Amy Hewes

Amy Hewes
A white woman wearing glasses and a high-collared shirtwaist, her hair in a bouffant updo
Amy Hewes, from the 1910 Mount Holyoke College yearbook
BornSeptember 8, 1877
Baltimore, Maryland
DiedMarch 25, 1970
Ossining, New York
Occupation(s)Economist, college professor
Known fortaught at Mount Holyoke College from 1905 to 1943

Amy Hewes (September 8, 1877 – March 25, 1970) was an American economist, "a pioneer in introducing the minimum wage to the United States",[1] who taught at Mount Holyoke College from 1905 to 1943.

Early life and education

[edit]

Amy Hewes was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Edwin Hewes and Martha G. Hewes.[2] Her birth was registered with the Baltimore Monthly Meeting of Friends. She earned a bachelor's degree at Goucher College in 1897. She earned a master's degree at the University of Berlin in 1900, and completed doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1903,[3][4] with a dissertation titled "The Part of Invention in the Social Process."[5] Along with the Wisconsin school, the Chicago School of sociology is very influential in the academic history of disciplinary sociology and between 1892-1920 Hewes was the only woman student awarded a fellowship in the sociology department[6] However, Albion W. Small, department chair in sociology at Chicago, would recommend her not for a position in sociology or cognate disciplines but as a language instructor of German: "political science--civics, constitutional and diplomatic history, elementary economics and sociology--or something within hailing distance of these I should not hesitate--but German is a sight too wide of the mark", she wrote to Small, clarifying her choice to decline this job in a letter.[7]

Career

[edit]

Hewes taught at Mount Holyoke College from 1905 to 1943; she was promoted to the rank of professor in 1909. Among her students at Mount Holyoke were Ella Grasso, governor of Connecticut, who considered Hewes a mentor.[8] She also taught at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers.[9][10] From 1943 to 1947, she was visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence College, University of Massachusetts, and Rockford College.[11] She also gave lectures on labor topics for community audiences.[12]

Hewes served as executive secretary of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission from 1913 to 1915.[3] She also worked on national and international committees concerning minimum wage and wartime labor shortages.[13][14][15] She testified at a Senate hearing on labor education extension programs in 1948.[11] She received an award from the United States Department of Labor in 1962, "for furthering the lot of laborers throughout the U.S."[16]

Books by Hewes include Industrial Home Work (1915),[17] Women as Munition Makers: A Study of Conditions in Bridgeport, Connecticut (1917),[18][19] and The Contribution of Economics to Social Work (1930).[20] For the United States Women's Bureau, she authored the study, Women Workers in the Third Year of the Depression (1933).[21] She also directed a published student study, Women Workers and Family Support (1925).[22] In addition to five books, she wrote over forty publications[6] in major academic journals[23] including American Economic Review,[24] Journal of Political Economy,[25] Monthly Labor Review,[26] Social Service Review,[27] American Journal of Sociology,[28] and Current History.[29]

Personal life

[edit]

Hewes lived with other Mount Holyoke faculty in South Hadley, Massachusetts, including fellow economist Alzada Comstock.[30] She died in 1970, aged 92 years, at a nursing home in Ossining, New York.[31][7]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Amy Hewes, 93, is Dead; Taught at Mt. Holyoke". The Berkshire Eagle. 1970-03-26. p. 6. Retrieved 2021-07-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Awarded to Miss Amy Hewes". The Baltimore Sun. 1899-03-30. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-07-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b "Amy Hewes". Mount Holyoke Historical Atlas. Archived from the original on 2018-01-02. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  4. ^ Madden, Kirsten; Dimand, Robert W. (2018-10-03). Routledge Handbook of the History of Women's Economic Thought. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-52836-4.
  5. ^ Deegan, Mary Jo (2017-07-05). Annie Marion MacLean and the Chicago Schools of Sociology, 1894-1934. Routledge. pp. 151–153. ISBN 978-1-351-53166-5.
  6. ^ a b Luo, Wei; Adams, Julia; Brueckner, Hannah (2018-08-30). "The Ladies Vanish?". Comparative Sociology. 17 (5): 519–556. doi:10.1163/15691330-12341471. ISSN 1569-1322.
  7. ^ a b Deegan, Mary Jo (1991). Women in Sociology: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood Press. pp. 164–169. ISBN 978-0-313-26085-8.
  8. ^ Purmont, Jon E. (2013-01-01). Ella Grasso: Connecticut's Pioneering Governor. Wesleyan University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0-8195-7344-5.
  9. ^ Hollis, Karyn L. (2004). Liberating Voices: Writing at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. SIU Press. pp. 44–45, 121. ISBN 978-0-8093-2567-2.
  10. ^ Higbie, Tobias (2018-12-30). Labor's Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Life. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-05109-8.
  11. ^ a b Education, United States Congress Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare Subcommittee on (1948). Labor Education Extension Service: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Education, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, on Feb. 16-20, 1948. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 204–207.
  12. ^ "Miss Hewes to Lecture on Labor". Hartford Courant. 1935-01-27. p. 10. Retrieved 2021-07-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ Demond, Helen (August 1943). "Amy Hewes: Professor Emeritus of Economics and Sociology". Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. 27: 45–46. Archived from the original on 2018-01-03. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  14. ^ Hewes, Amy (1933-03-01). "The Conference at Work". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 166 (1): 86–94. doi:10.1177/000271623316600113. ISSN 0002-7162. S2CID 143823284.
  15. ^ "WOMEN TO DISCUSS LABOR.; Trade Union League to Confer at Katonah on Sept. 29". The New York Times. 1928-09-16. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  16. ^ Negri, Gloria (1962-03-17). "Dept. of Labor Honors: Friend of the Worker". The Boston Globe. p. 3. Retrieved 2021-07-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ^ Hewes, Amy; Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics (1915). Industrial home work in Massachusetts. Women's Educational and Industrial Union.
  18. ^ Hewes, Amy; Walter, Henriette Rose (1917). Women as Munition Makers: A Study of Conditions in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Russell Sage Foundation.
  19. ^ Brown, Carrie (2002). Rosie's Mom: Forgotten Women Workers of the First World War. UPNE. pp. 56–60. ISBN 978-1-55553-535-3.
  20. ^ Keeler, M. (1931-06-01). "THE CONTRIBUTION OF ECONOMICS TO SOCIAL WORK. By Amy Hewes. Columbia University Press. 1930. $2.00". Social Forces. 9 (4): 609. doi:10.1093/sf/9.4.609. ISSN 0037-7732.
  21. ^ Hewes, Amy (1933). Women workers in the third year of the Depression : study. U.S. G.P.O. OCLC 61884203.
  22. ^ Women Workers and Family Support: A Study Made by Students in the Economics Course at the Bryn Mawr Summer School Under the Direction of Prof. Amy Hewes. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1925.
  23. ^ Engerman, David C. (2009-06-30). Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development. Harvard University Press. pp. 137–138. ISBN 978-0-674-03652-9.
  24. ^ Hewes, Amy (1922). "Guild Socialism: A Two Years' Test". The American Economic Review. 12 (2): 209–237. ISSN 0002-8282. JSTOR 1802623.
  25. ^ Hewes, Amy (1920). "Labor Conditions in Soviet Russia". Journal of Political Economy. 28 (9): 774–783. doi:10.1086/253301. ISSN 0022-3808. JSTOR 1820568. S2CID 153469354.
  26. ^ Hewes, Amy (1932). "Employment of Older Persons in Springfield, Mass., Department Stores". Monthly Labor Review. 35 (4): 773–781. ISSN 0098-1818. JSTOR 41814009.
  27. ^ Hewes, Amy (1942). "Lyman Terrace: A Small Housing Project". Social Service Review. 16 (1): 86–102. doi:10.1086/633842. ISSN 0037-7961. JSTOR 30013828. S2CID 145222734.
  28. ^ Hewes, Amy (1923). "Note on the Racial and Educational Factors in the Declining Birth-Rate". American Journal of Sociology. 29 (2): 178–187. doi:10.1086/213578. ISSN 0002-9602. JSTOR 2764290. S2CID 145696243.
  29. ^ Hewes, Amy (1934). "Britain's Care of the Jobless". Current History. 41 (3): 284–290. ISSN 2641-080X. JSTOR 45340163.
  30. ^ Comstock papers, 1912-1969, Mount Holyoke College Special Collections.
  31. ^ "DR. AMY HUGHES, 92, OF MOUNT HOLYOKE". The New York Times. (The misspelling of her name was corrected in the next day's paper.). 1970-03-26. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-07-03.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Hewes&oldid=1172012152"