She first attended Pennsylvania's Bryn Mawr College from 1903 to 1904, then graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1905 where she later returned to speak many times. In 1908, at the age of 23, she finished her education and received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago with a thesis later published as "The Social Psychology of Prayer". Being an advocate for child welfare while she worked for the United States Education Office, joining the National Child Labor Committee around the same time, she organized an exhibit and toured it extensively throughout the United States and abroad. When she brought it to Seattle, in May 1914, 6,000 people came to visit it every day, culminating with an audience, on May 31, of 40,000 people.