Frances Kellor

Frances Alice Kellor (October 20, 1873 – January 4, 1952) was an American social reformer and investigator, who specialized in the study of immigrants to the United States and women.

Frances Alice Kellor was born October 20, 1873 in Columbus, Ohio. During Kellors’ childhood, her father left the family, forcing her mother to move to Michigan to work as a laundress. Kellor could not afford to finish high school, so worked at a local news company. She eventually became an investigative reporter at the company, when two sisters, Mary and Frances Eddy took notice of her. The sisters helped fund Kellors’ college education. She received her law degree in 1897 from Cornell Law School, and received a scholarship to study sociology and social work at the University of Chicago. It was at the University of Chicago that she wrote her first scholarly article about equality among women and men in physical education. Kellor also began her study of prisons while at University of Chicago, which would lead to her first book Experimental Sociology (1901.)

She was secretary and treasurer of the New York State Immigration Commission in 1909 and chief investigator for the Bureau of Industries and Immigration of New York State in 1910-13. She became managing director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants and a member of the Progressive National Committee. She also oversaw the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers.

She directed the National Americanization Committee (NAC), the most important private organization promoting Americanization during World War I. Speaking for the NAC in 1916, proposed to combine efficiency and patriotism in her Americanization programs. It would be more efficient, she argued, once the factory workers could all understand English and therefore better understand orders and avoid accidents. Once Americanized, they would grasp American industrial ideals and be open to American influences and not subject only to strike agitators or foreign propagandists. The result, she argued would transform indifferent and ignorant residents into understanding voters, to make their homes into American homes, and to establish American standards of living throughout the ethnic communities. Ultimately, she argued it would "unite foreign-born and native alike in enthusiastic loyalty to our national ideals of liberty and justice." Unlike African American social reformers of the time, Kellor believed that enslavement made it impossible for African American women to lead moral, respectable lives. Kellor and her cohort of white reformers focused on improving recently emancipated African American women's efficiency, rather than attempt to challenge the racially restrictive segregationist practices of the Northern society.

In 1916, she became the chairman of the Women's Committee for the National Hughes Alliance, headquartered in the Hotel Astor. The goal of the Hughes Alliance was to organize the women of the country to support Charles E. Hughes in his bid for President of the United States in 1916.

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