Social Science for What?: Philanthropy and the Social Question in a World Turned Rightside Up

CHAPTER 1. ENGAGING THE SOCIAL QUESTION AT THE EARLY RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION

 CHAPTER 1  ENGAGING THE SOCIAL QUESTION AT THE EARLY RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION The Pittsburgh Survey has been a rapid, close range investigation of living conditions in the Pennsylvania steel district . . . . It has been made practicable by co-operation from two quarters—from a remarkable group of leaders and organizations in social and sanitary movements in different parts of the United States, who entered upon the field work as a piece of national good citizenship; and from men, women and organizations in Pittsburgh who were large-minded enough to regard their local situation as not private and peculiar, but a part of the American problem of city building. —Paul U. Kellogg, “The Pittsburgh Survey” You have heard of Shakespeare’s London, of the port of Lisbon in the days of the Spanish Main, of the mixtures of caste and race and faith on the trade routes of the East. They are of the ilk of Pittsburgh. How to get orderly plans of social betterment out of the study of such a community is at first sight a staggering question. But the clue to its answer is that same fact that stood out when we looked at Pittsburgh as a city of tonnage and incandescence . These people are here to work. This fact once grasped in its bearings and we get a foot hold for estimating Pittsburgh. The wage earners become a fairly well-defined belt in the population. What the issues of life and labor mean to 13 them will help us in understanding the trend of conditions in industrial communities generally. —Paul U. Kellogg, “The Pittsburgh Survey”1 I open with these passages from the Pittsburgh Survey because they come from a social science that mattered in its capacity to capture and make a difference in the central issues of its time. Here we see encapsulated what gave the study its resonance within the broader culture: ethnographic observation that spoke eloquently to the work and family lives of Pittsburgh’s wage earners; photographs that, in visually capturing the essence of the analysis, both animated and extended the boundaries of what constituted social scientific data; and a clear sense of the public purpose of social science and its responsibility to illuminate the social question as asked and experienced by the citizens of a modern industrial democracy. All this falls within the parameters of an empirical social investigation , framed by survey director Paul U. Kellogg in the expansive language of social citizenship and visualized in the imagery of a shared civic understanding of the social question that has yet to be resolved (see figure 1.1). The Pittsburgh Survey, of course, was the first, and best known, major research project the Russell Sage Foundation funded. It was a massive investigation of “life and labor” in the urban, immigrant, and—above all—industrial Pittsburgh of 1907 and 1908. It relied on scores of researchers, community volunteers, and the social photography of Lewis Hine to bring out the essential humanity and the dignity of labor as it revealed the human cost of economic inequality , poverty, and social neglect. Mostly, in the words of the survey report, it relied on “unbiased” scientific investigation of the “social facts” for a purpose that certainly speaks to us today: to engage a broad, and broadly public conversation about the future of liberal democracy in an age of unbridled corporate capitalism. Later I will return to the question of how, and how well, the Pittsburgh Survey succeeded in these aims. For the moment, I note that it was widely regarded as the most important sociological project of Social Science for What? 14 15 Figure 1.1 Scheme of the Pittsburgh Survey Source: Pittsburgh Civic Exhibit, Carnegie Institute, November-December, 1908. Reproduced from Kellogg (1909, 519). CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE CHARITIES COMMONS APPROPRIATION FROM RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY AN EFFICIENT STAFF OF INVESTIGATORS STUDYING UNBIASED PRESENTATION OF FACTS ? NATIONAL IMPORTANCE THE PEOPLE HOUSING WATER AND TYPHOID LABOR SITUATION SCHOOL SYSTEM WOMEN IN INDUSTRY CITY OFFICIALS BUREAU OF HEALTH NEWSPAPERS CIVIC CLUB CHURCHES SCHOOLS LABOR UNIONS PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS BUREAU OF FILTRATION CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS ASSOCIATED CHARITIES JUVENILE COURT MANUFACTURERS CIVIC IMPROVEMENT COST OF LIVING HEALTH INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS CHILDREN'S INSTITUTIONS LOCAL IMPORTANCE the day. It was innovative, thoroughly documented, astonishingly comprehensive, and helped jump start what would be enduring reform discussions about measures such as workers’ compensation and shortening the twelve...