From Hiram House to Warsaw: Evelina Belden Paulson’s Internationalist Extension of Social Work
Document 1: 22 August 1921 | Document 2: 8 September 1921
Document 3: 22 September 1921 | Document 4: 1 October 1921
Document 5: 4 October 1921 | Document 6: 2 December 1921
Bibliography
Project Group: Faith Roberts, Rebecca Natowicz, and Natalia Badziak
Student Editor: Natalia Shevin
Evelina Belden Paulson (1885-1996) was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey, to Ellen Scranton and William Henry Belden. Both parents served as American Board missionaries in Turkey and Bulgaria, contributing to Paulson’s career in social service, particularly in Poland. Belden attended Oberlin College, graduating in 1909. Over the course of her life, she lived in five settlement houses, including the Hiram House in Cleveland, where she assisted the immigrant community following her graduation. Belden provided counseling services for youth in Cook County Jail in Illinois, as well as working as a special agent for the Federal Children’s Bureau. Given her extensive social service experience, she served as executive secretary of the Social Service Division of the American Red Cross Commission in Poland after World War I.
In 1918, Poland was in chaos at the time of its restoration and faced many challenges. One challenge was the reunification of territories that had been formerly divided between Germany, Austria, and Russia; another was the restoration of agriculture and industries that had been crippled during foreign military occupation.[1] There were many refugees and displaced persons because when the Russian armies retreated in 1915 from Brest-Litowsk toward the East, the armies evacuated all the inhabitants in their path and destroyed everything during their retreat.[2] During this time, several million people from Eastern Poland were forced to flee into the interior of Russia. In 1919, the refugees had begun to “filter back from Russia to their homes in Poland. By 1921 this re-emigration had become an enormous movement…the re-emigration was so large, however, and the condition of returning people so wretched that the Polish government was only able to partially meet the situation.”[3] Poland consequently had a large number of refugees and not enough resources to support them: there were no crops–nothing remained even of the crop of 1918 because the military occupiers had used it all; people were starving, without clothing or other resources. In America, President Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover, Director of the U.S. Food Administration from 1917 to 1918 and Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928, formed a plan to send aid to Poland.[4] Julia Irwin writes, “Leaders in the War Council, the Wilson administration, and the State and War Departments regarded civilian aid as a crucial component of the U.S. commitment to Allied Europe, due to its strategic and ideological importance.”[5] Belden took part in efforts to aid to a Poland in 1921 and spent fourteen months in the country.
Before women even had the right to vote, Belden went overseas after graduating college rather than staying at home. Choosing a career in social work, first at Hiram House then with the Federal Children’s Bureau and eventually with the Red Cross, Belden was following in the footsteps of activist and reformer, “saintly mother of the unfortunate,” Jane Addams.[6] These well-educated women found fulfillment in their work with settlement houses and issues that concerned mothers. Belden took this effort to the refugees of Poland, where she worked to improve “the endless needs of underfed and ignorant children, of broken families of war torn villages, and of racial groups.”[7] Belden acted as an internationalist, but never spoke about a vision of peace and democracy in war-torn Europe, or ideals of nation-building and self-sovereignty. The emphasis was individual: she fed, clothed, and sheltered Poles. She was appointed director of Social Service and Junior Red Cross for Poland in spring of 1921.[8]
The legacy of women like Evelina Belden was the lesser-known but still remarkable prequel to the future public service of women in even more prominent positions, like Eleanor Roosevelt, who in her time visited coal mines, served in the United Nations, and furthered efforts toward racial equality.[9] Her international work can be understood as an extension of her social work in Hiram House, both considered appropriate women’s work at the time.
The following documents draw from only a fraction of Paulson’s collection in the Oberlin College Archives. They span three months of her service in Poland, offering insight into her thoughts and encounters with Polish refugees, and reflections on social work. Her letters to Henry Thomas Paulson are courtship letters, as they married soon after she returned to the United States in 1922. She delayed marriage for her career, occupying a rare position for women during the early 1900s. Additionally, their relationship can be considered a “role reversal” of formal courtships, since they usually were between a male soldier abroad at war sending letters to the homefront during World War I. All documents are written on carbon copy paper, since she sent the same letter to her family and Paulson.
[1] American Relief Administration European Children’s Fund, American Relief Administration European Children’s Fund Mission to Poland: Polsko-amerykański Komitet Pomocy Dzieciom.
[2] A city in Belarus on the border with Poland.
[3] American Relief Administration European Children’s Fund, American Relief Administration European Children’s Fund Mission to Poland: Polsko-amerykański Komitet Pomocy Dzieciom.
[4] Herbert Hoover was the 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933.
[5] Irwin continues, “Keeping Allied societies stable, maintaining high morale, visibly demonstrating U.S. involvement, and nurturing a strong postwar international community were fundamental to achieving their larger designs for Europe” (Julia Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 106).
[6] “Oberlin Girl Returns from a Year in Poland,” ALUMNI MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1922, Evelina Belden Paulson Student File, O. C. A.
[7] “Oberlin Girl Returns from a Year in Poland,” ALUMNI MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1922, Evelina Belden Paulson Student File, O. C. A.
[8] “Oberlin Girl Returns from a Year in Poland,” ALUMNI MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1922, Evelina Belden Paulson Student File, O. C. A.
[9] Susan Ware, Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 4.
