Papers of Louise C. Odencrantz, 1909-1968

Louise C. Odencrantz was born on August 22, 1884, in Gothenburg, Nebraska; she received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1907 and her M.A. in Social Sciences from Columbia University in 1908. From 1908 to 1915 she was an investigator in industrial relations for the Russell Sage Foundation. From 1915 through 1919 she supervised both the New York State and the United States Employment Bureaus on the wartime employment of women in industry. As Personnel Director (1919-1924) for Smith & Kaufmann, Inc., a New York City silk ribbon company, she was active in labor negotiations and employee welfare programs. In 1922 she helped organize the International Industrial Relations Association and attended its congresses as United States delegate in 1922, 1925, and 1928. From 1927 to 1936 she was Director of the Employment Center for the Handicapped in New York. For the next three years she helped organize and train new staff for the New York State Division of Placement and Unemployment Insurance, and during World War II was Executive Director of the Social Work Vocational Bureau in New York City. She retired from the business world in 1946, remaining active in many volunteer programs until her death in April 1969.

Odencrantz was the author of Italian Women in Industry (1915) and The Social Worker in Family, Medical and Psychiatric Social Work (1927), and co-author of Industrial Conditions in Springfield, Ill. (1915) and Public Employment Services in the United States (1938).