Survey Award Acceptance Speech, (14 May 1951) Atlantic City, NJ

“Survey Award Acceptance Speech” delivered May 14, 1951, Abbott, Edith. (1876-1957)

Abbott, Edith and Grace. Special Collections Research Center, Box 5, Folder 5, University of Chicago Library, Chicago, IL. (=A)

National Conference on Social Welfare, Official Proceedings of the Annual Meeting: 1951 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005), ix. (=B)

This copy-text (=A) was recovered from the papers of Edith Abbott at the University of Chicago in the “Papers of Grace and Edith Abbott” collection. The speech was found in Box 5, Folder 5 of the collection. The copy was typed with a typewriter and contained handwritten edits by Edith Abbott. One set of handwritten edits appears to be Edith Abbott’s original corrections, as checked against her handwriting in other papers. Another set, based on the content of the comments, appears to be the later edits of a researcher or archivist. I have included the handwritten edits made by Ms. Abbott, where legible. There is no other copy of the speech text or speech notes in any of the Edith Abbott papers.

The speech was also published in the Official Proceedings of the Social Welfare Forum: 1951, 78th Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Social Work (=B), alongside the award presentation of Edith Abbott by Ollie A. Randall, Chairman of the Awards Committee.

I have chosen to use the text from Edith Abbott’s papers as the copy-text for its unfiltered representation of Edith’s voice. The version published in the conference proceedings would have been processed and edited by men, and thus represents an attenuation of Edith’s voice.

The text presented here has been transcribed from the original typed copy of the speech, checked against the published copy of the official proceedings, and proofread for accuracy. All paragraphing, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation are consistent with the copy-text.

Paragraph numbers have been added in brackets.

Departures from the Copy-Text and General Editorial Procedures: I made two omissions from the original text. First, pages had numbers at the top that did not appear relevant to the text of the address. Secondly, there were two handwritten edits on the copy-text that are illegible and likely not part of Ms. Abbott’s notes. These edits were excluded in the published version of the text. I omitted this information to retain the integrity of the address.