My dear Miss Addams:
Your letter of November 5 -- enclosing criticism by your Chicago University advisor of our suggestive memorandum on the activities of this Association -- has been carefully studied. After working as we have worked for nearly twenty years it is discouraging to find how little even some University men know about the results.
Your university informant, upon whose judgment you relied, exclaims: "I am surprised at the claim that it was the Association which made the Unemployment Surveys of 1914-15 and of 1920-21." And yet, we made the first and published our report in a special illustrated volume of 160 printed pages as the November, 1915, issue of our quarterly Review! The second was a comparative survey of the same field six years later and a concise 30-page summary of it was printed in our Review for September, 1921.
I have at the moment neither time nor the inclination to point out in detail additional equally inaccurate conclusions of your advisor. They are obviously based on inadequate information.
Perhaps it is too much to expect that those not in immediate daily touch with our continuous but not spectacular work of bill drafting, preparation of memoranda and legal briefs, and the painstaking investigation of labor law administration problems, should stop to consider that these things are most important and in fact absolutely fundamental to any earnest constructive endeavor in our field.
The criticisms offered by your advisor would not have been unwittingly made had he learned from our official publication that our Association got those interested together [page 2] to draft the "Standard Old Age Pension Bill." Moreover, we drafted the first Maternity Protection law adopted by any American state, following two years of almost complete devotion to this problem by a member of our staff who also wrote the pamphlet on Childbirth Protection as printed for the National League of Women Voters. These contributions are merely suggestive of our constant cooperation and appear amply to justify the modest statement of the memorandum that the maternity protection legislation "urged by numerous national organizations including this Association, was adopted."
In the matter of vocational rehabilitation some thrilling inside stories of legislative work might be told, but most of this as well as the very important publicity work of the Association is naturally not published. It is for this very reason that it appears especially important once in five or ten years to print a general review of Association activities for the information of our members.
You of course will realize that the "suggestive memorandum" was prepared by one of our staff members, and as stated in our letter to you "To refresh your memory and to provide dates and specific items for your information and convenience." We hoped to be of help to you since you had not yet sent in a paper following our Annual Meeting in Chicago, and the year was coming to a close. We should all have valued so much an article from you as our first Vice-President.
Our Review must go to press Monday and there is now insufficient time for this issue, but if you find opportunity to write anything for us in the future it will be warmly appreciated. Professor Seager of Columbia University, three times president, and an active officer of our Association throughout its history, promptly expressed his pleasure at the opportunity to render this service, and since he lives in New York it was entirely feasible to get the article into the current number.
P.S. I enclose carbon copy for your Chicago University advisor. This should of course be forwarded to him for his information.
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