Museum of Social Reform

From the Scout Report (retrieved 2/9/07)

In the early decades of the twentieth century, a number of academics, social welfare advocates, and muckrakers became interested in the living conditions of recently arrived immigrants to the United States. One such person was Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody of Harvard University. In 1903, he founded the Social Museum, which was established “to promote investigations of modern social conditions and to direct the amelioration of industrial and social life.” For the next thirty years, Peabody and his colleagues at the museum worked on assembling a large collection of photographs, publications and reports related to the international social reform movement. At this site, visitors can browse through the photograph collection, which includes themes such as “charity”, “housing”, and “education”. Visitors will also want to browse through some of Peabody’s own publications, including his influential work, “The Approach to the Social Question: An Introduction to the Study of Social Ethics”.