1900-1939:

ARTS AND CRAFTS

MOVEMENT AND THE
INFLUENCE OF WWI
History of Occupational
Therapy
Time line
1900: US Population Increases
Progressive era fuels reform
Increase of women in the work place
1917: US enters WWI
1919: WWI ends (Treaty of Versailles)
1920: Women gain the right to vote
1929: Great depression
Womens Movement and Influence
Goal: establish selves outside of domestic sphere
Arguments for women in professional roles:
Morally superior
Naturally nurturing
Alturistic
Reform impulses
Christian charity
Helping the poor or the suffering
Gender roles clearly defined within this period
Men: Leadership in the public sector
Women: Establish institutes
Hull House
Established by Jane Addams
and Ellen Gates Starr
All female and secular society
Goal: Bridge gap between
middle-class reformers and the
poor
Education
Improvement using skills training
Meeting house for supporters of
contemporary social
movements
Chicago Arts and Crafts Society
This emphasis on the work ethic and on the idea
that idleness produces an immoral character
appears to have been intimately linked to early
occupational therapy philosophy and to the
arts-and-crafts movement or anti-modernism -
(Gutman,1995, p.259)
Anti-Modernism
Reaction to industrialism, emphasis on hand-made
products
Equated idle hands with immoral character
Linked to the arts & crafts movement, appreciation
for meaning in simplicity (Transcendentalism)
Arts and Crafts Movement
British roots
humans, not machines, completed objects;
therefore, work was not abstracted from life but had
a place at its very core -Ruskin
Relevance to American happenings
Machine gimcrackery
Arts & Crafts Reaches America
Quality of design
Natural materials
Handmade designs
Simple in design
Quality of life
handicraft clubs
arts-and-crafts societies
Meanwhile in Medicine
Advances
Shift towards a scientific foundation
Disease was understood in terms of physiological
processes rather than in terms of suffering or
personal disorientation; specialists concerned
themselves with organs and tissues rather
than the whole patient (Levin, 1987, p. 249)
Alternative Medical Approach
Dr. Herbert J. Hall
Work cure
Adolf Meyer, Mary Potter
Brooks Meyer, and William
Rush Dunton
Curative occupation
Goal-directed activity
Julia Lathrop
Susan Tracy
Nursing
These progressive physicians, Meyer, Hall, and
Dunton, worked with social caretakers Lathrop and
Tracy to link the holistic treatment of the past
with the modern, scientific approaches (Levin,
1987, p. 250)
Sheltered Workshops
Items sold in shops
Three purposes
Employ talented people who could earn a living by making
authentic objects
To give spiritual support to craftspeople who pursued crafts as
an avocation
To help employ the mentally and physically handicapped
The early occupational therapy link to the arts-and-
crafts movement did not end with the demise of the
therapeutic workshop.
Slagle and Meyer Unite
Belief that life should become as routine as
possible
Meyers research on the unbalanced cycles of
schizophrenia
Habit training= practice model Meyers and Slagle
when at Henry Phipps Clinic at John Hopkins
Habit Training
Balance of
occupational
cycles
Habit
Formation
as a
learning
process
Sequence of
occupational
cycles
Roots of Rehabilitation in War
US Army rehabilitation program based on
English reconstruction model
Bedside occupation and curative workshops
Army Division of Orthopedics
British colonel Robert Jones
Orthopedic rehabilitation back in war
Societys social & moral responsibility
Reconstruction Aides
1918: Walter Reed Hospital (DC), Orthopedic
Department uses physiotherapists &
occupational therapists
The employment of reconstruction aides [is]
inadvisable [] it is not desirable to employ
women in this type of work in military
hospitals
Commanding officers begin to call for more
Evolution of reconstruction aides
Requirements established for R.A. position
Educational training (medical disabilities, anatomy,
physiology)
Demonstrate 3 fields occupation (crafts)
Reasons for pursuing career:
Economic necessity
Contribute something to society
Experienced
ACTIVITIES OF MEANING, PURPOSE
The Fight of Reconstruction Aides
ORTHOPEDISTS
RECONSTRUCTION
AIDES:
Physiotherapists, OTs

VOCATIONAL
EDUCATORS
NURSES
After WWI
Medical orientation in OT
-curriculums
First occupational therapy program
-Milwaukee
Elizabeth Upham
Started 1st OT program at Milwaukee Downer
College
Taught
Intensive work in crafts
Lectures covering medical, psychology, sociology, economics
and theory
Hospital practice training
Elizabeth Upham
Believed in moral character improvement through
purposeful activity
Established the program to align OT with stronger
medical affiliation and offered more structured
course work to gain more credibility for the
profession
Elizabeth Upham
Suggested a person who becomes an independent
wage-earner adds to the resource of the country,
while every one who cannot increases the drain of
dependents (p.259, Gutman, 1995).

Organizations
National Society for promotion of Occupational
Therapy
First meeting in 1917
Only six people attended: George E. Barton, Isabel Newton,
Eleanor Clark Stagle, William Dunton Jr, Thomas Kinder and Susan
Cox Johnson
By 3
rd
meeting in 1919 300 people attended
Changed name to AOTA in 1921
Academia
First issue of Archives of Occupational Therapy
published in 1922 by AOTA
Later became known as American Journal of
Occupational Therapy (AJOT)
Federal Industrial Rehabilitation Act
Passed in 1923
Mandated hospitals that were caring for people with
industrial injuries or illness to use OT
Program goal is to allow disabled individuals to be
restored to useful, remunerative employment and to self-
respecting, self-supporting lives (Clark, 1945, p. 504)
Contributions we see now
Womens Movement
Arts and Crafts Movement
Multidisciplinary
Holistic
AOTA
Standardization
Curriculum
Balance
References
Crark, D. (1945). Industrial hygiene and the expandable federal state vocational
rehabilitation program. American Journal of Public Health, 35, 504
Ajenda Interactive Media (2009). Jane Addams Hull House Association: History.
Retrieved from http://www.hullhouse.org/aboutus/history.html
Gutman, S.A.(1995). Influence of the U.S. military and occupational therapy
reconstruction aides in World War I on the development of occupational therapy. The
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 49 (3), 256-262.
Levine, R. (1987). The influence of the arts-and-crafts movement on the professional
status of occupational therapy. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 41 (4),
248-254.
Quiroga, V. A. M. (1995). Occupational therapy: the first 30 years 1900-1930. Bethesda,
Maryland: American Occupational Therapy Association.
Reed, K.L,& Sanderson, S.N. (1999). Concepts of occupational therapy. p.238-241.
Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Photos found in Google Image Searches (sheltered workshops, industrial revolution
factories, arts and crafts clip art and societies, academic OT, american journal of
occupational therapy)
Photos from http://www.aota.org/About/39983.aspx