Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/644

Rh Archbishop Farley, Bishop Greer, the commissioner of health, the president of the Academy of Medicine, the president of Columbia University, the College of the city of New York and the New York University, the late Richard Watson Gilder and the late Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, and many other distinguished physicians, educators and public men. Europe has also taken up the work in the most encouraging manner. Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and England now have organizations, and the appeal of this society in many of the cities has brought about the granting of "quiet zones" around city hospitals. Mrs. Rice has organized also a children's society, in which Mark Twain took a great interest and was at the time of his death its president. The latest phase of Mrs. Rice's work is to form a national committee of the governors of all the states in order to make this movement country-wide. This work and great movement instigated by the persistency and perseverence of one woman entirely unaided is acknowledged to be one of the most revolutionizing reforms of the century, and Mrs. Rice's courageous perseverence and ceaseless efforts denote a character worthy of the widest emulation. Mrs. Rice is a refined, cultured woman, an accomplished musician and linguist and occupies a high social position in the city of New York. She is a woman of literary ability and has contributed to many of the leading magazines.

Miss Van Kleeck is a social reformer and economic worker. Secretary of committee on women's work of the Russell Sage Foundation. Miss Van Kleeck was born June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York. She is the daughter of Eliza Mayer, whose father, Charles F. Mayer, was a prominent lawyer of Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was the Rev. Robert Boyd Van Kleeck, of Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, New York. She graduated from Smith College in 1904, and since then has been engaged in social work, holding the following positions: During the summer of 1904, secretary, Sea Breeze, the fresh air home of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor; from 1905 to 1907 she was holder of the joint fellowship of the Smith College Alumnae Association and the College Settlements Association, during which time the subjects of investigation were overtime work of girls in factories and child labor in the New York City tenements. The results of the first investigation were published in Charities and the Commons, October 6, 1906, and the report of the second appeared in Charities and the Commons, January 18, 1908. From 1907 to 1909 Miss Van Kleeck was industrial secretary of the Alliance Employment Bureau in charge of the investigations of women's work. In 1909 she was secretary of the committee on women's work of the Russell Sage Foundation, continuing the investigations begun at the Alliance Employment Bureau and undertaking others. The subjects of investigation have been women's work in the bookbinding trade in New York, makers of artificial flowers, and working girls in public evening schools in New York. Miss Van Kleeck has also supervised an investigation of the working girls in the millinery trade carried on by Miss Alice P. Barrows, a member of the same staff.