrative one furnished the first de-
bate to engage the energies of the National Conference. Certain
representatives, notably those from Massachusetts, New York,
and Pennsylvania, were taken slightly aback at the debate; for,
as they said, their boards had some administrative functions,
and since the states were assuming new duties in the field of
public service, these new tasks tended to be added to the func-
tions of the state boards rather than to be given to new execu-
tive bodies set up for their administration. However, Wines of
Illinois was an outstanding proponent of the supervisory func-
tion of the board, to be quickly joined by A. G. Byers and
General Brinkerhoff of the Ohio board, by Hastings H. Hart
of the Minnesota board, and by Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch and
Amos W. Butler of the Indiana board. So long as Rhode Island
remained the only state with a board directly administering all
charitable and penal institutions of the state, the debate re-
mained mild, for Rhode Island was of the opinion that the
success of a plan that worked in such a small state, where all
the institutions were grouped in one place, could scarcely be a
demonstration of the best plan for larger states with widely
scattered institutions. During this period there was no clear-cut
opinion expressed by anyone to the effect that centralized ad-
ministration is desirable in itself.
Oddly enough, one of the excellent descriptions of the ad-
vantages of a supervisory board, in contrast with the adminis-
trative type, was given by George I. Chace, chairman of the
Rhode Island Board of Charities and Corrections, in 1882. He
felt that such a board had, with all its limitations, unfettered
opportunity to visit state institutions; to report its findings to
the governor, the legislature, and the public; to equip itself
with the best knowledge available on the occurrence and
method of treatment of the defective, delinquent, and depend-
ent, serving as a guide to public opinion and legislative action; to

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Doom; Or, a Poetical Description of the Great
and Last Judgement

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Title: The Day of Doom; Or, a Poetical Description of the Great and
Last Judgement
Author: Michael Wigglesworth
Contributor: John Ward Dean
Cotton Mather
Release date: November 26, 2017 [eBook #56053]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Michael McDermott, using scans obtained from
the Internet Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY OF
DOOM; OR, A POETICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT AND LAST
JUDGEMENT ***

The Day of Doom Or, a
Poetical Description of the
Great and Last Judgement
Transcriber’s Note: Biblical references were originally present as side
notes rather than footnotes. The references for each stanza were
collected into a single footnote, as the references are mostly generic
to the action of the stanza. The summaries, also present as side
notes, have been moved to precede the stanza to which they were
attached.
The Day of Doom;
Or, a
Poetical Description
Of the
Great and Last
JUDGMENT:
With Other Poems.
By
Michael Wigglesworth, A.M.,
Teacher of the Church at Malden in New England,
1.
Also a memoir of the author, autobiography and sketch of his funeral
sermon by Rev. Cotton Mather.
Acts 17:31. Because he hath appointed a Day in the which he will
judge the World in Righteousness by that Man whom he hath

ordained.
Mat. 24:30. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in
Heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the Earth mourn, and they
shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven with power
and great glory.
From the Sixth Edition, 1715.
New York;
American News Company.
1867.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord, 1867,
by
Wm. Henry Burr,
in the Clerk’s office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.
C. S. Westcott & Co., Printers, 79 John street.

Memoir of the Author.
The following is the substance of an article published in the “New
England Historical and Genealogical Register,” for April, 1863, written
by John Ward Dean, Esq., of Boston:
A century ago no poetry was more popular in New England than
Wigglesworth’s Day of Doom. Francis Jenks, Esq., in an article in the
Christian Examiner for Nov., 1828, speaks of it as “a work which was
taught our fathers with their catechisms, and which many an aged
person with whom we are acquainted can still repeat, though they
may not have met with a copy since they were in leading strings; a
work that was hawked about the country, printed on sheets like
common ballads; and, in fine, a work which fairly represents the
prevailing theology of New England at the time it was written, and
which Mather thought might, ‘perhaps, find our children till the Day
itself arrives.’”
The popularity of Wigglesworth dated from the appearance of his
poem, and continued for more than a century. Expressing in earnest
words the theology which they believed, and picturing in lively colors
the terrors of the judgment day and the awful wrath of an offended
God, it commended itself to those zealous Puritans, who had little
taste for lofty rhyme or literary excellence. The imaginative youth
devoured its horrors with avidity, and shuddered at its fierce
denunciation of sin. In the darkness of night he saw its frightful
forms arise, and was thus driven to seek the “ark of safety” from the
wrath of Jehovah. For the last century, however, the reputation of
the Day of Doom has waned, and few at the present day know it
except by reputation.
The author of this book, whose wand had summoned up such
images of terror, was neither a cynic nor a misanthrope, though

sickness, which generally brings out these dispositions where they
exist, had long been his doom. His attenuated frame and feeble
health were joined to genial manners; and, though subject to fits of
despondency, he seems generally to have maintained a cheerful
temper, so much so that some of his friends believed his ills to be
imaginary.
Rev. Michael Wigglesworth was born October 28, 1631, probably in
Yorkshire, England. He was brought to this country in 1638, being
then seven years old, but in what ship we are not informed. His
father, Edward Wigglesworth, was one of those resolute Puritans
who, with their families, found an asylum where they could enjoy
their religion without molestation in our then New England
wilderness, the distance of which from their English homes can
hardly be appreciated now. Here they suffered the severe hardships
of a rigorous climate, the fearful dangers from savage tribes around
them, while uniting to build up villages which are now cities, and
which still retain some of the characteristics of their Puritan
founders. The determined purpose and strength of principle that
conquered every obstacle was a school of severe training for the
children of that period. It was natural that a father who had endured
so much for conscience’ sake should desire to see his only son a
clergyman; and, although the father’s means were not large, the son
was devoted to the ministry and given a thorough education.
Michael, after nearly three years of preparatory studies, entered
Harvard College in 1647. Here he had the good fortune to have for a
tutor the excellent Jonathan Mitchell, “the glory of the college,” and
famous as a preacher. The friendship here begun appears to have
continued after both had left the college walls. Probably the eight
stanzas “on the following work and its author,” signed J. Mitchel,
were written by that tutor and preacher, who was a native of
Yorkshire, the county in which Wigglesworth is believed to have
been born.
In 1651 Mr. Wigglesworth graduated, and was soon after appointed
a tutor in the College. Some of his pupils were men of note in their

day. Among them were. Rev. Shubael Dummer, of York, Me.;
Rev. John Eliot, of Newton; and Rev. Samuel Torry, of Weymouth;
but the chief of them, it will be admitted, was Rev. Increase Mather,
D.D., pastor of the second church in Boston, and for sixteen years
president of Harvard College. That the tutor was faithful to his trust,
we have evidence from the sketch of the funeral sermon appended
to this work, preached by Rev. Cotton Mather, D.D., son of Increase,
who probably derived his information from his father.
While a tutor, he prepared himself for the ministry, and before his
father’s death he had preached several times. He was invited,
probably in the autumn of 1654, to settle at Malden, as the
successor of Rev. Marmaduke Matthews, but owing to long-
continued sickness was not ordained there till 1656. The precise
date of his ordination is not known, but it must have been
subsequent to August 25, 1656, for his letter of dismission from the
church at Cambridge bears that date. This letter, addressing the
“Church of Christ at Maldon,” states that “the good hand of Divine
Providence hath so disposed that our beloved and highly esteemed
brother, Mr. Wigglesworth, hath his residence and is employed in the
good work of ye Lord amongst you, and hath cause to desire of us
Letters Dismissive to your church, in order to his joining as a
member with you.”
The ill health which had delayed his ordination at Malden returned
soon after his settlement there, and interrupted his ministry several
years. He took a voyage to Bermuda, sailing Sept. 23, 1663, and
being absent about seven months and a half. But the tedious and
stormy voyage seems to have impaired his health so much that the
change of climate afforded him little relief, and he returned much
discouraged. He met with a very cordial welcome from his friends
and parishioners.
While he was thus withheld from his ministry, he employed his time
in literary labors. His Day of Doom was published about 1662, the
year before his voyage to Bermuda. The first edition consisting of

1,800 copies, was sold, with some profit to the author, within a year,
which considering the population and wealth of New England at that
time, shows almost as remarkable a popularity as that of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.
While absent on his voyage in search of health, Dec. 9, 1663,
Rev. Benjamin Bunker was ordained pastor of the church at Malden.
It seems that a distinction was observed at this time in New England
between pastor and teacher. Wigglesworth calls Bunker “pastor” in
some verses composed on his death, while on the title-page of this,
work he calls himself “teacher.” After Wigglesworth became sole
minister, he was probably considered the pastor. Bunker held this
office over six years, till his death, Feb. 3, 1669-70; In the elegy on
the death of his colleague, Wigglesworth highly extols Bunker’s piety
and usefulness. The next colleague of our author was Bev. Benjamin
Blackman, settled about 1674. He supplied the desk four years and
upward. and left in the year 1679. His next colleague was
Rev. Thomas Cheever, son of his early teacher, the celebrated New
England schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever, author of Latin Accidence.
These three ministers were all educated at Harvard College, Bunker
having graduated in 1658, Blackman in 1663, and Cheever in 1677.
Mr. Cheever began to preach at Maiden Feb. 14, 1679-80, was
ordained July 27, 1681, and was dismissed May 20, 1686.
Wigglesworth, though long prevented by sickness from officiating,
never resigned his ministerial charge, as appears from a letter which
he addressed to Samuel Sprague, July 22, 1687. He was now left
alone as minister of the church. He had, however, recovered his
health in a measure about this time, which had suffered for nearly
twenty years, and for the remainder of his life he continued in public
usefulness.
He died on Sunday morning, June 10, 1705, in the 74th year of his
age. The epitaph on the last page of this work is believed to have
been written by Cotton Mather, as it appears in the appendix to his

funeral sermon as by “one that had been gratified by his Meat out of
the Eater and Day of Doom.”
Mr. Wigglesworth had at least three wives: Mary, daughter of
Humphrey Reyner, of Rowley; Martha, whose maiden name was
probably Mudge; and Sybil, widow of Dr. Jonathan Avery, of
Dedham, and daughter of Nathaniel Sparhawk, of Cambridge.
By his first wife he had (1) Mercy b. Feb., 1655-6; m. 1st, [Samuel?]
Brackenbury, by whom she had at least one son, William; m. 2d,
[Rev. Samuel.?] Belcher.
By his second wife, Martha, who d. 11th Sept., 1690, a. 28, he had:
— (2) Abigail, b. 20th March, 1681; m. Samuel Tappan, 23d Dec,
1700;— (3) Mary, b. 21st Sept., 1682 ; unm. in 1708;— (4) Martha,
b. 21st Dec., 1683; m. Wheeler;— (5) Esther, b. 16th April, 1685; m.
1st, John Sewall, June 8, 1708, who d. 1711; m. 2d, Abraham
Tappan, Oct. 21, 1713;— (6) Dorothy, b. 22d Feb., 1687-88; m. 2d
June, 1709, James Upham;— (7) Rev. Samuel, b. 4th Feb., 1689-90,
d. 3d Sept., 1768. By his third wife, Sybil, who d. 6th Aug., 1708, a.
53, he had:— (8) Prof. Edward, D.D., b. about 1692, d. Jan. 16,
1765.
Rev. Samuel Wigglesworth, the elder son, was settled in Hamilton
Parish, in Ipswich, Mass., in 1714. He m. 1st, Mary, dau. of John
Brintnal, of Winnisimmet, 30th June, 1715, who d. June 6, 1723, a.
28, having borne him four children, Mary, Michael, Martha, and
Phebe. He m. March 12, 1730, Martha Brown, and had nine children.
Edward Wigglesworth, D.D., the younger son, took his degree of
Bachelor of Arts in 1710, and applied himself to the study of Divinity.
He preached for some time in different parishes, and in 1722 was
installed Hollis Professor of Divinity of Harvard College. Not long
afterward he was chosen one of the fellows of the corporation. He
left an only son, who succeeded him as Hollis Professor in the same
college, and an only surviving daughter, who married Prof. Sewall.

The following are the various editions of the Day of Doom, so far as
we have been able to ascertain:
The first edition was published in 1661 or 1662, and the second four
years after. These facts are obtained from memoranda by the author,
which are printed in the Historical Magazine for December, 1863. An
edition was printed in London, England, without the author’s name,
in 1673. This was, probably, the third impression; the date of the
fourth is unknown. The fifth edition is said to have been published in
1701. Mr. Dean has made diligent search and repeated inquiries, but
can only find two or three copies of the edition of 1673, and several
fragments which must have been parts of some of the other
editions.
There was an edition published at Newcastle, in England, in 1711.
The next edition was published in 1715, called “the 6th edition,
enlarged, with Scripture and marginal notes”—“printed by John
Allen, for Benjamin Eliot, at his shop in King street.” From this
edition, which was evidently the seventh, the present one is
reprinted, being carefully compared with that of 1673. Another
edition appeared in 1751, “Printed and sold by Thomas Fleet, at the
Heart and Crown, in Cornhill,” Boston. The next edition appeared in
1811, “Published by E. Little & Company, Newburyport,” Mass. The
last edition, prior to the present, was published in Boston in 1828,
by Charles Ewer.
Besides the Day of Doom Mr. Wigglesworth published, in 1669,
“Meat out of the Eater; or, Meditations concerning the necessity and
usefulness of Afflictions unto God’s Children.” The “fourth edition”
appeared in 1689, and subsequent editions in 1717 and 1770. In
1686 he preached an Election Sermon, which was printed by the
colony. Among his unpublished writings is a poem entitled “God’s
Controversy with New England, written in the time of the great
Drought, Anno 1662. By a lover of New England’s prosperity.”

Mr. Wigglesworth borrowed little from other poets, and what he
borrowed was probably from the commentaries and theological
treatises with which his library abounded, rather than from the
poets. Not that his style is wholly prosaic, for there are passages in
his writings that are truly poetical, both in thought and expression,
and which show that he was capable of attaining a higher position
as a poet than can now be claimed for him. The roughness of his
verses was surely not owing to carelessness or indolence, for neither
of them was characteristic of the man. The true explanation may be,
that he sacrificed his poetical taste to his theology, and that, for the
sake of inculcating sound doctrine, he was willing to write in halting
numbers.
The author of the Day of Doom, belonging to the straitest sect of
Puritans, was, like many others of that sect, a man of generous
feeling toward his fellows. Rev. Dr. Peabody calls him “a man of the
beatitudes.” Obedience to the supreme law gave a heavenly lustre to
his example and a sweet fragrance to his memory. The clergy of his
day possessed a deep religious earnestness and a fervent piety.
They were Bible students and men of prayer. Even many who
consider them erroneous in doctrine, are willing to allow that they
were strict in morals; that, if they were wrong in faith, they were
right in life; that, if their creed was opaque, their hearts were
luminous; and that, if their vision did not discern the additional light
which the saintly Robinson had prophesied was yet to break forth
from God’s Word, they sincerely accepted the light they saw. They
were patient, hopeful, humble, believing, faithful. They stood on a
higher plane than their successors, and exercised a proportionally
higher power over their hearers. Their people revered them, were
constant in attendance on their services, and submitted gladly to
their sway.

Autobiography
I was born of Godly Parents, that feared ye Lord greatly, even from
their youth, but in an ungodly Place, where ye generality of ye
people rather derided than imitated their piety; in a place where, to
my knowledge, their children had Learnt wickedness betimes; in a
place that was consumed with fire in a great part of it, after God had
brought them out of it. These godly parents of mine meeting with
opposition and persecution for Religion, because they went from
their own Parish church to hear ye word and Receiv ye Lords supper
&c, took up resolutions to pluck up their stakes and remove
themselves to New England: and accordingly they did so, Leaving
dear Relations, friends and acquaintance, their native Land, a new
built house, a flourishing Trade, to expose themselves to ye hazzard
of ye seas, and to ye Distressing difficulties of a howling wilderness,
that they might enjoy Liberty of Conscience and Christ in his
ordinances. And the Lord brought them hither and Landed them at
Charlstown, after many difficulties and hazzards, and me along with
them, being then a child not full seven years old. After about 7
weeks stay at Charlstown, my parents removed again by sea to New
Haven in ye month of October. In our passage thither we were in
great Danger by a storm which drove us upon a Beach of sand
where we lay beating til another Tide fetcht us off; but God carried
us to our port in safety. Winter approaching we dwelt in a cellar
partly under ground covered with earth the first winter. But I
remember that one great rain, brake in upon us and drencht me so
in my bed, being asleep, that I fell sick upon it; but ye Lord in mercy
spar’d my life and restored my health. When ye next summer was
come I was sent to school to Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, who at that time
taught school in his own house, and under him in a year or two I
profited so much through ye blessing of God, that I began to make
Latin and to get forward apace. But God who is infinitely wise and

absolutely soverain, and gives no account concerning any of his
proceedings, was pleased about this time to visit my father with
Lameness which grew upon him more and more to his dying Day,
though he liv’d under it 13 years. He wanting help was fain to take
me off from school to follow other employments for ye space of 3 or
4 years, until I had lost all that I had gained in the Latin Tongue. But
when I was now in my fourteenth year, my Father, who I suppose
was not wel satisfied in keeping me from Learning whereto I had
been designed from my infancy, and not judging me fit for
husbandry, sent me to school again, though at that time I had little
or no disposition to it, but I was willing to submit to his authority
therein and accordingly I went to school under no small
disadvantage and discouragement, seing those that were far inferior
to me, by my discontinuance now gotten far before me. But in a
little time it appeared to be of God, who was pleased to facilitate my
work and bless my studies that I soon recovered what I had lost,
and gained a great deal more, so that in 2 years and 3 quarters I
was judged fit for ye Colledge and thither I was sent far from my
parents and acquaintance among strangers. But when father and
mother both forsook me then ye Lord took care of me. It was an act
of great self denial in my father that notwithstanding his own
lameness and great weakness of Body which required ye service and
helpfulness of a son, and having but one son to be ye staff of his
age and supporter of his weakness, he would yet for my good, be
content to deny himself of that comfort and Assistance I might have
Lent him. It was also an evident proof of a strong Faith in him, in
that he durst adventure to send me to ye Colledge, though his
estate was but small and little enough to maintain himself and small
family left at home. And God let him Live to see how acceptable to
himself this service was in giving up his only son to ye Lord and
bringing him up to Learning; especially ye Lively actings of his faith
and self denial herein. For first, notwithstanding his great weakness
of body, yet he Lived til I was so far brought up as that I was called
to be a fellow of ye Colledge and improved in Publick servdce there,
and until I had preached several Times; yea and more than so, he
Lived to see and hear what God had done for my soul in turning me

from Darkness to light and from ye power of Sathan unto God,
which filled his heart full of joy and thankfulness beyond what can
be expressed. And for his outward estate, that was so far from being
sunk by what he spent from year to year upon my education, that in
6 years time it was plainly doubled, which himself took great notice
of, and spake of it to myself and others, to ye praise of God, with
Admiration and thankfulness. And after he had lived under great and
sore affliction for ye space of 13 years a pattern of faith, patience,
humility, and heavenly mindedness, having done his work in my
education and receiv’d an answer to his prayers, God took him to his
Heavenly Rest, where he is now reaping ye fruits of his Labors.
When I came first to ye Colledge, I had indeed enjoyed ye benefit of
Religious and strict education, and God in his mercy and pitty kept
me from scandalous sins before I came thither and after I came
there, but alas I had a naughty vile heart and was acted by corrupt
nature, therefore could propound no Right and noble ends, but
acted from self and for self. I was indeed studious and strove to
outdoe my compeers, but it was for honour and applause and
preferment and such poor Beggarly ends. Thus I had my Ends and
God had his Ends far differing from mine, yet it pleased him to Bless
my studies, and to make me grow in Knowledge both in ye tongues
and inferior Arts and also in Divinity. But when I had been there
about three years and a half; God in his Love and Pitty to my soul
wrought a great change in me, both in heart and Life, and from that
time forward I learnt to study with God and for God. And whereas
before that, I had thoughts of applying myself to ye study and
Practice of Physick, I wholy laid aside those thoughts, and did chuse
to serve Christ in ye work of ye ministry if he would please to fit me
for it and to accept of my service in that great work.
Note.—In the foregoing Autobiography the original spelling is
retained. In the following poems the spelling is modernized. The use
of the acute accent (’) to indicate the former pronunciation of the
final ed as a separate syllable will be obvious; in other exceptional
cases the old apostrophe is retained. In a few instances the
termination tion is divided by a hyphen, to indicate its pronunication

as two syllables (she-on). The modern double commas are also used
to mark quotations.
W. H. B.

To the Christian Reader.
Reader, I am a fool,
And have adventuréd
To play the fool this once for Christ,
The more his fame to spread.
If this my foolishness
Help thee to be more wise,
I have attainéd what I seek.
And what I only prize.
Thou wonderest, perhaps,
That I in Print appear,
Who to the Pulpit dwell so nigh,
Yet come so seldom there.
The God of Heaven knows
What grief to me it is,
To be withheld from serving Christ;
No sorrow like to this.
This is the sorest pain
That T have felt or feel;
Yet have I stood some shocks that might
Make stronger men to reel.
I find more true delight
In serving of the Lord,
Than all the good things upon Earth,
Without it, can afford.
And could my strength endure
That work I count so dear,
Not all the Riches of Peru
Should hire me to forbear.

But I’m a Prisoner,
Under a heavy Chain;
Almighty God’s afflicting hand
Doth me by force restrain.
Yet some (I know) do judge
Mine inability
To come abroad and do Christ’s work.
To be Melancholly;
And that I’m not so weak
As I myself conceit:
But who in other things have found
Me so conceited yet?
Or who of all my Friends
That have my trials seen,
Can tell the time in sevén years
When I have dumpish been?
Some think my voice is strong,
Most times when I do Preach;
But ten days after, what I feel
And suffer few can reach.
My prison’d thoughts break forth,
When open’d is the door.
With greater force and violence,
And strain my voice the more.
But vainly do they tell
That I am growing stronger,
Who hear me speak in half an hour,
Till I can speak no longer.
Some for because they see not
My clieerfulness to fail,
Nor that I am disconsolate,
Do think I nothing ail.

If they had borne my griefs,
Their courage might have fail’d them,
And all the Town (perhaps) have known
(Once and again) what ail’d them.
But why should I complain
That have so good a God,
That doth mine heart with comfort till
Ev’n whilst I feel his Rod?
In God I have been strong,
But wearied and worn out.
And joy’d in him, when twenty woes
Assail’d me round about.
Nor speak I this to boast.
But make Apology
For mine own self, and answer those
That fail in Charity.
I am, alas! as frail.
Impatiént a creature,
As most that tread upon the ground,
And have as bad a nature.
Let God be magnified.
Whose everlasting strength
Upholds me under sufferings
Of more than ten years’ length;
Through whose Almighty pow’r
Although I am surrounded
With sorrows more than can be told,
Yet am I not confounded.
For his dear sake have I
This service undertaken,
For I am bound to honor him
Who hath not me forsaken.

I am a Debtor too,
Unto the sons of Men,
Whom, wanting other means, I would
Advantage with my Pen.
I would, but ah! my strength.
When triéd, proves so small,
That to the ground without effect
My wishes often fall.
Weak heads, and hands, and states,
Great things cannot produce ;
And therefore I this little Piece
Have publish’d for thine use.
Although the thing be small,
Yet my good will therein.
Is nothing less than if it had
A larger Volume been.
Accept it then in love,
And read it for thy good;
There’s nothing in ’t can do thee hurt,
If rightly understood.
The God of Heaven grant
These Lines so well to speed,
That thou the things of thine own peace
Through them may’st better heed;
And may’st be stirréd up
To stand upon thy guard.
That Death and Judgment may not come
And find thee unprepar’d.
Oh get a part in Christ,
And make the Judge thy Friend;
So shalt thou be assuréd of
A happy, glorious end.

Thus prays thy real Friend
And Servant for Christ’s sake,
Who, had he strength, would not refuse
More pains for thee to take.
Michael Wigglesworth.

On the Following Work and its
Author.
A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
Saith Herbert well. Great truths to dress in Meter.
Becomes a Preacher, who men’s Souls doth prize,
That Truth in Sugar roll’d may taste the sweeter.
No cost too great, no care too curious is
To set forth Truth and win men’s Souls to bliss.
In costly Verse, and most laborious Rhymes,
Are dish’d up here Truths worthy most regard:
No Toys, nor Fables (Poets’ wonted crimes)
Here be, but things of worth, with wit prepar’d.
Reader, fall to, and if thy taste be good,
Thou’lt praise the Cook, and say, ’Tis choicest Food.
David’s affliction bred us many a Psalm,
From Caves, from mouth of Graves that Singer sweet
Oft tun’d his Soul-felt notes: for not in ’s calm,
But storms, to write most Psalms God made him meet.
Affliction turn’d his Pen to Poetry,
Whose serious strains do here before thee lie.
This man with many griefs afflicted sore.
Shut up from speaking much in sickly Cave,
Thence painful seizure hath to write the more.
And send thee Counsels from the mouth o’ th’ Grave.
One foot i’ th’ other world long time hath been,
Read, and thou’lt say, Illis heart is all therein.

Oh, happy Cave, that’s to mount Nebo turn’d!
Oh, happy prisoner that’s at liberty
To walk through th’ other World! the Bonds are burn’d,
(But nothing else) in Furnace fiéry.
Such fires unfetter Saints, and set more free
Their unscorch’d Souls for Christ’s sweet company.
Cheer on, sweet Soul, although in briny tears
Steept is thy seed; though dying every day;
Thy sheaves shall joyful be when Christ appears.
To change our death and pain to life for aye.
The weepers now shall laugh; the jovial laughter
Of vain ones here shall turn to tears hereafter.
Judge right, and his restraint is our Reproof.
The Sins of Hearers Preachers’ Lips do close,
And make their Tongue to cleave unto its roof.
Which else would check and cheer full freely those
That need. But from this Eater comes some Meat.
And sweetness good from this affliction great.
In those vast Woods a Christian Poet sings
(Where whilom Heathen wild were only found)
Of things to come, the last and greatest things
Which in our Ears aloud should ever sound.
Of Judgment dread, Hell, Heaven, Eternity,
Reader, think oft, and help thy thoughts thereby.
J. Mitchel.

A Prayer Unto Christ the Judge of
the World.
O Dearest, Dread, most glorious King!
I’ll of thy justest Judgments sing:
Do thou my head and heart inspire,
To Sing aright, as I desire.
Thee, thee alone I’ll invocate,
For I do much abominate
To call the Muses to mine aid:
Which is th’ Unchristian use and trade
Of some that Christians would be thought,
And yet they worship worse than naught.
Oh! what a deal of Blasphemy
And Heathenish Impiety
In Christian Poets may be found,
Where Heathen gods with praise are crown’d!
They make Jehovah to stand by
Till Juno, Venus, Mercury,
With frowning Mars, and thund’ring Jove,
Rule Earth below, and Heav’n ahove.
But I have learn’d to pray to none,
Save unto God in Christ alone.
Nor will I laud, no, not in jest,
That which I know God doth detest.
I reckon it a damning evil.
To give God’s Praises to the Devil.
Thou, Christ, art he to whom I pray;
Thy Glory fain I would display.
Oh! guide me by thy sacred Sprite,
So to indite, and so to write.

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Trends In Social Work As Reflected In The Proceedings Of The National Conference Of Social Work 18741946 Frank J Bruno

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