Van Kleeck, Mary, 1883-1972

Mary Abby Van Kleeck was born on June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York, to Eliza Mayer and Episcopalian minister Robert Boyd Van Kleeck. (Mary van Kleeck changed the capitalization of her last name in the 1920s.) Following her father''s death in 1892, her family moved to Flushing, New York, where she attended Flushing High School. She earned an A.B. from Smith College in 1904. In the fall of 1905 she began working as a fellow for the College Settlement Association on New York''s Lower East Side, where she worked with several women reformers and researched factory women and child labor. In 1910, the Russell Sage Foundation began supporting her research and hired her as the head of its Committee on Women''s Work, which in 1916 was expanded to create the Division of Industrial Studies, later renamed Department of Industrial Studies (DIS). She served as its director into the late 1950''s. Beginning in 1914, she taught at the New York School of Philanthropy and at Smith College''s School for Social Work. She joined the Army''s Ordinances Department in early 1918, creating standards for the employment of women in war industries. She served on the War Labor Policies Board, and with strong backing from the Women''s Trade Union League, she was named the director of the Department of Labor''s Woman-In-Industry Service, the predecessor of the Women''s Bureau. She held the position only briefly, before handing it over to the assistant director, Mary Anderson. In 1921 Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover appointed her to President Harding''s Conference on Unemployment and she later served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Conference and Sub-Committee on the Business Cycle. In 1929, she accepted an appointment to President Hoover''s Law Enforcement and Observance Commission. She also promoted social and economic planning, serving from 1928 to 1948 as associate director of the International Industrial Relations Institute. She resigned from the Labor Department''s Federal Advisory Committee of the United States Employment Service in August 1933 after one day, citing her objections to New Deal policies that she believed interfered with workers'' right to strike. In addition to working through government to promote social change, she served on the committees and boards of secular and religious humanitarian organizations such as the Church League for Industrial Democracy; the Episcopal League for Social Action; and Hospites, a refugee relocation organization that provided employment and financial assistance for social workers fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She remained dedicated to the rights of workers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Concern for workers'' liberties led her to leadership roles in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she served on the Board of Directors and several committees from 1935 until 1940 when a conflict with the board over membership requirements prompted her to resign. In 1948, after her retirement, she supported Henry A. Wallace''s campaign for president and unsuccessfully ran for the New York State Senate as the American Labor Party candidate. Because of her interactions with various organizations that had been declared subversive by the Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., she was subpoenaed by Joseph McCarthy''s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations in 1953 and was denied a visa several times in the 1950s. She spent the last few decades of her life out of the public sphere with her close friend and colleague, Mary L. Fleddérus. She died on June 8, 1972, in Kingston, New York.