ABSTRACT
In 1912, when President William Howard Taft appointed Julia Lathrop as the first chief of the US Children's Bureau created to promote child welfare, Lathrop became the first woman to head a federal agency. In 1922, after her retirement from the Children's Bureau, she became a leader in the Illinois and the National League of Women Voters; she also worked for the League of Nations on behalf of children's welfare around the world. In devoting her life to child welfare, women's rights, social research, and building the welfare state, Lathrop was part of a movement of American politicians, journalists, professionals, and volunteers who mobilized at the end of the nineteenth century to deal with a variety of social problems associated with industrialization. Lathrop and her colleagues at Hull House and in the Children's Bureau also believed that women shared special characteristics as mothers or potential mothers.
