(Jewish Daily Bulletin)
The National Conference on Jewish Social Service will open its sessions here on Wednesday and continued until May 14.
In connection with the sessions, the early history of the Social Service Conference is being recalled by social service leaders here.
Towards the end of the last century the Jewish social workers of the country began to realize the need of a central conference, not only for the raising of money but also to centralize all activities. Many cities attempted to call such a conference but it was not until 1899, in Cincinnati, that such an attempt was successful. The previous year, Mr. Max Senior, though not professionally a social worker, took the leadership in forming a Federation of Charities in this city. Rabbi Saul Lowenstein became superintendent of this Federation. Mr. Senior was then specially interested in the problem of transients. In this connection he came in contact with the work on a national basis and it was through his initiative that the National Conference of Jewish Charities, as it was then called, was convened in Chicago in 1899.
Among the leaders at the Conference were Max Senior, Miss Nina Low, Dr. Lee K. Frankel, Dr. Lowenstein, and Rabbi Emil Hirsh.
This was a preliminary meeting and the following year they convened in Cincinnati, where various rules for transients were adopted, the wife of the Wife Desertion Bureau was endorsed and the Cincinnati method of tuberculosis treatment was initiated.
Many of the leaders were lay people at that time. When Cincinnati became the laboratory of every new effort in Jewish Social Service, Mr. Senior arranged that a section be established of which Dr. Boris D. Bogen was made secretary.
Gradually the professional social workers took the lead in the conference. The name was changed from the “National Conference of Jewish Charities” to the “National Conference of Jewish Social Service.”
Other pioneers in the movement, besides those already mentioned, were Jacob Billikopf, Fred Butzel, Professor Jacob Hollander, Felix M. Warburg, David Bressler, Morris D. Waldman, Ludwig Bernstein. Maurice Hexter, Sidney Pritz, Louis Marks and Cyrus Sulzburger.
Mr. Senior was instrumental in establishing a scholarship for professional social service. Cincinnati conducted the first Jewish Social Service School.
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