This booklet addresses the need to reform the celebration of the Fourth of July. It includes a letter from President William Taft to Luther Halsey Gulick, the president of the Playground Association of America; a report from the Conference of Municipal Representatives of the Third Annual Playground Congress titled “A Safer, Saner Fourth of July”; and an essay by William Orr, principal of Central High School in Springfield, Massachusetts, titled “Independence Day: A Civic Opportunity.”

This one-page sheet provides a list of publications published by the foundation’s Charity Department.

This article from The North American Review, though not published by the Russell Sage Foundation, was written by RSF’s founder, Margaret Olivia Sage, and thus may be of interest to scholars. The author argues that privileged women have a duty to help others and that recent changes in women’s education have expanded their minds, thus allowing them to make greater contributions to society.

MARGARET OLIVIA SAGE founded the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907.

Social movements—organized efforts by relatively powerless people to change society—can result in legal and policy changes, such as laws protecting same-sex marriage and tax rebates for solar energy. However, movements also change people’s beliefs, values, and everyday behavior. Such changes may help bring about new policies or take place in the absence of new policy, yet we still know little about when and why they occur. In Changing Minds, sociologists Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta ask why movements have sometimes had fast and far-reaching cultural influence.

Polletta and Amenta examine the trajectories of U.S. social movements, including the old-age pension movements of the 1930s and 1940s, the Black rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the women’s movement of the 1970s, right-wing movements in the 1980s and 1990s, and the environmental movement up to the present, to determine when, why, and how social movements change culture. They find that influential movements are featured in the news, but not only in the news. Movement perspectives may appear also in opinion and commentary outlets, on television talk shows and dramas, in movies, stand-up comedy, and viral memes. Popular culture producers remake movement messages as they transmit them, sometimes in ways that make those messages compelling. For example, while the news largely ignored feminists’ challenge to inequality in the home, popular cultural outlets turned “liberation” into a resonant demand for women’s right to self-fulfillment outside the home and within it.  Widespread attention to the movement may lead people to change their minds individually. But more substantial change is likely when companies, schools, and other organizations outside government strive to get out in front of a newly legitimate issue, whether environmental sustainability or racial equity, by adopting movement-supportive norms and practices. Eventually, ideas associated with a movement may become a new common sense—though not always the ideas that the movement intended.

Throughout Changing Minds, Polletta and Amenta provide activists with strategies for getting their message heard and acted on. They suggest how movement actors can get into the news as political players or experts rather than lawbreakers or zealots. They show when it makes sense for activists to work with popular cultural producers and when they should create their own cultural outlets. They explain why the routes to cultural influence have changed and why urging people to take one easy step to save the planet can do more harm than good.

Changing Minds is a fascinating exploration of why and how some social movements have caused profound shifts in society.

FRANCESCA POLLETTA is Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

EDWIN AMENTA is Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

This 1925 pamphlet, published by the Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, gathers suggestions for organizing May Day festivals. An appendix of May Day songs, speeches, and games is included.

Elizabeth Burchenal was inspector of athletics for girls in New York public schools.

This book examines the Work Projects Administration, previously known as the Work Progress Administration, as well as other national relief policies. The WPA was the name applied to the federally operated and financed program inaugurated in the summer of 1935 in which as many as fifty federal agencies cooperated in providing jobs for workers meeting prescribed conditions of eligibility.

Donald S. Howard was assistant director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Foundations and charitable trusts receive from society certain privileges, of which tax exemption is the most tangible. In return for these privileges, and also in view of the fact that the ultimate beneficiary is society itself, it seems wholly proper that the foundation or trust should be held accountable for its stewardship. Accountability includes disclosure of the availability of this public trust; provision for its protection against theft, squandering, or unreasonable withholding; and requirement for adequate reporting. However, accountability should not be confused with control. Freedom of operation is as important in welfare as it is in business if social progress is to continue. Some abuses exist, and, as this book points out, in most states even the most rudimentary machinery of accountability does not function. The trend has been toward new legislation, chiefly in states, but on the federal level with respect to taxation. Public Accountability of Foundations and Charitable Trusts traces the development of state regulation under the courts and legislatures and presents an analysis of the regulatory machinery in 12 states, with brief consideration of Canadian and English law; it also offers a recommended program.

Eleanor K. Taylor was associate professor of the State University of Iowa.

Migration and Social Welfare, published in 1940, identifies the more pressing problems faced by migrants in the United States, including the sources and causes of migration and the social effects of inadequate welfare provision. It was written on special commission from the Social Work Year Book Department. Topics include employment, housing, health, and education of migrants. It proposes a national immigration policy and includes a bibliography on interstate migration.

Philip E. Ryan was executive secretary of the Council on Interstate Migration.

A general history of large American philanthropic foundations from their creation in the nineteenth century to the larger development of such foundations in the twentieth century, this 1954 book is an attempt to provide a systematic, historical interpretation of twentieth-century foundation principles, planning, and operation.

Joseph C. Kiger taught history at the University of Alabama and Washington University, St. Louis.