Material for this study was collected during the summer and early autumn of 1931, in response to a request from the President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief. Thirty communities were visited, and the reports on work relief carried out in 26 of them, chiefly situated in the middle, eastern, and southern states, can be found in Part II.

Joanna C. Colcord was director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. Assisted by William C. Koplovitz and Russell H. Kurtz.

The Mid-Century Committee on Outcomes in Elementary Education was assembled to describe for educations, test-makers, and interested citizens the measurable goals of instruction in American elementary schools. This 1953 report presents the specific objectives of elementary education as outlined by a distinguished group of consultants and evaluated by carefully selected critics.

Nolan C. Kearney was assistant superintendent for curriculum and research in the public schools of St. Paul, Minnesota.

This book, published in 1959, examines systematic research in the field of parent education – the efforts, particularly between 1934 and 1959, designed to develop in parents a greater competence in the task of rearing their children – and describes the contributions of the social sciences to parent education theory and practice. It aims to provide a solid frame of reference against which the soundness of parent education efforts and concepts can be measured. It seeks to explore and clarify the contributions which social science theory and research have made and potentially could make to the successful planning of educational efforts directed to parents.

Orville G. Brim, Jr., was a sociologist at the Russell Sage Foundation. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and was the author of Sociology and the Field of Education.

Cultural Difference and Medical Care, published in 1954, explores the difficulties inherent to U.S. medical practitioners in supplying health services and medical care to Spanish-speaking people living in the American Southwest. While its examples are drawn from this culturally distinct population, its principles apply as well to any cultural or subcultural group in any geographic setting. 

Lyle Saunders was associate professor of preventive medicine and public health (sociology), University of Colorado, School of Medicine.

The study reported in this 1960 book examined the process of foster home placement and the impact of this process on the foster child. It also aimed to show some of the limits and potentialities of research in an actual practicing agency. The study grew out of a Russell Sage Foundation residency held by the author during 1954–1955 at the Chicago Child Care Society.

Eugene A. Weinstein was professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University.

This 1952 volume documents philanthropic contributions and policies of corporations. Part I presents a factual picture of corporate giving, including its historical development as well as its scope and problems. Part II discusses the beneficiaries of corporate giving, with suggestions on making wise choices, and separate sections on the more important agencies or groups of agencies, including institutions of higher education. Part III deals with legal and tax factors.

F. Emerson Andrews was director of publications at the Russell Sage Foundation.

This 1939 book deals with consumer credit – particularly, it examines the consumer as a determining factor in economic events through quantitative aspects of consumer credit. It includes year-end estimates of the outstanding amounts of various types of consumer credit covering the period from 1923 to 1937 and it attempts to interpret the influence of expansions and contractions of the aggregate indebtedness of consumers upon the total flow of goods and services which constitute the real national income. It includes a history of consumer credit from before the Civil War to the twentieth century.

Rolf Nugent was director of the Department of Consumer Credit Studies at the Russell Sage Foundation.

This 1940 volume presents a discussion of the development of civil service and social work. From the foreword: “Discussions with the Civil Service Committee of the New York City Chapter of the American Association of Social Workers resulted in a definite request from that body that the Charity Organization Department of the Foundation attempt to issue a ‘manual’ for the guidance of groups of social workers engaged in studying their local civil service problems, or participating in the processes of selection for social work positions. To undertake this task the Department was fortunate in securing Alice Campbell Klein, whose many years of experience as a worker in the fields of public health and social work, as assistant editor of the Encyclopedia of the Social Services, and later as a staff member of the Joint Vocational Service, had familiarized her with general problems in social work.”

This 1924 book documents a study on child welfare work in the District of Columbia begun in 1918 and revisited in 1922 by the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation. It aimed to develop a plan of action to improve the conditions of children in foster homes and institutions. Topics include training schools, the juvenile court, and the care of mothers with children.

Hastings H. Hart was director of the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation.

With The Charities of Rural England, 1480–1660, Professor Jordan concludes his study of the metamorphosis of English social and cultural institutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has been concerned with documenting the shift in men’s aspirations from an absorption with the needs of the spiritual society to an intense preoccupation with the secular needs of mankind. He has accordingly sought to describe and analyze the rapid growth of charitable giving, wherewith generous men were to establish firmly the foundations of the principal social and cultural institutions of the modern world.

In this volume, the author deals with the charitable contributions of Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire, selected principally because of their historical and geographical diversity and because they yielded to the process of social change with differing rates of momentum. Taken together, they represent a cross section of rural England in the early modern age.

It is Professor Jordan’s view that the gentry were the principal architects of social change and that they willingly undertook a very large measure of social responsibility. But it is clear that great merchant wealth was also flowing in for a variety of purposes. It is not too much to say that the charitable wealth of the gentry and the merchants was merged to effect the transformation of whole regions and to afford to mankind not only a measure of protection against poverty but substantial hope for the betterment of life and opportunity in generations to come.

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan was president of Radcliffe College and professor of history at Harvard University.