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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is tearing through the federal government agency by agency, slashing programs, firing civil servants, and cutting research dollars. Polling indicates Americans may be souring on this approach, as program cuts come closer to home. Even then, some 40% of Americans believe the country could run with almost no federal employees. This reflects how disconnected Americans have become from federal agencies and the programs and services they provide.
It wasn’t always this way. The history of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, an early 20th-century federal agency, provides a helpful example of how federal agents made their work visible to Americans. They understood that citizens needed to see government in order to care about it. They focused on passing and implementing laws, while also making sure they advertised their efforts. This strategy was effective in both bolstering political support and in expanding the reach of their programs well beyond their limited capacity.
President William Howard Taft established the Children’s Bureau in 1912 to research and report on the health and welfare of American children. Julia Lathrop, the organization’s initial chief, was the first woman to run a federal bureau. Lathrop and her allies lacked established support within Washington, so they constructed a national network to conduct and advertise their work on behalf of mothers and children.
Lathrop’s first undertaking was to evaluate national infant mortality rates. But her Bureau did not have the resources to hire professional social scientists to collect the data at the scale that they wanted. Instead, they partnered with women’s magazines and federated women’s clubs to recruit local volunteers across the country to take part in data collection campaigns. Lathrop did this out of necessity, but she also understood that building out an active volunteer corps could generate grassroots political support for her agency’s programs.
