Sophie Irene Loeb (1876–1929)

Sophie Irene Loeb, née Simon, was born in Rovno, Russia (present-day Rivne, Ukraine) and emigrated to the USA in 1882 at age six. The family settled in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Her father Samuel Simon died when she was 16, and as the eldest of six children, she went to work while still in high school to support her family. She worked in a local store and as an elementary school teacher before marrying Ansel Loeb, her former employer, in 1896.
The couple divorced in 1910, and Sophie Loeb moved to New York City, where she began working as a journalist for the New York Evening World. In 1912, she published her first book, Epigrams of Eve, with illustrations by Ruby Lindsay.

Miss Loeb became one of the most famous and tireless child welfare advocates in the country. She took a special interest in the hardships of widows and orphans and worked closely with Hannah Bachman Einstein, who founded the Widowed Mothers’ Fund Association in 1909. In 1915, she was appointed to New York City's Child Welfare Board and visited the UK and Europe for comparative studies of social welfare policies. She was instrumental in the passage of numerous laws to benefit and protect mothers and children including public school lunches, housing reform, and maternity services. In 1924, she help found and served as president of the Child Welfare Committee of America. During these years, she worked with Governor Alfred E. Smith on a commission to codify child welfare legislation and guidelines in New York State. In 1927, she worked with the League of Nations in Geneva to frame an international code for the care of vulnerable children. She also continued with her journalism and wrote several other books, including Everyman’s Child (1920). The Evening World sent her to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1925 to report on conditions there, and her articles were collected in Palestine Awake: The Rebirth of a Nation (1926).