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.

The Survey Study of Behavioral Outcomes of General Education in High School was organized to describe for educators, curriculum planners, testmakers, and interested citizens the objectives of general education in American secondary schools. It attempts to draw out what high school graduates should be able to do – how they may be expected to think and feel and act – as a result of the general education element of their high school program.

From the preface: “The present work and a simultaneously published companion volume, Theory and Practice of Social Planning, share an overall goal. They would conceptualize and illustrate both specialized planning for social programs or fields and the social aspects of more general planning endeavors. Of particular concern here is the demonstration through use of a number of critical planning concepts often discussed only in the abstract. Author and reader, of course, are concerned with specific policies and with programs in specific fields. The studies presented – they are short monographs rather than true chapters – introduce issues and problems in a variety of high-priority areas. The specific rationale for selection and the manner in which each study is employed are discussed in the first chapter.” Topics include: the anti-poverty war, child delinquency, income security, city renewal, community psychiatry, and the delivery of social services at the local level.

ALFRED J. KAHN was professor of Social Policy and Planning at the Columbia University School of Social Work.

This study deals with philanthropic foundations: their types, organization, boards of trustees, finances, professional staff, methods of operation, grant programs, areas of interest, reporting and publicity, and legal problems. It is based on extensive interviews, correspondence, questionnaires, examination of the literature in the field, and its author’s long experience with the Russell Sage Foundation and as consultant and adviser to other foundations and philanthropic organizations. It is designed to assistant foundations and to serve as an aid to prospective donors and their advisers in setting up such institutions.

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

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.

How is the computer modeling of socioeconomic systems being used in government decision making? Is it providing the needed guidance? When it is not, why not? What is its future? How can it be made more useful for policy purposes? To address these questions, the authors investigated a multitude of different types of models being applied or developed in a wide variety of policy areas. They examined models of municipal operations, models of the national economy, and models of the world to detail the tensions between policy modeling and policymaking.

A volume of the “Population of the United States in the 1980s” series commissioned by the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census, which utilized data from the 1980 census to analyze trends in American life, Dollars and Dreams explores the dramatic changes in U.S. standard of living as wage stagnation and rising income inequality in the 1970s and 1980s began to undermine Americans’ traditional economic optimism. Levy examines various social and economic trends in income distribution since World War II, such as the rise of the suburbs, the fall of the steel industry, the baby bust, double-income families, single-parent households, income growth among the elderly, and deficits in Washington. His follow-up, New Dollars and Dreams: American Incomes and Economic Change, was published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1999.

FRANK LEVY is Daniel Rose Professor of Urban Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An examination of philanthropic efforts in London between 1480 and 1660, exploring the urban social conscience and the power of urban aspirations at the time, as well as the origins of modern cultural institutions in England. Jordan documents the vast charitable system made in London and the social philosophy of the merchant aristocracy which controlled the city’s affairs.

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan was president of Radcliffe College and a historian specializing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain.