Social Welfare and Visual Politics
The Story of Survey Graphic
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Social Welfare and Visual Politics: The Story of Survey Graphic
Cara Finnegan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Pragmatic Instrumentalism: The "Science" of Social Invention

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Jane Addams, Survey Graphic, December 1937, v26, n12, p. 678.

13. The journals' "pragmatic instrumentalism" was not formed in a vacuum. The principles guiding both Survey Graphic and the Midmonthly during the twenties and thirties were those of progressive, modernist modes of thinking that valued social invention, believed in the authority of the expert, and possessed an interest in the communicative potential of visual explanation. If we wish to ascribe a rhetorical stance to Survey Graphic during these years, we must start with the journal's beginnings as a child of the progressive era. Survey Graphic and the Midmonthly were indebted to their predecessors, whose "efficiency progressivism" had mutated smoothly into a post-war, modernist concern for social engineering and planning. Kellogg and the Survey Associates believed in the authority of the expert, whose task was to collect and explain social facts to the public. Armed with the expert's "scientific" knowledge, the public would ideally act accordingly to bring about necessary social changes. For Kellogg and the Survey Associates, empowerment of the public remained the ultimate goal. They wished to engage in what Louis Brandeis called "social invention," to make certain that "study, research, and contemplation found their justification in purposeful social action." [ 19]

14. If social invention marked the path to social perfection, then social reformers would have to use methods that facilitated social invention. In the thirties the journals continued to embrace their time-tested method of social inquiry, the "scientific" collection of "social facts" by experts. Philosophical justification for their method could be found in the writings of John Dewey, himself an "expert" to which the journals often turned for analysis, judgment, and inspiration. In an essay entitled "Authority and Freedom," published in Survey Graphic in 1936, Dewey argued that the key problem of human relations is in fact the relationship between authority and freedom. Society needs authority to maintain rational social control, Dewey explained, but if authority is dominant then we lose freedom. In contrast, if freedom reigns supreme our ability to maintain a rational hold on society will suffer. For Dewey, the key was balance. If we can achieve the proper balance between authority and freedom, then we may have enough authority to control society and enough freedom to enjoy it. Like other social reformers of the time, Dewey found the answer in science. He asked,

    Are there resources that have not as yet been tried out in the large field of human relations, resources that are available and that carry with them the potential promise of successful application? The resource that has not yet been tried on any large scale, in the broad field of human, social relationships is the utilization of organized intelligence, the manifold benefits and values of which we have substantial and reliable evidence in the narrower field of science.[ 20]

    In 1927's The Public and Its Problems, Dewey had argued that while the public was becoming more comfortable with science, it was less likely to see how it might apply its principles in the social world: "Men have got used to an experimental method in physical and technical matters. They are still afraid of it in human concerns." [ 21] Dewey's position was that the public cannot adequately care for itself unless it can first know itself: "Genuinely public policy cannot be generated unless it be informed by knowledge, and this knowledge does not exist except when there is systematic, thorough, and well-equipped search and record." [ 22] Although Dewey wrote these words before the Depression, his Depression-era arguments remained much the same, though they possessed added urgency. In 1935's Liberalism and Social Action he wrote, "The crisis in democracy demands the substitution of the intelligence that is exemplified in scientific procedure for the kind of intelligence that is now accepted." [ 23] For America to engage in adequate liberal reform, Dewey explained, reformers must apply "intelligence" that models experimental science: the systematic collection and analysis of social facts.

15. Significantly, neither Paul Kellogg nor Dewey advocated rule by experts. The expert who embraced "organized intelligence" should not be an authoritarian figure who engages in judgment, they argued, but a knowledge-creator who simply provides the information upon which good public policy should be based. Paul Kellogg liked to think that the experts provided the information, while his journals provided the framing and interpretation. Quoting welfare expert Karl de Schweinitz, Kellogg wrote, "'The function of the interpreter is to take the discoveries of the specialist and make them part of the knowledge of the general public'." [ 24] The function of the Midmonthly and the Graphic, then, was an interpretive one: to make the neutral, "objective" information provided by experts relevant to their reading public, both the professional and the layperson.

16. Visual representation served as one way through which Kellogg sought to translate expert information for public consumption. When Kellogg founded Survey Graphic, he meant for the title to combine The Survey's interest in social planning with a new commitment to the graphic depiction of social facts. Writing to one of his reporters as the new journal debuted, Kellogg explained that a greater visual component would help the journal reach a broader segment of the public: "The keynote of the thing . . . is interpretation and we are going to employ photographs, etchings, drawings and text of a sort which we hope will get a new hearing for the big human concerns which lie underneath all this technical discussion of social problems." [ 25] In keeping with Kellogg's interest in making the new magazine more visually interesting, charts, graphs and maps appeared in the pages of Survey Graphic much more frequently and with greater visual impact than in the Midmonthly. The famous "work portraits" of Lewis Hine debuted in the pages of Survey Graphic, and Hine's work would appear there on a regular basis throughout the twenties and early thirties.[ 26] In addition, Survey Graphic regularly turned to popular cartoonist Hendrik Willem Van Loon to provide illustrations for its articles. Beginning in the mid-thirties, Survey Graphic intensified its commitment to visual representation of social facts by espousing a new kind of "visual language," lauded for its potential to make communication across culture and language virtually seamless.[ 27] And, of course, Survey Graphic would continue to show its interest in the visual aspects of social welfare work by publishing many of the Historical Section's photographs.

17. In sum, by the 1930's, The Survey and Survey Graphic had matured into respected public welfare journals offering a decidedly progressive slant on social and political issues. Both journals relied heavily upon the discourses of social invention, the authority of expertise and, particularly in the case of Survey Graphic, placed visual representation at the core of their mission. Survey Graphic continued to operate under this progressive ethos into the Depression years.

    
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