Settlement Women and Bureau Men: Rejoinder to Schachter

Abstract

In Settlement Women and Bureau Men: Constructing a Usable Past for Public Administration (Stivers, 1995), I argued that public administration needs to broaden its understanding of its origins. Instead of limiting our history to the overly procedural concerns of municipal reformers (most of them men) like those associated with the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, we should include the accomplishments of social reformers (most of them women) associated with settlement houses. In her interesting comments on this article, Hindy Schachter finds my focus on the New York Bureau of Municipal Research totally misplaced (Schachter, 1997, 93). My admiration for Schachter's work on public administration during the Progressive period knows no bounds. But I'm not ready quite yet to give up the idea that an overemphasis by the bureau men on science and efficiency set in motion dynamics that the field still has to reckon with. Schachter is correct that the ultimatum presented in 1914 to the New York Bureau by its principal backer, John D. Rockefeuer, was an important turning point. William H. Allen resigned in protest over what he saw as Rockefeller's attempt to rein in social activism. Allen's subsequent association with the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations probably influenced the commission's choice of the New York Bureau as a focus of its investigation into philanthropy in the United States. But even before 1914, bureau men concentrated more on efficient and economical government than on the substantive conditions of people's lives. True, as Schachter says, bureau men argued for a few measures that meant increased governmental spending. And true, as she notes, before 1914 bureau partisans often asserted that what they were really after was not efficiency for its own sake but efficiency so that government could do more with available resources. But, as Hays (1964) cautions us, one can't always take Progressive reformers' words at face value; one has to look at deeds as well. Overall, I believe, the work of the New York Bureau was, from its earliest days, aimed at rooting out the waste, fraud, and abuse that bureau men traced to domination of New York City by Tammany Hall. Most of the bureau's early investigations were focused on reducing expenditures, rationalizing administrative processes, and more than anything, introducing a system of budgeting and financial management. Its own 1912 progress report presented a list of accomplishments made up almost entirely of administrative improvements (New York Bureau, 1912). As my original article tried to emphasize, the dichotomy between women's and men's reform activities was never absolute. There were, as Schachter notes, a few nonclerical women associated with the bureaus. …