Emily Balch
| Emily Greene Balch | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 8, 1867 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | January 9, 1961 (aged 94) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Writer, economist, professor |
| Known for | Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 |
Emily Greene Balch (January 8, 1867 – January 9, 1961) was an American economist, sociologist and pacifist. Balch combined an academic career at Wellesley College with a long-standing interest in social issues such as poverty, child labor and immigration, as well as settlement work to uplift poor immigrants and reduce juvenile delinquency.
She moved into the peace movement at the start of the World War I in 1914, and began collaborating with Jane Addams of Chicago. She became a central leader of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) based in Switzerland, for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.
Born to a prominent Yankee family in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (a neighborhood of Boston), her father was a lawyer. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1889 after reading widely in the classics and languages, and focusing on economics. She did graduate work in Paris and published her research as Public Assistance of the Poor in France (1893). She did settlement housework in Boston, but decided on an academic career. She then studied at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Berlin, and began teaching at Wellesley College in 1896. She focused on immigration, consumption, and the economic roles of women. She served on numerous state commissions, such as the first commission on minimum wages for women. She was a leader of the Women's Trade Union League, which supported women who belonged to labor unions. She published a major sociological study of Our Slavic Fellow Citizens in 1910.
She was a longtime pacifist, and was a participant in Henry Ford's International Committee on Mediation. When the United States entered the war, she became a political activist opposing conscription in espionage legislation, and supporting the civil liberties of conscientious objectors. She collaborated with Jane Addams in the Women's Peace party, and numerous other groups.
In a letter to the president of Wellesley, she wrote we should follow "the ways of Jesus". Her spiritual thoughts were that American economy was "far from being in harmony with the principles of Jesus which we profess." Wellesley College terminated her contract in 1919. Balch served as an editor of The Nation, a well-known magazine of political commentary.
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