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.

An examination of the public relations administration of the Boy Scouts of America, the second in a series of public relations case studies published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Topics include the use of symbols and slogans, relations with the community, publicity programs, and a general history and annual reports of the Boy Scouts.

Harold P. Levy, research associate, with an introduction by Mary Swain Routzahn, director, Department of Social Work Interpretation, Russell Sage Foundation.

Reports of fact-finding studies made as a basis for social action, arranged by subjects and localities. Reports to January 1, 1928.

Allen Eaton, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, in collaboration with Shelby M. Harrison, director, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation.

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.

Part of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Small Loan Series, this 1938 volume offers a broad analysis of judicial decisions and opinions involving small loan laws. Written by F.B. Hubachek of the Chicago Bar.

Encyclopedic in scope, Academic Women on the Move is an important volume on a vital topic. In twenty-one chapters specially written for this book by distinguished women, the authors summarize the vast research literature on women in higher education. They bring together and compare hundreds of studies on the problems and status of academic women, from their entry as students through their career development and eventual status as researchers, faculty members, and administrators. In addition the book gives an equally detailed account of the emergence of political activism among these women in the 1968–1972 period, with analytic chapters on the legal, internal, and external routes to rid academe of sex discrimination. A wide-ranging exploration of recent professional and political efforts to improve the status of women in American academic life, this book will serve as a superb research and reference work for years to come.

Contributors: Carol Ahlum, Helen S. Astin, Alan Bayer, Ann Calderwood, Jean Campbell, Constance M. Carroll, Marianne A. Ferber, Jo Freeman, Patricia Albjerg Graham, Judith Dozier Hackman, Florence Howe, Joan Huber, Katherine M. Klotzburger, Janet Lever, Jane Loeb, Laura Morlock, Katherine Nelson, Michelle Patterson, Cynthia Sterling Pincus, Brigitte A. Prusoff, Lora Hnizda Robinson, Pamela Roby, Alice S. Rossi, Margaret Rumbarger, Bernice Sandler, Pepper Schwartz, Lucy W. Sells, Myrna M. Weissman, Lenore J. Weitzman

Alice S. Rossi was professor of sociology and chairperson of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Goucher College.

Ann Calderwood was publisher and editor of Feminist Studies.

Your Community was first published in 1935. This later edition, revised by Donald S. Howard, director of the Department of Social Work Administration of the Russell Sage Foundation, to reflect changes in social work and community and civic organizations, examines the idea and scope of the local community and its efforts to conserve the health and safety and promote the education and general welfare of its inhabitants. Topics include housing planning and zoning, medical care, consumer protection, public assistance, worker wages and employment conditions, and recreation. Its followup, Studying Your Community by Roland L. Warren, was published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1955.

Joanna C. Colcord was director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.