Text 11. Social Workers. Emily Greene Balch

Emily Greene Balch (1867-1961), American social reformer, economist, and pacifist who won the Nobel Prize for peace in 1946. Balch shared the prize with John Mott, president of the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Balch graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1889. For the next two years she studied the French welfare system at the Sorbonne in Paris. She returned to the United States to pursue a career as a social worker in Boston, where she helped to found one of the nation's first settlement houses—a charitable organization providing social services to poor people.

Dissatisfied with social work, Balch continued her studies at Harvard Annex (now Radcliffe College), the University of Chicago, and the University of Berlin. In 1896 she began teaching economics at Wellesley College while continuing to promote various issues of social justice. In 1902 she cofounded the Boston branch of the Women's Trade Union League, an organization dedicated to improving the earnings and working conditions of women. Balch chaired the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, which in 1913 authored the country's first minimum wage law. That same year she became chair of the economics and sociology departments at Wellesley.

During World War I (1914-1918), Balch took a leave of absence from teaching in order to pursue her interest in pacifism. She defended conscientious objectors (individuals who oppose war and refuse to participate in combat) and demonstrated in antiwar protests. In 1915 Balch served as a delegate to the International Congress of Women at The Hague, Netherlands. Upon her return to Boston she campaigned against the entry of the United States into the war. As a result of her peace activism, in 1918 the Wellesley College trustees refused to reappoint Balch to her teaching position.

At the second International Congress of Women in 1919, Balch helped form an organization known as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She served as the organization’s first secretary from 1919 to 1922. WILPF worked closely with the League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations) to promote world peace.

In 1926 Balch represented WILPF on a committee investigating conditions in Haiti, a country that the United States had invaded in 1915 under the auspices of protecting the Panama Canal. Balch drafted a report recommending that the United States withdraw its troops and permit Haitian self-rule. During World War II (1939-1945), Balch departed from absolute pacifism and supported the entry of the United States into the war.

Text 12. Social Workers. Martha McChesney Berry

Martha McChesney Berry (1866-1942), American educator and social worker, who pioneered a new system of education to make learning and knowledge more accessible. Berry was born near Rome, Georgia. She attended Madame Lefevre's School in Baltimore, Maryland, and a finishing school in Boston, Massachusetts. Berry developed a new system of education designed to bring learning and knowledge within reach of all students willing to work for it. She began to develop her education system by teaching Bible stories to the less privileged people near her home. In 1902 she established her first school in a log cabin on her father's plantation in Mount Berry, Georgia. There were two teachers, and five boys formed the first enrollment. Because the students were too poor to pay tuition, no funds for the upkeep and maintenance of the school were available. Berry instituted a system whereby each student had daily chores to help in the upkeep of the school, making the school self-sustaining.

Berry’s system of providing education for the poor through self-help spread through the state of Georgia and neighboring states. When Georgia established agricultural and trade schools, they were patterned after the Berry system. In 1932 Berry was appointed to the board of regents of the state's university system, where she was the only woman; in 1937 she became the only female member of Georgia's planning commission. Enrollment in the Mount Berry School rapidly increased, and at the time of Berry’s death in 1942 the school had 1300 pupils and 125 buildings on 14,165 hectares (35,000 acres) of land. The school’s campus was built by the students themselves and was maintained by student labor.

The Mount Berry School is still in use today. The campus includes the two schools for boys and girls; Berry College, an accredited college; and a model practice school. Each student is required to do a certain amount of work in lieu of tuition, and students receive academic schooling as well as practical training. A mill, workshops of all kinds, a granite quarry, pastures, and farmlands all form a part of the school.