Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal advocate for women

590 Pages·1995·2.1 MB·English

by  Martha H. Swain

Ellen S. Woodward : New Deal Advocate
title: for Women Twentieth-century America
Series
author: Swain, Martha H.
publisher: University Press of Mississippi
isbn10 | asin: 0878057560
print isbn13: 9780878057566
ebook isbn13: 9780585217512
language: English
Woodward, Ellen S.--(Ellen Sullivan) ,
subject Women social reformers--United States--
Biography, New Deal, 1933-1939.
publication date: 1995
lcc: HQ1413.W68S93 1995eb
ddc: 361.7/4/092
Woodward, Ellen S.--(Ellen Sullivan) ,
subject: Women social reformers--United States--
Biography, New Deal, 1933-1939.
Page i
Ellen S. Woodward
Page ii
Twentieth-Century America Series
Dewey W. Grantham, General Editor
Ellen Sullivan Woodward, sometime
in the late 1920s
(Courtesy Albert Y. Woodward, Jr.)
Page iii
Ellen S. Woodward
New Deal Advocate for Women
Martha H. Swain
Page iv
Copyright © 1995 by the University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
98 97 96 95 4 3 2 1
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swain, Martha H.
Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal advocate for women / by Martha H.
Swain.
p. cm.(Twentieth-century America series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-87805-756-0 (alk. paper)
1. Woodward, Ellen S. (Ellen Sullivan) 2. Women social reformers
United StatesBiography. 3. New Deal, 1933-1939. I. Title.
II. Series.
HQ1413.W68S93 1995
361.7'4'092dc20
[B] 94-35499
CIP
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data available
Page v
With love
for
Margaret and Mimi
Page vii
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xvii
1. There's No Town Like Louisville: 1906-1926 1
2. Are We Sold on Mississippi?: 1926-1932 18
3. This New Federal Relief: 1933-1935 38
4. Women's Right to Work Relief: 1935-1936 54
5. Women at Work: The WPA Women's Projects 79
6. Women's Work and the Four Arts: 1937-1938 104
7. Security for the Home and Family: 1939-1946 134
8. A New Deal Woman in Wartime Washington: 1939- 156
1945
9. I Have Not Had an Easy Time: The FSA, 1946-1953 181
Essay on Sources 199
Notes 209
Index 269
Page ix
Preface
People who know that I have been writing a biography of Ellen
Sullivan Woodward may read this book and cite it less as biography
and more as another New Deal administrative history. That is why it
bears the title it does. After Woodward was widowed, her work
absorbed her life. Even her social and professional organization
contacts were work-related. She was a workaholic because, as a
conscientious official, she had little choice but to master the details of
her agencies: first, the Mississippi State Board of Development (1926-
1933); then three successive New Deal work-relief programs (1933-
1938); followed by the Social Security Board (1938-1946); and,
finally, the Office of International Relations of the Federal Security
Agency (1946-1953). Upon leaving the Works Progress
Administration for the Social Security Board, she wrote a friend, "It
has been hard to sever the old ties for I have simply lived my work for
the past five and a half years. "
1
Anyone who has ever "worked" RG 69 at the National Archives, the
records of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil
Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration knows
that one could spend a lifetime examining the manuscripts of the
Division of Women's and Professional Projects alone. During all the
spring and summer breaks I spent over a period of ten years delving
into RG 69, I barely touched the surface. Under the direction of
Richard Crawford and Aloha South, however, I have obtained
maximum results for my time and am grateful to them for their
patience and expert's knowledge of the holdings. The day-by-day
records are a maze of details and administrivia that is exasperating for
a researcher. How much more frustrating must they have been to relief
officials? Those readers who believe this study is needlessly cluttered
with too many routine matters must take it on faith that I have omitted
much more than I have included.
There are historians I respect who are critical of the New Deal work
programs for women because the projects did not meet the needs of a