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[Last month I posted a review of several books, including Sealander's 
history of American foundation philanthropy. Here is an extended review 
of that book. Interested  scholars will find a list of related studies at 
the end of the review.--RBE] 
 
H-NET BOOK REVIEW 
Published by H-STATE April, 1998 
 
Judith Sealander. _Private Wealth and Public Life: Foundation Philanthropy 
and the Reshaping of American Public Policy from the Progressive Era to 
the New Deal._ Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. xii, 
245pp, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8018-5460-1.  Reviewed for 
H-STATE 
 
Ruth Crocker 
Auburn University 
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        Scholarly writing on the foundations has been produced mainly by 
sociologists and political scientists rather than by historians. It is a 
"Manichean" literature, with the defenders of foundations claiming they 
are beneficent and their critics seeing them as sinister representatives 
of ruling-class elites. While enthusiasts praise the foundations' 
benevolent and creative uses of private wealth, scholars critical of 
foundations condemn their private power to shape public policy and view 
them as typifying the undemocratic and technocratic side of early 
twentieth-century reform. In this, they echo contemporaries' fears that 
foundations were "philanthropic trusts," carrying out the secret and 
undemocratic agendas of unelected elites. 1 
 
        Serious historical consideration of the foundations begins with 
the work of Barry D. Karl and Stanley N. Katz, published in a series of 
articles beginning in 1981. 2 
 
        In -Private Wealth and Public Life- Judith Sealander both builds 
on their work and challenges it in some important ways as she examines the 
activities of early twentieth-century foundations in a number of specific 
social-policy areas. She concludes that foundations were less powerful 
than either contemporary or later critics have claimed, and that their 
schemes were sometimes useful and farsighted but at other times 
ill-conceived or quixotic. 
 
        -Private Wealth and Public Life- provides a fresh and illuminating 
view of the work of several major foundations in the years before the New 
Deal. Claiming that too much emphasis has been put on the Carnegie 
philanthropies (comprising the Carnegie Foundation, the Carnegie 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Hero Fund), 3 and that 
Andrew Carnegie's contributions to modern philanthropy have been 
overemphasised, Sealander, a former Humanities fellow-in-residence at the 
Rockefeller Archive Center, focuses on Rockefeller philanthropies (the 
Rockefeller Foundation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial), as 
well as the Russell Sage Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Julius 
Rosenwald Fund. 
 
        The book is organized topically. Six chapters discuss specific 
areas of foundation involvement in policy-making. These are, rural life 
and vocational education; parent education; mothers' pensions; 
child-helping and the juvenile court system; the Bureau of Social Hygiene 
and sex research; and organized recreation. These chapters are uniformly 
well-written and are grounded in primary sources often overlooked by other 
scholars, notably the records of the Russell Sage Foundation. 
 
        It would be hard to overstate the difficulty of the task Judith 
Sealander has in hand. Most foundation histories are studies of a single 
foundation, sometimes of a foundation's activities in only one policy 
area. 4  To trace the activities of several foundations across a range of 
public policy areas is an ambitious project that most would find daunting. 
 
        Fresh, witty, and fearless, Sealander charges into the history of 
early twentieth-century policy-making slaying dragons as she goes. The 
theme of "rhetoric versus reality" provides a useful heuristic device that 
enables her to contrast the declarations of foundation-funded reformers 
with the activities they pursued and the policies they recommended. And 
the theme of "unintended consequences" serves similarly to compare 
intentions with results. On the way, Sealander seems to revel in poking 
holes in established interpretations. An example is this book's account of 
mothers' pensions, enacted into law in forty-six states between 1911 and 
1930 amidst a chorus of praise for motherhood and partly as a result of 
the campaign for child welfare by social-work experts both in and out of 
the foundations. 5  Welfare-state scholars have been impressed with the 
rhetoric of motherhood generated by the reformers and the beginnings of a 
welfare-state some have called "maternalist." Sealander is unimpressed. 
Accusing these scholars of "ignoring crucial questions" she claims they 
oversimpified the nature of support for and opposition to the pensions 
(106). Politicians were content to get the credit for sponsoring mothers' 
pensions legislation and thus for being "for motherhood," but they never 
funded these pensions at adequate levels, she points out, and the whole 
"crusade" for mothers' pensions was charcterized by sentimentalism among 
the supporters (mothers' clubs, magazine writers) and cynicism on the part 
of the politicians. Sealander takes welfare scholars to task for ignoring 
the contribution of Russell Sage Foundation expert Mary Richmond and the 
private charity organization experts who warned, correctly she believes, 
that welfare would corrupt the political process and that cash grants 
would "sow the seeds of dependency" (112) 
 
        Some of this criticism seems wide of the mark: feminist scholars 
have fully documented the shortcomings of the mothers' pensions, neither 
is their scholarship as monolithic as Sealander suggests. 6 
 
        Unlike previous accounts of twentieth-century social policy which 
mention Russell Sage Foundation and COS (private charity) experts, if at 
all, as opponents of welfare-state provision, Sealander stresses the 
Foundation's role in shaping social policy toward children (the Foundation 
underwrote the White House Children's Conference in 1909 which led to the 
founding of the U.S. Children's Bureau), and the critical importance of 
RSF expert Mary Richmond in the establishment of modern, professional 
social work. 
 
        Sealander gives equal attention to foundation initiatives that, 
like these, had a long-term impact on policy and to those that were 
passing fads or ludicrous fiascos. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s support of 
sex-research provides an example of the vagaries of foundation funding. 
Early experiments with inmates at the Rockefeller-supported Bedford Hills 
Reformatory proved disastrous. But in 1917 Katharine Bement Davis became 
head of the Rockefeller-funded Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Bureau 
began to produce important iniatives in sex-education. Frank and 
well-written manuals were distributed in the millions through the state 
boards of public health. Rockefeller funding also underwrote fundamental 
research in normal sexuality that Sealander calls, "years ahead of its 
time." The effort was abandoned in 1928, however. Davis was "retired," and 
even the documentation of this research was destroyed. 7 
 
        Foundation policy-making was often marked by impractical goals, 
doubtful theory, and inadequate means. Foundation planners were muddled, 
not all-powerful (142), "hopeless romantics," not social scientific 
boffins, Sealander claims. "Demonstration" projects funded by foundations 
that were intended to be picked up and implemented by public authorities 
were often instead abandoned. For example, the foundation-spearheaded 
initiative to improve schools for blacks and poor whites in the South was 
insufficiently persuasive to legislators only interested in funding public 
education for white children. In other cases, such as foundation 
initiatives to persuade local governments to fund recreation programs and 
facilties, foundation-sponsored policy proved more lasting. (197) 
 
        Sealander concludes that historians have been misled by 
contemporaries' bitter opposition to foundations (rooted in Populist and 
antimonopolist fears). She both explains away the fears and dismisses 
them. Because the foundations were "new institutions moving at a far 
faster pace than many other parts of the polical structure, and because 
they were not yet synchronized as a part of American polity, they first 
inspired confusion and fear," she observes. "That fear, however, was 
largely unfounded" (217). Not everyone will agree with Sealander's 
"contentious history." Responses from some of those targeted in her book 
have already begun. 8  The resulting discussion will surely be useful in 
reviving scholarly interest in the foundations' important but often 
overlooked role in early twentiety-century policy-making. 
 
        Notes 
 
        1. "Benevolent trusts" was coined by John D. Rockefeller in his 
1909, -Random Reminiscences of Men and Events-(New York: Doubleday, Page 
and Company, 1909), p. 186-88. He used it to indicate that combinations 
were occurring in philanthropy as in business. 
 
        Critical of foundations are Sheila Slaughter and Edward T. Silva, 
"Looking Backwards: How Foundations Formulated Ideology in the Progressive 
Period," in Robert Arnove, ed., -Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: 
The Foundations at Home and Abroad- (Boston, 1980); and Magali Sarfatti 
Larson, "The Production of Expertise and the Constitution of Expert 
Power," in Thomas Haskell, ed., -The Authority of Experts: Studies in 
History and Theory-(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). See also 
the exchange between Martin Bulmer and Donald Fisher. Donald Fisher, "The 
Role of Philanthropic Foundations in the Reproduction and Production of 
Hegemony," -Sociology- 17 (1983); idem, "Boundary Work: Toward a Model of 
the Relation of Power/Knowledge," -Knowledge- 10 (1988): 156-76; Martin 
Bulmer, "Philanthropic Foundations and the Development of the Social 
Sciences: A Reply to Donald Fisher," -Sociology- 18 (1984): 572-79; Donald 
Fisher, "Philanthropic Foundations and the Social Sciences: A Response to 
Martin Bulmer," -Sociology- 18 (1984): 581-87. 
 
        2. Especially, Barry D. Karl and Stanley N. Katz, "The American 
Private Philanthropic Foundation and the Public Sphere, 1890-1930," 
-Minerva- 19 (1981): 236-70; "Philanthropy and the Social Sciences," 
-Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society- 129 (1985): 14-19; 
"Foundations and Ruling Class Elites," -Daedalus- 116 (1987): 1-40. 
 
        3. These have been the subject of two studies by Ellen Condliffe 
Lagemann, -The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, 
Philanthropy, and Public Policy- (Wesleyan University Press, 1989); 
-Private Power for the Public Good: A History of the Carnegie Foundation 
for the Advancement of Teaching- (Wesleyan University Press, 1983). 
 
        4. Examples are, John Ettling, -The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller 
Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South- (Cambridge, Mass., 1981); 
Steven C. Wheatley, -The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and 
Medical Education- (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 
1988). 
 
        5. A recent study is Kriste Lindenmeyer, -A Right to Childhood: 
The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare- (Urbana: University of 
Illinois Press, 1997). 
 
        6. See Theda Skocpol, "The Trouble With Welfare," -Reviews in 
American History- 24 (1996): 647-51. Major treatments are, Theda Skocpol, 
-Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy 
in the United States- (Harvard, 1992); Sonya Michel and Seth Koven, 
-Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare 
States- (Routledge, 1993); Linda Gordon, -Pitied But Not Entitled: Single 
Mothers and the History of Welfare- (Free Press, 1994); Gwendolyn Mink, 
-The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917-1942- 
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1995); Sonya Michel and Robyn Rosen, "The Paradox 
of Maternalism: Elizabeth Lowell Putnam and the American Welfare State," 
-Gender and History- 4, 3 (Autumn 1992): 364-86; Molly Ladd-Taylor, 
-Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890-1930- (Illinois, 
1994); Joanne Goodwyn, -Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: 
Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929- (Chicago, 1997). 
 
        7. See Ellen Fitzpatrick, -Endless Crusade: Women Social 
Scientists and Progressive Reform in America, 1830-1930- (New York, 1990); 
and Ellen Fitzpatrick, ed., -Katharine Bement Davis, Early 
Twentieth-Century Women and the Study of Sex Behavior- (New York, 1987). 
 
        8. For a strong response see, Barry D. Karl, "The Troublesome 
History of Foundations: Correcting a Contentious History," -Reviews in 
American History- 25, 4 (December 1997): 
 
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