USA: +1(669)289-8683 
Sign in
Chapter 3: Why was the right to vote a controversial topic for a women’s rights meeting?
Using only the textbook , (Chapter 3) attached and the YouTube video attached. No other resources
Only one paragraph. State valid facts and opinions.
NINTH EDITION
Social Welfare
A History of the American Response to Need
Mark J. Stern
University of Pennsylvania
June Axinn
Late of University of Pennsylvania
330 Hudson Street, NY, NY 10013
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 1 02/01/17 1:35 PM
Director, Teacher Education & the Helping Professions: Kevin M. Davis
Portfolio Manager: Rebecca Fox-Gieg
Content Project Manager: Pamela D. Bennett
Media Project Manager: Lauren Carlson
Portfolio Management Assistant: Anne McAlpine
Executive Field Marketing Manager: Krista Clark
Executive Product Marketing Manager: Christopher Barry
Procurement Specialist: Deidra Smith
Cover Designer: Melissa Welch
Cover Photo: Getty Images/eliskapodzimkova
Full-Service Project Management: Udhaya Harisudan, Lumina Datamatics, Ltd.
Composition: Lumina Datamatics, Ltd.
Printer/Binder: LSC Communications
Cover Printer: Phoenix Color
Text Font: 10.5/12 pt Dante MT Pro
Copyright © 2018, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior
to any! prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. To obtain permission(s) to use material f rom this work, please visit
http://www.pearsoned.com/permissions/
Acknowledgments of third party content appear on the page within the text or on pages 344–348, which constitute an extension
of this copyright!page.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, any third-party trademarks that may appear in this work are the property of their respective
owners and any references to third-party trademarks, logos or other trade dress are for demonstrative or descriptive purposes
only. Such references are not intended to imply any sponsorship, endorsement, authorization, or promotion of Pearson’s
products by the owners of such marks, or any relationship between the owner and Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates,
authors, licensees or distributors.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stern, Mark J., author. | Axinn, June, author.
Title: Social welfare : a history of the American response to need / Mark J.
Stern, University of Pennsylvania, June Axinn.
Description: New York : Pearson, [2018] | Revised edition of Social welfare,
c2012. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016049784| ISBN 9780134449913
Subjects: LCSH: Public welfare—United States—History—Sources. | Social
service—United States—History—Sources. | Child welfare—United
States—History—Sources.
Classification: LCC HV91 .S6235 2018 | DDC 361.60973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049784
1 17
ISBN-10: 0-13-444991-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-444991-3
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 2 02/01/17 1:35 PM
iii
Preface
This book has gone through many stages. Initially, the volume was planned as a collec-
tion of historical documents with brief introductory statements. The documents were to
be materials pertinent to an understanding of the development of social welfare policies
and programs in the United States. As work progressed, it became clear that the docu-
ments did not always support long-established interpretations found in popular second-
ary sources. The introductory statements became longer and longer as what we found
became more intriguing. The core of the book is now the historical narrative. The docu-
ments included have been chosen to illuminate the history.
The ninth edition of Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need exam-
ines the most current social welfare issues in historical perspective. Chapter 9 has been
revised to cover the period f rom 1992 to 2016. It examines how the administrations of
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have inf luenced social welfare policy.
Earlier editions analyzed the beginnings of the “turn to the right” of the 1980s. This
edition explores the effects of the drive to reduce federal spending for public programs
further and to turn control and responsibility for social welfare over to the states and the
private sector.
As in every period treated in the book, f rom the Colonial era to the present, social
welfare policy is put into economic, demographic, and political contexts. The accelerat-
ing shift to a postindustrial economy, with its accompanying loss of manufacturing jobs,
and the increasing bifurcation of income and wealth set the background for the weaken-
ing safety net.
New to This Edition
For this edition, the structure of chapters has been thoroughly revised. Each chapter is
organized around three elements: changes in the social and economic conditions of the
period, innovations in social welfare, and the role of social movements.
The introduction and the historical chapters have been revised and expanded to
include new sections on:
• The history of relationships between American Indians and Europeans during the
Colonial era and the treatment and status of Native Americans.
• The impact of immigration on the nation’s demography and the debate over
immigration policy.
• Expanded discussions of social movements throughout American history and
their impact of social welfare.
• An analysis of the impact of the recession of 2007–2009—the worst in the past
60!years.
• The implementation of the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress in 2010.
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 3 02/01/17 1:35 PM
iv Preface
In addition, new to this edition is the format of the text.
• Each chapter features Learning Outcomes to give you an idea of what will be
covered in the chapter. These correspond to the sections that are within the
chapters.
Acknowledgments
Graduate students in the social work program of the University of Pennsylvania have
used successive editions of this book. Thanks go to all of them for their thoughtful
contributions.
Many colleagues, both in social work and in related fields, have been particularly
helpful. It is especially pleasant to acknowledge June’s niece, Amy Hirsch, of Commu-
nity Legal Services of Philadelphia, and June’s son, David Axinn, formerly director of
Blair County Legal Services of Altoona, Pennsylvania, and now a partner in the firm of
Cohen and Axinn, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. They have each made insightful com-
ments and suggestions f rom their f rontline positions. We thank June’s daughter, Con-
stance Johnson, who as legal research analyst at the Law Library of Congress provided
invaluable bibliographic aid. In addition, I want to acknowledge the following reviewers,
who provided suggestions for enhancements for this new edition: David Fauri, Virginia
Commonwealth University; Robert Hawkins, New York University; Carol L. Langer,
Colorado State University–Pueblo; and William Rowe, Southern Connecticut State
University.
Hal Levin, one of our most treasured colleagues, coauthored the first two editions
of Social Welfare. Although Hal died in 1983, his name appeared as a coauthor of the
book for the next 16 years. His contribution to the book—especially its attention to the
historical development of social administration—remains considerable. June Axinn,
whose name still appears as an author, died in 2006. However, her scholarship remains
the foundation, and her incisive approach to social welfare continues to animate this
edition.
During the last years of Hal’s life, I joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylva-
nia School of Social Work. For a short period, the three of us enjoyed our collaboration,
which included developing an understanding of the impact of the rise of conservatism
on social welfare, as well as more mundane pursuits like agreeing on a place to eat lunch.
After Hal’s death, June and I continued this work that appeared in Dependency and Pov-
erty: Old Problems in a New World (Lexington Books, 1988) and regular discussions of his-
tory and contemporary social welfare.
Sidney Axinn and Susan Seifert, our spouses, made important contributions to this
volume. Their wit, humor, and support make all things possible.
Mark Stern
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 4 02/01/17 1:35 PM
v
1. Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past
(and Present) 1
2. The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 15
3. The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 34
4. The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 77
5. Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 115
6. The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 156
7. War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 205
8. Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 251
9. Social Welfare and the Information Society: 1992–2016 285
Brief Contents
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 5 02/01/17 1:35 PM
vi
1 Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past (and Present) 1
DOCUMENT: Introduction 10
An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 43 Elizabeth, 1601 11
2 The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 15
The Poor Laws in the Colonies 17
Conquest, Expansion, and Population Growth: Native Americans, Immigration,
and Slavery 23
Social Change and the Challenge to the Poor Laws 26
Veterans: A Special Class 29
DOCUMENTS: The Colonial Period 31
An Act of Supplement to the Acts Referring to the Poor, Massachusetts Bay, 1692 31
The Binding of Moses Love, 1747 33
3 The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 34
Social and Economic Conditions 36
Population Growth and Migration 36
Slavery and Free Labor 38
Reform and Social Change 42
Labor Unrest 42
Religious and Political Reform 43
The Expansion of Public Education 44
The Expansion of Suffrage 44
Moral Reform 45
Social Welfare Programs and Services 47
Institutionalization 47
Child Saving 53
Retreat from the Almshouse 56
DOCUMENTS: The Pre–Civil War Period 59
The First Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism
in the City of New York, 1818 60
Contents
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 6 02/01/17 1:35 PM
Contents vii
Constitution, By-Laws, & c., of the Female Orphan Asylum of Portland, Maine, 1828 67
President Franklin Pierce: Veto Message—An Act Making a Grant of Public Lands to the
Several States for the Benefit of Indigent Insane Persons, 1854 73
4 The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 77
Changing Economic and Demographic Realities 77
Population Changes 79
Naturalization and Citizenship 79
Regional Shifts 81
The Aging: The Group That Was Left Behind 83
Innovations in Social Welfare Services 83
The Welfare of Soldiers and Veterans 84
Social Welfare: Reconstruction and the Freedmen’s Bureau 86
Social Welfare and Urban Expansion 89
The Charity Organization Movement 90
The Settlement House Movement 95
A New View of Child Welfare 97
Social Movements During the Late 19th Century: The Reform Impulse 100
The Social Welfare of Women 100
The Labor Movement 102
The Agrarian Movement 103
Conclusion 105
DOCUMENTS: The Civil War and After 106
An Act to Provide for the Relief of Indigent Soldiers, Sailors and Marines,
and the Families of Those Deceased, 1887 107
The Economic and Moral Effects of Public Outdoor Relief, 1890 108
An Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Laborers to the United States,
September 1888, and Supplement, October 1888 111
5 Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 115
Changing Economic and Demographic Realities 116
An Urban and Industrial Society 116
Poverty and the Working Class 118
African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants 119
Innovations in Social Welfare 122
Regulating Working Conditions 124
Expanding Public Welfare 126
Protecting Vulnerable Families 128
Social Work and the Black Population 132
The Social Welfare of Veterans 133
Professionalizing Social Work 134
Social Movements in the Early 20th Century 136
Coalitions for Reform 136
Regulating Business 138
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 7 02/01/17 1:35 PM
viii Contents
Organized Labor 138
Women, Work, and Suffrage 139
The End of Reform 141
DOCUMENTS: Progress and Reform 143
The Family and the Woman’s Wage, 1909 144
Funds to Parents Act, Illinois, 1911 146
Public Pensions to Widows, 1912 147
6 The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 156
Changing Economic and Demographic Realities 156
The Economic Collapse 156
Agricultural Crisis 158
Family Life 162
Innovations in Social Welfare 163
The Hoover Response to Crisis 163
FDR and the First New Deal 164
Public Money for Relief 166
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) 167
The Second New Deal 168
The Social Security Act 170
Expanding Social Security: The 1939 Amendments 172
Public Assistance 173
The Changing Role of the Social Work Profession 176
New Alignments in Social Welfare 178
Mass Movements During the 1930s 180
Veterans and the Bonus 181
Older Americans 182
Labor and Social Welfare 182
Setbacks for Women 185
The Eclipse of Reform 185
Conclusion 186
DOCUMENTS: The Depression and the New Deal 188
Monthly Reports of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 1933 189
Social Security Act, 1935 195
7 War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 205
Changing Economic and Demographic Realities 207
Population Shifts 207
Technology, Productivity, and Economic Insecurity 210
World War II 212
Wartime Economic and Social Advances 214
Postwar Optimism 215
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 8 02/01/17 1:35 PM
Contents ix
Innovations in Social Welfare 218
Veterans and the GI Bill 218
The Attack on Public Welfare 219
Poverty and the Reform of Welfare 220
The War on Poverty 225
Expanded Benefits for the Aging 230
Controlling Public Assistance 230
Social Movements and Reform After World War II 232
Expanding the Civil Rights of African Americans 232
A Renewed Feminist Movement 234
Civil Rights and Juvenile Justice 235
DOCUMENTS: War and Prosperity 236
Message on the Public Welfare Program, 1962 237
Economic Opportunity Act, 1964 243
In re Gault, 1967 246
8 Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 251
Economic and Social Trends 252
A Struggling Economy 252
Changing Employment Patterns 253
The Changing Family 254
Poverty and Income Distribution 256
Innovations in Social Welfare 258
Expenditures for Social Welfare 258
Challenging the Welfare State: Welfare Reform 260
Child Welfare and the Aging 263
The Unemployed 266
Veterans 268
Personal Social Services 268
Social Movements 269
The New Right 269
The Expansion of Civil Rights 270
Women 274
Conclusion 275
DOCUMENTS: Conservative Resurgence and Social Change 276
Message on Reform in Welfare, 1969 277
Standard of Review for Termination of Disability Benefits, 1984 283
9 Social Welfare and the Information Society: 1992–2016 285
Social and Economic Change 287
The Economy: Productivity, Growth, and Employment 287
Poverty 290
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 9 02/01/17 1:35 PM
x Contents
Changes in Family Composition 292
America’s Changing Demography 293
Innovations in Social Welfare 293
The Fall and Rise of Health Care Reform 293
The Failure of Comprehensive Reform in the 1990s 294
Achieving Comprehensive Reform in 2010 296
Addressing Poverty and Dependency: The Scope of Welfare Reform 298
The Changing Dynamics of the Welfare Debate 298
The New Consensus over Welfare Reform 300
The Impact of Welfare Reform 301
Social Movements and Grassroots Change 302
Welfare Reform and “Immigration Control” 302
The Return to Voluntarism and the Rise of Privatization 303
The Continuing Battle for Social Justice 306
Education 306
Affirmative Action in the Labor Market 307
Abortion and the Right to Privacy 308
The Great Lockup 310
Conclusion 311
DOCUMENTS: Social Welfare and the Information Society 313
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, 1996 314
State of California, Proposition 187, Illegal Aliens—Public Services, Verification,
and Reporting, 1994 317
U.S. Supreme Court Lawrence v. Texas, 2003 321
Notes 329
Credits 344
Index 349
A01_STER9913_09_SE_FM.indd 10 02/01/17 1:35 PM
1
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Summarize the major factors that
inf luence changes in social welfare
during a particular historical era.
• Assess the impact of welfare reform
and health care reform on the well-
being of Americans.
• Summarize the role of social
movements in contemporary
American social controversies.
DOCUMENT: Introduction 10
An Act for the Relief of the Poor,
43 Elizabeth, 1601 11
1
Introduction:
How!to!Think About
Social Welfare’s
Past!(and Present)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
—George Santayana
History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradi-
tion. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is
worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today
—Henry Ford
How important is the history of social welfare and social work? The
answer lies somewhere between these two quotations. As Santayana
asserts, many of the challenges we face today echo the problems that
others have faced in the past. The limitations of resources, the hostility
to the poor and dependent, and the ethical issues involved in interven-
ing in the private lives of clients are issues social workers and policy
makers have faced in the past. Yet, at the same time that the past can be
a guide, it can also be a straitjacket, constraining our actions and pre-
venting us from understanding what is novel about our times.
“#
$%
&’
$
()
*+
‘,
-‘
./
0
&1
(2
.3
(
-&
$&
/%
2(
–
0&
++
#0
$’
&.
, (
%’
.$
,
4
(-
&$
&/
%2
(-
,
“‘
5′
,’
&.
, +
‘*
%2
%3
&
6
0&
./
%#
,,
, +
0-
“7
89
-9
:;
7<
.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 1 02/01/17 1:36 PM
2 Chapter 1
Here’s the thing. History can be useful in both of these situations. At the same time,
it allows us to understand how current public assistance and child welfare policies echo
the misconceptions of past generations, it can allow us to understand the novelty of cur-
rent patterns of family life. It can’t help a practitioner decide on a particular strategy for
engaging a client, but it can help the practitioner understand the set of social forces that
put them in a room together.
American history is more than the chronology of elections and wars often covered
by textbooks. Although often ignored, our history includes the struggles of many indi-
viduals and groups to improve the opportunities of ordinary people and to reduce the
role of discrimination and exclusion in our society. This book tells this story, the his-
tory of American social welfare. It explores the political and economic forces, values and
ideas, and social institutions that have inf luenced the development and reform of social
welfare policies and programs over the course of American history.
The goals of social welfare programs derive from the goals of the larger society for
itself and from the dominant ways that people make sense of the world around them. In
turn, decisions about who is needy and how they are to be helped bear upon economic
development, political organization, social stability, and family integrity. Social welfare
programs involve a redistribution of resources from one group to another. Our political
culture has often resisted using government to redistribute resources, relying instead on
the market to carry out this function. Through much of our history, Americans have
valued private assets over public goods and individual autonomy over collective choices.
Decisions about who should benefit f rom public policies often polarize Americans.
Should we be more generous with programs for older Americans or children? Does pro-
viding aid to a group discourage independence or allow it to f lourish? These issues were
debated 200 years ago, just as they are today.
Yet, despite these value conf licts, social realities—economic crises, wars, and civil
disorder—have led us to embrace many active social policies. Although it sounds like a
contradiction, very often Americans are ideological conservatives and pragmatic liberals.
Decisions about benefit levels and eligibility often communicate whether a program
is intended to invite or discourage participation. The extent to which needy individu-
als are viewed as beneficiaries, recipients, clients, or consumers suggests the intent of
the program. Welfare recipients, for example, are subject to behavioral requirements that
would be unthinkable for Social Security beneficiaries.
The geographical and demographic scope of the United States—the size and diver-
sity of its population—as well as legal and social traditions related to volunteerism, to
separation of church and state, to states’ rights, and to local responsibility—all compli-
cate legislative and administrative decisions in social welfare matters. Throughout Amer-
ican history we have debated the proper role of the federal, state, and local governments
in funding and administering programs. Some have argued that federal programs can
assure equal treatment across the country, while others have argued the local govern-
ments are more likely to understand the needs of their residents. Although private non-
profit organizations have often played an important role in administering social programs,
government has more often than not provided the funding. Since the 1990s, for-profit
corporations and professionals in private practice have assumed a more central role in
providing services, but again, government has usually provided the funding. The number
and complexity of these decisions result in bills—like the 2010 health care reform law—
that are thousands of pages long.
The history of social welfare is also a story of the growing professionalism of those
who administer social services—that is, with the history of the social work profession.
Although often
ignored, our history
includes the struggles
of many individuals
and groups to improve
the opportunities of
ordinary people and to
reduce the role of dis-
crimination and exclu-
sion in our society.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 2 02/01/17 1:36 PM
Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past (and Present) 3
The early development of the public and voluntary sectors of social welfare was accom-
panied by the development of service providers appropriate to their purposes: both the
overseer of the poor and the lady bountiful. Yet, as social welfare programs and services
have become more institutionalized, service providers have been required to acquire and
demonstrate their skills and capacities. Social workers originally drew their inspiration
from the struggle against poverty and want, but as they became more professional, they
often sought to define their unique skills as associated with psychology and individual
adjustment. The tension between social work as a social change profession and social
work as an individual adjustment profession has gone on for a century and will likely con-
tinue in the future. At the end of the day, however, social work practitioners have no
choice but to address both social injustice and the immediate needs of their clients. Thus,
the philosophical tension between individual and social change surfaces in one’s profes-
sional practice as one decides how both to address the everyday problems faced by one’s
clients and to assess one’s professional responsibility to pursue social justice in imperfect
systems.
When this book was originally conceived four decades ago, it argued that social wel-
fare policy and pro-family policy were essentially the same. Yet, as the authors made
this claim, the politics of domestic life were in the process of exploding. The gender
question—whether men and women should be treated the same—had been simmering
in politics since at least the years before the Civil War, when many questioned the pro-
priety of female abolitionists addressing “mixed” crowds of men and women. However,
during the 1970s, the legalization of abortion and the failed attempt to add the Equal
Rights Amendment to the Constitution provoked schisms that have yet to be overcome.
If anything, the battle over gender has become more contested in recent years as strug-
gles over marriage equality and questions (often raised by transgender commentators)
about whether using the categories male and female themselves as exhaustive categories
has reinforced the divide.
From the beginning, a separate channeling of family welfare and child welfare,
originating with English Poor Laws, and, therefore, at one with the fabric of an English
colonial milieu, divided social welfare responses for the worthy poor—the disabled and
children—from those for the unworthy—the able-bodied poor. The incorporation of the
English Poor Laws into the legislative framework of American colonial governments dif-
ferentiated those who were unable to work f rom those who were potentially employ-
able. Poor Law programs were vitally concerned with those who were employed and
who might be in danger of falling into pauperism. The family was effective to the degree
that it maintained the social order and the economic viability of its individual members.
To a considerable extent, social welfare programs for poor people in the 20th century
retain this orientation.
The essential worthiness of children and the importance of nurturing their potential
for social and economic contribution led to stated, public concern for their well-being
as members of families and eventually to grudging recognition of the needs of fami-
lies. The 20th century was proclaimed the Century of the Child, and pressures to make
the label stick resulted in the calling of the first White House Conference on Children
in 1909 and to a positive statement of public policy in regard to child care. Home and
family life were declared to be society’s goal for children, an enunciation of the rights of
children. Economic necessity, many felt, should not require that a mother leave her child
care responsibilities for work outside the home. Time and reality have demonstrated
more and more ambivalence of policy and practice in child welfare. The 21st century
began with one-fifth of U.S. children living in poverty.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 3 02/01/17 1:36 PM
Mobile User
4 Chapter 1
The changing status of women was a pivotal event in social welfare history. Until
the middle of the 20th century, married women rarely worked in the formal economy,
yet they provided the vast majority of care, typically to members of their family. By
the 1970s, a majority of married women were working for wages or salaries. Although
women’s entry into the labor force allowed many of them to take advantage of their
skills and education and helped many family budgets that were strained by inf lation and
economic stagnation, it created a “caring gap” because women had less time to care for
sick or dependent members of society. Today, much of this work is still done by women,
but now they are more often poorly paid aides rather than family members.
Government financial capacity often has more inf luence than the needs of clients
on social welfare policy. During the 18th and 19th centuries, state and local governments
collected few taxes and provided few services, whereas the federal government’s role in
social welfare was usually limited to the well-being of veterans. The entry of the fed-
eral government into social welfare policy greatly expanded the social welfare budget
(Figure!1.1). However, attacks on “tax-and-spend” policies during the late 20th century
reversed the growth of direct public spending on social welfare. The economic crisis that
began in 2007 challenged policy makers, regardless of their political ideology. Should the
government increase spending to stimulate the economy and increase the budget deficit,
or should the government cut spending to balance government budgets even if it served
to prolong and deepen the crisis?
The needs of the aging now receive great attention in the United States. But con-
cern for the welfare of our older citizens was not consistent before the Great Depression.
In the late 19th century, special attention was paid to the needs of older white men who
were veterans, but by the time of the Great Depression, the aging were one of the poor-
est groups in American society. The chapters that follow will trace the evolution of the
policy that has given older Americans some relative advantage within the social welfare
system.
The chapters that follow will also give the social welfare needs of two groups, vet-
erans and blacks, special attention to demonstrate two extremes in social policy in the
United States. Veterans have usually enjoyed better social welfare benefits than the rest
of the population because of their service in the armed forces. They have played an
important role in the expansion of public welfare programs because veterans’ programs
have often set precedents for benefits later extended to others. For example, in recent
years, the federal government has committed increased funding to reduce homeless-
ness among veterans, which has inspired homelessness advocates to call for an expanded
effort to end homelessness generally.
For people of color—blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and
those who identify as multiracial—a very different picture emerges. From the begin-
ning of European colonization, white invaders oppressed Native Americans. Genocide
remains an essential part of American history. Although all people of color have faced
discrimination and marginalization, African Americans’ historical experience—slavery,
segregation, and disenfranchisement—merits particular attention. Black Americans, the
largest of these groups until the early 21st century, suffered the dual oppressions of color
and class, of racial discrimination and poverty. Like other people of color, they have been
relegated to a social and economic role that has left them more vulnerable to the risks of
the market economy. Simultaneously, whites have often seen black Americans’ economic
marginalization not as a product of racism, but as proof of their genetic inferiority
and cultural deficiencies. Even when the government adopted policies to address past
discrimination—as it did after the Civil War and again during the 1960s—it has typically
lacked the political will and financial resources to accomplish their goals.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 4 02/01/17 1:36 PM
Mobile User
Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past (and Present) 5
America—it is often said—is a nation of immigrants. As the number of immigrants
has surged during periods of economic prosperity, anti-immigrant sentiment has often
led to efforts to restrict their f low, setting off some of the nastiest episodes in the his-
tory of American racism. The expansion of the foreign-born population has had a com-
plicated relationship to overall race relations. Within a few decades, America may well
become a minority majority nation in which nonwhites make up a majority. At the same
time, the expansion of immigration sometimes has diverted the nation’s attention from
the long-term marginalization of African Americans.
Anti-immigrant attitudes or nativism existed in the United States f rom the very
first days. The treatment of Native Americans is one example. In the Colonial period,
Figure 1.1 The expansion of government responsibility for the economic welfare of older
Americans represented a break with past approaches to social welfare.
(%
'.
$,
4
(
-&
$&
/%
2(
-,
"
'5
',
'&
.,
+
'*
%2
%3
&
6
0&
./
%#
,,
, +
0-
),
=0
>–
😕
:9
.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 5 02/01/17 1:36 PM
6 Chapter 1
Benjamin Franklin expressed concern about the German language and culture spread-
ing in Pennsylvania, and the Federalists worried about the Irish and French. In the years
before the Civil War, fears about immigrants gave rise to a short-lived political party,
the Know-Nothings, while during the depression of the 1870s, anti-Chinese agitation—
often tied to labor unions—led to the exclusion of the Chinese from entering the United
States, legislation that was not repealed until the Second World War. Nativism tri-
umphed in the 20th century, as Congress passed laws in 1921 and 1924 that virtually cut
off European immigration for four decades. The entry of millions of new immigrants
since the 1970s has again provoked two persistent reactions: a cosmopolitan belief that
immigrants enrich American society and a defensive fear that they will steal jobs and
dilute the “national character” (itself a product of generations of immigration).
Economic growth is intimately connected to trends in social welfare. As the country
became richer, social welfare programs usually expanded, regardless of which political
party was in power. The disparate treatment of different groups persisted, but policies
became more generous for all.
For those living today, it is hard to imagine the plight of 18th-century Americans
who barely produced enough to survive. The well-being, the very existence, of the colo-
nies depended upon the maximum contribution of each of the colonists. The dominant
ideologies of the Colonial period focused on human’s “original sin” and the necessity
of stern treatment for the unproductive. These beliefs, in turn, justified coercive alter-
natives to relief—the workhouse, indenture, apprenticeship, contracting out, and so on.
In contrast, the contemporary economy has an unprecedented capacity to pro-
duce consumer goods. Where a majority of Americans needed to work in agriculture
to feed the nation, now 3 per cent of the labor force can produce enough food to feed
all Americans and a large share of the rest of the world. As a result, as a society we
have more f lexibility in allocating resources to different social groups. The growth of
social welfare expenditures in the 20th century ref lected, in part, the increased ability
of society to meet the social welfare needs created by industrial society and its impact
on family structure. Yet, this development was hardly linear. The decline of manufac-
turing after the 1970s undermined many of the social arrangements that supported an
ever-expanding welfare system.
An examination of the history of the American response to dependency gives evi-
dence that ideology often followed from the dynamics of the economy. The colonial per-
ception of work as moral and idleness as immoral makes little sense, in an aff luent society,
in which individual well-being is so dependent on social conditions. Ironically, the unrivaled
expansion of America’s productive capacity has occurred as older ideas of personal respon-
sibility and punitive work-oriented policies have gained new legitimacy. The renewed war
on dependency and idleness comes at a time when low-paying, unstable service jobs have
replaced the more permanent manufacturing employment of a previous era.
For several decades, many Americans were able to maintain their standard of living
in the face of stagnant wages by increasing their use of credit. During the recession of
2007–09, we discovered that this consumer debt, including college loans and risky mort-
gages, had created an illusion, a bubble that suddenly burst. In the wake of the reces-
sion, we’ve witnessed renewed demands for a living wage, including universal affordable
health care and an increased minimum wage.
History is no elegant machine that turns out the same results over and over again.
But it makes sense to pay attention to these four factors to try to make sense of the past:
• Economic productivity
• Perceptions of social institution’s effectiveness
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 6 02/01/17 1:36 PM
Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past (and Present) 7
• Views of human nature
• Past decisions about social welfare
The society’s level of productivity at a particular historical moment places obvious
constraints on how generous social welfare programs can be. High levels of output and
aff luence increase the possibilities for choice; and the degree of equality in a society can,
and indeed often does, increase as national income rises. At the same time that wealth
makes some redistribution possible, it also makes redistribution psychologically neces-
sary; our concept of what might be a tolerable level of poverty varies with gross domes-
tic product. American history, however, suggests that aff luence does not automatically
translate into generosity.
Perceptions of social institution’s effectiveness strongly inf luence the
initiation and development of social welfare programs. We often draw a dis-
tinction between a residual and an institutional philosophy of social welfare.
The residual approach assumes that the array of other social institutions,
including the market economy, families, and other social organizations, are
capable of meeting the needs of most people. Social welfare should be seen as
a stopgap system that is relevant only when the other institutions fail.
In contrast, institutional approaches to social welfare are premised on
the belief that we live in an interdependent society. We are all subject to the
risks of modern life—aging, illness, unemployment, and disability, to name some of the
most important. Therefore, it makes sense—in the name of social solidarity—for us to
make provisions for those of us who will fall victim to these risks.
Ironically, when a society is functioning well, it’s easy to see the consumers of social
welfare benefits and services as individual failures, while when the economy fails or
social order is disrupted, we’re likely to look for collective solutions to life’s problems.
In a way, this turns reality on its head, because it is precisely the provision of collective
solutions that allows society to function most effectively.
Views of human nature unquestionably inf luence the response to human need. A
belief in the superiority of any group in the population—indeed, any racial, ethnic, reli-
gious, or sexual elite—becomes a basis for discrimination and exploitation. Our original
creed was that “all men are created equal,” but we’ve often acted as if some Americans
are “more equal” than others. From the earliest interactions between Europeans and
American Indians through the welfare reform debates of the 1990s, people have used
nonhuman metaphors—wolves, dogs, and alligators—to justify the exclusion of some
people from the dignity and support they deserved.
If people are seen as basically lazy, social welfare programs are devised to deter their
use. A 19th-century listing of the causes of dependency highlighted individual character
f laws and argued that the help given to the poor aggravated the problem. The dominant
19th-century response to dependency was the organization of “f riendly
visitors” to uncover the dishonesty and deviant behaviors of the poor. Alter-
natively, if people are considered essentially good, the response to need is
more likely to be guided by the offer of incentives and the development of
programs that provide opportunity for self-advancement.
Throughout American history, the poor have been considered both
blessed and condemned by God, both virtuous and sinful, and both lazy
and ambitious. And these contrasting views have often been held simultane-
ously. In connection with the family, for example, the prevailing 19th- century
view of Charity Organization Society leaders that family members had to
be deterred f rom a base, inherited instinct for pauperism was countered by
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 7 02/01/17 1:36 PM
8 Chapter 1
Settlement House movement leaders’ conviction about the constructive force of human
aspiration. To the former, pauperism—its effects upon the individual, the family, and
society—was a disease to be eradicated. Settlement house workers’ belief that poverty
resulted f rom the denial of opportunity led them to advocate for legislative reform
designed to affirm and expand human dignity.
The trajectory of welfare reform from the 1960s to the 1990s underlines the value
conf licts that run through social welfare policy. The rejection of work-based welfare
reform proposals in the 1970s was significant. Although the proposals were steeped in the
work ethic, this did not dispel opponents’ fears that adding the working poor to the wel-
fare rolls would lead to widespread moral decline and increased costs. The link between
work and the receipt of income security benefits was not strong enough to dispel the
threat to our economic system that Congress saw in a guaranteed annual income—no
matter how low that income was. The success of conservative welfare reform during the
1980s and 1990s ended efforts to balance support for the work ethic and a decent stan-
dard of living to even our poorest citizens. Rather, by 1996, government used punitive
regulations to prevent millions of eligible families from even applying for aid.
The impact of cultural bias is clear throughout our history. The Poor Laws, as they
developed in England during the shift f rom agriculture to factory production, were
an effort to deal with disjuncture and the conf lict in that society between feudal lords
and emerging industrialists. The adoption of the Poor Laws by the American colonies
represented the imposition of laws that were inappropriate to American realities. The
renewed vigor with which the Poor Laws were administered during the post–Civil War
period demonstrated again the significance of historical heritage. The reliance upon fam-
ily responsibility and local settlement as requirements for financial relief was detrimental
not only to industrial expansion, but also to family welfare. The importance of mobility
and of the nuclear family to successful urbanization and industrialization went unheeded.
The racially discriminatory application of the Poor Law principles to the freed slaves, its
advocates claims, would help African Americans achieve the independent status of other
American citizens.
Previous policy decisions cast a long shadow on contemporary social welfare policy
debates. The creation of the Social Security system during the 1930s inf luenced almost
all decisions about policy for the aged that followed. By the same token, the failure to
include health care in the original Social Security system allowed the health care field to
be dominated by private, often for-profit hospitals, insurance companies, and providers.
By the time Congress passed comprehensive health care legislation in 2010, past deci-
sions assured that public policy would have to accommodate these private interests. A
public option became the f lashpoint for debate and was ultimately abandoned in favor of
subsidies for private insurance.
In summary, the congruence of technology and the level of output, the view of soci-
ety, the view of human nature, and the historical heritage will inf luence policy choices.
This does not mean that these four factors contribute equally at any given moment. The
very fact that the family, f rom the point of view of public policy, has been considered
primarily an economic unit suggests that the degree to which each factor will exert inf lu-
ence on policy will depend upon existing economic conditions. The response to human
need during the 1930s was remarkably different f rom that during the high-employment
era of the 1970s. Yet both were periods during which need per se was widely recognized
and civil disorder was threatened.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 8 02/01/17 1:36 PM
Mobile User
Introduction: How to Think About Social Welfare’s Past (and Present) 9
This volume is organized around historical eras and gives a description of the eco-
nomic, political, and cultural context for each. The chapters are organized around three
sections: changing social conditions, innovations in social welfare, and the emergence
of social movements. Underlying this organization is a theory of policy change. At any
given time, the existing social welfare system is confronted by two challenges. On the one
hand, the foundations of the social order change as the population grows and its compo-
sition changes, different sectors of the economy grow or shrink, and people experience
the traumas of war, drought, or dislocation. On the other hand, people join together in
social movements that propose different ways of making sense of the changes around
them and of inf luencing them. Sometimes these movements are reactive—harkening
back to “the ways things used to be.” At other times, they seek new untried ways of cop-
ing with new difficulties. In time, some movements often succeed and become the new
conventional wisdom, while others drop by the wayside.
One way to make history real is to examine the actual documents that changed pol-
icy. This book examines social welfare programs and institutions through the use of leg-
islative documents, judicial decisions, administrative rulings, and statements of public
and voluntary social welfare leaders. These documents give the reader the opportunity
to put himself/herself back into history and consider the past not as a given, but rather
as a set of choices made by earlier generations of Americans. We, like they, make history
and live with the consequences of their and our choices.
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 9 02/01/17 1:36 PM
10
Introduction
The document that accompanies this chapter is an Act for the Relief of the Poor, better
known as the Poor Laws of 1601, passed by the English Parliament during the 43rd year
of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It is the only document in this book not derived from the
American experience. Its inclusion is based on the tremendous and lasting inf luence that
the British Poor Law tradition has had on American social welfare policy and programs.
Underlying the provisions of the Act for the Relief of the Poor are those features
that have been identified as Poor Law principles. The overriding importance of work and
workforce participation was primary. In providing support for the needy, individual and
family responsibility came first. The act sets forth the qualifications for the selection of
overseers of the poor, their duties, and accountability. In addition, the act details the pro-
visions to be made for various categories of poor persons and the ways in which benefits
are to be funded and administered.
The Poor Laws of England and Western Europe were a reaction against economic
dependency and a statement that those who could earn a living were expected to do
so. Those who were incapable of working were to be provided for, either by relatives if
possible, or by the local community. But those who were able to work should. A primary
concern with the work effort has dominated U.S. social policy throughout the years.
At the end of the 20th century, the inf luence of the Poor Law tradition on the Amer-
ican response to need has become stronger than at any time since the late 19th century.
The legislation originally devised to deal with the upheavals of the shift f rom feudalism
to an industrial society has provided a foundation for social welfare policy as we move
from an industrial to a service economy.
THE
STATUTES AT LARGE,
From The
Thirty-ninth Year of Q. Elizabeth,
TO THE
Twelfth Year of K. Charles II. inclusive.
To which is prefixed,
TABLE containing the TITLES of all the STATUTES during that Period.
VOL. VII.
DANBY PICKERING, of Gray’s Inn, Esq;
Reader of the Law Lecture to that Honourable Society.
Edited by Joseph Bentham, CAMBRIDGE, Printer to the University;
Charles Bathurst, at the
Cross-Keys, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-Street, London 1763.
DocUMenT
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 10 02/01/17 1:36 PM
11
CUM PRIVILEGIO.
An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 43 Elizabeth, 1601
Be it enacted by the authority of this present parliament, That the church-wardens of
every parish, and four, three or two substantial householders there, as shall be thought
meet, having respect to the proportion and greatness of the same parish and parishes, to
be nominated yearly in Easter Week, or within one month after Easter, under the hand
and seal of two or more justices of the peace in the same county, whereof one to be of
the quorum, dwelling in or near the same parish or division where the same parish doth
lie, shall be called overseers of the poor of the same parish: and they, or the greater part
of them, shall take order f rom time to time, by and with the consent of two or more
such justices of peace as is aforesaid, for setting to work the children of all such whose
parents shall not by the said church-wardens and overseers, or the greater part of them,
be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and also for setting to work all such
persons, married or unmarried, having no means to maintain them, and use no ordinary
and daily trade of life to get their living by: and also to raise weekly or otherwise (by
taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar and other, and of every occupier of lands,
houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal-mines, or saleable underwoods
in the said parish, in such competent sum and sums of money as they shall think fit) a
convenient stock of f lax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff, to
set the poor on work: and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary
relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them, being poor and not
able to work, and also for the putting out of such children to be apprentices . . . .
* * *
III. And be it also enacted, That if the said justices of peace do perceive, that the inhab-
itants of any parish are not able to levy among themselves sufficient sums of money
for the purposes aforesaid; That then the said two justices shall and may tax, rate and
assess as aforesaid, any other of other parishes, or out of any parish, within the hundred
where the said parish is, to pay such sum and sums of money to the church-wardens and
overseers of the said poor parish for the said purposes, as the said justices shall think fit,
according to the intent of this law: (2) and if the said hundred shall not be thought to the
said justices able and fit to relieve the said several parishes not able to provide for them-
selves as aforesaid; Then the justices of peace at their general quarter-sessions, or the
greater number of them, shall rate and assess as aforesaid, any other of other parishes, or
out of any parish, within the said county for the purposes aforesaid, as in their discretion
shall seem fit.
* * *
IV. And that it shall be lawful, as well for the present as subsequent church-wardens and
overseers, or any of them by warrant from any two such justices of peace, as is aforesaid,
to levy as well the said sums of money, and all arrearages, of every one that shall refuse to
contribute according as they shall be assessed, by distress and sale of the offender’s goods,
as the sums of money or stock shall be behind upon any account to be made as aforesaid,
rendering to the parties the overplus; (2) and in defect of such distress, it shall be lawful
for any such two justices of the peace to commit him or them to the common goal of
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 11 02/01/17 1:36 PM
12
the county, there to remain without bail or mainprize until payment of the said sum,
arrearages and stock: (3) and the said justices of peace, or any one of them, to send to the
house of correction or common goal, such as shall not employ themselves to work, being
appointed thereunto, as aforesaid: (4) and also any such two justices of peace to commit
to the said prison every one of the said church-wardens and overseers which shall refuse
to account, there to remain without bail or mainprize until he have made a true account,
and satisfied and paid so much as upon the said account shall be remaining in his hands.
* * *
V. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for the said church-wardens and
overseers, or the greater part of them, by the assent of any two justices of the peace
aforesaid, to bind any such children, as aforesaid, to be apprentices, where they shall see
convenient, till such man-child shall come to the age of four and twenty years, and such
woman-child to the age of one and twenty years, or the time of her marriage; the same
to be as effectual to all purposes, as if such child were of full age, and by indenture of
convenant bound him or her self. (2) And to the intent that necessary places of habitation
may more conveniently be provided for such poor impotent people; (3) be it enacted by
the authority aforesaid, That it shall and may be lawful for the said church-wardens and
overseers, or the greater part of them by the leave of the lord or lords of the manor,
whereof any waste or common within their parish is or shall be parcel, and upon agree-
ment before with him or them made in writing, under the hands and seals of the said
lord or lords, or otherwise, according to any order to be set down by the justices of peace
of the said county at their general quarter-sessions, or the greater part of them, by like
leave and agreement of the said lord or lords in writing under his or their hands and
seals, to erect, build, and set up in fit and convenient places of habitation in such waste or
common, at the general charges of the parish, or otherwise of the hundred or county, as
aforesaid, to be taxed, rated and gathered in manner before expressed, convenient houses
of dwelling for the said impotent poor; (4) and also to place inmates, or more families
than one in one cottage or house; one act made in the one and thirtieth year of her
Majesty’s reign, intituled, an act against the erecting and maintaining of cottages, or any-
thing therein contained to the contrary notwithstanding: (5) which cottages and places
for inmates shall not at any time after be used or employed to or for any other habitation,
but only for impotent and poor of the same parish, that shall be there placed from time
to time by the church-wardens and overseers of the poor of the same parish, or the most
part of them, upon the pains and forfeitures contained in the said former act made in the
said one and thirtieth year of her Majesty’s reign.
* * *
VII. And be it further enacted, That the father and grandfather, and the mother and
grandmother, and the children of very poor, old, blind, lame and impotent person,
or other poor person not able to work, being of a sufficient ability, shall, at their own
charges, relieve and maintain every such poor person in that manner, and according to
that rate, as by the justices of peace of that county where such sufficient persons dwell,
or the greater number of them, at their general quarter-sessions shall be assessed; (2)
upon pain that every one of them shall forfeit twenty shillings for every month which
they shall fail therein.
* * *
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 12 02/01/17 1:36 PM
13
VIII. And be it further enacted, That the mayors, bailiffs, or other head officers of every
town and place corporate and city within this realm, being justice or justices of peace,
shall have the same authority by virtue of this act, within the limits and precincts of
their jurisdictions, as well out of sessions, as at their sessions, if they hold any, as is
herein limited, prescribed and appointed to justices to the peace of the county, or any
two or more of them, or to the justices of peace in their quarter-sessions, to do and
execute for all the uses and purposes in this act prescribed, and no other justices of
peace to enter or meddle there: (2) and that every alderman of the city of London within
his ward, shall and may do and execute in every respect so much as is appointed and
allowed by this act to be done and executed by one or two justices of peace of any
county within this realm.
* * *
X. And further be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if in any place within this
realm there happen to be hereafter no such nomination of overseers yearly, as if before
appointed, That then every justice of peace of the county, dwelling within the division
where such default of nomination shall happen, and every mayor, alderman and head
officer of city, town or place corporate where such default shall happen, shall lose and
forfeit for every such default five pounds, to be employed towards the relief of the poor
of the said parish or place corporate, and to be levied, as aforesaid, of their goods, by
warrant f rom the general sessions of the peace of the said county, or of the same city,
town or place corporate, if they keep sessions.
* * *
XI. And be it also enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all penalties and forfeitures
beforementioned in this act to be forfeited by any person or persons, shall go and be
employed to the use of the poor of the same parish, and towards a stock and habitation
for them, and other necessary uses and relief, as before in this act are mentioned and
expressed; (2) and shall be levied by the said church-wardens and overseers, or one of
them, by warrant f rom any two such justices of peace, or mayor, alderman, or head
officer of city, town or place corporate respectively within their several limits, by distress
and sale thereof, as aforesaid; (3) or in defect thereof, it shall be lawful for any two such
justices of peace, and the said alderman and head officers within their several limits, to
commit the offender to the said prison, there to remain without bail or mainprize till the
said forfeitures shall be satisfied and paid.
* * *
XII. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the justices of peace of
every county or place corporate, or the more part of them, in their general sessions to be
holden next after the feast of Easter next, and so yearly as often as they shall think meet,
shall rate every parish to such a weekly sum of money as they shall think convenient;
(2) so as no parish be rated above the sum of six-pence, nor under the sum of a half-
penny, weekly to be paid, and so as the total sum of such taxation of the parishes in every
county amount not above the rate of two-pence for every parish within the said county;
(3) which sums so taxed shall be yearly assessed by the agreement of the parishioners
within themselves, or in default thereof, by the church-wardens and petty constables of
the same parish, or the more part of them: or in default of their agreement, by the order
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 13 02/01/17 1:36 PM
of such justice or justices of peace as shall dwell in the same parish or (if none be there
dwelling) in the parts next adjoining.
* * *
XV. And be it further enacted, That all the surplusage of money which shall be remain-
ing in the said stock of any county, shall by discretion of the more part of the justices of
peace in their quarter-sessions, be ordered, distributed and bestowed for the relief of the
poor hospitals of that county, and of those that shall sustain losses by fire, water, the sea
or other casualties, and to such other charitable purposes, for the relief of the poor, as to
the more part of the said justices of peace shall seem convenient.
* * *
XVI. And be it further enacted, That if any treasurer elected shall willfully refuse to
take upon him the said office of treasureship, or refuse to distribute and give relief, or
to account, according to such form as shall be appointed by the more part of the said
justices of peace; That then it shall be lawful for the justices of peace in their quarter-
sessions, or in their default, for the justices of assize at their assizes to be holden in the
same county, to fine the same treasurer by their discretion; (2) the same fine not to be
under three pounds, and to be levied by sale of his goods, and to be prosecuted by any
two of the said justices of peace whom they shall authorize. (3) Provided always, That
this act shall not take effect until the feast of Easter next.
* * *
XVII. And be it enacted, That the statute made in the nine and thirtieth year of her Maj-
esty’s reign, intituled, An act for the relief of the poor, shall continue and stand in force
until the feast of Easter next; (2) and that all taxations heretofore imposed and not paid,
nor that shall be paid before the said feast of Easter next, and that all taxes hereafter
before the said feast to be taxed by virtue of the said former act, which shall not be paid
before the said feast of Easter, shall and may after the said feast of Easter be levied by
the overseers and other persons in this act respectively appointed to levy taxations, by
distress, and by such warrant in every respect, as if they had been taxed and imposed
by virtue of this act, and were not paid.
?
14
M01_STER9913_09_SE_C01.indd 14 02/01/17 1:36 PM
15
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Compare the oor aws to public
assistance policies in the United
States since 1 .
• Summarize the major population and
economic changes of the Colonial
period.
• E plain how the e pansion
of democratic values during
the American evolution was
accompanied by increasing criticism
of the oor aws.
• Compare social provision for
veterans with that for other social
groups.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
The oor aws in the Colonies 1
Con uest E pansion and
opulation rowth: Native
Americans Immigration and
Slavery
Social Change and the Challenge
to the oor aws
eterans: A Special Class
DOCUMENTS: The Colonial
eriod 1
An Act of Supplement to the Acts
Referring to the Poor, Massachusetts
Bay, 1692 31
The Binding of Moses Love, 1747 33
2
The Colonial Period:
1647–1776
The earliest white settlers of New England came to North America
to establish the ideal religious community, “a city upon a hill” that
would provide an example for European reform. Yet, as soon as
they arrived, they were confronted with a set of realities that forced
them to adapt their ways. A radically different ecology, complex
relationships with Native Americans, and different economic and
demographic realities forced them to tailor the institutions they had
brought f rom England—including the Poor Laws—to these new
realities.
Although the early Puritans thought of their migration as an
“errand in the wilderness,” North America had been the home of
indigenous peoples for millennia. Although never rivaling the civili-
zations of Central and South America, the Southwest and Midwest
had been the center for cultures that supported large cities and sig-
nificant religious institutions, thanks in part to the expropriation of
the resources of ordinary residents; but those civilizations had col-
lapsed long before the arrival of Europeans. Furthermore, climate
change in the 16th and 17th centuries—what environmental histo-
rians call the “little Ice Age”—reduced the growing season across
!”
#$
%&
#
‘(
)*
&+
,&
-.
/
%0
‘1
-2
‘
,%
#%
.$
1’
,
/%
**
“/
#&
%-
, ‘
$&
-#
+
3
‘,
%#
%.
$1
‘,
+
!&
4&
+&
%-
, *
&)
$1
$2
%
5
/%
-.
$”
++
, *
/-
!6
-7
89
:6
.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 15 02/01/17 1:36 PM
16 Chapter 2
much of North America, putting more pressure on scarce resources. Still, at the begin-
ning of the 17th century, somewhere between 2 million and 8 million indigenous people
lived north of the Rio Grande.1
As early as 1647, at the f irst session of its colonial legislature, Rhode Island
announced the Elizabethan Poor Law principles that stressed, most importantly,
public responsibility for relief of the poor who could not work, and work for the
able-bodied:
It is agreed and ordered by this present Assembly, that each towne shall provide
carefully for the relief of the poor, to maintain the impotent, and to employ the
able, and shall appoint an overseer for the same purpose. Sec. 43 Eliz.2
Needy widows and their children would receive aid but were expected to help with
their own support by working. Those judged able to work and those who had worked
in the past were expected to support themselves through work. They were not generally
eligible for public aid even though they might be poor, despite working.
Considering the severe economic and physical privations of the early European set-
tlers, it is not surprising that public responsibility for relief should have been buttressed
by the principles of English Poor Law: local responsibility, family responsibility, and
the residency requirement of legal settlement. These principles had been evolving in
England and Western Europe for some 200 years and had been codified in 1601 in the
Poor Law.
The principle of local responsibility made public aid the domain of towns and cit-
ies. Family responsibility originally denoted the legal obligation of support that adults
had for their minor children and grandchildren and for their aged parents. Settlement,
added in 1662, made a designated period of residence a requirement for the receipt
of assistance. Settlement—the fact that only residents of a particular community were
entitled to aid—was a response to the new economic realities of early modern Brit-
ain. Population growth had combined with new commercial opportunities to push a
large share of the rural population off the land. Although the emergence of textile
and mining industries offered new opportunities, the supply of labor outstripped the
new demand. The ultimate effect was the creation of a large class of mobile labor—
vagabonds, beggars, and tramps—that were no longer tied to a particular locality. In
a society dominated by parishes and communities, this f loating labor supply chal-
lenged conventional ideas about both economy and social order. They were people
in need, and the Poor Laws, in providing public relief, were designed to meet—and
control—their needs.
The terms upon which relief was offered ref lected much more than the interests
of the poor. Parliament was subject to conf licting pressures. The owners of large farms
wanted to ensure the availability of local, low-cost, seasonal workers; the emerging
industrialists needed to encourage the migration of factory labor; and the town officials
wanted to minimize the need to levy taxes to support the homeless. The decision of Par-
liament to make local settlement an eligibility condition for relief ref lected the power of
the landed gentry. In supporting this interest, the government provided an incentive for
labor to remain on the farms—the risk of leaving was clear. At the same time, they were
able to satisfy the towns’ concern for minimizing local costs. Furthermore, by limiting
the mobility of the poor, government could respond to the interest of landowners and of
industrialists in maintaining law and order.
In accordance with the Act of Settlement of 1662, newcomers could be returned to
their place of legal residence even though there was no actual application for assistance.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 16 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 17
That it shall and may be lawful upon complaint made by the churchwardens
or overseers of the Poor of any Parish . . . for any two Justices of the Peace . . .
where any Person or Persons are likely to be chargeable to the Parish shall come to
inhabit . . . to remove and convey such Person or Persons to such Parish where he or
they were last legally settled.3
The policy objectives of the Poor Laws, however, could be shifted to respond to
changing conditions. By 1795, as urban centers grew and immigration increased, the
Poor Laws were amended to control relief costs. Behavioral restrictions on relief recip-
ients increased, and punishment, including whipping for not working, became more
widespread. Residency requirements were made stiffer, but the penalties for vagrancy
eased. A passport system was introduced, permitting increased mobility of labor
between communities.
The Poor Laws in The CoLonies
Although the long evolution of the Poor Laws in England served both as a hindrance
and as an aid to the process of commercial development, that evolution was always
contingent on the availability of surplus labor. The climate of the American colonies
was strikingly different. There was no persistent unemployment problem; no mass of
employables had been pushed off the land; no industries existed to pull workers into
towns; and no pool of workers awaited hiring. Initially there was neither an economic
reason nor a law-and-order reason to reduce mobility. The rationale for the adoption of
the Poor Laws rested on other grounds.
In the main, those colonists who were potential recipients of relief were
the poor who were largely incapable of self-support: the ill, the disabled, the
elderly, orphans, and widows with young children. Widows and their chil-
dren made up a large percentage of the poor—as high as half in some towns.4
Frequent wars, in part a response by Native Americans to the invasion of
their land by the settlers; recurring epidemics of smallpox, dysentery, mea-
sles, and yellow fever; major uncontrollable fires; high child mortality rates;
and the hazards of fishing and the consequent loss of life at sea—all gave rise
to economic need. These risks to which the colonists were subject were ones
for which all held common concern. The colonists were small bands of indi-
viduals joined together in enterprises whose success depended upon the con-
tribution and well-being of each. The smallness of their numbers made it possible to keep
friendly, public watch over individual misfortunes. Their isolation made this public over-
sight of community affairs a matter of individual self-interest. The Poor Laws ensured
individual and public protection. Those settled colonists known to be in need through no
fault of their own could be helped with cash relief in their own homes or in the homes of
neighbors. Relief for people in home—that is, family—settings was well regarded because
of the order and stability such settings promised for the community as a whole.
In 17th-century New England, the modern boundaries between public and private
and church and state would have made little sense. Community leaders sought to ensure
that sinful behavior was suppressed, including idleness, which in an agricultural society
could threaten everyone’s well-being. At first, there was no voluntary sector to respond
to people’s troubles. The Scots Charitable Society was established in Boston in 1657.5 In
1713, the Friends Almshouse was established in Philadelphia to provide relief for poor
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 17 02/01/17 1:36 PM
18 Chapter 2
Quakers.6 In 1724, the Boston Episcopal Society was formed, and in 1767, the Society of
House Carpenters was organized in New York.7
Voluntary responses to need remain an enduring feature of American social welfare.
Yet, like later efforts, the resources of colonial charitable societies and churches fell far
short of the need they sought to address. As a result, the Poor Laws remained the pri-
mary “safety net” of Colonial society. The laws offered some support to the disabled and
served as a deterrent to the able-bodied who might consider not working. The specific
provisions regarding settlement and family responsibility limited the number of inhabi-
tants for whose relief the town might be called upon to accept responsibility.
The family (and its structure) was a central force for maintaining economic, social,
and political stability. The vast majority of the colonists were farmers, and their farms
were isolated, small, and poorly equipped. For the most part, these farming families
had to supply their own food, clothing, and equipment as well as their own education,
entertainment, and health care. Family governance was hierarchical—generally with the
husband in command. Women were not entitled to vote, had little part in governance,
and lived in patriarchal families. Indeed, even their clothing was designed to show their
sexual subordination.8 Within this structure, all persons made valued contributions. Men
and boys cleared fields, farmed, cut wood, and trapped. Women and girls spun thread,
engaged in weaving, turned cloth into clothes, and took responsibility for myriad inter-
nal household chores. Men and women together worked to produce and to improve
whatever implements, utensils, furniture, and weapons the household needed.
Childbearing was viewed as a productive contribution to the family economy,
because young children often took on important chores and older children served as a
form of social security for their aging parents. If the husband was killed or disabled, the
wife moved naturally into the family and economic role he had held. In English colonies,
more than in Spanish or Portuguese colonies, women in the Colonial period could—and
did—hold property, run small businesses, and work for wages.9
During the 18th century, even as the colonies became more firmly established and
the colonists benefited f rom improved technology, expanding commercial activities
and shipbuilding, and increased trade with the native population, home manufactures
f lourished as a supplementary source of income. Improvements in the spinning wheel—
particularly after 1765, when the invention of the spinning jenny made it possible for a
person to spin 8 to 10 yarns simultaneously—made possible some home production for
market sale. With men continuing to concentrate on farming, the newly oriented home
manufacturing fell largely to women. In effect, women—and children—began to expand
a function that had long been theirs, and did so in their own homes so that their work
was easily integrated into family life.
The increasing centrality of women’s work to the colonial economy drove a num-
ber of changes. In 1750, Boston opened a group of spinning schools for female children.
In 1751, the Society for Encouraging Industry and Employing the Poor was founded to
promote the manufacture of woolen cloth and to employ “our own women and children
who are now in great measure idle.”10 The Massachusetts Province Laws of 1753–54 sup-
ported the manufacturing of linen, again with the employment of women and children
in mind:
The number of poor is greatly increased . . . and many persons, especially women
and children, are destitute of employment and in danger of becoming a public
charge.11
The colonies welcomed home manufacturing and the employment it provided. Cities and
towns could cut the taxes that supported dependents and, instead, offer employment to
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 18 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 19
women and children who might otherwise be “useless, if not burdensome, to society.”12
The dire language of the Poor Laws and subsequent legislation designed to ensure
their rigorous administration rested on cultural as well as economic factors. The popu-
larity of spinning schools and the enthusiastic attendance at and participation in spinning
bees sponsored by New England townships in the years preceding the Revolutionary
War suggest the extent to which the essential isolation of the colonists had “produced
a home-bred, home-living, and a home-loving people—a people who found both their
employment and their pleasure in their own and their near neighbor’s home.”13
The importance of home and family was balanced against a commitment to worldly
engagement that would later be labeled the “Protestant work ethic.” A fuller explanation
of the meaning and operation of the Poor Laws must take account of the moral under-
pinnings provided by Puritan Calvinism.
Many New England colonists had emigrated to escape religious persecution and
to seek f reedom to worship in accordance with their own religious beliefs. The result
was a unity of church and government peculiarly suited to New World conditions. With
individual status and economic reward a manifestation of predestined grace, the Puritan
work ethic allowed the Puritan elite to reconcile their commitment to the collective with
an interest in private gain. Although poverty could not be equated with unworthiness,
it could suggest—especially if public relief was necessary—a character and moral f law.
Philanthropy was encouraged, but charity ref lected a concern for the salvation of the
rich—the stewards of God’s wealth—more than a concern for the poor. Despite the fam-
ily’s usefulness, the impetus to maximize individual and family well-being did not center
on the individual as a family member or on the individual family as a unit. When a family
was in trouble, the concern was to save its potentially productive members. Hence, there
developed social welfare measures such as farming out, indenture, and apprenticeship,
which provided a family structure for governance and a means for productivity.
Poor Law provisions for public aid were inconsistent in their treatment of the family
as a social entity to be helped. Indeed, the provisions for relief established categories of
individuals—the young, the old, the disabled, and the able-bodied. By implication, the
family consisted of a number of individuals living together for the purpose of ensuring
self-support and, by extension, avoiding the necessity for support by taxpayers. At the
same time, the Poor Laws were quite expansive in their definition of family responsibil-
ity for supporting dependents. Not only parents and children but also grandparents and
grandchildren could be tapped for support. This expansive definition of family respon-
sibility, which would survive in some place until the 20th century, articulates a residual
definition of social welfare, in which the public sector was only responsible after individ-
ual and family resources failed to address the problem. In this context, the family that
could not maintain financial independence was not simply unsuccessful but actually dan-
gerous, both economically and morally. Such families could not by example, precept, or
education be expected to prepare the young for adult, independent living. The colonists,
therefore, provided for the binding out of children as apprentices for “better educate-
ing of youth in honest and profitable trades and manufactures, as also to avoyd sloath
and idleness wherewith such young children are easily corrupted”14 and required that in
addition to a trade, children learn to “read and understand the principles of religion &
the capital laws of this country.”15 These were preventive measures designed to protect
children from the contagion of parental failures.
Unattached, neglected, or dependent children could be placed with persons willing
to take responsibility for their care and who would educate and train them for a useful
calling. Persons assuming such a responsibility for children were expected to recoup their
expenses f rom the child’s work. Thus, indenture and apprenticeship were designed to
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 19 02/01/17 1:36 PM
20 Chapter 2
protect against the danger of pauperism and to ensure that children were immediately
profitable to themselves and to the community.
Apprenticeship ref lected colonial society’s concern with the home life, the work life,
and the spiritual life of the child. Ideally, each child would grow up “under some orderly
family government”16 that would provide support and an opportunity for learning both
for economic and for religious salvation. When the natural family did not provide these
essentials, apprenticeship to a contracted family was an alternative that often eased the
burden on the public treasury.
If after warning and admonition given by any of the Deputies; or Select-men, unto
such Parents or Masters, they shall still remain negligent in their duty, in any the
particulars aforementioned, whereby Children or Servants may be in danger to
grow Barberous, Rude or Stubborn, and so prove Pests instead of Blessings to the
Country; That then a fine of ten shillings shall be levied on the Goods of such negli-
gent Parent or Master, to the Towns use, except extreme poverty call for mitigation
of the said fine.
And if in three months after that, there be no due care taken . . . then a fine of
twenty shillings to be levied. . . .
And Lastly, if in three months after that, there be no due Reformation of the
said neglect, then the said Selectmen with the help of two Magistrates, shall take
such children and servants from them, and place them with some Masters for years
(boyes till they come to twenty-one, and girls eighteen years of age) which will
more strictly educate and govern them according to the rules of this Order.17
Apprenticeship was used for economy and for control. New England colonies varied in
practice, but all reacted to the economic hardships of the wars with the native population
and the increase in the number of poor families by looking toward an expansion in inden-
ture and apprenticeship for job training, religious training, and education. The emphasis
for Native American children, apprenticed to the English, was particularly on Christian
education and the imposition of European religious beliefs on the native population.18
The practice of indenturing the children of the poor did not always occur without
protest. When the British government sent a large group of Palatine German refugees to
Manhattan in 1710, Governor Robert Hunter issued an order to apprentice the children to
families in faraway Westchester, Long Island, and Rhode Island, to keep them off public
support. The parents, despite illness and destitution, protested the separation and loss.19
Children of poor parents—both in and out of the almshouse—were subject to bond-
ing and indenture. Complaints about cruel treatment and lack of appropriate education
and job training increased as the 18th century progressed.20
The counterparts of the systems of indenture and apprenticeship for children were
the systems of indenture contracting or farming out for adults. In accordance with colo-
nial welfare legislation, overseers of the poor were empowered “to take effectual care
that . . . persons of able body living within the same town or precincts thereof (not hav-
ing estates otherwise to maintain themselves) do not live idly or misspend their time
loitering, but that they be brought up or employed in some honest calling, which may be
profitable unto themselves and the public.”21
To the end that individuals be profitable to themselves and to the commonwealth,
indenture contracts enforced labor by sentencing potential paupers to servitude, some-
times to a master of their own choosing and sometimes to an assigned master. Under
farming out, the adult poor could be turned over to the bidder willing to contract, at the
lowest charge to the community, to take on the care of paupers and to put them to work.
Such a care might permit the individual to remain home. Assistance to the elderly, under
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 20 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 21
this formulation, was quite f lexible. It ranged from care in a private home for those who
were feeble all the way to assistance in finding employment if the older person was capable
of working.22
By the middle of the 18th century, cities began to build institutions like jails and
almshouses to replace individual homes for criminals and those poor who were very old,
disabled, or seriously ill. Yet, these institutions remained small and less separated f rom
the community than later institutions would be. As demand for help rose, cash relief
and noninstitutional help became harder to obtain. Urban poverty and unemployment
increasingly meant commitment to a privately owned workhouse, a publicly owned
house of correction, a poor farm, or an almshouse where care or proper punishment
and hard labor could more easily be administered. The first almshouse was established
in Rensselaerswyck, New York, in 1657. Plymouth ordered the construction of an alms-
house in 1658, and Boston did the same 2 years later.
The early development of workhouses and almshouses—welfare mechanisms that
were both sophisticated and expensive—was a response to the rapid population growth
experienced by the colonies and of the increased fiscal capacity of some colonies. Occa-
sionally, where towns could not afford such institutions, private philanthropists made
contributions to the public effort.23
The popularity of indenture as a means of dealing with dependency was indicative
of the transition to a “f ree” labor system in which employers were f ree to hire and fire
as they saw fit and workers had to find a buyer for their labor. The new mobility of the
population in the late 17th and early 18th centuries placed strains on all forms of estab-
lished authority. Community leaders could not regulate people as they moved in and out
of town. Even colonial authorities were challenged to cope with a hard-to-follow popu-
lation of f loating laborers. The binding of labor to a particular authority was one means
of slowing this mobility and the social disorder it might breed.
Colonial welfare legislation stressed the provision of indoor reliefs; that is, care
offered in homes other than one’s own or in institutions. Nevertheless, the seasonally
unemployed might benefit f rom tax remissions, and the overseers of the poor could
legally provide outdoor relief—money payments to persons permitted to remain in their
own homes because their poverty resulted f rom physical disability, widowhood, or old
age. Taxes were collected for the latter purpose. Frequent wars coupled with postwar
recessions created increased demands for help. In crises, private philanthropy supported
the practice of outdoor relief by the provision of items such as blankets and stock-
ings. During the severe winter of 1761–62, the Quakers in Philadelphia distributed fuel
stamps—“tickets of recommendation”—to be redeemed for wood.24
Even worthiness had its limits. The stigma of poverty was not reserved for the
undeserving. In 1718, a statute of the Province of Pennsylvania made it obligatory that
every person receiving public relief “upon the shoulder of the right sleeve . . . in open and
visible manner, wear . . . a large Roman P. together with the first letter of the name of the
county, city or place whereof such poor person is an inhabitant, cut either in red or blue
cloth, as by the overseers of the poor, it shall be directed and appointed.”25 In New York,
relief recipients were required to wear badges inscribed with the large letters “N.Y.”26
The coercive work features of the Poor Laws and the meagerness of relief provi-
sions deterred many of the eligible from seeking aid. Not only did the laws spell out the
kinds of care that might be made available to those who applied, but they also directed
the overseers to seek out those whose situations or ways of living portended financial
burden for the community. Direct deterrence was enhanced by the Poor Law principle
of family responsibility, requiring that “the father and grandfather and the mother and
grandmother and the children of every poor, old, blind, lame, and impotent person, or
The stigma of poverty
was not reserved for
the undeserving. In
1718, a statute of the
Province of Pennsylva-
nia made it obligatory
that every person
receiving public relief
“upon the shoulder of
the right sleeve . . . in
open and visible man-
ner, wear . . . a large
Roman P.”
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 21 02/01/17 1:36 PM
22 Chapter 2
other poor person not able to work . . . shall at their own charges relieve and maintain
every such poor person as the justices of the peace . . . shall order and direct.”27 The overt
demand that relatives support each other in time of need was covertly strengthened by
the stigma of resorting to public aid.
It’s striking to a contemporary observer how many features of contemporary wel-
fare policy can find their origins in the colonial Poor Laws. The residual character of the
Poor Laws—that is, the fact that public responsibility was simply a “safety net” to be used
after private or voluntary efforts failed—continues to guide contemporary relief policy.
In addition, features such as the large variation in policy between different localities and
states, the use of work requirements to “divert” potential recipients, the removal of chil-
dren from “unfit” parents, and, of course, the stigmatization of the poor are as much a
part of social welfare policy today as they were in the 17th century.
The Poor Laws were designed to protect those who held legal claim to settlement
in particular localities. They offered protection against strangers who threatened
the stability—namely, the morality and physical safety—of a society concerned
with order and wary of new ways and different cultures. In regard to strangers, the
Poor Laws demonstrated most clearly their law-and-order nature. The requirement
of settlement for public assistance—for example, 40 days in New York, 3 months in
Massachusetts, a year in North Carolina—underlined the absence of local responsibil-
ity for outsiders.
By the end of the 18th century, residency requirements had become even stricter.
In New York, for example, the time needed to establish settlement rose to a year and
the annual rental value required more than doubled, increasing f rom 5 pounds to 12
pounds a year.28 Beyond that, “warning out” the practice of expelling strangers became
more common. Strangers were carefully screened. In the 1690s, the newcomer was sus-
pect, and major efforts were made to reduce the potential costs of support for migrants.
Those few who could ensure their financial independence and future contribution to the
community were permitted to remain and to acquire settlement. More frequently, they
were escorted to the town limits.
The low numbers of the reported poor in the early years of the 18th century are
deceptive. They did not usually include people receiving temporary relief, for example,
during the severe winter months. Nor did they include the “near poor” and those needy
but ineligible people, displaced Native Americans, and nonresidents who were poor but
excluded from aid. Even with the small number who received help, the cost of aid made
up a large part of the total budget and sometimes even exceeded total tax receipts.29 The
colonists were concerned with the threat to economic survival posed by possible drains
on the public treasury resulting f rom the potentially poor and sick outsider. This fear
often outweighed the value of labor skills the stranger might bring.
Additional evidence that the protection of society, rather than the care of the poor,
dictated the writing of the colonial Poor Laws is offered by the fact that the laws contain
no expression of concern for the poor beyond the concise statements of provision for
their care. The laws do, however, make explicit the rights and duties of the overseers
of the poor and spell out in detail methods for selecting and appointing overseers, their
taxing powers, their responsibilities, and their accountability—as well as the
penalties to which they were subject if they performed improperly. The laws
indicate that the tasks of the overseers were considered onerous. In Pennsyl-
vania, for example, the overseers were appointed to a one-year term of office
but, on penalty of having to serve a second year or pay a heavy fine, were
required to set forth the names of their successors.30
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 22 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 23
ConquesT, exPansion, and PoPuLaTion
GrowTh: naTive ameriCans, immiGraTion,
and sLavery
In New England, the township became the unit of colonial Poor Law administration,
and, as might be expected, the major foci of administrative practice implementing wel-
fare legislation were work and religion. Although they were adapted to local conditions
and to variations of religious tenets, colonies outside of New England also adopted the
poor-relief system of England.
The colonists, whether Anglican as in Virginia, Puritan as in Massachusetts Bay, or
Catholic as in Maryland, were English in their political and social heritage. The English
character of these colonial enterprises was enhanced by the fact that they were essen-
tially private enterprises. All were financed through private capital raised by investment
organizations such as the London and Massachusetts Bay companies or, as in the case of
Maryland, by individual landowners ready to risk their own fortunes. In either instance,
royal support was given in the form of charters or land grants. Colonization was an ele-
ment of the global competition of European powers for supremacy of the new global
economy. In the Southern colonies, the usual motivation of colonization—the search
for gold and other precious substances—failed but was replaced by America’s first cash
crop—tobacco. Thanks to the Doctrine of Discovery, Europeans could claim sovereignty
over land not occupied by Christians and consider indigenous peoples as uncivilized,
barbarous, and consequently without rights to their land. The colonists’ success derived
from a combination of patriotism, profit seeking, religious fervor, and belief in the supe-
riority of English culture.
The newcomers to America were not just settlers; they were conquerors as well.
The English and the Europeans attacked and conquered the resident population in many
ways, both direct and indirect. The first impact of Europeans often arrived before the
settlers themselves. With no immunity to a variety of pathogens including smallpox,
measles, mumps, and inf luenza, epidemics started with the first contact and then spread
inland as infected Indians came into contact with more distant tribes. It’s likely that,
within a century of first exposure, 95 percent of the indigenous population of eastern
North America perished. Although there were instances of deliberate exposure of Native
Americans to infected blankets (for example, near Fort Pitt during the middle of the 18th
century), most of the death toll of disease was the result of normal interactions with
Europeans.
And there was a lot of interaction between the people. Particularly during the early
18th century, American Indians became an important part of the expanding global mar-
ket of the era. A bovine epidemic in Europe created a shortage of leather, which Native
Americans filled by hunting millions of white-tailed deer. Most American Indian cultures
valued trade not only as an economic transaction but also as a symbol of the recipro-
cal relationships between different people. To fill this demand, Europeans produced a
variety of goods for the American Indian market, including brass kettles, tools, woolen
textiles, and jewelry as well as the better-known weapons and liquor.
However, the integration of American Indians into the global economy was short-
lived. The wars of the mid-18th century, which forced the French and Spanish out of
eastern North America, undermined a balance of power diplomacy on which peaceful
relations were based. By the end of the century, the pattern of broken treaties, violence,
and displacement that would characterize European-indigenous relations for the next
century and a half was firmly set.31
The newcomers to
America were not just
settlers; they were
conquerors as well.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 23 02/01/17 1:36 PM
24 Chapter 2
The process of establishing colonies was not, however, an easy task for the newcom-
ers. The colonists shared a common experience of hardship and scarcity in America. The
severity of the New England winter, the “horrid snow” described by Cotton Mather,32
was counterpart to the unexpected, unbearable heat that brought death to one-half of
the Virginia settlers during their first summer in America. Captain John Smith, a leader
of the Virginia Company, wrote, “Nothing can be expected thence, but by labor.”33 In the
South, as in the North, the Poor Laws constituted a reasonable response to a situation
in which financial disaster and death seemed imminent and which, in fact, did produce
social and physical disabilities.
The intent of the original colonists to settle permanently in the New World was
strengthened by the rapid addition of new settlers and new settlements. The English
revolution that led to the overthrow of King Charles I in 1649, the establishment of the
Puritan Commonwealth, and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 spurred emigra-
tion, especially of those who were seeking f reedom and purity of religion. The emi-
grants to New England were of all classes of English society and consisted of whole
families and individuals ready to establish homes and families in the new country.
The Restoration of the British monarchy sparked an increased emigration of Puritans
to New England and reinforced the dominance of Puritanism in colonial America. Later,
French Huguenots and Scottish Calvinists emigrated to Carolina as a result of religious
persecution and trade restrictions. The possibilities for religious and political f reedom
and for economic stability brought additional settlers—Welsh, Jews, and Swiss—and
the colonial population soared. By 1640, more than 27,000 Englishmen were scattered
through Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland,
and Virginia. In 1690, there were 200,000 inhabitants; by 1710, there were 350,000; and in
1760, 1.5 million people lived in the 13 colonies, representing many parts of Europe and
Africa. The numbers of Africans grew from the original 20 brought in 1619 to 16,700 in
1690; 44,900 in 1710; and 325,000—22 percent of the population—in 1760.34
European population growth in the New England colonies was controlled
by the factors that led to their founding. The colonists were bound by a common
set of religious and ethical motivations and, for the most part, had underwritten
the expenses of their passage and of supplies through the purchase of shares in
a joint enterprise. The New England colonies, despite official ties to England,
were essentially independent and used their independence to accept and reject
immigrants on the basis of religious beliefs and potential for economic self-suf-
ficiency. Although slavery persisted in the North through most of the 18th cen-
tury, African American slavery was not central to the Northern economy.
A different pattern evolved in the South, ref lecting the different base for settle-
ment and the economic base that developed. Virginia was settled solely as a commercial
enterprise. A large number of its settlers were working-class Englishmen who paid for
their passage through indenture contracts, a 4- to 7-year commitment to work. In 1625,
documents show that 487 people—almost 40 percent of Virginia’s population—were
indentured servants.35 The South grew as it developed tobacco and prospered with the
establishment of plantations. Some Native Americans were enslaved for service in Flor-
ida and Georgia; some were traded in the Caribbean islands. The first blacks to come
to Virginia came as indentured workers. As servants and as f reemen, they had much in
common with their white counterparts in terms of status and problems. However, the
chasms of skin color and culture quickly differentiated white servants f rom black chat-
tel. By the middle of the 17th century, much of the Southern economy was based on the
use of slave labor to produce crops for export—indigo, low-land cotton, but especially
tobacco.
However, the chasms of
skin color and culture
quickly differentiated
white servants from
black chattel. By the
middle of the 17th
century, much of the
Southern economy was
based on the use of
slave labor to produce
crops for export—
indigo, low-land cotton,
but especially tobacco.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 24 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 25
With New England practicing selectivity in the acceptance of immigrants and the
South relying increasingly upon the use of slave labor, immigrants were funneled into
the Middle Atlantic colonies. Large numbers were unable to pay for their passage and
came under contracts of indenture. It is estimated that two-thirds of the settlers in Penn-
sylvania came under such provisions of servitude. German and Scotch-Irish families who
arrived during the 18th century came as “redemptioners,” people who had made a down
payment on passage and who used the promise of work as collateral for the balance.
Indentured servitude resulted for those who defaulted.
By the close of the Colonial period, British North America had prospered. When
Georgia was declared a crown colony in 1752, all 13 American colonies were formal geo-
graphic and political entities. Between 1700 and 1776, a great deal of cultural, social,
political, and economic change occurred. Population growth had occurred not only by
natural increase but also by way of immigration. The resulting intermingling of various
religious, ethnic, and racial groups lent a cosmopolitan air to the busy ports of trade
and entry—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The regular plying of sailing
vessels between North America and the European continent brought not only economic
returns to all but also, to the upper classes, the latest turns of fashion in dress, belles
lettres, and social amenities. The establishment of active legal and political ties between
the separate colonies and London and the frequent exchange of representatives required
lent additional encouragement to the maintenance of continental social graces, at the
same time that the separation of the American and European continents presented the
colonies with opportunity for self-government.
The colonies took an early interest in expanding schooling because their lead-
ers believed that the population should be able to read the Bible. A college—soon to
be called Harvard—was established at Cambridge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as
early as 1636. By the mid-18th century, William and Mary, Yale, the University of Penn-
sylvania, Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth were all established. The ties of
communication among the colonies were fostered by a f lood of printed materials and
broadsides and the practice of letter writing. Newspapers proliferated, and the institut-
ing of a mail service, carried regularly by 1732 between Massachusetts and Virginia, was
additionally encouraging to writings of all kinds.
The many changes that marked colonial life sharpened class differences. By the time
of the American Revolution, many residents were already third- and fourth-generation
Americans. By the middle of the 18th century, a new elite, based on commercial success,
had come to dominate both Northern and Southern societies. Beneath this class existed
a middle stratum, again largely Protestant, of farmers, artisans, and small tradesmen.
Alongside and below this group existed another large group—often neither English nor
Protestant, sometimes nonwhite, and almost always without property.
Different bases for prosperity for the North and South resulted in different views of
people and of their need for social welfare programs. New England and the Middle Atlantic
colonies shifted from sole dependence upon farming and fishing to home manufacturing,
shipbuilding, and trading. These colonies were sufficiently urbanized to add the risks of a
market economy to those of colonial frontier life. Problems of dependency increased with
the inf lux of poorly paid immigrants and with the growing numbers of disabled men result-
ing from the wars of European powers in America and wars with Indians. Particularly stark
were the needs of elderly and disabled blacks, who had been freed as a way of avoiding their
care in old age.36 These factors, combined with an economy of scarcity and with a growing
population, made the enforcement of the Poor Laws attractive to town governments.
In the South, the introduction of slavery and the continued reliance on an agricul-
tural economy prevented the development of a large, f ree, laboring class. If the large
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 25 02/01/17 1:36 PM
26 Chapter 2
plantation holdings of Virginia contrasted sharply with small tenant farmer holdings of
Carolina, the two were, nevertheless, joined in a feudal system that created a degree of
economic stability. The milder climate, the availability of fertile land, and the mixture of
less austere religious sects fostered a warmer, more favorable view of the f ree men. As
early as 1728, William Byrd, a prosperous and educated gentleman who served on a com-
mission set up to run the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, may have
exaggerated when he observed the way of life in North Carolina:
Surely there is no place in the World where the inhabitants live with less labour . . .
by the great felicity of the Climate, the easiness of raising Provisions. . . . Indian
Corn is of so great increase, that a little Pains will Subsist a very large Family with
Bread, and then they may have meat without any pains at all, by the Help of the
Low Grounds, and the great Variety of Mast that grows on the Highland.37
While such ease of living might have led to laziness and an “Aversion to Labor,” as
Byrd feared, the fact was that it also led to greater tolerance of human misfortune—
again for f ree men. By the middle of the 17th century, Virginia had adopted both the
Poor Laws and apprenticeship to provide for poor f ree men: white and black,
orphans, illegitimate children, and mulatto children of white women. Native
Americans were excluded f rom these arrangements. There was no recogni-
tion of any social welfare needs that Native Americans, slaves, or indentured
servants might have, and it was left to these groups to rely on their own infor-
mal self-help mechanisms.
soCiaL ChanGe and The ChaLLenGe
To The Poor Laws
Although many features of the Poor Laws anticipated modern welfare arrangements,
they were driven by efforts to maintain a hierarchical, stable social order. The Poor Laws
were a product of a society that used the legal system to constrain a dynamic population
during a time of social change. In America, as in England, efforts at control increasingly
were at odds with the f luidity of the emerging social order.
We’ve already encountered many of the social forces that were propelling social
change during the 18th century. High fertility and lower mortality led to a natural
increase in colonial populations far greater than that in Europe at the same time. As cities
grew, the social bonds that reinforced a sense of community became weaker. Rich and
poor urbanites were less likely to see a sense of reciprocal obligation; indeed, they might
see their natural state as one of conf lict.
These economic and social changes were accompanied by a shift f rom
a communal to an individualistic cultural perspective. Nowhere was this
more evident than in religion. During the earlier Colonial era, religion
reinforced the belief that the individual was subservient to the community.
But beginning in the 1740s, evangelical Protestantism swept the colonies in
the form of the Great Awakening, beginning with the preaching of Jona-
than Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts. In place of the calm exege-
sis of earlier sermons, Edwards used vivid imagery to push his listeners to
an altered emotional state. Parishioners would interrupt his sermons with
moaning and cries.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 26 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 27
Other ministers, many itinerants who would move f rom community to commu-
nity, soon picked up Edwards’s approach. Religion became less about people’s relation-
ship to their community and more about their individual connection to God.
The sense of Americans as a separate people was reinforced during the Seven Years’
War (often called the French and Indian War) during which Americans bore much of
the fighting in North America. After the war, British efforts to reassert its control of the
colonies led to confrontations and ultimately open conf lict (Figure 2.1). Ultimately, the
Figure 2.1 Revolutionary War Broadside, May 12, 1774. The British attempted to reinforce
their control of the colonies after the Seven Years’ War. However, American resistance to these
efforts, including the Boston Port Bill, pushed some Americans to move toward independence.
‘$
&-
#+
3
‘
,%
#%
.$
1’
,+
!
&4
&+
&%
-,
*
&)
$1
$2
%
5
/%
-.
$”
++
, *
/-
(+
;<
=-
:>
6?
9.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 27 02/01/17 1:36 PM
28 Chapter 2
North American colonies declared independence and fought what became a civil war
between the advocates of independence and residents who remained loyal to Britain.
In the years following the Revolution, the United States was governed by its first
constitution, the Articles of Confederation. However, after a period of democratic
expansion during the war, political elites reasserted their control during the 1780s and
called for a stronger national government that could assert its superiority over the indi-
vidual states. In 1787, representatives convened in Philadelphia and produced the current
U.S. Constitution, which, along with a Bill of Rights, was ratified in 1789.
If society was essentially a group of individuals, the traditional bonds of reciprocity
that undergird the Poor Laws lost their effectiveness. For many in authority, the response
to the Poor Laws’ ineffectiveness was to make them more restrictive. Yet, for others, the
alternative conclusion was that the entire effort to help the poor was counterproductive.
For them, the effort to help the poor would make poverty more attractive. Anticipating
later generations of “welfare reformers,” Benjamin Franklin argued for the abolition of
the Poor Laws. As Franklin saw it, the causes of poverty were of the individual’s own
making; the social system worked well, the growing wealth of the upper classes was jus-
tified, and an assumption of social responsibility would inevitably aggravate the problem
by fostering further dependency.
I have sometimes doubted whether the laws peculiar to England, which compel the
rich to maintain the poor, have not given the latter a dependence, that very much
lessens the care of providing against the wants of old age.
I have heard it remarked that the poor in Protestant countries, on the continent of
Europe, are generally more industrious than those of Popish countries. May not the
more numerous foundations in the latter for relief of the poor have some effect toward
rendering them less provident? To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is
concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness,
and supports for folly, may we not be fighting against the order of God and Nature,
which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for, and
cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance?@. . .
However, as matters now stand with us, care and industry seem absolutely nec-
essary to our well-being. They should therefore have every encouragement we can
invent, and not one motive to diligence be subtracted; and the support of the poor
should not be by maintaining them in idleness, but by employing them in some
kind of labour suited to their abilities of body, as I am informed begins to be of
late the practice in many parts of England, where workhouses are erected for that
purpose. If these were general, I should think the poor would be more careful, and
work voluntarily to lay up something for themselves against a rainy day, rather than
run the risk of being obliged to work at the pleasure of others for a bare subsis-
tence, and that too under confinement.38 [Italics in original]
Franklin’s view highlights a belief in the responsibility of people for their own welfare
in an ordered society that rewards industry and thrift. Franklin rationalized poverty and
inequality in income distribution:
Much malignant censure have some writers bestowed upon the rich for their luxury
and expensive living, while the poor are starving, & c.; not considering that what the
rich expend, the labouring poor receive in payment for their labour. It may seem a
paradox if I should assert, that our labouring poor do in every year receive the whole
revenue of the nation; I mean not only the public revenue, but also the revenue or
clear income of all private estates, or a sum equivalent to the whole . . . .
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 28 02/01/17 1:36 PM
The Colonial Period: 1647–1776 29
In support of this position I reason thus. The rich do not work for one another.
Their habitations, furniture, cloathing, carriages, food, ornaments, and everything
in short, that they or their families use and consume, is the work or produce of the
labouring poor, who are, and must be continually, paid for their labour in producing
the same.39
Some went so far as to argue that, for the market economy to function, individual
earned income should never be supplemented. This would compel labor force participa-
tion and ensure a supply of workers willing to perform menial, difficult, and unpleasant
tasks.
It seems to be a law of nature, that the poor should be to a certain degree improvi-
dent, that there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, and
the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby
much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery, and
freed from those occasional employments which would make them miserable, but
are left at liberty, without interruption, to pursue those callings which are suited to
their various dispositions, and most useful to the state. As for the lowest of the poor,
by custom they are reconciled to the meanest occupations, to the most laborious
works, and to the most hazardous pursuits; whilst the hope of their reward makes
them cheerful in the midst of all their dangers and their toils.40
By the end of the Colonial era, the poor and unfortunate were no longer
seen as an organic part of the social order. Often they were literally outsiders;
addressing their problems was no longer the responsibility of respectable cit-
izens. As Americans began to consider the meaning of “liberty” and “equal-
ity” in their political thought, these words meant little for the poor—free and
enslaved—whose well-being was increasingly marginalized.
veTerans: a sPeCiaL CLass
Welfare measures for veterans, however, differed from those applied to the general pop-
ulation. The English “Acte for Reliefes of Souldiours” of 1593 set the tone for colonial
legislation. It had recognized both the special services and the special needs of disabled
soldiers and sailors and provided relief for this group as a right on the basis of disability,
with payments scaled to military pay. As early as 1624, the colony of Virginia passed sim-
ilar legislation. In 1636, Plymouth Colony declared that any soldier injured in defense of
the colony was entitled to support.
That in case necessity require to send forces abroade, and there be not volunteers
sufficient offered for the service, then it be lawfull for the Governor and [his] assis-
tants to presse [men into service] in his Majesties name . . . provided that if any that
shall goe returne mamed & hurt, he shall be mayntayned completely by the Colony
duringe his life.41
Other colonies followed the precedent, and by 1777, all but Connecticut had made spe-
cial provisions for veterans. The entitlement to these provisions did not carry the onus of
pauperism and, equally important for the future, carried no requirement of local settle-
ment. Colonies, not towns, were responsible for financing and administration. The pat-
tern was so well accepted that the Continental Congress in 1776 adopted a report of the
Committee on Disabled Soldiers and Sailors recommending to the states pensions for
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 29 02/01/17 1:36 PM
30 Chapter 2
invalid and disabled veterans.42 This special attention to veterans, and in some instances
to other persons identified as the “unsettled poor,” broke ground for eventual contribu-
tions by the states and by the federal government to social welfare.
Of more immediate interest, however, is the logic by which the colonies selected
veterans for preferential treatment—domiciliary care, pensions for elderly and disabled
veterans, and outdoor relief for widows and children of veterans. This selection for spe-
cial treatment was, after all, consistent with the colonial view of humanity. Veterans had
participated in an unusual kind of work. In doing so, they had made an extraordinary
contribution to the commonwealth at the same time that they had made visible their
own individual worth. Certainly such work and such worthiness were not to be deterred
in a society where their special services were so badly needed.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 30 02/01/17 1:36 PM
31
The Colonial Period
The two documents selected to illustrate the thrust of social welfare during the colonial
era are An Act of Supplement to the Acts Referring to the Poor (Massachusetts Bay, 1692) and the
contract of indenture entitled The Binding of Moses Love (1747). The documents illustrate
legislative and judicial actions taken to achieve societal stability and individual well-being.
For society and the individual, the actions were protective and preventive and called upon a
family unit to perform the functions of a social welfare institution. Where no natural fam-
ily existed to support members in need, a substitute family was found. The number of col-
onists was very small, and the community itself functioned in part as an extended family.
An Act of Supplement expresses governmental concern for all the inhabitants of Mas-
sachusetts Bay. The act explicitly states that its provisions extend beyond those who
receive public alms; its intent is to ensure that all single persons under the age of 21
years live “under some orderly family government.” The significance of such an assur-
ance stems from the nature of a society in which government and family mirrored one
another in their responsibility to fulfill God’s plan that people work and produce. Both
were organized in a fixed hierarchical structure in which each individual had been called
to an assigned place. Fulfilling one’s responsibility within the structure was a duty to
oneself, to the community, to God. Family government was protective of the individual
who might be tempted to fall away f rom that responsibility and protective of the com-
munity that would bear the cost of such a fall. The family model reinforced the Puritan
values of work and frugality as religious observances. In a society of scarcity, such a join-
ing of religious and secular concerns was particularly felicitous.
The Binding of Moses Love demonstrates that the colonists observed the human con-
dition with a certain solicitousness. Moses Love was bound out when only 2 years and 8
months of age. The indenture contract is concerned with avoiding future dependency of
the children of the poor. Support, education, and employability are the long-term goals.
All in all, the rights and responsibilities bestowed on Moses Love’s master are those of a
parent. As indicated in An Act of Supplement, this discharge of governmental and familial
responsibilities toward children generally endeavored “to defend them from any wrongs
or injuries” and to prepare them for economic self-sufficiency in adulthood.
The ACTS AND RESOLVES, Public and Private
of the
PROVINCE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY:
CHAPTER 14.
AN ACT OF SUPPLEMENT TO THE ACTS REFERRING TO THE
POOR,
&c.
Whereas the law for the binding out poor children apprentice is misconstrued by
some to extend only to such children whose parents receive almes; for explanation
whereof—
DoCumENTS
The family model reinforced
the Puritan values of work
and frugality as religious
observances. In a society of
scarcity, such a joining of
religious and secular concerns
was particularly felicitous.
1692–3, ch. 28, & 7
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 31 02/01/17 1:36 PM
32
Be it declared and enacted by His Excellency the Governour, Council and Representatives in
General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,
[Sect. 1.] That the selectmen or overseers of the poor in any town or district
within this province, or the greater part of them, shall take, order and are hereby
impowred f rom time to time, by and with the assent of two justices of the peace, to
set to work, or bind out apprentice, as they shall think convenient, all such children
whose parents shall, by the selectmen or overseers of the poor, or the greater part of
them, be thought unable to maintain them, (whither they receive almes or are charge-
able to the place or not), so as that they be not sessed to publick taxes or assessments,
for the province or town charges; male children till they come to the age of twen-
ty-one years, and females till they come to the age of eighteen years, or time of mar-
riage: which shall be as good and effectual in law, to all intents and purposes, as if any
such child were of full age, and by indenture of covenant had bound him or herself,
or that their parents were consenting there [un] to: provision therein to be made for
the instructing of children so bound out, to read and write, as they may be capable.
And the selectmen or overseers of the poor shall inquire into the usage of children
bound out by themselves or their predecessors, and endeavour to defend them f rom
any wrongs or injuries.
And, for the better preventing of idleness, and loose or disorderly living,—
Be it further declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid,
[Sect. 2.] That the selectmen or overseers of the poor, or the greater part of them,
be and are further impowred, by and with the assent of two justices of the peace, to
set to work all such persons, married or unmarried, able of body, having no means to
maintain them, that live idlely and use or exercise no ordinary and daily lawful trade
or business to get their living by. And no single person of either sex, under the age of
twenty-one years, shall be suffered to live at their own hand, but under some orderly
family government; nor shall any woman of ill fame, married or unmarried, be suffered
to receive or entertain lodgers in her house. And the selectmen or overseers of the
poor, constables and tythingmen, are hereby ordered to see to the due observance of
this act, and to complain and inform against any transgressions thereof to one or more
justices of the peace, or the court of general sessions of the peace, who are hereby
respectively required and impowred, upon due conviction of the offender or offenders
for living idely or disorderly, contrary to the true intent of this act, to commit or send
such offenders to the house of correction or work-house, there to remain and be kept
to labour, until they be discharged by order of the court of general sessions of the
peace, unless such person or persons so complained of shall give reasonable caution
or assurance, to the satisfaction of the justice or court, that they will reform: provided,
this act shall not be construed to extend to hinder any single woman of good repute
f rom the exercise of any lawful trade or imployment, for a livelihood, whereto she
shall have the allowance and approbation of the selectmen or overseers of the poor, or
the greater part of them, any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding:
provided,—
[Sect. 3.] This act shall continue in force for the space of three years next coming,
and to the end of the session of the general assembly next after. [Passed November 27;
published December 3.]
Volume I. Boston: Wright & Potter, Printers to the State, 1869.
* * * *
Selectmen or overseers of the
poor to bind out poor chil-
dren, &c.;
—to inquire into the usage
of such as they bind out.
Selectmen or overseers of
the poor to set to
No single person under
twenty-one years old to live
out of family government.
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 32 02/01/17 1:36 PM
33
THE BINDING OF MOSES LOVE, 1747
This Indenture made the fourteenth day of September Anno domini 1747 by and
between Luke Lincoln, Benja Tuckor, Nathall Goodspeed and John Whittemor all
of Leicester in the Covnty of Worcester selectmen of sd Leicester on the one part,
Matthew Scott of Leicester aforesaid yeoman on the other part Wittnesseth that the
above sd selectmen by virtue of the Law of this province them Impowering & with
the assent of two of the Majesties Justices of the Peace for sd Covnty hereto annexed
to put and bind out to the sd Matthew Scott & to his heirs Execvtors & Adminrs as an
Apprentice Moses Love a Minor aged two years and Eeight Months with him & them
to Live and dwell with as an apprentice dureing the term of Eighteen years and fovr
months (viz) untill he shall arrive to the age of twenty-one years—he being a poor
Child & his parants not being well able to support it. Dureing all which the sd appren-
tice his sd Master his heirs Execvtors & Adminrs shall faithfully serve at such Lawfull
imployment & labovr as he shall f rom time to time Dureing sd term be Capable of
doing and performing & not absent himself f rom his or their service without Leave
& In all things behave himself as a good & faithful apprentice ought to do and the sd
Matthew Scott for himself his heirs Execvtors & Adminrs do Couenant promise and
grant to & with the above sd selectmen of Leicester aforsaid & with their successors
in the office or trust of selectmen of Leicester aforsaid & Inbehalf of sd apprentice
that he the sd Matthew Scott his heirs Execvtors & Adminrss shall & will Dureing
the term aforsd find and provide for the sd apprentice sufficient Cloathing meet drink
Warshing and Lodging both in Sickness & in health & that he will teach him or cavse
him to be tavght to read & write & siffer fiting his degree if he be Capable of Learning
and at the Expiration of the term to Dismiss him with two suits of apparril one to be
fitt for Lords days In Wittness where of the partyes to these present Indentvrs haue
Interchangably set their hands & seals the day and year first written. Signed sealed &
Delivered in presence of
Steward Southgate
John Brown
Luke Lincoln (seal)
Benja Tucker (seal)
John Whittemor (seal)
New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Boston, 1880, Vol. XXXIV, p. 311.
?
M02_STER9913_09_SE_C02.indd 33 02/01/17 1:36 PM
34
The American Revolution was a political watershed for the United
States. American society was in the middle of a social and economic
transition that had begun by the end of the 17th century and would
not be completed until the Civil War. The result of this process—
the emergence of a liberal, capitalist society—would touch every
part of American culture, f rom the work people did to the beliefs
they held to the institutions they developed. It held particular signif-
icance for the poor and needy. Whereas in the 18th century, the poor
had been seen as an organic part of society, by the 19th century, they
were increasingly cast as deviants—outside the normal social order
and in need of reform.
During the years from the Revolution to the Civil War, well-off
Americans alternated between an optimistic hope that they could
improve the poor by changing their environment, and fear that only
by containing the poor could they prevent them from threatening
the entire society. Whether in hope or fear, the actions of the pow-
erful during these years defined the problems of the poor in a way
that did little to address their fundamental life challenges. Instead,
the powerful constructed a variety of new institutions to contain
deviant populations. Although they often used utopian language
The Pre–Civil War
Period: 1777–1860
3
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Describe the major social and
economic changes of the pre Civil
ar years.
• Contrast the goals of the different
social reform movements of the
pre Civil ar years.
• Assess the effectiveness of innovation
in social welfare programs and
services during the early 1 th century.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Social and Economic Conditions
Population Growth and
Migration 36
Slavery and Free Labor 38
eform and Social Change
Labor Unrest 42
Religious and Political
Reform 43
The Expansion of Public
Education 44
The Expansion of Suffrage 44
Moral Reform 45
Social elfare rograms and
Services
Institutionalization
Child Saving
etreat from the Almshouse
DOCUMENTS: The re Civil ar
eriod
The First Annual Report of the
Managers of the Society for the
Prevention of Pauperism in the
City of New York, 1818 60
Constitution, By-Laws, &c., of
the Female Orphan Asylum of
Portland, Maine, 1828 67
!”
#$
– %
&’
()
*
. +
,-
+.
*
,/
+
&’
%+
,0
1,
2
‘,
3/
.
4
2+
(/
(-
‘&
2+
.
5,
0,
.,
(3
,
),
6′
&’
7
(8
%
(3
-‘
1.
.,
)
%-
5,
—
+,
-+
.*
-!
99
:;
.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 34 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 35
focused on perfecting the functioning of society, a more coercive real-
ity lay underneath the appealing language.
The emergence of a liberal, capitalist society, however, was not
complete. Although most of the nation expanded democratic institu-
tions and the operation of economic markets during these years, the
states of the American South moved in the opposite direction. The
cotton economy, which hardly existed at the time of the Revolution,
became the region’s dominant industry. The world that cotton planters
constructed to support that crop led them to revive slavery and contain
democratic forces.
Still, one piece of unfinished business left over f rom the Revolution could not be
avoided. The issue of slavery and race—the foundation of American prosperity and the
greatest challenge to its political creed—slowly but inexorably overshadowed all other
issues. Ultimately, the nation was forced to endure its greatest tragedy so that the “pecu-
liar institution” of American slavery could be eliminated.
With their declaration of independence from England and the beginning of the Rev-
olutionary War, the now-independent states established a loose confederation for gover-
nance. But the Articles of Confederation—The United States’ first constitution—gave
the central government few powers during its first decade. James Madison, predicting
its failure, cited the confederation as “nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce
and of alliance between … independent and Sovereign States.”1
Not everyone agreed with Madison. Many democrats had fought Britain to reduce
centralized authority. The Articles retained broad support as part of the Revolutionary
legacy, but more conservative members of the political elite saw them as fundamentally
f lawed. They engineered a constitutional convention in 1787—ostensibly to revise the
Articles—that proposed an entirely new and more centralized form of government. Its
proponents accepted a set of compromises with skeptics to protect individual liberties—
the Bill of Rights—to gain their support, and then fought a two-year battle at the state
level to ratify the proposal. What we now know is the U.S. Constitution established a
new government, which began to function on March 4, 1789, when George Washington
took the oath of office in New York as president.
The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitu-
tion were based on limited democratic ideals. In the colonies, only adult, white men of
property were eligible to vote. During the first three decades of the century, the prop-
erty requirements were eliminated. Most white men could vote, but women, blacks, and
Native Americans could not. Tribes were ruled to be “domestic dependent nations,” and
Native Americans were thus considered aliens, not citizens. As the Constitution had spec-
ified, the census—the official enumeration of the population of the United States, which
was the basis for the number of representatives of each state in Congress—counted slaves
as three-fifths of a person. As a result, Southern states were allotted Congressmen and
electoral votes based on their enslaved population. Native Americans did not count at all.2
The Preamble of the Constitution of the United States cited the promotion of the
general welfare as one of the reasons for forming the new government. Nevertheless,
there was no mention of social welfare concerns among the carefully enumerated pow-
ers of the government’s legislative body, the Congress. Since the Constitution specifically
reserved to the states such powers as had not been delegated to the central government,
providing for the social welfare needs of families and individuals remained the respon-
sibility of the separate states, much as it had been the responsibility of the separate col-
onies. A public-private partnership of local government and charities was the typical
means of addressing want and deprivation.
CHAPTER OUTLINE (Continued)
President Franklin Pierce: Veto
Message—An Act Making a Grant
of Public Lands to the Several States
for the Benefit of Indigent Insane
Persons, 1854 73
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 35 03/01/17 6:14 AM
36 Chapter 3
The years between the ratification of the Constitution of the United States and the
outbreak of the Civil War were years of major political, economic, and social changes.
These changes were accompanied by, and in turn furthered, rapid population growth,
enormous geographical expansion, productivity increases on the farm and in the work-
shops and factories, and heated political and ideological struggles. In 1800, the United
States still sought to shake off its identity as former colonies; by 1860, the country could be
considered a world power. The pre–Civil War period was one of excitement and turmoil,
expansion and recession, opportunity and frustration, and exhilaration and discontent. It
was a period of rapid change necessarily affecting the welfare of individuals and families.
Social and Economic conditionS
Population Growth and Migration
Population growth, composition, and migration make up one aspect of the pre–Civil War
transformation.3 In 1790, families had many children, and the ordinary life span was quite
short. One result was that less than 2 percent of the population was 65 years or older and
the median age was only 16. Those who survived until old age were revered by the colo-
nists. At public meetings, the best seats were assigned to the oldest men, then to the oldest
women. Wealth, race, and gender counted, but age remained an important mark of status.
By 1860, despite continued immigration, the population had aged. Old age was more
common, and the median age of the population rose to about 20 years. Seniority, for exam-
ple, was no longer the basis for preferential seating in the town’s meetinghouse. Increasingly,
wealth, income, and property became the essential measures of social status. Clothing styles
for men ref lected the shift in generational power. Wigs were replaced by hairpieces to make
men look younger; jackets were cut to be narrow at the waist and broad at the shoulders, with
straight backs. In contrast, throughout the 19th century, the desire to hide women’s bodies
and demonstrate their sexual subordination prevailed over the glorification of youthful styles.4
By 1860, the African American population stood at 4.5 million, of whom 4 million
were slaves. As early as 1774, the Continental Congress had prohibited further importa-
tion of slaves into the colonies after December 1, 1775. This prohibition was not entirely
successful, and the question was again debated at the Federal Convention of 1787, where
it was agreed that the further importation of slaves would cease after January 1, 1808.
The end of the slave trade as mandated in the Constitution restricted the growth
of the African American population to the difference between births and deaths, while
white immigration continued. Still, compared to most slave populations in the Western
Hemisphere, the African American population continued to grow. As white immigra-
tion continued, however, African Americans’ share of the population fell f rom 19 per-
cent in 1800 to 14 percent in 1860. In 1860, the census enumerated 4,521,000 persons, of
whom 3,954,000 were slaves. And the country had become more urban. In 1800, only
6 percent of the population lived in urban areas; by 1860, almost 20 percent
did so.
The total population of the country (excluding Native Americans, who
were not counted) numbered 3,929,000 in 1790, the year of the first U.S. cen-
sus. By 1800, the population had risen by 34 percent to about 5,297,000, of
whom 1,002,000—19 percent—were nonwhite and 322,000—6 percent—lived
in urban areas. By 1830, on the eve of massive migrations, especially f rom
Ireland and Germany, the total population stood at 12,901,000. By 1840, it
reached 17,120,000; in 1850, it was 23,261,000; and in 1860, it was 31,513,000.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 36 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 37
Population growth had been the result of several factors, including resident births
and the purchase, annexation, and cession of populated territories. The most important
cause of the population explosion, however, was the extraordinary wave of immigra-
tion beginning during the 1830s, when 538,381 immigrants arrived in the United States.
Immigration rose to 1,427,337 during the 1840s and peaked during the 1850s with the
arrival of 2,814,554 individuals. Even the Civil War did not deter migrants; 2 million
immigrants arrived during the 1860s.
Of the total of 1,427,337 immigrants to the United States during the 1840s, nearly
900,000 arrived f rom Ireland and 400,000 f rom Germany. Spurred by famine in the for-
mer and political repression in the latter, immigration f rom these two countries con-
tinued at extremely high levels during the 1850s, when together they accounted for 87
percent of immigrants. Almost all the immigrants landed at entry points between Bal-
timore and Boston, and most remained in the Northern region of the country, where
they congregated in cities. The Irish, coming primarily f rom a background of peasant
farming, with little education, moved into canal and railroad construction, domestic ser-
vice, and the developing textile industry. The Germans were more likely to be farmers or
skilled artisans and moved more quickly into steadier and better-paying jobs.
Whether from Ireland or Germany, the immigrants were often perceived as a threat
to resident Americans. The Irish were predominantly Catholic and the Germans were
often Catholic or Jewish in an overwhelmingly Protestant country. Moreover, they came
at a time of initial industrial conf lict. The sudden availability of workers ready to take
employment at lower than generally accepted wages and the introduction, by German
immigrants especially, of radical political philosophies upset American labor and indus-
try alike. Further, many of the immigrants arrived in need of immediate employment
or emergency financial aid. The addition of newcomers to the rolls of public charges
provoked opposition and agitation against them.
Xenophobia—the fear of foreigners—has a long history in the United States. Fear of
the inf luence of the French Revolution led the Federalist Party to pass the Naturalization
Act of 1795, which increased the residence requirement for naturalization for free, white
persons to 5 years f rom the 2 previously specified. Three years later, the Alien and Sedi-
tion Acts legislated 14 years for residency, required registration of all aliens, and gave the
president the power to expel any alien deemed dangerous. Although most of this legisla-
tion was repealed and residence requirements returned to the 5-year level, the early years
of the republic showed deep distrust of foreigners. The immigrant wave of the 1840s
and 1850s gave impetus to the American Party—called “Know Nothings” because of its
origins in secret f raternal orders—built on anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and antiblack
feelings.
As in the present day, however, nativist sentiment was balanced by the embrace of
cosmopolitanism by many Americans. The immigrant restrictions of the 1790s were
quickly repealed after the fall of the Federalist Party in 1800. Although many “Know
Nothing” voters moved into the nascent Republican Party in 1856, the new party firmly
rejected anti-immigrant rhetoric.5
Although population growth between 1790 and 1860 was most spectacular in the
Northern areas of the country, growth occurred in the South as well. In 1850, the pop-
ulation of the 15 Southern states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mis-
souri, Arkansas, and Texas) was about 10 million, of whom 3 million were slaves. This
slave population was an increase from the 1.5 million counted in 1820. Between 1820 and
1850, the number of f ree blacks had increased f rom 234,000 to 434,000. Although the
slave population was ignored in public and involuntary social welfare measures, its effect
Whether from Ire-
land or Germany, the
immigrants were often
perceived as a threat to
resident Americans.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 37 03/01/17 6:14 AM
38 Chapter 3
upon the well-being of the country, as ref lected in economic and social reform activity,
was enormous.
As the black and white population grew, the Native American population was dev-
astated. Wars, diseases, broken treaties, the loss of homeland, and the destruction of the
game upon which many Native people depended upon for food and clothing all took
their tolls. The Creeks, Seminoles, Cherokees, and countless other tribes were in dire
trouble. Many were pushed out of the East and beyond the Mississippi to live. The res-
ervation replaced the range, at an enormous cost in population, lifestyle, and culture
for the native population. The federal government—through the Removal Act of 1830—
forced the removal of the Choctaw, Cherokee, and several other tribes to territories west
of the Mississippi in what came to be known as the “Trail of Tears.”
Population growth prior to the Civil War was matched by territorial expansion.
Territorial additions included the Northwest Territory, secured by treaty with Great
Britain in 1783; the Louisiana Purchase f rom France in 1803; the Florida Purchase
f rom Spain in 1819; the Texas annexation in 1845; the Oregon and Mexican territo-
ries secured by treaties with Great Britain and Mexico in 1846 and 1848, respectively;
and the Gadsden Purchase f rom Mexico in 1853. Thus, by 1860, the country’s land
area reached to the Pacific Ocean, and its Northern and Southern borders were fixed.
The 13 original states had increased to 33. In 1790, the original 13 states contained
94 percent of the total population. Only 250,000 of a total population of 4 million
persons lived in the land west of the boundaries of these states. In 1860, half the popu-
lation lived in trans-Appalachian regions despite the heavy European immigration into
the Northeast.6
Slavery and Free Labor
The territorial expansion of the United States stoked regional tensions. Beginning with
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to enter as a slave state while
Maine became a free state, the expansion of territory and admission of states pitted the
North and South against one another. Many Northerners opposed the Mexican-American
War of 1846–48 because it expanded opportunities for slavery’s expansion.
Although western expansion and development was encouraged on ideological
grounds, economic realities drove political decisions. The invention of the cotton gin in
1793 had made cotton production a base of the Southern economy and slavery the most
profitable form of labor. The economy of New England was shaped by the introduction
of the spinning jenny and the power loom, which brought together the processes of
spinning and weaving in a single establishment. In contrast, the Southern planter class
controlled the most fertile land and the enslaved labor force to work it. The textile facto-
ries of the North were smaller operations; their need for labor was f luctuating by season
and by the business cycle. As a group, these industrialists required the availability of a
large but free labor force, a group for which they need feel no responsibility during eco-
nomic slowdowns.
The New England and Southern states quite naturally moved to opposing sides on
questions related to territorial expansion and to the acceptance of new states into the
Union. The cultivation of cotton lent itself not only to the use of slave labor but also to
the creation of large plantations. What is more, the agricultural system used to produce
cotton accelerated soil depletion, so the Southern planter class saw territorial expansion
as a necessity. New England, with its concern for a large, readily available supply of f ree
labor, was initially opposed to territorial expansion because of the threat such an expan-
sion represented to the retention of an adequate labor pool on the Eastern Seaboard.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 38 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 39
Although industry expanded before the Civil War, the United States remained a rural
and agricultural nation. As a result, government land policy remained an arena for polit-
ical dispute. The federal government’s policy on selling public lands became increasingly
f lexible and generous during the pre–Civil War period. Originally, the government’s pol-
icy was to sell only large tracts of land, a policy that favored large landholders. In 1800,
and again in 1820, the government reduced the minimum number of acres required for
purchase. This policy, which encouraged small landholders, was further liberalized in
1832 when the government recognized the right of preemption that permitted squatters
to take possession of land without a cash-down payment and to pay for it later.
Today, it is hard to imagine that controversies over tariffs—the taxes levied against
imported goods—could provoke widespread political upheaval. Yet, even before the
antislavery campaign increased regional tensions, tariffs almost tore the country apart.
Northern manufacturing states were in severe competition with Great Britain to buy
their raw material—cotton—and to sell their products—textiles. The North sought
high-tariff protections against the importation of foreign-made goods. The South, on
the other hand, seeking high prices for raw cotton and low prices for finished products,
favored low tariffs and competition among industries, domestic and foreign.
The issue came to a head in 1832 when South Carolina declared that the tariff laws
of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and would not be enforced in the state. President
Andrew Jackson took a strong stand against the idea that individual states could nullify
federal laws and succeeded in gaining congressional support for a Force Bill that autho-
rized him to use federal troops to enforce the law (Figure 3.1). This strong stance—plus
the passage of a less severe compromise tariff law in 1833—resolved the crisis. Yet, the nul-
lification crisis became the template for the regional struggle over the balance of federal
and states’ rights that would continue until the Civil War.
Figure 3.1 Although Andrew Jackson was associated with a widening of democratic values
for white men, he also developed a reputation for his crimes against Native Americans both
before and during his presidency.
&*
1′
,%
&3
%
&’
/(
(3
2
‘,
3/
8
,)
,3
–
.1
‘,
1.
, 2
‘,
3/
.
4
2+
(/
(-
‘&
2+
.
5,
0,
.,
(3
, )
,6
‘&
‘7
(8
%
(3
-‘
1.
.,
)
%-
<.
=$
;-
"$
#$
.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 39 03/01/17 6:14 AM
40 Chapter 3
The expansion of cotton production in the South and its use in the textile industries
of Great Britain and the North were the key economic drivers of the period. In 1792, the
year before the invention of the cotton gin, the annual production of cotton was about
6,000 bales. In 1794, the year after the cotton gin’s invention, production rose to 17,000
bales. By 1800, 73,000 bales were being produced, and by 1860, 3,841,000 bales.7 Just as
the South’s production of raw cotton outstripped the country’s production of all other
agricultural products, New England’s production of finished cotton goods outstripped the
country’s manufacture of all other goods. The value of cotton products, which stood at
$46 million in 1840, rose to $116 million in 1860.8 The needs of these two areas spurred
the development of the Middle Atlantic states, which produced farm commodities, meat
and dairy products, lumber, and other necessities. In addition, the Middle Atlantic states
became the shipping and banking centers for the country. Truly, the South, New England,
and the Middle Atlantic states were closely joined, and the tie that bound was made of
cotton. The digging of canals and building of railroads opened the West, an important
factor in its own right, but additionally so in view of the way in which its resources served
to strengthen the dependence of the other areas, one upon the other.
The rise of King Cotton extinguished the hope that African American slavery would
have a natural death. At the end of the Revolution, Northern whites that objected to slav-
ery could tell themselves that it was an archaic institution that could not survive long in
an independent nation. With the rise of cotton, slavery became the bedrock of the entire
American economy. It would take a bloody social conf lict to bring it to an end.
The economic realities that led the South and New England to different solutions to the
questions of labor supply had inevitable consequences for the social well-being of their work-
ers. The dominance of slave labor in the South slowed the growth of public welfare institu-
tions. Slaves were considered chattel or property, the protection or exploitation of which was
totally the responsibility of the slave master. Free blacks were left to help themselves. Self-help
among the slaves was common, but the very fact of being owned left with the owner the
responsibility for maintaining his property in working order. An apologist for slavery defined
it as a “system of labor which exchanges subsistence for work.”
Slavery makes all work, and it insures homes, food and clothing for all. It permits no
idleness, and it provides for sickness, infancy, and old age. It allows no tramping or
skulking, and it knows no pauperism.9
Outside the plantation, there were stretches of territory cultivated by small farm-
ers without slave labor. These “hardy yeomen” occupied areas generally not suitable for
growing cotton, but quite suitable for raising cattle and for cultivating corn and wheat.
As a class, they were prosperous and independent. There remained only the poor whites,
also farmers, but because they were landless or owned the most worthless, worn-out
land, their subsistence was most precarious. Nevertheless, they were not directly sub-
jected to the economic f luctuations created by the commercialization of agriculture.
Despite the overall picture of self-sufficiency, there were Southerners who found
themselves in need. The poor whites, although generally capable of independence, were
one such group. But in developing Southern towns, there were others—abandoned and
orphaned children, mulattoes, f reed slaves. The dominance of slavery, however, blocked
the development of public welfare institutions in the South.
Destitution in the North during the pre–Civil War period was more directly related
to urbanization, industrialization, and the development of the factory system. In 1791,
the year of Hamilton’s Report of Manufacture, household manufacture of wool and cot-
ton cloth was occurring in all of the states and could still be characterized as “a vast
scene.”10 The first successful cotton mill, using the principle of the spinning jenny, had
The rise of King Cotton
extinguished the hope
that African American
slavery would die a nat-
ural death.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 40 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 41
already been put into operation in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and by 1809, 62 mills were
operating in New England, with 25 more in the process of construction.11 New England
had thus become the textile manufacturing center of the country. The introduction of
the power loom in the factory at Waltham, Massachusetts, was the impetus for further
development.
The large-scale production of cotton textiles required, first of all, the construction
of factories so expensive that their costs had to be borne by absentee owner-investors.
Operation of the factories required the recruitment of large numbers of workers to
towns. In New England, the workers recruited during the early years of industrializa-
tion were young women from farm families living in surrounding areas. To attract these
young women, the factory owners erected dormitories or saw to the development of
boarding homes, where social, religious, and educational activities for workers could be
planned and supervised.12
The labor force of young women expanded as a result of difficulties in the New
England agricultural economy. The growing ease with which young women were
recruited for factory work paralleled the rise of commercial farming, the decline of the
household manufacturing of cloth, and the transfer to the market of services formerly
performed at home. The reality of large families as a liability could, for the moment, be
mitigated by the fact that girls could earn wages for use in an increasingly commercial
society. Harriet Martineau, a traveler to the United States in 1835, reported her visit to
“the corporate factory-establishment at Waltham”:
Most of the girls live in houses provided by the corporation, which accommodate
f rom six to eight each. When sisters come to the mill, it is a common practice for
them to bring their mother to keep house for them and some of their compan-
ions, in a dwelling built by their own earnings. In this case, they save enough out
of their board to clothe themselves, and have their two or three dollars a week to
spare. Some have thus cleared off mortgages from their fathers’ farms; others have
educated the hope of the family at college; and many are rapidly accumulating an
independence.13
Young, native-born women took factory jobs for only a few years. Soon, immigrants
f rom French, Canada, and other nations replaced them. Often, parents and children
worked in the same factories, representing the first permanent factory labor force. At
that point, native-born women moved into occupations such as teaching. If financially
able, they moved into a new genteel ethos of homemaking.
America’s first industrial workers were not a social class; the young women who
worked in factories eventually left to marry or pursue other work. By the 1830s, how-
ever, they had been replaced by a more permanent group of workers—often immi-
grants—whose prospects for advancement were limited. The risks that we associate with
industrialization—unemployment, disability, and displacement—became a new reality
on the social landscape.14
The success of the textile factories fostered the development of other manufactures
required for the maintenance of that industry and that industry’s employees. The “fac-
tory system” was applied to other industries and spread rapidly throughout the New
England and Middle Atlantic states, with the result that centers of considerable size,
offering employment to males as well as females, to skilled as well as unskilled labor-
ers, developed. Whereas 202,000 persons lived in urban centers in 1790, 6.2 million were
living in cities in 1860. The growth of older cities demonstrates what was happening.15
New York City’s population grew from 123,000 in 1820 to 805,000 in 1860; Philadelphia’s
jumped from 112,000 in 1820 to 562,000 in 1860; Boston’s went f rom 43,000 to 177,000;
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 41 03/01/17 6:14 AM
42 Chapter 3
and Baltimore’s f rom 62,000 to 212,000, during the same years. In addition, many new
cities sprang up not only in New England and the Middle Atlantic states but in the West
and the South as well.
Industrialization and urbanization led to many problems for which social welfare
measures—particularly financial aid—were necessary. The expansion of wage labor
was associated with increased mobility of the labor force. With extended kinship ties
f requently broken by distance and with adults away f rom home at work, families were
more and more subject to forces beyond their control and dependent upon services sup-
plied f rom outside the family unit. The hazards of the developing market economy in
which families depended on wages and in which industrial competition kept wages low
and employment uncertain were aggravated by a series of economic depressions—one,
1815–21; another, 1837–43; still another, 1857–59. Only the years 1850–56 showed vig-
orous, sustained recovery. The long stretch between 1815 and 1859 was a difficult time
for individuals and families who were not physically or psychologically f ree to move to
the open lands and opportunities of the West. These people included many
immigrant families; disabled veterans of the War of 1812, the Mexican War,
and the Indian Wars; the ill and disabled; children who had been orphaned or
abandoned; and older people who had no children or spouses to support them
and who found themselves forced into involuntary retirement because of ill
health or unemployment.
REfoRm and Social changE
The emergence of large reform movements during the antebellum period represented a
split vision of American society. On the one hand, many movements associated with the
middle class saw their society as fundamentally sound but in need of some improvement
around the margins. On the other hand, other movements raised the fear that America
was corrupt at its core. With the rise of evangelical Protestantism after the second Great
Awakening of the 1820s, the conviction that Americans needed to attack sin propelled a
variety of movements against alcohol, prostitution, and other forms of vice. Ultimately,
this same sensibility would drive the movement to abolish slavery.
Labor Unrest
Much of the response to unemployment and inequality of income distribution took the
path of reform activities. Such activities supported a view of the basic soundness of the
economic order at the same time that they demonstrated new convictions about the
potential for change of individuals and of aspects of the social structure. As early as 1827,
with the formation of the Mechanics’ Union Trade Association in Philadelphia, an effort
was made to organize all skilled artisans. Although attempts at a combined national asso-
ciation failed, labor entered the depression starting in 1837 with at least five national
trade unions: cordwainers, comb makers, carpenters, weavers, and printers.16 These
unions, and the workers’ political parties that developed during the 1830s, demanded
action in regard to a number of reform and protection issues:
1. Equal and universal free education
2. The availability of public lands for settlement
3. The depreciation of child labor and apprenticeship abuses
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 42 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 43
4. Restrictions on competitive prison labor
5. Better working conditions for women
6. Establishment of a 10-hour workday without any decreases in wages
7. Governmental control of currency
8. The right to organize
9. Provision of jobs for the unemployed in public works programs17
They did not demand a change in basic property relationships, but they did demand
a larger share of the product of the existing economic system. What they objected to
was not private property, but the loss of independence that wage labor entailed. Indeed,
for many male trade unionists, the new manufacturing systems were a core challenge to
their manhood.18
Whatever hardships labor suffered, the promise of a new world for common peo-
ple seemed real enough. Small establishments—manufacturers, tradesmen, and entre-
preneurs—dominated the economy. Similarly, westward migration had produced large
numbers of small, independent landowners. It appeared to resident Americans and
immigrants alike that the country’s economic growth and geographic expansion were
of their own making and that their own toil had produced a situation in which dreams
could come true.
Religious and Political Reform
The generation of the American Revolution was typically motivated by secular beliefs,
but in the early decades of the 19th century, American Protestantism made a comeback.
Yet, as it returned, Protestants embraced a more optimistic and humanistic set of beliefs.
The colonial view of humanity as predestined to damnation gave way to a view of peo-
ple as having the power to change, if properly led. The new age of reason meant that
individuals could respond to the godliness of their own nature and could control their
own destinies, including economic and social welfare.
The major religious movement of the early 19th century was the “Second Great
Awakening.” During the 1820s and 1830s, a wave of religious fervor swept the country,
leading to mass revival meetings and conversions. Upstate New York experienced these
so f requently that it became known as the “burnt-over district.” Women took a leading
role in the Second Great Awakening, although often barred f rom becoming ministers.
The impulse to cleanse society of sin encouraged women to pursue campaigns against a
variety of evils, which led to many of the reform movements discussed below.
With the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828, Jacksonian democ-
racy symbolized the possibility of egalitarianism and a spur to its further achievement.
Elections became more frequent, with many state and local offices changing hands every
year. After a period of political disorganization—symbolized by the 1824 presidential
election in which no candidate won a majority of the Electoral College—the Jackson
campaign organized the Democratic Party with party operatives in every state united
around an ideology that stressed limited government and a suspicion of special inter-
ests that sought to benefit f rom government action. Legislatures reduced or eliminated
restrictions of the enfranchisement of white men—especially property requirements—
although women would have to wait nearly a century to secure the right to vote.
Areas of reform activity included the extension of suffrage, temperance, more effec-
tive poor relief, humane treatment for the insane, rehabilitation of criminals, child sav-
ing, and, of course, the drive for the abolition of slavery.
During the 1820s and
1830s, a wave of reli-
gious fervor swept
the country, leading
to mass revival meet-
ings and conversions.
Upstate New York expe-
rienced these so fre-
quently that it became
known as the “burnt-
over district.”
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 43 03/01/17 6:14 AM
44 Chapter 3
The Expansion of Public Education
A large part of the reform effort centered on free public education, which for some was
seen as a weapon in the battle for egalitarianism, for democracy. Horace Mann labeled
education “the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the
social machinery.”19 For Native Americans, “education and conversion usually went hand
in hand,” with religious conversion the dominant force.20 Only through education could
the rich and poor be brought together.
Now surely nothing but universal education can counterwork this tendency to the
domination of capital and the servility of labor>.>.>. But, if education be equably dif-
fused, it will draw property after it by the strongest of all attractions: for such a thing
never did happen, and never can happen, as that an intelligent and practical body of
men should be permanently poor. Property and labor in different classes are essen-
tially antagonistic; but property and labor in the same class are essentially fraternal.21
There was a widespread agreement that “universal and complete” education “would
do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society.” Democracy
could be real if the poor could be made the equal of the rich. Education could instill the
means and will to make it so.
Yet, educational expansion could also serve non-egalitarian purposes. In addition to
expanding literacy, public education taught regularity and the importance of following
instructions, important skills for an emerging working class. The establishment of public
high schools in large cities by midcentury provided public resources for the training of
an occupational elite. It would not be until the 20th century that high schools served a
majority of the population.
This drive for education was left to the states for development and moved f rom
New England to the West, where Jacksonian political democracy was most advanced.
The Middle Atlantic states—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—expe-
rienced more difficulty, but by midcentury, these states had permissive statutes allowing
for the establishment of schools by localities. In the South, no statewide systems of pub-
lic education were in operation before the Civil War.
The Expansion of Suffrage
The opening of the West must be credited with the rapid advance of white male suffrage.
As people went westward and formed new states, they made new constitutions. In
the western country there were few great differences in wealth .>.>. much the same
state of poverty and hope. Naturally, under such conditions .>.>. all were equally
capable of bearing the responsibility of voting or governing. The new states of the
days after the War of 1812, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, and Missouri, provided white
manhood suffrage though Mississippi clung to a tax provision.22
Connecticut liberalized its suff rage qualifications in 1818. Massachusetts followed
in 1820. In 1821, New York legislated universal male suffrage, even for free blacks if they
owned property. Other states followed and male political democracy became a reality.
Women did not achieve legal and political equality with men, but the reform period
was the beginning of a long campaign for women’s rights. In 1848, the first Women’s
Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. A “Declaration of Sentiments,”
modeled after the Declaration of Independence, was adopted. Women demanded equal
civil and political rights and began the long struggle for suffrage.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 44 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 45
Not so clearly recognized was the effect of industrialization and urban-
ization upon the economic structure of the family. The technological rev-
olution, which gained such momentum during the pre–Civil War period,
spelled the beginning of a decline in farming as a chief means of support
and the virtual end of the family system of manufacturing. Not only had
wages, per se, become a basic means of family support, but these wages were
being earned away from home. From this economic reality evolved separate
worlds for men and women. All that went on outside the home—particularly in the areas
of work and politics—was the world of men. For the middle class, the world of women
centered in the home, the family, and the church. The pastoral letter read on July 28,
1837, from the pulpit of all Congregational churches in New England described a proper
woman operating in her “proper sphere.”
The appropriate duties and inf luence of women .>.>. are unobtrusive and private>.>.>.>.
When the mild, dependent, softening inf luence of women upon the sternness of
man’s opinion is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand forms.
The power of woman is in her dependence, f lowing from .>.>. that weakness which
God has given her for her protection, and which keeps her in those departments of
life that form the character of individuals and of the nation.23
Moral Reform
Although barred f rom formal politics, women often led reform movements, including
temperance, suff rage, and the abolition of slavery. They moved from a concern for the
rooting out of individual imperfections that would lead to unhappy family living to a
demand for explicit political recognition and power, and then to larger social issues.
Often, their reform efforts were tied to an implicit critique of male-dominated social
habits, as was the case with the Temperance Movement.
Spurred by the growth in corn production by the pioneer farmers of the Ohio River
Valley and the burgeoning distilling industry of the East, whiskey became abundant and
cheap—and drinking whiskey is something of a national pastime for men, women, and
children.24 During the first three decades of the 19th century, annual per capita con-
sumption increased to more than five gallons. After 1830, as a result of the Temperance
Movement and of stiff federal taxation, it dropped to less than two gallons per capita.25
Before that, however, the proliferation of unregulated taverns that encouraged drink-
ing, particularly on the part of male laborers, aggravated perceptions of social chaos
and disorder in the lower class, especially immigrants. The loss of time f rom work
because of drunkenness on the part of the male breadwinner and the habit of spend-
ing time at the saloon on payday were real threats to family well-being. The unavail-
ability of adequate jobs for women made them dependent upon men for the family’s
support. The physical abuse that often accompanied the drinking added to the urgency
of temperance as “a matter of women’s rights as well as a religious and humanitarian
reform.”26
The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was founded in 1826 and
engaged in widespread propaganda against intemperance. The Temperance Movement
involved itself in social and political activities, and by 1860, it boasted a membership
of a number of formal social groups and more than a million individuals. One state
(Maine) had voted for prohibition. The Temperance Movement would become more
vocal and politically stronger after the Civil War—eventually evolving into a demand
for Prohibition—but the attention given to the problem during the antebellum period
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 45 03/01/17 6:14 AM
46 Chapter 3
was an evidence of a growing concern about the relation of drinking to unemployment
and to pauperism.
During the 1830s and 1840s, thousands of local and state temperance societies were
formed with the intention of regulating or prohibiting the sale of liquor. While these
societies generally had women’s auxiliaries appended, an independent women’s gesture
was made when Amelia Bloomer founded the newspaper The Lily. In her first editorial,
Bloomer wrote:
It is WOMAN that speaks through the LILY. It is upon an important subject, too,
that she comes before the public to be heard. Intemperance is the great foe to her
peace and happiness.27
Tales of victimized women, of victimized families, led Bloomer and The Lily to an alli-
ance with those more specifically focused on women’s rights.
The efforts of The Lily were not isolated. Middle- and upper-class women, spurred
by evangelical fervor and optimism, turned to a variety of moral reform movements—
like the crusade against prostitution. It was not difficult to see these moral reform efforts
as a thinly veiled criticism of dominant male culture. Although only a small minority of
women would move f rom this criticism to overt feminism, the moral reform efforts of
the antebellum era are a critical stage in the emergence of a distinctive women’s perspec-
tive in social welfare.
The Temperance Movement addressed itself to the economic costs of drinking and
also served as a ref lection of the crusading, religious spirit of the era, an era of striving
for perfection and beauty as a response to the reality and harshness of a changing soci-
ety. The democratic, educated, temperate, spiritual individual was the ideal, and reform
activity was an acknowledgment of human perfectibility as well as a spur to the accom-
plishment of aspirations. For some, the larger world seemed too oppressive, and they
withdrew to utopias such as Brook Farm or Walden Pond or to the intellectual and meta-
physical world of transcendentalism. For others, the reform of people and of institutions
that stif led progress was cause enough for the good fight.
The assurance of opportunity and liberation underlay the zeal of adherents to
particular causes and provided the moral force that brought Quakers, Transcenden-
talists, f ree blacks, activist women, and reformers of all types together in the aboli-
tionist cause. The new religious humanitarianism, the growing democratic thrust, and
the moral force surrounding black uprisings on behalf of f reedom made abolition the
central and urgent core of the Northern reform movement. At the same time, in the
South, the principles of Jeffersonian democracy and its apologetic approach to slavery
lost out to an aggressive ideological defense. The egalitarian leadership of the Revo-
lutionary generation passed f rom the moderate Virginians to the extremists of South
Carolina, and eventually the aristocratic worldview that represented the interests of a
small group of planters prevailed. The white South united in an effort to maintain and
extend slavery.
Abolitionism pulled together many strands of the reform era. An optimistic view
of human nature—perfectionism—made the existence of human bondage that much
more obnoxious. If the solution to the labor problem of the North was expanded
opportunity for f ree labor, then the expansion of slavery into the West was
intolerable. Although Southerners often chided the North for its treatment
of the poor, Northerners continued to see the extension of a liberal, capi-
talist social order as the solution to most of the nation’s ills. Ultimately, this
vision could not be reconciled with the enslavement of 4 million human
beings.
The Temperance Move-
ment addressed itself
to the economic costs
of drinking and also
served as a reflection
of the crusading, reli-
gious spirit of the era,
an era of striving for
perfection and beauty
as a response to the
reality and harshness of
a changing society.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 46 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 47
Social WElfaRE PRogRamS and SERvicES
For the most part, reform during the pre–Civil War period was geared to the reform of
individuals—not to reform of systems—and the effort was to find an environment in
which individual changes might be encouraged. Increasingly, reformers turned to formal
institutions as a means to address a variety of social problems, including crime, mental
illness, and poverty.
Institutionalization
The rise of formal institutions as the primary response to social problems had complex
origins. Certainly, the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening and the opti-
mism of Jacksonian democracy played a role. At the same time, as society became more
mobile, traditional, informal social control became less effective. Finally, the idea to sim-
ply lock up difficult and frightening individuals had appeal, whether or not it
helped the incarcerated.
During the 18th century, criminals were often dealt with through the
inf liction of physical pain or social disgrace. Increasingly in the early 19th
century, writers came to believe that criminality was a product of a bad envi-
ronment, which led the perpetrators to their actions. It was reasoned, then,
that removing criminals f rom these bad inf luences would bring about a
change in their character. The penitentiary was born as a means to use social
isolation as a means of reforming prisoners. The New York penitentiary in
Auburn and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia became the models
for this approach. At Eastern State, prisoners were intended to remain in
solitary confinement during their entire stay, although problems with over-
crowding undermined the intent of its designers.
The “insane asylum” also sprung f rom some advocates’ belief in the
effectiveness of institutionalization. The memorials written by pioneer reformer Dor-
othea L. Dix to encourage provisions for the construction of hospitals for the insane
exemplified contemporary efforts to help people fulfill their potential through the use of
specialized facilities. Institutions for the insane, children, the disabled, and the poor were
particularly important in this regard, since they offered attention to classified needs and
surcease from worldly instability. Dix wrote about “the mischiefs which result alike from
religious, social, civil, and revolutionary excitements,”28 excitements that characterized
the pre–Civil War period and that were deemed responsible for the increase in mental ill-
ness. In the same vein, society was held responsible for an increase in crime and pauper-
ism. The economic growth, geographic expansion, and extension of political democracy
that had created a world of opportunity had also created a world of change, insecurity,
and temptation. A society laying claim to a belief in human perfectibility but given to
the creation of environmental and human disorders must provide order—and cure—for
both. Institutions were thought to do just that.
During the pre–Civil War period, 32 hospitals were built for the insane. Their advo-
cates believed they and other specialized institutions would, or could, cure both human
and societal ills. Speaking particularly of the insane, Dix said:
To confine the insane to persons whose education and habits do not qualify them
for this charge, is to condemn them to mental death. .>.>.
Under well-directed hospital care, recovery is the rule—incurable [italics in original]
permanent insanity the exception. .>.>.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 47 03/01/17 6:14 AM
48 Chapter 3
But cure alone .>.>. is not the sole object of hospital care. .>.>. Of vast importance is
the secure and comfortable provision for .>.>. the incurable insane. Their condition .>.>.
is susceptible of amelioration, and of elevation to a state of comparative comfort and
usefulness.29
Professional and humane treatment could cure, especially if that treatment was
offered in an ordered, stable milieu that provided the sick individual with relief f rom
excitement and with a sense of dignity. At the least, it would ameliorate symptoms. In
either case, the conviction that individuals were capable of self-perfection required that
they be treated as though they might perfect themselves. The institution became the
answer to the individual’s ailment and, simultaneously, in its exemplification of needed
reform, the answer for society’s ills.
The development of specialized institutions for dependent populations often began
in the private sector, but its advocates ultimately looked to government for financial sup-
port. Dorothea Dix’s Memorial to Congress in 1848 asking that 5 million acres of public
land be given to the building of institutions for the insane was a challenge to the fed-
eral government to support reform. In time, Congress passed a bill allocating 10 million
acres, taking cognizance of the needs not only of the insane but also of the blind and
the deaf. President Pierce’s veto in 1854 denied the federal government’s responsibility
for the social welfare of the country. In so doing, however, the veto upheld the historic
responsibility of the states in matters of social welfare, when people could not sustain
their own social well-being through self-endeavor or private charity.
I readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all as men and
citizens, and as among the highest and holiest of our duties, to provide for those
who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disuse of
body or mind; but I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the
Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United
States.>.>.>. And if it were admissible .>.>. I can not avoid the belief that it would in the
end be prejudicial .>.>. to the noble offices of charity. . . .
If the several States, many of which have already laid the foundation of munificent
establishments of local beneficence, and nearly all of which are proceeding to establish
them, shall be led to suppose .>.>. that congress is to make provision for such objects, the
fountains of charity will be dried up at home.30
The Pierce veto reinforced the pattern of state responsibility and of private charity
dominance in social welfare. Veterans were the only group for which the federal gov-
ernment maintained direct responsibility. By 1790, Congress had taken over financial
support for disabled veterans, veterans’ widows, and orphans of veterans. Pensions
were established for those groups during the Revolutionary War and were extended
without serious questioning to participants of the War of 1812, the Seminole Indian
Wars, and the Mexican War of 1846–48. The federal government eventually granted
benefits to able-bodied veterans of each war. The pensions were small and the num-
bers of veterans covered were few because of the time that had elapsed between each
war’s end and congressional action. Nevertheless, at a time when the federal govern-
ment was not involved in other social welfare activities, the veteran pensions estab-
lished precedent that would expand with the increase in the number of veterans after
the Civil War.
The view of poverty and of the plight of families in need changed very little f rom
that of the Colonial period. Welfare legislation passed by the founding states had rep-
resented the continuation of colonial and provincial law. As new states entered the
The Pierce veto rein-
forced the pattern of
state responsibility and
of private charity domi-
nance in social welfare.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 48 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 49
Union, their public welfare provisions tended to copy those of established states. Unem-
ployment and sharp increases in relief roles reconfirmed the ultimate responsibility
of government for the relief of individual suffering but, at the same time, fostered an
expanded definition of the responsibility of relatives. In most Northern states, grand-
children were legally responsible for the financial support of their grandparents; in
many states, brothers and sisters were responsible for one another. The humane con-
viction that the poor were an inescapable obligation meant the provision of minimal,
survival relief. But, more than ever, the view was that relief should be unnecessary and
that government was obligated to minimize the cost to the taxpayer for the care of the
poor. Only the legislation of the Southern and Western states tempered this view with
any concern for the “comfort of the poor” or with legislation less restrictive than that
of New England.
The more restrictive approach of the Northeastern and North Central states often
was a response to the higher demands placed on the states by unemployment and des-
titution in more economically developed regions. In his 1824 report on the relief and
settlement of the poor, John V. N. Yates, secretary for New York State, wrote that “pop-
ulous places have at all times, been burdened with a larger proportion of paupers, than
places where a thin or scattered population is found.”31 At the time of the report, well
over half the population of the country was still living on the Atlantic Coast. The begin-
ning inf lux of immigrants, who tended to remain in Eastern cities, aggravated the reac-
tion to public outdoor relief giving, since they frequently were among the unemployed.
Indeed, what appears to be an overreaction to public outdoor relief giving—New York
City, for example, with a population of 203,000, had expended only $16,000 in 183032—
might have been a veiled stance against immigrants. Similarly, the inf lux of foreigners
strengthened the argument that relief giving be left to benevolent societies and to the
rich. The uncertainty of private charity was in itself considered a virtue, for it instilled
in the newcomer that most American of all values, independence. Furthermore, private
charity reinforced the old belief that the rich should expect deference f rom those of
more modest means.
The belief that individuals were responsible for their poverty did not go completely
unchallenged. Thomas Paine as early as 1792 and Mathew Carey in 1833 both saw pov-
erty as related to the failure of the economic system. Paine urged the abolition of the
Poor Laws and the establishment of a system of pensions, family allowances, subsidized
education, and guaranteed employment.
By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments of civil torture,
will be superseded, and wasteful expense of litigation prevented. The hearts of the
humane will not be shocked by ragged and hungry children, and the persons of sev-
enty or eighty years of age, begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged
from place to place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows
will have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on the death of
their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children will no longer be consid-
ered as increasing the distresses of their parents. The haunts of the wretched will
be known, because it will be to their advantage, and the number of petty crimes,
the offspring of distress and poverty, will be lessened. The poor, as well as the rich, will
then be interested in the support of government, and the cause and apprehension of riots and
tumults will cease [italics in original].33
Mathew Carey, a renowned pamphleteer on political and economic matters,
responded to the charge that the poor rates and the aid of private philanthropy demoral-
ize the poor and lead to corruption of pride in independence. His “appeal to the wealthy
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 49 03/01/17 6:14 AM
50 Chapter 3
of the land” was written to refute “certain pernicious errors” that prevailed respecting
the situation of the poor:
1. That every man, woman, and grown child, able and willing to work, may find
employment.
2. That the poor, by industry, prudence, and economy, may at all times support
themselves comfortably, without depending on eleemosynary aid. .>.>.
3. That their sufferings and distresses chief ly, if not wholly, arise from their idle-
ness, their dissipation, and their extravagance.
4. That taxes for the support of the poor, and aid .>.>. by charitable individuals .>.>.
are pernicious, as .>.>. they foster their idleness and improvidence, and thus pro-
duce, or at least increase the poverty and distress they are intended to relieve.34
Through comparisons of average annual wages and subsistence expenses for work-
ers in selected occupations, Carey demonstrated the inevitable gaps between income
and need—the necessity for financial supplementation. He demonstrated further that
only 549 paupers had been supported with outdoor relief—that most suspected form
of relief—in Philadelphia in 1830 and that the aid granted had averaged 46? cents per
week—less than 7 cents per day. Pointing up how many of those supported were fam-
ilies with children, the disabled, or the aged, Carey argued that the poor rates and the
aid of benevolent societies “far f rom producing the pernicious effects ascribed to them
are imperiously necessary.” Rather than look to the poor as the cause for the rise in poor
rates, he concluded that one must look to the workings of a market economy in a soci-
ety becoming increasingly dependent upon machines “for the low rate of wages is the
root of mischief.”
A cause has been steadily and powerfully operating to increase the poor rates. . . .
I mean the rapid and oppressive reduction of wages, consequent on the wonderful
improvements in machinery. Manual labour succumbs in the conf lict with steam
and water power; and everything that supersedes the demand for that labour must
increase competition, lower wages; produce distress and .>.>. increase the poor rates.35
The arguments of Paine and Carey looked both forward and backward. Like the
Colonial Poor Laws, they retained an idea of community responsibility for needy resi-
dents. At the same time, they foreshadowed the idea that in a complex market society,
wage-earners could not realistically prepare for the risks associated with accidents, dis-
ability, or old age. They helped to prevent the abolition of public relief in most local-
ities despite the powerful forces aligned against it. So distinguished a leader as Josiah
Quincy—congressman, mayor of Boston, and chairman of a state committee to study
the pauper laws—considered the Poor Laws “too deeply riveted in the affections, or the
moral sentiment of our people to be loosened by theories, however plausible.”36
The physically disabled aside, public and private sources generally agreed that the
causes of poverty were to be found in individual character f laws and in organizations
that encouraged and promoted dependency. The New York Society for the Prevention
of Pauperism was founded “to investigate and as far as possible to remove the causes of
mendicity, to devise plans for ameliorating the condition of the poor and wretched, and
to secure their successful operation.”37 The society successfully petitioned the Corpora-
tion of the City to appoint five members of that body to the Board of Managers of the
society, thus encouraging the board “to calculate upon municipal countenance and aid.”
The first annual report (1818) of the society listed the causes of poverty as ignorance,
idleness, intemperance, and imprudence (especially to marry). The report listed the
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 50 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 51
following as tending to aggravate the causes of poverty: lotteries, pawnbrokers, houses
of ill fame, and the numerous charitable institutions. Although public relief and private
benevolence did admittedly relieve some misery and suffering, the long view of the soci-
ety, as expressed by its president and its chairman of the Committee to Prepare a Report
on the Subject of Pauperism, was that charity encouraged idleness and extravagance
on the part of the poor, relaxed their need for industry, and eventually diminished that
“wholesome anxiety to provide for the wants of a distant day, which alone can save .>.>.
f rom a state of absolute dependence, and from becoming a burden to the community.”38
New York City had already erected “buildings for eleemosynary purposes, at an
expense of half a million dollars, and.>.>.>. [was being called upon] for the annual distri-
bution of 90,000 dollars more.”39 Failure to find a solution to the burgeoning expense of
supporting an increasing number of paupers was frightening:
Without a radical change in the principles upon which public alms have been usu-
ally distributed, helplessness and poverty would continue to multiply—demands
for relief would become more and more importunate, the numerical difference
between those who are able to bestow charity and those who sue for it, would grad-
ually diminish, until the present system must fall under its own irresistible pressure,
prostrating, perhaps, in its ruin, some of the pillars of the social order.40
The agreement that pauperism could be prevented and cured only by erecting “bar-
riers against the encroachments of moral degeneracy” fostered a review of contempo-
rary relief practices and a search for barriers that could, at one and the same time, save
the poor f rom pauperism and the rich f rom taxation. Voluntary organizations, such as
the New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and the Associations for Improv-
ing the Condition of the Poor that developed later in several large cities, sought “to
remove the various causes of mendicity” primarily through friendly advice. The Associa-
tion for Improving the Conditions of the Poor and its successors during the 19th century
did little to reduce want. Indeed, they were often formed on the belief that treacherous
paupers were taking advantage of less hard-hearted philanthropists. They did, however,
support the view that the pauper should properly be excluded f rom the social order. If
outdoor relief were abolished, they hoped, the pauper would have no alternative but to
seek aid within the almshouse.
The New York Society’s Sub-Committee on Ignorance was charged as follows: “This
Committee shall report the number of children who do not attend any school; the
number of adults who cannot read; the number of families and individuals who do
not attend public worship; and the causes which prevent.”41
Ignorance and the lack of religious fervor—in the eyes of the Association—reinforced
pauperism.
Dissatisfaction with public outdoor relief, especially of the able-bodied, focused on
its effectiveness in relieving or preventing poverty. Many believed that cash assistance pro-
moted the very opposite of its intended purpose. So strongly was this view held that the
state of Delaware prohibited local outdoor relief. Philadelphia abolished it f rom 1827 to
1839 and Chicago from 1848 to 1858. Debates over the proper role of public relief were
most intense where the problem was most serious, in the East. Many states, including
Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, formed commissions to
study the problem. In their anxiety to ensure an appropriate work-spirit for the transient
poor who might be employable, the reports tended to ignore the bulk of those receiving
relief, the permanent poverty of children and the elderly.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 51 03/01/17 6:14 AM
52 Chapter 3
In 1821 in Massachusetts, Josiah Quincy’s “Report of the Committee to whom
was Referred the Consideration of the Pauper Laws of this Commonwealth” placed
in “strong light the objections to the entire principle of our existing pauper laws” but
despaired of the laws being abolished. Among the committee’s recommended principles
for the operation of a relief system, two were particularly important:
1. That of all modes of providing for the poor, the most wasteful, the most expen-
sive, and the most injurious to their morals and destructive of their industrious
habits is that of supply in their own families.
2. That the most economical mode is that of Alms Houses; having the character
of Work Houses, or Houses of Industry, in which work is provided for every
degree of ability in the pauper; and thus the able poor made to provide, par-
tially at least for their own support, and also to the support, or at least the com-
fort of the impotent poor.42
In summary, the report stressed the responsibility of society to diminish pauperism
and recommended the use of a single administrative mechanism, the almshouse, for
doing so—“denying for the most part all supply from public provision, except on condi-
tion of admission into the public institution.”43
In 1823, in response to rising costs of relief, the Senate and Assembly of the State of
New York resolved that the secretary of state study and report on the expenses and oper-
ation of the Poor Laws in New York, as well as in other states, for the purpose of suggest-
ing improvements in the New York welfare system. Secretary Yates’s report, submitted
in February 1824, divided the poor of the state into the permanent poor, that is, those who
received support regularly during the year studied, and the occasional poor, that is, those
who received help during part of the year (perhaps brief ly during the autumn and winter
months). He found 6,896 of the first group, and 15,215 of the second. Of the total of
6,896 permanent poor, only 1,789, “though not in the vigor of life,” could be considered
capable of earning their subsistence. Among the permanent poor not capable of earning
their subsistence were 2,604 children under 14 years of age. Yates did not specify the num-
ber of families represented by the 6,896 individuals classified as permanent poor, but he
did assert that 1,585 of the total were men who had been reduced to that state by drinking
and “of consequence, that their families .>.>. were reduced to the same penury and want.”44
Yates reported four major findings: (1) the poor, when farmed out, were f requently
treated with barbarity and neglect, (2) the education and morals of the children of pau-
pers were almost wholly neglected, (3) there was no adequate provision for the employ-
ment of the poor for the inculcation of industrious habits, and (4) there was little
attention being given to the disbursement of public funds appropriated for the support
of the poor. As a single, total remedy for all these evils, Yates recommended the adop-
tion of the “poorhouse plan” for every county of the state. In accordance with the plan,
the poorhouses to be erected in each county would be houses of employment where
paupers might be “maintained and employed .>.>. in some healthful labor, chief ly agri-
cultural, their children to be carefully instructed, and at suitable age, to be put out to
some useful business or trade.” As for sturdy beggars or vagrants—most likely the
occasional poor—they were to be confined to penitentiaries connected to the poor-
houses and subjected to a regimen of discipline consisting of “a rigid diet, hard labor,
employment at the stepping mill, or some treatment equally efficacious in restraining
their vicious appetites and pursuits.”
The recommendations of the Yates report called for a separation of the worthy and
unworthy poor: long-term care in houses of employment for the former and short-term
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 52 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 53
penitentiary or workhouse confinement for the latter. The two types of houses were to
be physically joined to form a system of almshouse care for the poor.
Until a system .>.>. can be devised, which with economy and humanity, will admin-
ister relief to the indigent and infirm, incapable of labor, provide employment for
the idle, and impart instruction to the young and ignorant, little hope can be enter-
tained of meliorating the condition of our poor or relieving the community f rom
the growing evils of pauperism.45
Thus the almshouse would be that particular institution given to the creation of an
environment in which concern for the worthy poor and attention to their needs would
contrast with the punitive conditions for those capable of work. Yet, few counties ever
committed the resources necessary to enforce this split.
Historically, the Yates report is significant, since it gained widespread attention and
established indoor almshouse care as the major approach to the relief of the poor in the
United States. In 1857, a state Select Senate Committee to Visit Charitable and Penal
Institutions reported the existence of 55 almshouses, exclusive of the almshouses and
poorhouses in New York and Kings counties.46 Massachusetts listed 83 almshouses in
1824; there were 219 in 1860. By 1860, Pennsylvania had 31 county institutions, in addi-
tion to local almshouses. By 1860, Maryland had almshouses in all but one county, and
that county was permitted the use of the facility in Baltimore.47
As the Civil War approached, almshouse care was being used extensively through-
out the United States. As with other institutions—asylums, houses of refuge, reformato-
ries—the reform impulse quickly gave way to custodial realities. Grand plans to classify
the poor and operate two institutions in one gave way to fiscal austerity and Spartan
conditions. In 1824, however, the almshouse seemed the obvious answer for all who devi-
ated (or might deviate) f rom self-reliance—the impotent elderly or disabled, the potent
able-bodied, and the eventually potent child. The emphasis in the Yates report upon sav-
ing the poor f rom pauperism and upon deterring the able-bodied f rom accepting relief
showed how strongly held belief could render the widespread poverty of the era invisi-
ble. Nowhere is this more evident than in the child-saving activities of the era.
Child Saving
Stirrings of dissatisfaction with almshouse care, especially for children, developed
soon after the Yates report appeared. This dissatisfaction was based in part on the
reform, crusading interests of the era. The period was one of growth of democratic
concepts and of increased concern for individual self-realization. In child welfare, this
meant a new awareness of children as children—young people who must grow into
adults were able to participate in a democratic government. It seemed to the reform-
ers that neither the undifferentiated almshouse nor the environment provided by the
family—particularly the poor family—would provide the requisite discipline and edu-
cation for children.
The mischief and excitements attributable to urbanization have led to social change
and unrest. Self-realization and individual freedom were not to be confused with license
and self-indulgence. Democracy was not to be extended to family life and the relaxation
of parental authority. Fear of permissiveness in the care of children was aggravated by
the growing presence of immigrants, who, it was thought, were unaware of traditional
American child-rearing practices. The goal for a reformed American society was the
return to the well-ordered institutions of the Colonial era. If children were to save the
country for democracy, they must first be saved themselves.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 53 03/01/17 6:14 AM
54 Chapter 3
Again, the institution—this time with specialized concern for dependent, neglected,
and delinquent children—offered an approach that appeared to be both humane and
comforting for the individual, a substitute for the supposedly poorly functioning families
of workers and immigrants.
Institutions for children had appeared early on the American scene but were few
in number until the 19th century. The first American institution for children, founded
in 1729, was a private institution for girls established in New Orleans by the Ursuline
Sisters. The Bethesda House for Boys, founded in 1740 near Savannah, Georgia, was also
privately supported. The first government-supported institution was established in 1790
in Charleston, South Carolina, and remained the only publicly funded institution for chil-
dren until the turn of the century. The Charleston Orphan House was founded for the
“Purpose of Supporting and Educating Poor Orphan Children, and Those of Poor, Dis-
tressed and Disabled Parents, Who Are Unable to Support and Maintain Them.”48
During the first half of the 19th century, the number of children’s institutions
increased rapidly so that by 1851, there were 77, with an additional 47 built over the next
decade.49 Most of these institutions were orphan asylums or simply asylums for depen-
dent children; some were houses of refuge, reformatories for delinquent children. Most
were privately controlled by religious, social, or foreign-born national groups, although
many received government subsidies. The first private institution to receive a state sub-
sidy was the Orphan Asylum of New York, which was granted a subsidy by an act of the
state legislature in 1811. Similar grants were made in other states. The New York (City)
House of Refuge and the Philadelphia House of Refuge were opened in 1825 and 1828,
respectively. Both were supported by a combination of city appropriations, state subsi-
dies, and voluntary contributions. By 1860, the state subsidies became the norm.
Institutions wholly supported by public funds were also developed, generally to meet
the needs of special classes of children. The Boston House of Reformation, established
in 1826, was the first reformatory for juveniles funded by a municipality. The first state
reform school, the House of Refuge for Delinquent Boys, was established in Massachusetts
in 1847. A “School for Idiots,” under the superintendency of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe,
was opened in 1848, also in Massachusetts. Similar publicly funded schools were opened in
the next decade in Albany, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Lakeville, Connecticut.
Because so many reformers saw working-class and poor families as the source of
social problems, they constructed institutions that isolated their inmates f rom these
inf luences. Starting with distrust for the competence of poor parents, superintendents
of children’s institutions discouraged contact with parents. As for the actual care pro-
vided, in both orphan asylums and institutions for delinquents, the goal was submission
and obedience on the part of the child. The Charleston orphan asylum saw itself as edu-
cating boys to become disciplined workers and citizens. The construction of houses of
refuge for delinquent children spoke most pointedly to pre–Civil War concerns about the
care of children. The delinquent child highlighted the “vicious tempers and habits” that
could develop in an environment where authority and governance did not exact obedi-
ence and submission.50 How easily the willful, offending child could become the adult
criminal, the contributor to societal breakdown! The movement for institutions devoted
to delinquent children began with the establishment of the New York Society for the
Prevention of Pauperism in 1819 and the New York House of Refuge in 1826. By 1857,
the number of such institutions had grown sufficiently to warrant a national convention
of refuge superintendents.
Houses of refuge, like institutions for dependent, homeless children, offered a
model for family home care, a combination of shelter, routine, and discipline. Isolated
and shielded from outside, particularly from own-family inf luences, delinquent children
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 54 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 55
were subjected to a “vigorous course of moral and corporal discipline” with the intent
that they “be made tractable and obedient”51 and, ultimately, good citizens. As indicated
by the report of the investigation of the Philadelphia House of Refuge in 1835, the suc-
cess of such an institution was thought to be measured by the extent to which its prac-
tices were a demonstration of parenting and parental responsibilities fulfilled.
The inmates present a healthy appearance; their clothing is comfortable, and their
fare is abundant and wholesome. Their labour is suited to their age and capacity—
regular, but not severe. Their government .>.>. is parental.>.>.>. They have their regular
hours of labour, and instruction; while every attention is paid to induce habits of
industry, the greatest possible care is had for their intellectual improvement. . . .
To this unfortunate class, the advantages of this institution are peculiarly adopted.
Here then vicious tempers and habits are restrained—their minds improved—principles
of virtue inculcated; and not a few, who were on the broad road to ruin, have been res-
cued from destruction and prepared for usefulness.52
The model of “home life” offered by the house of refuge and by other child-caring
institutions was semimilitary, characterized by discipline, training, and rehabilitation.
The design of the institution and the imposition of a controlled, regulated environ-
ment were meant to hasten the reform of the inmates. Thus, the realization of the
goal of child saving through institutionalization did little to tailor care to the needs of
the child.
The advocates of child institutionalization did not go unchallenged. Charles Lor-
ing Brace, the founder of the Children’s Aid Society of New York, was an early, vocal
critic of institutionalization. Despite the increase in special institutions for children,
the unquestioned acceptance of institutional child care declined during the 1850s. This
decline resulted partly f rom an inability to build specialized institutions in sufficient
numbers to absorb the growing number of dependent, homeless, orphaned, and delin-
quent children. Economic uncertainty was increasing, and for widows and other adults
without economic resources, surrendering their children to institutions was not rare. In
New York City alone, according to a police report in 1852, “there were an estimated
10,000 abandoned, orphaned, runaway children roaming the streets.”53 The catchall
almshouse, rather than the specialized institution, remained the most available form of
care for children.
Other factors contributed to a less positive view of institutional child care, includ-
ing the rise of public education and the decline of opportunities for legal indenture and
apprenticeship. The pattern of child-caring institutions had included a relatively short
period of institutional housing during which education and re-education for orderly liv-
ing were provided. Having satisfactorily completed this period of rehabilitation, the insti-
tution placed out boys as apprentices and girls as domestic servants. The spread of public,
compulsory education made the educational efforts of child-caring institutions appear
inadequate and unnecessary and, moreover, took the child back into the very commu-
nity from which he or she was to have been “saved.” Similarly, the gradual disappearance
of cottage industries meant not only the disappearance of work opportunities that could
be selected and put under surveillance by the institution but also the disappearance of
family care as an aspect of indentured apprenticeship. Simultaneously, increasingly heavy
migrations from Europe, combined with stretches of economic recession to make for a
surplus of adult workers, rendered child labor less profitable.
As the apprenticeship system declined, the indenturing of children changed for the
worse. The value of the instruction received f rom the “masters” became less, and the
value of the services rendered by the children increased.54
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 55 03/01/17 6:14 AM
56 Chapter 3
Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society of New York in 1853 to advance a new
approach to child care. The circular announcing the formation of the society expressed
the urgency of the task ahead.
But a small part of the vagrant population can be shut up in our asylums. .>.>. The
class increases. Immigration is pouring its multitudes of poor foreigners, who …
leave young outcasts everywhere abandoned in our midst. For the most part …
[they] grow up utterly by themselves. No one cares for them, and they care for no
one. .>.>. Every cunning faculty is intensely stimulated. They are shrewd and old in
vice when other children are in leading-strings.55
Conceptually, Brace was bent on saving children through the provision of education and
shelter and, ideally, through separation of children from parents.
Efforts to secure adequate and proper shelter for dependent children led Brace to the
notion of foster home care:
The workers .>.>. in this movement [foster home placement] felt f rom the beginning
that “asylum-life” is not the best training for outcast children in preparing them for
practical life. In large buildings, where a multitude of children are gathered together,
the bad corrupt the good, and the good are not educated in the virtues of real life.
The machinery, too, which is so necessary in such large institutions, unfits a poor
boy or girl for practical handwork.56
Brace became convinced that foster home placement outside of New York City was
the best possible solution. So he chose the farms and ranches of the West, where “the
best of all Asylums for the outcast child .>.>. [would be] the farmer’s home.”57 The fact
that farm labor was in demand in the West and, therefore, that large numbers of chil-
dren could be absorbed fit neatly with a romantic conception of country life. During the
12-year period, 1853–1864, the Children’s Aid Society of New York placed 4,614 children
with Western farmers. The Society’s efforts to place children in the West continued until
after World War I. In the end, over 120,000 children had ridden the “orphan trains.”58
The experience of Brace’s foster children fits no neat generalization. After spend-
ing days on the trains, the children would arrive at a destination where they would be
“viewed” in a public place. Local residents interested in obtaining a child would select a
child, and in a matter of minutes, a bargain was struck. Certainly, many of the children
felt exploited by their new guardians and ran away, often finding their way back to New
York City. At the same time, many of the children became integral parts of their foster
families and benefited from the move. What is certain is that the Children’s Aid Society’s
policy was to block communication between the children and their living relatives.
Brace’s advocacy of Western foster care inspired other child-saving agencies to use
similar placement methods, removing dependent children f rom city environs, either to
the West or to the rural environs of the city. The Church Home Society was founded in
Boston in 1855, the Henry Watson Children’s Aid Society in Baltimore in 1860, and the
Home for Little Wanderers also in New York in 1861. With their emphasis upon child
saving, these organizations, like institutions and almshouses, offered programs that did
not individualize the child.
Retreat from the Almshouse
The Children’s Aid Society advocacy of sending children to the West was only one part
of a broader critique of institutional care during the years before the Civil War. Increas-
ing state subsidy led to broader oversight of institutions. Ultimately, the gap between the
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 56 03/01/17 6:14 AM
The Pre–Civil War Period: 1777–1860 57
promises of the moral entrepreneurs who created institutions and their reality led polit-
ical and civic leaders to wonder if this was the best solution to the problems of a new
democracy. In New York, the state Select Senate Committee to Visit Charitable and Penal
Institutions made its report in 1857. The committee had been appointed
. . . to visit . . . all charitable institutions supported or assisted by the State, and all city
and country poor and work houses and jails .>.>. to examine into the conditions of
the said establishments, their .>.>. government, treatment, and management of the
inmates, the conduct of the trustees, directors, and other officers .>.>. and all other
matters whatever pertaining to their usefulness and good government.59
The committee made its visits during the summer and autumn months when the
“average number in the poor house is twenty-five percent less than in the winter” and
made the following overall statement about what was found:
The poor houses throughout the State may be generally described as badly con-
structed, ill-arranged, ill-warmed, and ill-ventilated. The rooms are crowded with
inmates; and the air, particularly in the sleeping apartments, is very noxious, and to
casual visitors, almost insufferable.60
Still further:
The evidence taken by the committee exhibits such a filth, nakedness, licentious-
ness, general bad morals, and disregard of religion and the most common religious
observances, as well as of gross neglect of the most ordinary comforts and decen-
cies of life, as if published in detail would disgrace the State and shock humanity.61
The committee recalled that almshouses had been originally designed to be “com-
fortable asylums for worthy indigence” and gave examples of how they had been
permitted to become “unsuitable refuge for the virtuous poor, and mainly places of con-
finement for the degraded.”62
The care of old people, of worthy adults who were suffering temporary reversals,
of the insane, and of children was found to be especially outrageous. The committee
recommended outdoor relief for worthy adults and specialized institutional care for chil-
dren and the insane, the object being the removal of these classes from the almshouses.
A .>.>. more efficient and economic auxiliary in supporting the poor, and the prevention
of absolute pauperism, consists .>.>. in the proper and systematic distribution of outdoor
[italics in original] relief. Worthy indigent persons should .>.>. be kept from the degrada-
tion of the poor house, by reasonable supplies of provisions .>.>. at their own homes.63
It was recommended that the insane be removed to state asylums.
In Massachusetts, too, almshouse care was found wanting. A special committee was
appointed in 1858 to “investigate the whole system of public charitable institutions of
the Commonwealth.” The committee found the system of state almshouses to have
“grave disadvantages.”
For example: (1) partisan administration, (2) tendency of breaking up families to
perpetuate dependency, (3) greater difficulty in placing children, (4) or finding work,
(5) increased costs of transportation, (a) involved extra school and church facilities,
(b) increased risks from fire and from moral and social contamination.64
The committee recommended that the almshouse system be abandoned at the earliest
convenience.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 57 03/01/17 6:14 AM
58 Chapter 3
The impetus for the attack on the Poor Law practice of outdoor relief and the sub-
sequent rise in the use of almshouses and specialized institutional care was attributed to
external factors and to individual behavior f laws.
The rise in immigration and the growth and increased crowding of cities created
what was considered an unstable atmosphere, not conductive to mental health or stable
labor-force behavior. The increased availability of alcohol and other forms of entertain-
ment was a further factor believed to contribute to irresponsible behavior and poverty.
In addition, the Poor Laws themselves, which provided a safety net for families in need,
were judged to be part of the problem of rising incidence of need.
The response was the construction of many specialized institutions aimed at provid-
ing a stable environment for the poor and the mentally ill. The regularity of institutional
life was to be a force for “cure” of those in need; the unpleasantness of life in the alms-
house was to discourage the requests for assistance.65
Neither direct criticism of almshouse care, as in the New York and Massachusetts
reports, nor indirect criticism, as implied in efforts to remove special classes of indigents,
produced an immediate retreat f rom such care. The eruption of the Civil War was, cer-
tainly, a prime factor for the hiatus. Perhaps, the nature of the population of inmates
is even more telling. Although estimates vary widely, there is general agree-
ment that more than half the inmates were foreign-born.66 The probability is
that most people agreed with Brace that these were “dangerous classes” and
that fear rather than concern was the mark of public opinion. Almshouse care
remained the dominant form of care for the poor until the Progressive Era of
the late 19th century.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 58 03/01/17 6:14 AM
59
The Pre–Civil War Period
Three documents have been selected to illustrate the tenor of social welfare during the
pre–Civil War period: The First Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Preven-
tion of Pauperism in the City of New York (1818); Constitution, By-Laws, &c., of the Female
Orphan Asylum of Portland, Maine (1828); and President Franklin Pierce: Veto Message—An
Act Making a Grant of Public Lands to the Several States for the Benefit of Indigent Insane
Persons, the act granting public lands to the various states for the benefit of indigent
persons (1854). The documents demonstrate several major themes:
1. That the causes of poverty are outside the economic system and that poverty
can be abolished through the reform of individuals
2. That institutions can serve as mechanisms for the rehabilitation of individuals
and of the social order
3. That the development and administration of social welfare programs are local
public and voluntary social welfare concerns, rather than a responsibility of the
federal government
The managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in their First
Annual Report give evidence of the change that had occurred in society’s view of
people. The Puritan doctrine of a fixed social structure gave way to one in which
achievement was limited only by failure to fulfill individual potential. It was the Age
of Reason, and the will of God yielded to f ree will. The rational man could reach
perfectibility, if he willed to do so. The problem for social welfare then, as for all insti-
tutions, was to create an environment in which individual reform and perfectibility
were encouraged and could take place. The managers of the society were particularly
f rightened by the growth of pauperism, which they believed was fostered in a rapidly
changing society. The report of the managers demonstrates the extent to which ratio-
nal human beings, f reed of heavenly strictures, could rationalize the harsh treatment
of the poor.
During the pre–Civil War era, institutions were founded to provide and demon-
strate the well-ordered environmental setting in which human perfectibility could f lour-
ish. Children’s institutions were particularly important in this regard, since the future of
the country quite literally depended upon the kind of adults that children became. The
Female Orphan Asylum of Portland, Maine, was established to “carry into effect, means
for the support, instruction and employment of female children, from three to ten years
of age.” The bylaws of the asylum demonstrate the premium placed upon stability and
regularity in the daily lives of children. Their clothing, their fare, their instruction, and
their activities are proscribed in rules and regulations so as to inculcate “habits of order,
neatness, and industry.” Of equal importance was the prevention of parental interference
“in the management of the children.” Indeed, parents could not visit except in the pres-
ence of the asylum’s governess. To be preferred was the parent’s relinquishing all claim
to the child, thus freeing the institution for its work. At the age of 11, the children were
generally “placed out” with virtuous families, and the asylum followed their conduct and
circumstances until they had reached age 18.
DoCUMENTS
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 59 03/01/17 6:14 AM
60
President Pierce vetoed “the ten-million acre bill” in the belief that the bill would
eventuate in the “transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in all
the States.” His decision to veto was based on the constitutional guarantee that those
powers not specifically delegated to the United States by the Constitution were reserved
for the states. Since he could find no specific delegation of authority for social wel-
fare, the president interpreted the Constitution to mean that social welfare matters
involved issues of states’ rights and, therefore, required the exercise by each state of its
own police power to provide for the welfare of its inhabitants. In addition to the con-
stitutional question of states’ rights, the president’s decision was steeped in historical
precedent by which programs to meet social welfare needs had long been the province
of local and voluntary organizations. The veto was to sustain the tradition until the
depression of the 1930s.
The First Annual Report of the Managers of the Society
for the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York
Read and Accepted October 26, 1818
To which is added:
A REPORT ON THE SUBJECT OF PAUPERISM,
dated February 4, 1818
The Managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism
in the City of New York, ’12(‘/
That their anticipation of the importance and difficulty of their duties has been fully
realized. Their first efforts were necessarily directed to the development of the objects
which they were appointed to consider. Though these objects were specified as far as
practicable; though the nature of the duty allotted to the Board was pointed out, as well
as the general aspect of the plan, such as the Managers should have in view, yet the basis
only was laid, and it was their work to erect the superstructure. They were not at a loss
for materials. These were more and more exhibited to them in the multifarious ramifica-
tions of their labours. But it was not an easy task to arrange them in proper order, and to
dispose of them to advantage; it therefore required time, deliberation, and assiduity, to
digest an effectual plan, and to take measures for rendering it subservient to the momen-
tous purposes of the Society.
In order to investigate, and as far as possible to remove the various causes of men-
dicity; to devise plans for meliorating the condition of the poor and wretched, and to
secure their successful operation, the Managers, immediately after their appointment,
respectfully solicited the Corporation of this city to appoint five Managers f rom that
body, agreeably to the 6th article of the constitution. The favourable result of this appli-
cation warrants the Board to calculate upon municipal countenance and aid.
The 3rd article of the By-laws declares that “each attending Committee shall con-
sist of as many members of the Society as the Board may think necessary. They shall
make rules, or by-laws, to govern themselves; keep a book, wherein they shall enter
their proceedings, and report to the Board at every stated meeting, a summary of their
proceedings, with their opinions on the most adviseable course for the Board to pursue
relative thereto.”
Nine Standing Committees were accordingly appointed, to carry into effect the
views of the Managers, as stated in the following extract from the minutes:—
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 60 03/01/17 6:14 AM
61
DISTRICTING COMMITTEE
This Committee shall consist of as many members of this Board as there are wards
in the city, who shall form a general plan of operations;—and as soon after as possible
each person shall, in his respective ward, associate with as many members of the Society
as may be thought adviseable, who shall divide the ward into as many districts as they
may think proper. These sub-committees shall embrace in their operations the duties
specified on the 12th and 13th pages of the printed Report on the subject of Pauperism.
IDLENESS AND SOURCES OF EMPLOYMENT
The object of this Committee shall be to devise means for the employment of the
poor.
INTEMPERANCE
This Committee shall inform the Board as to the number of places where ardent
spirits are retailed in small quantities;—what quantity is drunk, with an estimate of its
cost, and the class of citizens most subject to the vice of intemperance.
The Committee shall give opinions at large on every thing connected with this sub-
ject, including the law, police regulations, officers, & c. & c.
LOTTERIES
This Committee shall report the number of lottery offices in the city; the amount of
money annually expended; the probable waste of time occasioned by lotteries; the usual
percent advance on tickets; the extent of the evil arising f rom the insuring of tickets,
how far the restraining laws are enforced, & c. & c.
HOUSES OF ILL FAME
This Committee shall report the probable number of houses of this description;
families that live by prostitution; and in what particular the police regulations on the
subject may be amended.
PAWN-BROKERS
This Committee shall report the number of pawn-brokers, their manner of doing
business, and the best mode of correcting the evils arising therefrom.
CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS
This Committee shall inform the Board as to the number in the city; the gross and
annual amount of their funds, and the mode respectively adopted by them, in the distri-
bution of charity to the poor.
GAMBLING
This Committee shall report the number and kinds of gambling houses, and their
opinion as to the best mode of diminishing or suppressing them.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 61 03/01/17 6:14 AM
62
IGNORANCE
This Committee shall report the number of children who do not attend any school;
the number of adults who cannot read; the number of families and individuals who do
not attend public worship; and the causes which prevent.>.>.>.
In the years 1788–1789, there were under the old system,
Paupers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7391
>>>>>>>>In the Hospital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
>>>>>>>>—Penitentiary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
>>>>>>>>—Orphan House . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000
Total 9731
In the years 1798–1799, when the new system was in operation, there were
Paupers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3090
>>>>>>>>In the Hospital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
>>>>>>>>—Penitentiary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
>>>>>>>>—Orphan House . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Total 4731
Exhibiting a decrease in one city of 5026.
It is evident, therefore, that the object of the New York Society for Preventing Pauper-
ism is such as cannot, in the nature of things, be speedily accomplished. Habits and vices,
which take their rise from the worst passions and propensities of men, however deplorable
in their effects upon individuals and society, will yield to no sudden remedies. They must be
supplanted gradually by the inf luence of appropriate agencies, by the assiduities of patient
and persevering labour, by the constant and meliorating operations of benevolence. The
measures pointed out in the document appended to this Report, are adapted ultimately to
remove those evils which so much aff lict society, and which the severest enactments of civil
authority have been found unable to repress. Let the moral sense be awakened, and a moral
inf luence be established in the minds of the improvident, the unfortunate, and the depraved;
let them be approached with kindness and an ingenuous concern for their welfare; inspire
them with self-respect, and encourage their industry and economy: in short, enlighten their
minds, and teach them to care for themselves. These are the methods of doing them real and
permanent good, and relieving the community from the pecuniary exactions, the multiplied
embarrassments, and threatening dangers of which they are the authors. Happily, the object
proposed by this institution is one which may be aided by every individual, whatever be his
circumstances; though it prospectively demands the concurrence and patronage of all. The
public is called upon not so much for pecuniary subscriptions and benefactions, as for friendly
advice, for vigilant attention to the common good, for the adoption of wholesome opinions,
and the exertion of a salutary inf luence. They who experience the ill effects of pauperism
and its attendant evils, are urged, not to make fresh sacrifices and incur additional embarrass-
ments, but to act upon the defensive, to employ the means of prevention, to check an inunda-
tion which threatens to overwhelm them. They are invited to adopt measures which cannot
possibly be hurtful in any instance; which seem alone adapted to the end in view, which are
required by the necessity of the case, and sanctioned by the results of experience.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 62 03/01/17 6:14 AM
63
The Managers consider the information which they have thus laid before the Society,
of sufficient moment to encourage every member, and to stimulate the citizens generally,
to give their utmost sanction and support to this truly benevolent institution, whose aim is
to improve the temporal and moral condition of a considerable portion of this community.
Conscientiously engaged in so good a cause, let all rely on the blessing of that
Almighty Father who “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust.”
MATTHEW CLARKSON, President
Joseph Curtis, Sec’y, pro tem.
New-York, Oct. 26, 1818.
New York: Printed by J. Seymour, 49 John-Street, 1818.
* * *
REPORT
(3 /+1
SUBJECT OF PAUPERISM.
To the “New-York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism.”
The Committee appointed to prepare a Constitution for the government of the
Society, and a statement of the prevailing causes of pauperism, with suggestions relative
to the most suitable and efficient remedies, Report,
That we entered upon the duties assigned us, under a strong conviction of the great
importance of the subject of Pauperism. We were persuaded that on the judicious man-
agement of this subject depend, in a high degree, the comfort, the tranquility, and the
freedom of communities.
We were not insensible of the serious and alarming evils that have resulted, in var-
ious places, f rom misguided benevolence, and imprudent systems of relief. We knew
that in Europe and America, where the greatest efforts have been made to provide for
the sufferings of the poor, by high and even enormous taxation, those sufferings were
increasing in a ratio much greater than the population, and were evidently augmented
by the very means taken to subdue them.
We were fully prepared to believe, that without a radical change in the principles
upon which public alms have been usually distributed, helplessness and poverty would
continue to multiply—demands for relief would become more and more importunate,
the numerical difference between those who are able to bestow charity and those who
sue for it, would gradually diminish, until the present system must fall under its own
irresistible pressure, prostrating perhaps, in its ruin, some of the pillars of social order.
It might be long indeed before such a catastrophe would be extensively felt in this
free and happy country. Yet it is really to be feared, as we apprehend, that it would not be
long before some of the proximate evils of such a state of things would be perceived in
our public cities, and in none, perhaps, sooner than in New-York. Although these conse-
quences are but too apparent from the numerous facts which recent investigations have
brought to light, particularly in Great Britain, and in some parts of the United States, yet
we are very sensible of the difficulties attendant upon every attempt to provide an ade-
quate remedy for poverty, and its concomitant wretchedness.
The evil lies deep in the foundation of our social and moral institutions; and we
cannot but consider it as one of the most obscure and perplexing, and at the same time,
interesting and imposing departments of political economy.
M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 63 03/01/17 6:14 AM
64
While there exists so great a disparity in the physical and intellectual capacities of
men, there must be, in every government, where a division of property is recognized by
law and usage, a wide difference in the means of support. Such, too, is the complication
of human affairs, the numerous connexions, and close dependencies of one part upon
another, it is scarcely to be presumed, and it would be extravagant to expect, that under
the most moral, and the wisest civil regulation to which human society is susceptible of
attaining, partial indigence and distress will not be experienced to an amount that will
ever demand the exercise of Christian benevolence.
The great and leading principles, therefore, of every system of charity, ought to be,
First, amply to relieve the unavoidable necessities of the poor; and, Secondly, to lay the
powerful hand of moral and legal restriction upon every thing that contributes, directly
and necessarily, to introduce an artificial extent of suffering; and to diminish, in any class
of the community, a reliance upon its own powers of body and mind for an independent
and virtuous support. That to the inf luence of those extraneous, debilitating causes, may
be ascribed nine tenths of the poverty which actually prevails, we trust none will doubt,
who are extensively acquainted with facts in relation to this subject.
The indirect causes of poverty are as numerous as the f railties and vices of men.
They vary with constitution, with character, and with national and local habits. Some
of them lie so deeply entrenched in the weakness and depravity of human nature, as to
be altogether unassailable by mere political regulation. They can be reached in no other
way, than by awakening the dormant and secret energies of moral feeling.
But with a view to bring the subject committed to our charge more definitely before the
Society, we have thought it right, distinctly to enumerate the more prominent of those causes
of poverty which prevail within this city; subjoining such remarks as may appear needful.
1st. I-3(‘&3%1. Arising either f rom inherent dullness, or f rom want of opportuni-
ties for improvement. This operates as a restraint upon the physical powers, preventing
that exercise and cultivation of the bodily faculties by which skill is obtained, and the
means of support increased. The inf luence of this cause, it is believed, is particularly
great among the foreign poor that annually accumulate in this city.
2d. I5)131… A tendency to this evil may be more or less inherent. It is greatly increased
by other causes, and when it becomes habitual, it is the occasion of much suffering in fam-
ilies, and augments to a great amount the burden of the industrious portions of society.
3d. I3/1*21’&3%1 ,3 5′,3@,3-. This most prolific source of mischief and misery drags
in its train almost every species of suffering which aff licts the poor. This evil, in relation
to poverty and vice, may be emphatically styled the Cause of Causes. The box of Pandora
is realized in each of the kegs of ardent spirits that stand upon the counters of the 1600*
licensed grocers of this city. At a moderate computation, the money spent in the purchase
of spirituous liquors would be more than sufficient to keep the whole city constantly sup-
plied with bread. Viewing the enormous devastations of this evil upon the minds and mor-
als of the people, we cannot but regard it as the crying and increasing sin of the nation, and
as loudly demanding the solemn deliberation of our legislative assemblies.
4th. W&3/ (8 1%(3(*7. Prodigality is comparative. Among the poor it prevails to a
great extent, in an inattention to those small but frequent savings when labour is plenti-
ful, which may go to meet the privations of unfavourable seasons.
5th. I*2’<513/ &35 +&./7 *&'',&-1.. This, it is believed, is a fertile source of trial and poverty. *Since this Report was written, the number of licenses has been very considerably reduced by the present chief magistrate of the city. M03_STER9913_09_SE_C03.indd 64 03/01/17 6:14 AM 65 6th. L(//1',1.. The depraving nature and tendency of these allurements to hazard money, is generally admitted by those who have been most attentive to their effects. The time spent in inquiries relative to lotteries, in f requent attendance on lottery offices, the feverish anxiety which prevails relative to the success of tickets, the associations to which it leads, all contribute to divert the labourer f rom his employment, to weaken the tone of his morals, to consume his earnings, and consequently to increase his pov- erty. But objectionable and injurious to society as we believe lotteries to be, we regard as more destructive to morals, and ruinous to all character and comfort, the numerous self-erected lottery insurances, at which the young and the old are invited to spend their money in such small pittances, as the poorest labourer is f requently able to command, under the delusive expectation of a gain, the chance of which is as low, perhaps, as it is possible to conceive. The poor are thus cheated out of their money and their time, and too often left a prey to the feelings of desperation: or, they are impelled by those feelings to seek a refuge in the temporary, but fatal oblivion of intoxication. 7th. P&A36'(@1'.. The establishment of these offices is considered as very unfavourable to the independence and welfare of the middling and inferior classes. The artifices which are often practised to deceive the expectation of those who are induced, through actual distress, or by positive allurement, to trust their goods at these places, not to mention the facilities which they afford to the commission of theft, and the encouragement they give to a depen- dence on stratagem and cunning, rather than on the profits of honest industry, fairly entitle them, in the opinion of the Committee, to a place among the causes of Poverty. 8th. H(<.1. (8 ,)) 8&*1. The direful effects of those sinks of iniquity upon the habits and morals of a numerous class of young men, especially of sailors and apprentices, are visible throughout the city. Open abandonment of character, vulgarity, profanity, &c. are among the inevitable consequences, as it respects our own sex, of those places of infa- mous resort. The effects upon the several thousands of females within this city, who are ingulphed in those abodes of all that is vile, and all that is shocking to virtuous thought, upon the miserable victims, many of them of decent families, who are here subjected to the most cruel tyranny of their inhuman masters—upon the females, who, hardened in crime, are nightly sent f rom those dens of corruption to roam through the city “seek- ing whom they may devour,” we have not the inclination, nor is it our duty, to describe. Among “the causes of poverty,” those houses, where all the base-born passions are engen- dered—where the vilest prof ligacy receives a forced culture, must hold an eminent rank. 9th. T+1 3<*1'(<. %+&',/&6)1 ,3./,/.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 93 03/01/17 12:14 PM
94 Chapter 4
Charity Organization leaders were not alone in their beliefs about inherited tenden-
cies toward pauperism. Nor is it fair, with the wisdom of hindsight, to picture them as
totally destructive in their work with families. Warner’s statistically based delineation
of objective environmental causes of poverty and the social fact finding of other wel-
fare leaders helped foster social legislation. Such a legislation brought about reform in
housing, working conditions for women, child labor practices, and sanitation—all of
which were to improve the individual’s and the family’s opportunity for self-betterment
and success. An awakening interest in eugenics and social Darwinism provided a f rame-
work for some support of social legislation, but it carried with it the position that there
was no major defect in society itself. Quite simply, the inability to take advantage of
enhanced opportunity was further evidence of individual weakness.
The leaders of voluntary charity were not content with simply improving their “sci-
entific charity”; they sought to eliminate the competition posed by public sources of wel-
fare as well. Beginning with the efforts of Brooklyn in 1879, a number of cities moved to
eliminate outdoor relief so that the needy would be forced to rely on voluntary charities.
Although the outdoor relief cutoff fit well into the philosophical position of the Charity
Organization Movement, it f lowed f rom practical considerations as well. Democratic
politicians had successfully used outdoor relief and public employment as means of
assuring the loyalty of voters.50
In the end, f riendly visiting had an unexpected impact. Initially, charity leaders had
imagined that the relationship of the visitor and the client would be one-directional; the
poor family would learn lessons of thrift and efficiency f rom the worker. Yet, over the
last decades of the 19th century, the relationships became more complex than antici-
pated. In the end, the generation of middle-class women and men who were involved in
charity work came away from the experience with a new appreciation of the difficulties
faced by poor families. As the 19th century came to a close, old beliefs about the moral
foundation of poverty were eclipsed.
Among public welfare leaders, especially, there were those ready to point out social
causes of poverty and to assert society’s responsibility for helping meet individual and famil-
ial needs. At the 13th Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1886, Fred H. Wines ques-
tioned the use of statistics for the pseudoscientific purpose of proving individuals to be the
cause of poverty and crime. He urged the conference to look at the “three or four great facts”
that characterized modern social life: the invention of labor-saving machinery, the aggrega-
tion of capital in the hands of large and wealthy corporations, the aggregation of population
in great centers, and the emancipation of women. Taken together, he felt these characteris-
tics had changed the relation of people to one another and might “account in some degree
for the present measure and manifestations of pauperism” and other social ills.51
At the 17th Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1890, Franklin B. Sanborn
spoke more specifically about family welfare and made a strong plea for outdoor relief,
which he defined as “family aid.” In analyzing the purposes for which family aid was
expended in Massachusetts, he pointed out that reports of outlays for aid to the poor in
their own families often overstated the sum actually expended by including payments for
the sick in hospitals, burials, and so on. As for the able-bodied poor in almshouses, Sanborn
said, “that mythical class . . . are scarcely found in this country in public establishments,
except for a few months in the cold season, when the number of employments/././. is con-
siderably reduced by Nature herself.” The statement is reminiscent of the Yates report of
1824, but unlike Yates, Sanborn concluded in favor of cash payments to families in their
own homes. Asking that the poor be classified according to their real character and needs
and not herded together in a common “receptacle” for all forms of poverty, Sanborn
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 94 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 95
pointed out that “there are persons, be the number greater or less, who need public relief at
their own homes, and who can receive it there with greater advantage both to themselves
and to the public than anywhere else.” In a telling argument—probably embarrassing for
his listeners—he pointed out that outdoor relief must continue not only because it is less
costly than indoor relief, but also because there would never be “almshouses, workhouses,
hospitals, and other places of indoor relief in sufficient number to contain all the poor at
any season, or half of them in seasons of special destitution.” In a final burst, Sanborn said
that one reason cash relief had been distributed, even to the point of abuse, was “the desire
to prevent the breaking up of families, the corruption of the young, and the unspeakable
distress of the old and the virtuous, by throwing them into forced association with the
dregs of mankind, in what was ironically termed a charitable establishment.”52 It was in
response to and in disagreement with Sanborn that Josephine Shaw Lowell addressed the
conference on the demoralizing effects of public outdoor relief.
In time, hostility to the philosophy and methodology of Charity Organization
became openly vocal and widespread. Charles D. Kellogg, chairman of the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections’ Committee on History of Charity Organiza-
tion, reported in 1893:
The very name of Charity Organization indicates a paramount purpose to bring
about cooperation of those engaged in ministering to the poor . . . Yet cooperation
is one of the most difficult of attainments ././. In some cities there exists a distinct
hostility in the older charitable societies to Charity Organization. They resent the
implication that their work may need amending.53
These “older charitable societies” were understandably suspicious of Charity Orga-
nization’s assumed authority for standard setting in a field in which they had long been
functioning. They were particularly aroused by the threat to their autonomy in being
asked to “sustain [through cooperation] a society that is purely administrative,”54 that is,
a society to whom they would be accountable for their relief activities.
Charity Organization’s emphasis on reducing f raud was taken to be the sole pur-
pose of registering and investigating applicants for relief. Thus, charity organizers were
accused of lumping the honest with the dishonest poor to the detriment of the former
and the inhumane neglect of the latter.55 In the words of a popular poem:
The organized charity scrimped and iced
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.56
Trade unions were particularly incensed by scientific charity during periods of recession
and unemployment. They interpreted Charity Organization’s investigation methods and its
stress upon the debilitating effects of relief as creating unnecessary suffering and as prolong-
ing an “unfair social system as a result of which workers find themselves unemployed.”57
Finally, the motives of the inf luential and wealthy leadership were suspect. Hostility
toward Charity Organization Societies grew out of the view that the societies might just
be “devices for saving the taxpayer, and secured for them the title ‘Society for the Sup-
pression of Benevolence.’”58
The Settlement House Movement
At the end of the 19th century, a second major movement developed in the voluntary sector
of social welfare: the Settlement House Movement. Inspired by the efforts of Canon Samuel
Barnett’s Toynbee Hall in London to bring the privileged and underprivileged together to
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 95 03/01/17 12:14 PM
96 Chapter 4
overcome the effects of spiritual and social disintegration, Stanton Coit and Charles B. Sto-
ver founded the Neighborhood Guild of New York City in 1887. Their hope in opening this
first American settlement house, where educated persons might live among the poor new-
comers to the United States, was to bring about a sense of neighborliness that could lead to
the making of good citizens. In 1889, Jane Addams established Hull House in Chicago and
Vida Scudder founded the College Settlement in New York. Located in large cities, these set-
tlement houses emphasized neighborhood services and community development.
Settlement houses and Charity Organization shared many characteristics. They
were both dominated by upper- and middle-class white Protestants who viewed the
expanding and diverse working-class population of the city with trepidation. Members
of both movements believed that these populations could be “improved” if they adopted
the family norms and values of their benefactors. Finally, they both were suspicious of
public welfare and believed voluntary action was the key to addressing the problems of
urban residents. The groups differed, however, in their views of families, in their views
of society, and, ultimately, in their views of social welfare as a helping mechanism.
Charity Organization Societies had come into being for the express purpose of orga-
nizing voluntary and public charities to direct toward worthy families the relief-giving
services of others.59 Their particular concern was with the poor, and especially with
those individuals whose f lawed character permitted them to sup at the public trough
while contributing nothing to the public larder. Their investigations of applicants for
relief—investigations that led eventually to the development of casework methodology
and to the emergence of a social work profession—were meant to individualize each
poor family so that particular f laws could be detected and overcome and independence
could be regained. The Charity Organization Societies did make an effort to separate
the “worthy” poor f rom the “unworthy” poor to help the former adequately, but the
fear of encouraging pauperism led for the most part to a basic philosophy that deterred
all f rom asking for help. In essence, the orientation of the Charity Organization toward
relief was in line with the Poor Law tradition and led to competition with public officials
for supremacy in handling relief matters. In many localities, Charity Organization Soci-
eties took on the job of investigating relief applicants for public agencies, a job they had
assumed very early for private relief societies.60
Settlement house workers were more likely to see social conditions as an important
cause of poverty and dependency. Much of the clientele served by settlement houses
consisted of migrants and immigrants whose problems quite clearly were associated
with making the transition from rural to urban living and from a known to an unknown
culture. Whatever their problems with the culture or the language, clients of settlement
houses were less likely to be viewed as pathological by workers. When such families
could not cope, settlement leaders believed that social conditions shared part of the
blame. As a result, social reform was more central to settlement work than to the opera-
tion of charity organization socieities.61
The Charity Organization and Settlement House movements in the early years were
quite different in goals, in techniques, and in service programs. The Charity Organiza-
tion was bent upon preventing pauperism. To aid in this process of reformation, Charity
Organization Societies engaged heavily in the detection of f raud and the establishment
or promotion of “various well-proved schemes for the encouragement of thrift and self-
help.”62 Settlement houses, on the other hand, f rom their inception moved toward the
socialization of the normal, adequately functioning family, and their goal was ref lected
in the three strands of their program activities: neighborhood clubs providing recre-
ational and educational opportunities, social research in regard to family and community
needs, and, especially, social action leading to legislative and political change.
Much of the clientele
served by settlement
houses consisted of
migrants and immi-
grants whose problems
quite clearly were asso-
ciated with making the
transition from rural to
urban living and from a
known to an unknown
culture.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 96 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 97
Jane Addams, the founder of Chicago’s Hull House and the preeminent leader of
the Settlement House movement in the United States, stated the difference between the
Charity Organization Society and the settlement:
The settlement does stand for something unlike that which the charity visitor stands
for. You are bound, when you are doing charitable work, to lay stress upon the indus-
trial virtues. ././. Now the settlement ././. does not lay perpetual and continual stress
upon them. It sees that a man may, perhaps, be a bit lazy, and still be a good man
and an interesting person. ././. It does not lay so much stress upon one set of virtues,
but views the man in his social aspects. ././. To adjust an individual to civilization as
he finds it round him, to get him to the pitch which shall induce him to push up that
civilization a little higher ././. is perhaps the chief function of a settlement.63
As the century drew to a close, the differences between Charity Organization and
Social Settlements (COS) became less sharp. COS leaders such as Mary Richmond, who
outlined the basis for casework in Social Diagnosis, grounded their work increasingly
in observation and practice, not in sweeping moral judgments. Meanwhile, settlement
house workers soon found that good intentions and sympathy were not enough; they,
too, needed to provide practical services to community residents if they were to main-
tain their credibility. Most importantly, workers in both areas began to see the virtue of
individualization; care needed to be tailored to the specific needs of the client. By the
turn of the century, the milieu that would create the social work profession was in place.
A New View of Child Welfare
By the turn of the century, the lines of disagreement between private and public welfare
leaders were drawn. The private sector, despite contributions to social legislation, had
opted for a professional service approach to people in need. Many in the public sector
had moved away f rom the use of almshouses toward an income approach based upon
the social necessity of giving and receiving cash relief.
The prominence of Northern social welfare leaders tended to obscure emerging
efforts to meet needs in the South and West. As urban population centers grew in these
areas, officials tended to follow the path of institutionalization developed 50 years ear-
lier in the East. While the North argued the pros and cons of outdoor relief, the South
and West started to build and expand almshouses, mental hospitals, orphan asylums,
and correctional institutions. By then, however, their goal was custodial, not remedial;
for by 1880, it was clear that institutions throughout the United States were not suc-
ceeding in providing an environment for the rehabilitation of the lives of the inmates,
but were offering protection for the larger society against criminals, paupers, and the
insane.
Dependent children did not generate the same fears as poor and dependent adults.
Rather, the public good required that children be rescued f rom a life of dependency or
criminality and helped to become productive citizens. A new view of child welfare devel-
oped; child care was to be separate and special.
The legal implications of this new approach were ref lected in the enactment of the
first juvenile court act in 1899, An Act to Regulate the Treatment and Control of Depen-
dent, Neglected, and Delinquent Children.64 This act, which established separate treat-
ment and control for children, was of major significance because it had common-law
derivations. Thus, the newly established juvenile court moved child welfare away
f rom an orientation of statutory criminal law, which had previously governed child
welfare cases.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 97 03/01/17 12:14 PM
98 Chapter 4
As the world of childhood diverged from that of adults, welfare leaders came to see
the mixing of dependent children and poor adults as a moral evil. New York State was
the first to remove children to foster family homes and to specialized institutions, and
other states followed suit.
The eighth annual report of the New York State Board of Charities (submitted Janu-
ary 15, 1875) contained Commissioner William F. Letchworth’s study of pauper and des-
titute children in the state’s almshouses.65 Despite a strenuous effort at removal, in 1874,
593 children remained in almshouses (9 percent of all inmates), nearly 300 of whom
were described as intelligent children, over two years of age, who needed proper training
and care to fit them for useful stations in life. The slow pace of removing children from
almshouses led to the board’s recommendation that “the commitment of children of
intelligence over two years of age, to county poor-houses, be prohibited by statute”; and
on April 24, 1875, an Act to Provide for the Better Care of Pauper and Destitute Children
was passed by the senate and assembly of the state of New York. It became unlawful
for any child over 3 and under 16 years of age to be committed to a county poorhouse
“unless such child be an unteachable idiot, an epileptic or paralytic, or ././. otherwise
defective, diseased or deformed, so as to render it unfit for family care.”66
The removal of dependent children from almshouses was driven in part by the idea
that poverty could be self-perpetuating, a notion that later generations would call the
“vicious cycle” of poverty. Institutional care as devised during the pre–Civil War period
was intended to provide for the child a model of disciplined, organized, productive life as a
substitute for disorganized family living. Instead, almshouse care was found to expose chil-
dren to adult paupers, frequently the child’s own parents, so that the model supported the
very pattern it was intended to supplant. The removal of children would break up these
families, by placing the children in good, humble foster homes. In these homes, according
to Anne B. Richardson, reporting to the 13th annual Conference of Charities and Correc-
tions (1886) on the care of dependent and delinquent children in Massachusetts, the chil-
dren are restored to conditions of family life where strains produce character.67
Amos G. Warner of Charity Organization reiterated the point in 1894:
The child who is born in an almshouse and grows up there is almost always a pau-
per, because his bad heredity is reinforced by such an environment. . . . The child
that grows up in an infant asylum or orphans’ home has at most an imperfect
opportunity for right development, and the original possibilities of its nature are but
faintly ref lected by its career. With a child boarded out in a private family, or given
to foster parents while still an infant, the conditions are better and more might be
inferred if we could compare its characteristics with those of its parents.68
In Pennsylvania, as in New York and Massachusetts, anxiety existed about the reten-
tion of children in almshouses. The Report of the Commissioners of Public Charities for the
Year 1882 expressed the dangers of permitting children to be in constant association with
“these imbecile and debased paupers”:
It must be kept in view that they are one and all involuntary and helpless prison-
ers, not f rom any fault of their own, but too often inheriting the worst traits of a
degraded parentage; and, if to this inborn nature is added the results of the society
and example of the most degraded of our race, are we to expect anything better
from them than their training will promise?69
The commissioners recommended to the state legislature an act to prevent and forbid
the detention of children between the ages of 2 and 16 years in poorhouses or alms-
houses. The act was passed in 1883.70
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 98 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 99
Reports f rom New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania showed that the removal
of children already resident in almshouses was slow. Charles S. Hoyt, secretary of the
New York State Board of Charities, reporting on “The Causes of Pauperism” (1877),
was shrill in denouncing “the practice of receiving parents and children into poor-
houses together” and of retaining them there as families. His contention that heredity
entered so largely in the problem of pauperism led him to assert unequivocally that it
was against sound policy to keep pauper families, whether in or out of the almshouse,
together; “in fact the sooner they can be broken up the better.”71 Certainly the fear of
hereditary inf luences would lead to anxiety in regard to the slowness of the process of
removal. At the same time, the threatened removal of children had an equally import-
ant if less publicized effect—that of deterring families f rom entering the poorhouse.
Thus, poor families who required public help were doubly deterred, for if they entered
almshouses, they would face deplorable living conditions as well as the possibility of
family breakup.
A number of reasons underlay the slowness of reducing the number of children in
almshouses. Oddly enough, one reason was simply that the laws against accepting chil-
dren were not always known or understood by almshouse superintendents. During the
next decade, the movement to deinstitutionalize children lost ground, and a concern for
keeping families intact emerged. The 1883 report of the Pennsylvania Board of Commis-
sioners of Public Charities, for example, mentioned the acceptance of families in alms-
houses, especially bereaved and immigrant families who must have temporary help but
for whom outdoor relief was not available because of “mistaken notions of economy.”72
Such a temporary use of the almshouses made it possible for families to stay together.
The report urged the wider use of outdoor relief as even more efficacious in preventing
the breaking up of homes.
Eventually, the momentum for removing children f rom almshouses accelerated.
Child welfare leaders began to state a rationale for individualizing the needs of chil-
dren—a parallel reaction, perhaps, to the Charity Organization emphasis upon individ-
ualizing families. In his report for 1888, Charles W. Birtwell, general agent of Boston’s
Children’s Aid Society, described the agency’s changing practices:
The aim will be in each instance to suit action to the real need—heeding the teach-
ings of experience, still to study the conditions with a f reedom from assumptions
././. as complete as though the case in hand stood absolutely alone.73
In his report for 1893, Birtwell made the logical connection between the individual-
ized child and the individualized family.
These children cannot be divorced from the natural relations of family life without
loss ././. and therefore we must humbly set ourselves to learn the ways in which fam-
ily ties may be strengthened and parental responsibilities maintained.74
The census of 1890 showed that the number of children in the country’s alms-
houses had decreased by 36 percent, f rom 7,770 in 1880 to 4,987 in 1890.75 In part this
was a result of the continuing work of the Children’s Aid Society of New
York. Part of the decrease could be attributed to a combination of posi-
tive concern for families and for individual character leading to the removal
f rom almshouses of entire, intact families who were then sent to the West,
where both employment and a “proper” moral climate were generously
available. The philosophy of Charles Loring Brace was now serving a larger
purpose.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 99 03/01/17 12:14 PM
100 Chapter 4
soCial movEmEnts during thE latE 19th
CEntury: thE rEform impulsE
Although government led the effort to reconstruct Southern society after the Civil War,
by the 1870s both government and the economy were back in the hands of traditional
social elites. Women, workers, poor farmers, and African Americans were effectively
marginalized as state governments and the federal government used their economic and
military power to reinforce the status quo. Women who had been central to prewar social
reform were shocked to find their demand for the vote ridiculed. Workers mobilized and
organized, but their demands were met by injunctions, strikebreakers, and armed troops.
Farmers—South and West, black and white—struggled against drought, debt, and the
power of the railroads. Although white resistance closed off the prospect of interracial
cooperation at the end of Reconstruction, at the end of the century, an agrarian move-
ment that culminated in Populism tried again to unite farmers f rom different regions
and different races into a coherent social movement.
The Social Welfare of Women
Women leaders’ prominence in the Charity Organization Movement, and in social
welfare generally, ref lects the extent to which women entered public life during and
after the Civil War. The period held enormous consequences for women—particularly
middle-class women. Expanded aff luence offered independence and leisure, and women
sought to establish for themselves a proper place more nearly equivalent in significance
and power to that of men.
During the war, women had participated in the abolition movement, but the drive
for women’s rights had ceased as they became engaged in wartime tasks. As they did
in the Sanitary Commission, women—in the South as well as in the North—took on
war-related services for which the government had been unprepared. Women took jobs
vacated by men going off to battle. They worked in industries and businesses, on farms
and plantations, and in the professions. They worked “at the bench” and loom; they
taught and nursed; they organized and managed.
Yet, the increased public role of women in the economy and society did not trans-
late easily into political power. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—
designed to expand the citizenship and voting rights of African Americans—also made
voting an explicitly male activity. It would be more than a half century until American
women gained the right to vote.
In 1869, women in the suff rage movement split over support of the 15th Amend-
ment. The American Equal Rights Association, which had carried on the fight for wom-
en’s rights since 1866, was replaced by two contesting groups: the National Woman
Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and the Amer-
ican Woman Suffrage Association, the group that had supported the 15th Amendment.
In 1890, they reunited as the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. Yet, the
women’s movement purchased consensus by waff ling on racism. The new association
asserted that women could increase the size of the educated voting population and reduce
the inf luence of the ignorant populace. In the South, this argument for women’s suffrage
was coupled with efforts to curtail the political and civil rights of African Americans.76
For all the publicity they engendered, the number of women formally associated
with the national suff rage movement was small, probably never more than 10,000.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 100 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 101
Nevertheless, large numbers of women did join organizations that represented more
widespread and acceptable interests. The women’s auxiliaries of the Patrons of Hus-
bandry (the Grange), the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and especially the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), for example, were organizations in
which women found companionship as well as outlets for interests and energies in a
limiting world.
The technological revolutions that changed the world of work changed women’s
domestic labor as well. Indoor plumbing, electric lighting, and household labor-saving
devices, and the spread of commercial canning and baking, were examples of techno-
logical innovations that reduced the hours of labor for housekeeping. The falling birth-
rate among middle-class families77 as well as the availability of inexpensive immigrant
and black domestic help furthered the process by which native-born, middle-class white
women were released f rom work at home. The founding of women’s colleges offered
additional opportunities. Vassar was founded in 1865, Smith in 1871, and Bryn Mawr
in 1885. Finally, in an era whose purported ideal was the married woman in the home,
there was an excess of females in most of the Northeastern states, where women pro-
vided leadership for the feminist movement.78 Women’s organizations and organizational
activities were the result.
The national WCTU was formed in 1874 and constituted a nationalization of earlier
local efforts to contain the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. In the postwar
era, the intent of the movement was abstinence and prohibition. Within 20 years, the
union’s membership totaled more than 200,000 women, representing “the most inf lu-
ential women’s organization in the country.”79 Unlike the derision to which suff ragists
were subjected, members of the WCTU were recognized as active in a legitimate cause.
Their concern about observed deleterious effects of alcoholism on the family and about
the possible further deterioration of family life was considered well within the bounds of
women’s concerns, particularly because women were considered to possess moral supe-
riority. The work of the WCTU was labeled home protection; the union’s first president,
Frances E. Willard, called upon all Christian women to join the crusade.80
Women’s attraction to the Temperance Movement had complex social and psy-
chological roots. On the one hand, it represented a middle-class reaction to the disor-
der of the early industrial city. The middle class had not yet been able to separate itself
physically f rom other social classes. The perceived disorder and moral corruption of
the working class was constantly on display. At the same time, it represented a gendered
response to the realities of marriage in the late 19th century. Alcohol was at the center
of the male world of leisure—dominated by taverns, clubs, and brothels—a world from
which respectable women were excluded. In addition, the connection between drink
and domestic violence could hardly have eluded women’s sensibilities. Finally, the tem-
perance campaign represented a cultural response of native-born Protestants to cities
increasingly dominated by Catholic and Jewish ethnic groups.81
With moral superiority the foundation for a proper women’s sphere and the home
and family the appropriate locale of the operation, conf licts inevitably marked the wider
women’s movement. Why should women venture into the public sphere? The answer
to this question was relatively easy in the matter of temperance. Even college education
could be justified as “education for motherhood.”82 Friendly visiting for the Charity Orga-
nization Societies could be seen as instilling the virtues of independent American family
life in the poor. But the right to vote, as demanded by suff ragists, was another matter.
The right to vote was a call for political power, and those few women who demanded it
were suspect. Even when Willard determined that the purpose of the WCTU could be
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 101 03/01/17 12:14 PM
102 Chapter 4
achieved only by way of women’s votes, her call was cloaked in the mantle of “home
protection.”83 And, even then, the union’s resolution, passed at its national convention
in 1877, called for women’s voting only in local elections and only on the question of
prohibition.
For the middle class, the idea of working women represented a thorny issue. The
ideal woman of the postwar era might work before marriage, but not after. Thus, despite
an expansion in the kinds of jobs women held,84 many women found themselves increas-
ingly “dependent on the money wages of their husbands or fathers, wages that they
themselves did not earn.”85 The era’s concept of “true womanhood” helped limit oppor-
tunities for economic and social independence.
Nevertheless, women did work. In 1890, 4 million women, 14 years and older, were
employed—18 percent of the female population, 17 percent of the civilian labor force.
By 1900, 5 million women—many of them married—were working outside the home.86
Edith Abbott, in her study of women in industry, attributed the presence of married
women and of older women in the job market largely to the employment of immi-
grants, children of immigrants, and blacks.87
Whatever the middle-class ideal, foreign-born and black women, along with many
American-born white women, had to work to support the family economy, which was
dependent on the wages of children and sometimes wives as well as those of their hus-
bands. The double bind of lower-class women did not go unnoticed by Josephine Shaw
Lowell:
Of course there are women who can attend to home duties and also do outside
work; but the average woman cannot do it; and the division of work between man
and woman is discriminated by their natures . . . he to do the outside work, the
woman to do the inside work. . . . I think one of the causes of poverty is that we
have adopted the theory for poor people—not for ourselves—that it is the business
of women to help support the family. . . . When the husband dies, the double work
that ought to be done by both father and mother, come to the widow.88
The Labor Movement
The potential of large-scale associations of laborers to counter the power of industry
and to protect workers against the risks of industrial society had led in 1878 to the orga-
nization of the International Labor Union (ILU) and to the initial attempts of the Knights
of Labor to consolidate many trade unions and grades of workers. With the demise of
the ILU in 1882, the Knights began to grow. In 1883, membership stood at 50,000; in
1886, the membership skyrocketed to 700,000.89
Despite its phenomenal growth, the Knights of Labor was torn by inter-
nal dissension. There was a fundamental difference between the leadership,
which persisted in the repudiation of the strike except as a weapon of last
resort, and the membership, which found that strikes and boycotts could
secure important gains. The leadership was convinced that strikes were
futile, since “a strike cannot regulate the laws of supply and demand, for if
it cuts off the supply, it also cuts off the demand by throwing consumers
out of work, thereby curtailing their purchasing power.”90 The decline of the
Knights of Labor came swiftly.
Nineteenth-century unions’ concern with social welfare went beyond
issues of wages and control. Many unions—like the Knights of Labor and those in the
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 102 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 103
railroad industry—connected to an older tradition of f raternal organization. These
organizations often sponsored insurance and other forms of economic security for their
members, a function that laid the foundation for the expansion of employee benefits
during the 20th century.
Leadership in the labor movement shifted to the American Federation of Labor, a
federation of craft unions, which saw labor’s advance not in the abandonment of a cap-
italist mode of organization, but in increasing workers’ wages. By 1900, labor became
increasingly militant in achieving its ends. The battle of labor was for job protection and
for a fair share in the nation’s economic growth. It was also a battle against poverty and
against the country’s view of the poor. The white, male, skilled workers who made up
a majority of unionized workers went to pains to differentiate working men like them-
selves from those who were dependent on relief. As long as unions discriminated against
immigrants, Af rican Americans, and women, they were vulnerable. The exclusion of
African Americans f rom unions, for example, explains why black workers were often
used as strikebreakers during this era.
The depression of the 1890s rekindled labor militancy. Coxey’s Army attempted to
organized thousands of unemployed workers to march on Washington demanding relief.
The American Railway Union—led by Eugene V. Debs—pioneered the idea of an indus-
trial union to replace the narrow craft unions (conductors, engineers, firemen) that had
dominated railroads before then. Yet, the success of the union in shutting down much of
the nation’s system during its 1894 Pullman strike was met with injunctions against the
union, the jailing of its leaders, and the use of troops to run the trains (Figure 4.2).91
The Agrarian Movement
The problems of farmers in interstate commerce were recognized in 1889, when the
Department of Agriculture was raised to the rank of an executive department and its
head made a secretary with cabinet status. Federal recognition of the challenge of labor
led, in 1884, to the creation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with authority “to col-
lect information upon the subject of labor, its relation to capital, the hours of labor, and
the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material,
social, intellectual, and moral prosperity.”92
In the face of new economic realities, both farmers and workers sought to organize
to protect their interests. By 1875, some 30,000 local granges, with a combined member-
ship of 2.5 million, organized farmers and farm laborers.93 Concerned originally with
securing legal protections against railroads, the granges increasingly engaged in a broad
range of political activities designed to strengthen farmers in their relation to corporate
enterprise. In addition, Southern and Western farming communities experimented with
new financial institutions and political movements to combat the dominance of the East.
The depression of the 1890s had sparked a widespread rural rebellion of smaller farm-
ers—the Populist movement. Populism started as a variety of local efforts to address the
problems of debt faced by farmers in the West and South. An age-old problem of farmers
was the reality that their crops tended to be harvested at the same time. As a result, they
were forced to sell their product when the supply was largest and, as a result, prices were
lowest. The Populists proposed a system of government-run storage facilities, which would
allow farmers to wait until prices were more favorable before selling their products. The
movement sought the support of the Knights of Labor to bridge the urban-rural divide.94
The Populists discovered that their proposals were generally ignored by the two
major parties. As a result, as the depression of the 1890s worsened, they mobilized
In the face of new
economic realities, both
farmers and workers
sought to organize to
protect their interests.
By 1875, some 30,000
local granges, with a
combined membership
of 2.5 million,
organized farmers and
farm laborers.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 103 03/01/17 12:14 PM
104 Chapter 4
around the idea of a third party that would unite farmers and other laboring classes
across regions and races. The new party enjoyed success in the elections of 1892 and
1894, sometimes on its own and in other states by “fusing” with the minority party. Yet,
“fusion” became the party’s undoing. First, its success in unseating Democrats in the
South and Republicans in the West supported accusations that political intrigue—not
reform—was the party’s real purpose. Finally, in 1896, pressure to fuse with the Dem-
ocrats in supporting William Jennings Bryan for the presidency led the party to lose its
independent identity.
Figure 4.2 The vanguard of anarchy. In the wake of layoffs and wage reductions, the
American Railway Union struck the nation’s railroads in 1894. Elite publications like Harper’s
Review saw the strike as a threat to civilization and labeled its leaders as anarchists and
revolutionaries.
‘%
5+
‘,
, ?
. ”
. (
?
$&
&$
“.
”
&&
+!
),
3
‘$
!#
,
4
3)
%#
%5
‘”
3)
,
-$
*$
,$
%!
, &
$1
‘”
‘6
%
0
(%
!5
‘+
,,
, &
(-
7,
28
9-
@=
8@
=@
.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 104 03/01/17 12:14 PM
The Civil War and After: 1860–1900 105
Although they failed as a political party, Populism put forward a number
of reform ideas that were picked up by later reform movements. A gradu-
ated income tax, railroad regulation, and the direct election of senators were
among many proposals that came to fruition during the 20th century.
ConClusion
If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep during the Civil War and awakened at the end of
the 19th century, he could hardly have been more astounded. A rural society of isolated
communities had given way to a dynamic, industrial society increasingly dominated by
cities.
The social welfare realities at the turn of the 20th century, too, would have seemed
new and strange. The hope in institutionalization that had animated reform before
the Civil War was nearly spent by the turn of the century, even though the institu-
tions remained, now generally warehouses for unwanted and feared populations. The
dynamic public sector of the Civil War years also had generally disappeared. The most
visible federal role in welfare at the turn of the century was the Civil War pension sys-
tem, which would continue to support large numbers of older Americans for decades to
come. Instead, the social welfare scene of the 1890s was dominated by voluntary social
welfare organizations, often staffed and led by middle-class women.
Yet, change was in the air. The depression of the 1890s had sparked a widespread
rural rebellion of smaller farmers—the Populist movement. Although Populism had
fallen apart after its electoral defeat in 1896, its core message—that democracy had a
role in improving the lives of ordinary citizens—was not totally lost. As the new century
began, new social movements would inf luence the course of American history and the
efforts of government and professionals to address the problems of poverty, exclusion,
and disaffiliation.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 105 03/01/17 12:14 PM
106
The Civil War and After
Three documents are used to highlight the direction of social welfare developments from
the close of the Civil War to the turn of the century. The documents include the State of
New York’s An Act to Provide for the Relief of Indigent Soldiers, Sailors and Marines, and the
Families of Those Deceased (1887); an excerpt f rom Josephine Shaw Lowell’s address, The
Economic and Moral Effects of Public Outdoor Relief, delivered at the National Conference of
Charities and Corrections (1890); and An Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Laborers to
the United States, September 1888, along with its October 1888 amendment. They were
a follow-up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The immigration legislation represents a
markedly different response to perceived social problems in the post–Civil War era.
New York’s legislation to provide relief for indigent servicemen and their families is
an example of one state’s special attention and positive response to the claims of veter-
ans. The legislation provides state funding for relief, a shift f rom strict adherence to local
responsibility for relief giving and from the requirement of local residence. Need was to
be determined and relief was to be administered by designated relief committees in each
post of the GAR, a veterans’ organization. Placement of indigent servicemen or their
families in an almshouse without the consent of the GAR was prohibited. By definition,
veterans were not paupers and not subject to the ordinary conditions prescribed for han-
dling the needs of the poor.
However, other Americans in need were viewed with more caution, their worthi-
ness not above suspicion. The excerpt from Lowell’s address is significant for its demon-
stration of the current view of mankind and the poor. During the postwar era, an earlier
view of man’s perfectibility gave way to a view of the corruptibility of the individual.
Social Darwinism supported a theory of social evolution that permitted the abandon-
ment of those who could not sustain themselves or add to the resources of society. Low-
ell fell short of arguing for complete abandonment, admitting that some persons do
“need relief (that is, help) in their own homes.” What she could not accept was the use of
public funds for relief giving, seeing no good in such giving for the community at large.
In fact, she saw an “inverse ratio between the welfare of the mass of people and the dis-
tribution of [public] relief.” The moral weakening of the individual who received public
relief led to a weakening of people in the larger society.
Lowell was a leader among those who sought to apply scientific methodology to
philanthropy. She was a major supporter of a new delivery system, the Charity Organiza-
tion Society, whose original intent was to use volunteer counseling services in an attempt
to avoid the necessity for cash relief.
While veterans were thought to have made their contribution to society and be enti-
tled to aid and cash assistance when in need, and other needy Americans were perhaps
potentially productive and therefore to be encouraged with services and advice, Chinese
workers were regarded very differently. No longer needed as workers on the railroads,
they were deemed a threat to other laborers. Since they were distrusted because of
their different race, religion, culture, and language, the solution was seen as avoidance.
In 1882, legislation was passed that permitted no further immigration of workers f rom
China. The legislation of 1888 went further and moved to reduce the number of Chinese
in the United States.
DOCUMENTS
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 106 03/01/17 12:14 PM
107
During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, immigration and
suffrage were largely uncontrolled by federal activity, and in practice states had consider-
able freedom to regulate the right to vote as well as the right to hold office. This changed
after the Civil War. The federal government moved to define its control over who came
to this country and who became a citizen. In this process, it established legal rights for
African Americans, but it continued to deny them to Native Americans and introduced
new restrictions against immigrants. The most severe immigration and naturalization
discrimination was practiced against those from Asia. The Chinese exclusion acts wanted
to accomplish exactly that. Legislation was passed in 1882 and amended several times
after that. The September 1888 legislation barred new laborers f rom arriving, although
it permitted “Chinese officials, teachers, students, merchants, or travelers for pleasure or
curiosity” to enter. Additionally, it prohibited any Chinese laborer in the United States
f rom returning once having left “unless he has a lawful wife, child, or parent in the
United States, or property therein of the value of one thousand dollars.” One month
later, it became illegal for “any Chinese laborer ././. who shall depart ././. to return.”
In terms of social welfare, veterans were thought to be very worthy; they had done
valued work. The American poor were somewhat worthy; they might be helped to
become independent members of society. But Chinese workers were feared; they were
to be excluded not only from social welfare, but also from any participation in the life of
the country.
LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH SESSION
January 4–May 26, 1887
Chap. 706
AN ACT to provide for the relief of indigent soldiers, sailors and marines,
and the families of those deceased.
P”,,+- June 25, 1887; three-fifths being present.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
S+(#$%! 1. For the relief of indigent and suffering soldiers, sailors and marines, who
served in the war of the rebellion, and their families, or the families of those deceased,
who need assistance in any town or city in this State, the proper auditing board of such
city or town may provide such sum or sums of money as may be necessary, to be drawn
upon by the commander and quartermaster of any post of the Grand Army of the
Republic in said city or town, upon the recommendation of the relief committee of said
post, in the same manner as is now provided by law for the relief of the poor, provided
said soldier, sailor and marine, or the families of those deceased, are and have been resi-
dent of the State for one year or more, and the orders of said commander and quarter-
master shall be the proper vouchers for the expenditure of said sum or sums of money.
§ 2. In case there be no post of the Grand Army of the Republic in any town in
which it is necessary that such relief, as provided for in section one, should be granted,
the town board of said town shall accept and pay the orders drawn as hereinbefore pro-
vided, by the commander and quartermaster of any post of the Grand Army of the
Republic, located in the nearest city or town, upon the recommendation of a relief com-
mittee, who shall be residents of the said town in which the relief may be furnished.
Town or city auditing
boards may grant relief to
indigent soldiers, etc.
Expenditure, how
supervised.
To whom, relief may be
granted.
Relief committee in certain
towns.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 107 03/01/17 12:14 PM
108
§ 3. Upon the passage of this act the commander of any post of the Grand Army
of the Republic, which shall undertake the relief of indigent veterans and their families,
as hereinbefore provided, before the acts of said commander and quartermaster may
become operative in any city or town, shall file with the city clerk of such city, or town
clerk of such town, a notice that said post intends to undertake such relief as is provided
by this act. Such notice shall contain the names of the relief committee of said post in
such city or town, and of the commander and other officers of said post. And the com-
mander of said post shall annually thereafter, during the month of October, file a similar
notice with said city and town clerks, and also a detailed statement of the amount of
relief furnished during the preceding year, with the names of all persons to whom such
relief shall have been furnished, together with a brief statement in each case, f rom the
relief committee upon whose recommendation the orders were drawn.
§ 4. The said auditing board of any city or town may require of the said commander
and quartermaster of any post of the Grand Army of the Republic, undertaking such
relief in said city or town, a bond with sufficient and satisfactory sureties for the faithful
and honest discharge of their duties under this act.
§ 5. Superintendents and overseers of the poor are hereby prohibited f rom send-
ing indigent soldiers, sailors, and marines, (or their families, or the families of those
deceased), to any alms-house (or orphan asylum) without the full concurrence and con-
sent of the commander and relief committee of the post of the Grand Army of the
Republic, having jurisdiction as provided in sections one and two. Indigent veterans with
families, and the families of deceased veterans, shall, whenever practicable, be provided
for and relieved at their homes in such city or town in which they shall have a residence,
in the manner provided in sections one and two of this act. Indigent or disabled veterans
of the classes specified in section one, who are not insane, and who have no families
or f riends with whom they may be domiciled, may be sent to any soldiers’ home. Any
indigent veteran of either of the classes specified in section one, or any member of the
family of any living or deceased veteran of said classes, who may be insane, shall, upon
recommendation of the commander and relief committee of such post of the Grand
Army of the Republic, within the jurisdiction of which the case may occur, be sent to
any insane asylum, and cared for as provided for indigent insane in section twenty-six of
chapter one hundred and thirty-five of the laws of eighteen hundred and forty-two.
§ 6. This act shall take effect immediately.
* * *
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES
AND CORRECTIONS
1890
THE ECONOMIC AND MORAL EFFECTS OF
PUBLIC OUTDOOR RELIEF.
BY MRS. CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL, OF NEW YORK.
I have not been able to assent to the report of the Chairman of the Committee on
Indoor and Outdoor Relief, only because, as it seems to me, he does not draw the dis-
tinction which is necessary between public and private relief.
I admit, of course, that there are persons who need relief (that is, help) in their own
homes, and that both Pitt’s argument and Mr. Sanborn’s argument apply to such: “Great
Notice to city or town
clerk, of taking charge of
relief.
Annual statement as to
relief, etc., how filed.
Bond of relief committee.
Duties of overseers and
superintendents of poor,
as to committals to alms-
house, etc.
Outdoor or home relief, to
be given when possible.
Soldiers’ Home, relief at.
Care of indigent insane
veterans.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 108 03/01/17 12:14 PM
109
care should be taken, in relieving their distresses, not to throw them into the great class
of vagrant and homeless poor.” Such people, however, are, to my mind, not proper sub-
jects for public relief at all; for what is public relief, and upon what grounds is it to be
justified? Public relief is money paid by the bulk of the community (every community
is of course composed mainly of those who are working hard to obtain a livelihood) to
certain members of the community, not, however, paid voluntarily or spontaneously by
those interested in the individuals receiving it, but paid by public officers f rom money
raised by taxation. The only justification for the expenditure of public money (money
raised by taxation) is that it is necessary for the public good. That certain persons need
certain things is no reason for supplying them with those things f rom the public funds.
Before this can be rightly done, it is necessary to prove that it is good for the community
at large that it should be done. . . .
The practice of any community in this particular is a matter of great importance, for
there can be no question that there is an inverse ratio between the welfare of the mass of the
people and the distribution of relief. What some one has called “the fatal ease of living with-
out work and the terrible difficulty of living by work” are closely interrelated as cause and
effect; and, if you will permit me, I will try to show by a short allegory what this relation is.
Once upon a time there lived in a valley, called the Valley of Industry, a people who
were happy and industrious. All the goods of this life were supplied to them by exhaust-
less subterranean springs of water, which they pumped up into a great reservoir on the
top of a neighboring hill, the Hill of Prosperity, f rom which it f lowed down, each man
receiving what he himself pumped up, by a small pipe which led into his own house, a
moderate amount of pumping on the part of every one keeping the reservoir well filled.
Finally, a few of the inhabitants of the Valley, more keen than the rest, ref lected
that it was unnecessary to weary themselves with pumping, so long as every one else
kept at work. The Hill of Prosperity looked very attractive; and they therefore mounted
to a convenient point, and put a large pipe into the reservoir, through which they drew
off copious supplies of water without further trouble. The number of those who gave
up pumping and withdrew to the Hill was at first so small that the loss did not add very
much to the work of the mass of the people, who still kept to their pumping, and it did
not occur to them to complain; but those who could followed the others up the Hill
until it was all occupied, and by this time, although those who remained in the Valley did
find their pumping a good deal harder than it was when all who used the water joined
in the work, yet every one had become so accustomed to some people using the reser-
voir water without doing any pumping that it had come to be considered all right, and
still there were no complaints. Meanwhile, the people on the Hill of Prosperity having
nothing to do but enjoy the prospect, some of them began to explore the neighboring
country, and soon discovered another valley at the foot of the Hill, running parallel with
the Valley of Industry, and called the Valley of Idleness, and in it were a few people who
had wandered f rom the former Valley (for the two were connected at the farther end),
and who were living in abject misery, with no water, and apparently no means of getting
any, so long as they stayed where they were. The people from the Hill of Prosperity were
very much shocked at the suffering they found. “What a shame!” they cried. “The poor
things have no water! We have plenty and to spare, so let us lead a pipe from the reservoir
down into their Valley.” No sooner said than done: the pipe was carried into the Valley
of Idleness, and the people were made more comfortable. But as soon as the news was
brought into the Valley of Industry, some of the pumpers who were tired or weak, and
some who were only lazy, left their pumping, and hastened into the neighboring Valley,
to enjoy the “free” water; but the pipe was not very large, and soon there was want and
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 109 03/01/17 12:14 PM
110
suffering again, and the people f rom Prosperity Hill were much disturbed, and decided
to lay down another small pipe, which they did. But the result was the same, for the new
supply of water attracted more people f rom the Valley of Industry. And so it went on,
new pipe, more people, new pipe, more people, until the inhabitants of Prosperity Hill
were full of distress about it, and exclaimed, “It seems a hopeless task to try to make
these people happy and comfortable!” And they would have given up in despair, but a
new idea occurred to them; and they said, “They do not seem to know how to take very
good care of their children, and we will therefore take their children f rom them, and
teach them to be comfortable and happy.” So they built large, fine houses for the chil-
dren, and they carried water in large pipes into the houses. And some of them said, “Let
us put faucets, so as to teach them to turn on the water when they need it.” But others
said: “Oh, no! How troublesome it is to have to turn a faucet when you need water! Let
them have it as we do, f ree.” And sometimes one or other would suggest that, perhaps,
after all, it was not quite right to waste so much of the water from the reservoir, and that
the large pipe itself, which supplied the Hill of Prosperity, ought to have some means of
checking the f low; but the answer was, “It is necessary and right that the water should be
wasted; for otherwise the people in the Valley of Industry would have nothing to do, and
they would starve.” Usually, however, the Prosperity Hill people were too much engaged
in taking care of the inhabitants of the Valley of Idleness to give much thought to those
of the Valley of Industry; and their anxiety was quite justified, for they had to keep up a
perpetual watchfulness, the people increasing so fast that it was necessary constantly to
lay more pipe to keep them from the most abject suffering, and even this device never
succeeded for very long, as I have said.
In fact, no one thought much about the Valley of Industry or its people. Those
in the Valley of Idleness only thought of them long enough to ref lect how silly they
were to keep on pumping all the time and making their backs and arms ache, when
they might have water without any exertion, by simply moving into their Valley.
The children born in the Valley of Idleness did not even know there was a Valley of
Industry, or any pumps, or any pumpers, or any reservoir: they thought the water
grew in pipes, and ran out because it was its nature to. As for the people on the
Hill of Prosperity, they were, as we have seen, rather confused in their views in this
particular; and, besides thinking that their waste of the water f rom the reservoir
was what kept the people in the Valley of Industry f rom starving, they used also to
say sometimes: “How good it is for those people to have such nice, steady work to
do! how strong it makes their backs and arms! how it hardens their muscles! What
a nice, independent set of people they are! and what a splendid quantity of pure,
life-giving water they get out of our reservoir!”
Meanwhile, you can imagine, though they could not, that it was rather hard on the
men in the Valley of Industry, not only to have the water they pumped up drawn off at
the top to supply two other communities, but also to have their own ranks thinned and
their work increased by the loss of those who were tempted into the Valley of Idleness,
to live on what the Prosperity Hill people and the Valley of Idleness people like to call
euphemistically “free water,” because they got it f ree, though actually it was not free at
all; for the Valley of Industry people paid for it with their blood and muscle.
I might go on to tell you how the situation was still further complicated and made
harder for them, and indeed for almost everyone, when a few of them obtained control of
the inexhaustible subterranean springs; but here, I think, the allegory may end for the pur-
poses of this Conference, and it seems to me to teach a lesson which we may well heed.
* * *
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 110 03/01/17 12:14 PM
111
An Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Laborers
to the United States
September 13, 1888
Fiftieth Congress, Session 1
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That f rom and after the date of the exchange of ratifications of
the pending treaty between the United States of America and His Imperial Majesty the
Emperor of China, signed on the twelfth day of March, anno Domini eighteen hundred
and eighty-eight, it shall be unlawful for any Chinese person, whether a subject of China
or of any other power, to enter the United States, except as hereinafter provided.
S+(. 2. That Chinese officials, teachers, students, merchants, or travelers for pleasure
or curiosity, shall be permitted to enter the United States, but in order to entitle themselves
to do so, they shall first obtain the permission of the Chinese Government, or other Gov-
ernment of which they may at the time be citizens or subjects. Such permission and also
their personal identity shall in such case be evidenced by a certificate to be made out by
the diplomatic representative of the United States in the country, or of the consular repre-
sentative of the United States at the port or place from which the person named therein
comes. The certificate shall contain a full description of such person, of his age, height,
and general physical features, and shall state his former and present occupation or profes-
sion and place of residence, and shall be made out in duplicate. One copy shall be delivered
open to the person named and described, and the other copy shall be sealed up and deliv-
ered by the diplomatic or consular officer as aforesaid to the captain of the vessel on which
the person named in the certificate sets sail for the United States, together with the sealed
certificate, which shall be addressed to the collector of customs at the port where such
person is to land. There shall be delivered to the aforesaid captain a letter f rom the con-
sular officer addressed to the collector of customs aforesaid, and stating that said consular
officer has on a certain day delivered to the said captain a certificate of the right of the
person named therein to enter the United States as a Chinese official, or other exempted
person, as the case may be. And any captain who lands or attempts to land a Chinese per-
son in the United States, without having in his possession a sealed certificate, as required in
this section, shall be liable to the penalties prescribed in section nine of this act.
S+(. 3. That the provisions of this act shall apply to all persons of the Chinese race,
whether subjects of China or other foreign power, excepting Chinese diplomatic or con-
sular officers and their attendants; and the words “Chinese laborers,” whenever used
in this act, shall be construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese
employed in mining.
S+(. 4. That the master of any vessel arriving in the United States f rom any foreign
port or place with any Chinese passengers on board shall, when he delivers his manifest
of cargo, and if there be no cargo, when he makes legal entry of his vessel, and before
landing or permitting to land any Chinese person (unless a diplomatic or consular officer,
or attendant of such officer), deliver to the collector of customs of the district in which
the vessel shall have arrived the sealed certificates and letters as aforesaid, and a separate
list of all Chinese persons taken on board of his vessel at any foreign port or place, and
of all such persons on board at the time of arrival as aforesaid. Such list shall show the
names of such persons and other particulars as shown by their open certificates, or other
evidences required by this act, and such list shall be sworn to by the master in the man-
ner required by law in relation to the manifest of the cargo.
Chinese laborers. Immi-
gration prohibited. Post,
p. 504.
Classes permitted to enter.
Certificates to be obtained.
Penalty for violation.
Scope of act.
Master to deliver certif-
icates, etc., on arrival in
United States.
List to be delivered.
Contents of list.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 111 03/01/17 12:14 PM
112
The master of any vessel as aforesaid shall not permit any Chinese diplomatic or
consular officer or attendant of such officer to land without having first been informed
by the collector of customs of the official character of such officer or attendant. Any
refusal or willful neglect of the master of any vessel to comply with the provisions of
this section shall incur the same penalties and forfeitures as are provided for a refusal or
neglect to report and deliver a manifest of the cargo.
S+(. 5. That from and after the passage of this act, no Chinese laborer in the United
States shall be permitted, after having left, to return thereto, except under the conditions
stated in the following sections.
S+(. 6. That no Chinese laborer within the purview of the preceding section shall
be permitted to return to the United States unless he has a lawful wife, child, or parent
in the United States, or property therein of the value of one thousand dollars, or debts
of like amount due him and pending settlement. The marriage to such wife must have
taken place at least a year prior to the application of the laborer for a permit to return to
the United States, and must have been followed by the continuous cohabitation of the
parties as man and wife.
If the right to return be claimed on the ground of property or of debts, it must
appear that the property is bona fide and not colorably acquired for the purpose of evad-
ing this act, or that the debts are unascertained and unsettled, and not promissory notes
or other similar acknowledgments of ascertained liability.
S+(. 7. That a Chinese person claiming the right to be permitted to leave the United
States and return thereto on any of the grounds stated in the foregoing section, shall apply
to the collector of customs of the district from which he wishes to depart at least a month
prior to the time of his departure, and shall make on oath before the said collector a full
statement descriptive of his family, or property, or debts, as the case may be, and shall fur-
nish to said collector such proofs of the facts entitling him to return as shall be required by
the rules and regulations prescribed from time to time by the Secretary of the Treasury,
and for any false swearing in relation thereto he shall incur the penalties of perjury. He
shall also permit the collector to take a full description of his person, which description
the collector shall retain and mark with a number. And if the collector, after hearing the
proofs and investigating all the circumstances of the case, shall decide to issue a certificate
of return, he shall at such time and place as he may designate, sign and give to the person
applying a certificate containing the number of the description last aforesaid, which shall
be the sole evidence given to such person of his right to return. If this last named certifi-
cate be transferred, it shall become void, and the person to whom it was given shall forfeit
his right to return to the United States. The right to return under the said certificate shall
be limited to one year; but it may be extended for an additional period, not to exceed a
year, in cases where, by reason of sickness or other cause of disability beyond his control,
the holder thereof shall be rendered unable sooner to return, which facts shall be fully
reported to and investigated by the consular representative of the United States at the
port or place from which such laborer departs for the United States, and certified by such
representative of the United States to the satisfaction of the collector of customs at the
port where such Chinese person shall seek to land in the United States, such certificate
to be delivered by said representative to the master of the vessel on which he departs
for the United States. And no Chinese laborer shall be permitted to re-enter the United
States without producing to the proper officer of the customs at the port of such entry
the return certificate herein required. A Chinese laborer possessing a certificate under this
section shall be admitted to the United States only at the port f rom which he departed
therefrom, and no Chinese person, except Chinese diplomatic or consular officers, and
their attendants, shall be permitted to enter the United States except at the ports of San
Diplomatic and consular
officers.
Penalty.
Return of laborers
prohibited.
Conditions for permission
to return.
Property requisites.
Identification of Chinese
wishing to return.
Certificate.
Transfer void.
Extension of period.
No entry without
certificate.
Chinese permitted to land
only at certain ports.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 112 03/01/17 12:14 PM
113
Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Port Townsend, or such
other ports as may be designated by the Secretary of the Treasury.
S+(. 8. That the Secretary of the Treasury shall be, and he hereby is, authorized and
empowered to make and prescribe, and f rom time to time to change and amend such
rules and regulations, not in conf lict with this act, as he may deem necessary and proper
to conveniently secure to such Chinese persons as are provided for in articles second and
third of the said treaty between the United States and the Empire of China, the rights
therein mentioned, and such as shall also protect the United States against the coming
and transit of persons not entitled to the benefit of the provisions of said articles. And
he is hereby further authorized and empowered to prescribe the form and substance of
certificates to be issued to Chinese laborers under and in pursuance of the provisions of
said articles, and prescribe the form of the record of such certificate and of the proceed-
ings for issuing the same, and he may require the deposit, as a part of such record, of the
photograph of the party to whom any such certificate shall be issued.
S+(. 9. That the master of any vessel who shall knowingly bring within the United
States on such vessel, and land, or attempt to land, or permit to be landed any Chinese
laborer or other Chinese person, in contravention of the provisions of this act, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished with a
fine of not less than five hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars, in the dis-
cretion of the court, for every Chinese laborer or other Chinese person so brought, and
may also be imprisoned for a term of not less than one year, nor more than five years, in
the discretion of the court.
S+(. 10. That the foregoing section shall not apply to the case of any master whose
vessel shall come within the jurisdiction of the United States in distress or under stress of
weather, or touching at any port of the United States on its voyage to any foreign port
or place. But Chinese laborers or persons on such vessel shall not be permitted to land,
except in case of necessity, and must depart with the vessel on leaving port.
S+(. 11. That any person who shall knowingly and falsely alter or substitute any
name for the name written in any certificate herein required, or forge such certificate,
or knowingly utter any forged or f raudulent certificate, or falsely personate any person
named in any such certificate, and any person other than the one to whom a certificate
was issued who shall falsely present any such certificate, shall be deemed guilty of a mis-
demeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not exceeding one thou-
sand dollars, and imprisoned in a penitentiary for a term of not more than five years.
S+(. 12. That before any Chinese passengers are landed f rom any such vessel, the
collector, or his deputy, shall proceed to examine such passengers, comparing the certif-
icates with the list and with the passengers; and no passenger shall be allowed to land in
the United States f rom such vessel in violation of law; and the collector shall in person
decide all questions in dispute with regard to the right of any Chinese passenger to enter
the United States, and his decision shall be subject to review by the Secretary of the Trea-
sury, and not otherwise.
Sec. 13. That any Chinese person, or person of Chinese descent, found unlawfully
in the United States, or its Territories, may be arrested upon a warrant issued upon a
complaint, under oath, filed by any party on behalf of the United States, by any justice,
judge, or commissioner of any United States court, returnable before any justice, judge,
or commissioner of a United States court, or before any United States court, and when
convicted, upon a hearing, and found and adjudged to be one not lawfully entitled to be
or remain in the United States, such person shall be removed from the United States to
the country whence he came. But any such Chinese person convicted before a commis-
sioner of a United States court may, within ten days from such conviction, appeal to the
Secretary of the Treasury
to prescribe regulations,
etc.
Form of certificate, etc.
Vessels in distress.
Punishment for counter-
feiting certificate, etc.
Landing passengers.
Arrest of Chinese unlaw-
fully in the United States.
Punishment to master of
vessel unlawfully bringing
Chinamen.
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 113 03/01/17 12:14 PM
114
judge of the district court for the district. A certified copy of the judgment shall be the
process upon which said removal shall be made, and it may be executed by the marshal
of the district, or any officer having authority of a marshal under the provisions of this
section. And in all such cases the person who brought or aided in bringing such per-
son into the United States shall be liable to the Government of the United States for all
necessary expenses incurred in such investigation and removal: and all peace officers of
the several States and Territories of the United States are hereby invested with the same
authority in reference to carrying out the provisions of this act, as a marshal or deputy
marshal of the United States, and shall be entitled to like compensation, to be audited
and paid by the same officers.
Sec. 14. That the preceding sections shall not apply to Chinese diplomatic or con-
sular officers or their attendants, who shall be admitted to the United States under spe-
cial instructions of the Treasury Department, without production of other evidence
than that of personal identity.
S+(. 15. That the act entitled “An act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to
Chinese,” approved May sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-two, and an act to amend
said act approved July fifth, eighteen hundred and eighty-four, are hereby repealed to take
effect upon the ratification of the pending treaty as provided in section one of this act.
Approved, September 13, 1888.
* * *
An Act, a Supplement . . .
October 1, 1888
Fiftieth Congress, Session 1
C)”3. 1064.—An act, a supplement to an act entitled “An act to execute certain
treaty stipulations relating to Chinese,” approved the sixth day of May eighteen hundred
and eighty-two.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act, it shall be unlawful for any
Chinese laborer who shall at any time heretofore have been, or who may now or hereaf-
ter be, a resident within the United States, and who shall have departed, or shall depart,
theref rom, and shall not have returned before the passage of this act, to return to, or
remain in, the United States.
S+(. 2. That no certificates of identity provided for in the fourth and fifth sections of the
act to which this is a supplement shall hereafter be issued; and every certificate heretofore
issued in pursuance thereof, is hereby declared void and of no effect, and the Chinese laborer
claiming admission by virtue thereof shall not be permitted to enter the United States.
S+(. 3. That all the duties prescribed, liabilities penalties and forfeitures imposed, and
the powers conferred by the second, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, sections of the act to
which this is a supplement are hereby extended and made applicable to the provisions of
this act.
S+(. 4. That all such part or parts of the act to which this is a supplement as are
inconsistent herewith are hereby repealed.
Approved, October 1, 1888.
Appeal.
Punishment of person
aiding.
Diplomatic and consular
officers.
Prior acts to be repealed.
Vol. 22, p. 58.
Vol. 23, p. 115.
October 1, 1888.
Exclusion of Chinese
laborers. Vol. 22, p. 59.
Ante, p. 476.
No certificates for return
to be issued.
Penalties.
Repeal provisions.
?
M04_STER9913_09_SE_C04.indd 114 03/01/17 12:14 PM
115
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Summarize the major shifts in
America s economic and social
structure during the early 0th century.
• E plain how maternalism was a
successful strategy for e panding social
welfare during the rogressive Era.
• Compare the success of reform
movements before orld ar I with
their decline during and after the war.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Changing Economic and
Demographic ealities 11
An Urban and Industrial Society 116
Poverty and the Working Class 118
African Americans, Native
Americans, and Immigrants 119
Innovations in Social elfare 1
Regulating Working Conditions 124
Expanding Public Welfare 126
Protecting Vulnerable Families 128
Social Work and the Black
Population 132
The Social Welfare of Veterans 133
Professionalizing Social Work 134
Social Movements in the Early 0th
Century 1
Coalitions for Reform 136
Regulating Business 138
Organized Labor 138
Women, Work, and Suffrage 139
The End of Reform 141
DOCUMENTS: rogress and
eform 1
The Family and the Woman’s Wage,
1909 144
Funds to Parents Act, Illinois,
1911 146
Public Pensions to Widows, 1912 147
5
Progress and Reform:
1900–1930
The rapid social and economic changes of the late 19th century had
caught many Americans by surprise. As the new century dawned,
they felt like strangers in their own land. In the countryside, the cre-
ation of a global market for agricultural goods meant that the price
of wheat in Kansas was tied to not only the success of the year’s
harvest, but how well farmers in Canada and Australia did as well.
In the cities, a predominantly native-born, white middle class, and
a foreign-born working class studied one another across barriers of
social class, language, and culture. But the striking economic reality
of the era was the emergence of economic giants: trusts, monopo-
lies, and corporations.
Over the first 30 years of the 20th century, Americans f rom all
walks of life tried to come to terms with these changes and their
implications for their welfare. It was an era of experimentation and
innovation, but ultimately, most of the reform efforts of the era
fell short of their goals. Although the motivation for reform was in
abundant supply, Progressive reforms lacked two critical ingredients
for success: ideas and institutions.
Intellectually, Americans lacked a set of coherent ideas for
changing the economic and social structure. Many of their ideas
!”
#
$%
#
$&
‘”
%
($
)”
, *
+$
),
%
–
*(
.,
./
+0
*(
%
1$
2$
%$
.)
, !
$3
+0
+4
.5
&
.)
/+
“%
%,
!
&-
1$
/-
)&
!&
-6
77
87
.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 115 02/01/17 1:37 PM
116 Chapter 5
looked to the past, to returning to a society dominated by small-town values. Others, like
the creation of a socialist commonwealth that would eliminate capitalism, never received
serious consideration by most Americans.
The institutional realities of the early 20th century, too, could not support serious
reform. The forces that were reshaping economic and social life were national and
international in scope. Yet, most Americans owed their allegiance to social institu-
tions that were local or sectarian. Fraternal organizations, political parties, and labor
unions—even if they were affiliated with national federations—were effective only in
addressing local issues.
If reform were to succeed, it would need to reach across the rigid cultural barri-
ers that dominated American society in the early 20th century: the lines between the
countryside and the city, between workers and the middle class, between foreigners and
native born, and between men and women.
The Progressives made a start at building the ideas and institutions that could ulti-
mately reform American society, but it was only a start. Ironically, many of its gains
occurred after the end of the Progressive Era with America’s entry into World War
I.9After the war, the dominant political climate turned more conservative as the culture
sought “100 percent Americanism” and “normalcy.”1 Below the surface, many reform
movements would continue to grow, although their eventual success was years away.
Changing EConomiC and dEmographiC
rEalitiEs
By the 1920s, the United States had become the richest country on earth—a world leader
in farm and manufacturing output. By 1925, it was producing 55 percent of the world’s
iron ore, 66 percent of the steel, 62 percent of the petroleum, 52 percent of the timber,
60 percent of the cotton, 80 percent of the sulfur, and 95 percent of the automobiles.2
An Urban and Industrial Society
Revolutions in technology and communication began to knit America into a single coun-
try. The American f rontier had disappeared only in the last decade of the 19th century.
By the turn of the 20th century, train lines connected cities and regions. During the 19th
century, most workers walked to work, which meant they needed to live near their jobs.
By the early 20th century, trolley lines and commuter trains made it possible for people
to live in one section of town and work or shop in another. Before the 1920s had ended,
the automobile had become an increasingly common form of transportation, often
accounting for half of a city’s commutes to work.
The telephone had an equally dramatic impact on communications. In 1890, only
about 2 percent of American homes had a telephone. By 1930, 40 percent did. No longer
did it take days or hours to get word across town or across the nation. During the first
three decades of the 20th century, motion pictures and radio improved people’s access to
information and culture from across the world.
Twentieth-century inventions and innovative managerial skills revolutionized indus-
try and agriculture. Between 1899 and 1929, the total output of manufacturing increased
by 273 percent.3 Growth occurred throughout the period but was particularly stimulated
by the war, when new industries were developed to replace the previously imported
German dyes, chemicals, and optical instruments. When European industries were left
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 116 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 117
devastated by World War I, the United States became the leading world supplier of both
manufactured and agricultural products.
The period f rom the turn of the century to the depression of the 1930s saw the
development of new power supplies, greater mechanization, and the spread of “scien-
tific management.” Whereas in 1913, it had taken 14 hours to assemble a car, in 1914,
the job was done in 93 minutes. By 1925, Henry Ford was able to produce an automobile
every 10 seconds.
In agriculture, too, mechanization and new sources of power joined with improved
transportation to increase productivity. The value of agricultural output rose steadily,
due almost entirely to the increase in crop yields per acre. As farming became mecha-
nized, labor was f reed to move into manufacturing. By the end of the period, although
the United States had only 4 percent of the world’s farmers and farm laborers, it was
producing nearly 70 percent of the world’s tobacco, 25 percent of the oats and hay, 20
percent of the wheat, 13 percent of the barley, and 7 percent of the potatoes.4
Technological progress and relatively steady employment levels resulted in a climbing
gross domestic product (GDP), despite brief recessions. GDP stood at about9 $179 billion
in 1900 and $104 billion in 1929. Per capita GDP rose by 73 percent in the first 30 years
of the century.5
The increase in GDP was based on the ability of the agricultural sector to support
a growing urban, industrial population. Between 1900 and 1930, the population of the
United States increased by 47 million to reach 123 million. During these years, the total
number of persons living in urban areas increased by 38 million to a total of 69 million.
Forty percent of the population lived in urban areas in 1900; this rose to 51 percent in
1920 and to 56 percent in 1930.6 The “push” of agricultural mechanization and the “pull”
of manufacturing growth affected both black and white workers. For the United States as
a whole, 27 percent of the black population and 49 percent of the white population lived
in urban areas in 1910; in 1930, 44 percent of the black population and 58 percent of the
white population lived in urban areas.7 Although the Southern African American popu-
lation remained predominantly rural, in the Northern and Western parts of the coun-
try, blacks concentrated in urban areas. The expanding demand for labor and cut-off of
European immigration during World War I accelerated these population shifts.
Between 1920 and 1930, some 6 million people moved from farms to cities, resulting
for the first time in a net loss—of 1.2 million—in farm population. As cities grew, they
became commercial and industrial in character. The number of cities with populations
of at least 100,000 grew from 38 in 1900 to 83 in 1930.8 The growth was haphazard, caus-
ing crowded, unsanitary, tenement living. Families, both f rom abroad and f rom rural
areas, were unfamiliar with urban living. Their social and economic vulnerability pro-
vided opportunities for political leaders—often organized into citywide “machines”—to
gain their allegiance. Although city governments succeeded in addressing many social
problems, especially where building infrastructure could also provide jobs, contracts, and
kickbacks, the social and cultural needs of the urban working class were often ignored.
Growth and change occurred in the organization of industry as well as in its output.
In 1897, about a dozen corporations other than railroads were capitalized at $109million.
By 1903, the number had risen to 300, of which about 50 were capitalized at more than
$50 million; 17 were capitalized at more than $100 million; and one, U.S. Steel, became
the first billion-dollar corporation. These were the years in which some of the largest
trusts in America were formed: Standard Oil, Consolidated Tobacco, and American
Smelting, in addition to U.S. Steel. At the same time, many corporations became “ver-
tically integrated,” controlling their supply of raw materials as well as networks for
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 117 02/01/17 1:37 PM
118 Chapter 5
distributing and selling their goods. The efforts of the federal government to regulate big
business were largely ineffective. By 1914, large corporations dominated anthracite coal,
agricultural machinery, sugar, telephone and telegraph, and public utilities in addition
to iron and steel, railroads, oil, tobacco, and copper. Control of American industry had
shifted from individual owners to a professional managerial class responsible to a board
of directors often controlled by a small and powerful group of investment bankers.9
Paralleling the concentration of corporate power was a concentration of wealth and
income. As the nation prospered, the income and asset growth at the top far exceeded
that of either the middle class or the working class. Andrew Carnegie, for example, was
said to have had an average annual income of more than $10 million—not subject to any
income tax—at the turn of the century. In 1899, the richest 1.6 percent of the population
had received 10.8 percent of national income. By 1910, this had jumped to 19 percent.
The percentage of national income that went to the top 10 percent of the population
increased from 40 to 50 percent between 1910 and 1930.
Rising wages and relatively steady employment meant that working-class incomes
rose, too, but at a much slower rate. A 1915 report by the Commission on Industrial Rela-
tions took the critical question of the era to be, “Have workers received a fair share of
the enormous increase in wealth which has taken place in this country during the period,
as a result largely of their labor?” Its response: “The answer is emphatically—No!”10
Poverty and the Working Class
The commission’s report pointed out that during 1890–1912, personal wealth had
increased 188 percent, but the aggregate income of wage earners in manufacturing,
mining, and transportation had risen only 95 percent. The wage earner’s share of the
net product in manufacturing had actually declined. The commission estimated that to
achieve a minimum decency level, an average family of 5.6 members required an annual
income of $700. Because 79 percent of the country’s fathers earned less than $700 a
year, earnings from other family members were necessary to sustain a family. Although
reformers railed against child labor, many low-income parents were moved more by eco-
nomic necessity than by moral injunctions. The Census Bureau reported that 1,750,000
children between 10 and 15 years of age were gainfully employed in 1900; by 1910, this
number had dropped to 1,600,000. In 1930, however, the figure still stood at 667,000.11
The report of the Commission on Industrial Relations concluded that, despite the
labor of wives and children, and the widespread practice of taking in boarders and lodg-
ers, 50 to 66 percent of working-class families were poor and that a third lived in “abject
poverty.” Other estimates confirmed the judgment of poverty and risk. Robert Hunter,
a social worker writing in 1904, estimated the poverty population at 10 million. Father
John A. Ryan, an ethical theorist and economist writing in 1906, found that the average
family needed an annual income of at least $600 and that 60 percent of all wage earners
received less.12 Within the ranks of the working class, as the American Federation of
Labor (AFL) succeeded in unionizing some crafts, dissatisfaction was further aggravated
by the notable difference in payments to skilled and unskilled workers. Each recession
(1910–1911, 1914–1915, 1920–1921) meant increased unemployment and wage cuts,
especially for unskilled workers—largely ex-farmhands, African Americans, and immi-
grants. Indeed, by 1928–1929, social welfare agencies were reporting increased caseloads.
From 1919 to 1929, manufacturing output increased by 53 percent, while the number
of wage earners in manufacturing remained stable.13 Annual real earnings rose and the
length of the workweek fell, so that for the employed it was a prosperous period. A sig-
nificant share of families crossed a watershed. During the late 19th century, a majority of
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 118 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 119
families experienced poverty at some point during its life cycle. As a result, parents formu-
lated strategies—like sending children to work or taking in boarders—as hedges against an
economic emergency. By the early 20th century, the threat of extreme poverty subsided for
two groups—more skilled workers in expanding industries like automobile making, and
white-collar workers in service industries. As a result, many of these families shifted to new
family strategies—including prolonging children’s education and practicing contraception.
The pre–World War I period was one of prosperity marked by rising farm income.
The closing of the f rontier, however, meant rising land prices. This, combined with ris-
ing costs of mechanization, made easy access to low-cost credit to buy land and machin-
ery a major issue for most farmers. For the marginal farmer, land became more and
more difficult to acquire. As the average size of farms started to grow, farm tenancy,
already prevalent in the South, began to spread to the Midwest. In 1900, 35 percent of
the nation’s farms were tenant operated; by 1930, this had risen to 42 percent. For black
farmers in the South, the figure reached 79 percent in 1930. The demands of World War
I had led to an overextension of agriculture. The debt burden, cutthroat competition,
and declining profits pushed the farm sector into depression before the slowdown hit
industry. Between 1919 and 1929, the number of farms actually declined.14
African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants
The well-being of African Americans in the early 20th century was worse than at any
time since the end of slavery. With the end of Reconstruction, African Americans had
lost any real political power; they had been abandoned to the “oppression of those who
had formerly exercised unlimited domination” over them. They still retained some of
the political and civil rights they had won after the Civil War.15
The Populist revolt of the 1890s created fear among the white elite, however, that
an alliance of poor whites and blacks might challenge their power. In the early years of
the 20th century, Southern states moved to pass Jim Crow laws that excluded African
Americans f rom voting or serving on juries, segregated schools and public accommo-
dations, and provided economic elites with even more power with which to control
black workers.16
The segregation and suppression of Jim Crow was given judicial respectability by
the Supreme Court’s approval in 1896 of the “separate but equal” doctrine in the Plessy !v.
Ferguson case.17 Rationalization of the necessity for segregation was epitomized by the
widespread acceptance of D.9W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, in which freed
blacks were stereotyped as cruel, vengeful rulers over starving, helpless whites and as
“racially incapable of understanding, sharing, or contributing to Americanism.”18 In this
atmosphere, Booker T. Washington’s belief that Af rican Americans should focus on
acquiring skills and better work habits found support among whites, who gained com-
fort and conviction from the seeming acquiescence of the country’s outstanding Negro
leader—the founder of Tuskegee Institute—in policies of social segregation and political
cooperation. Washington wrote:
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social
equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privi-
leges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather
than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of
the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privi-
leges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the
exercise of these privileges.19
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 119 02/01/17 1:37 PM
120 Chapter 5
Progressivism—especially in the South—was tied to efforts to restrict the
rights of Af rican Americans. Halting efforts by Populists to forge a bira-
cial alliance were countered by moves toward “honest government” that
included restrictions on the f ranchise.20 Sunk in the tenancy-mortgage
morass of the sharecropper and crop-lien systems that kept them in per-
petual debt and subjected to lynching and harassment, the black population
began to migrate to urban areas. In 1900, there were only 2 million blacks
living in cities. The largest single group was in Washington, DC, Baltimore,
New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York each had more than 60,000 black residents.21
Spurred by the labor demands of World War I, the net migration of blacks to Northern
states amounted to 426,000 between 1910 and 1920 and jumped to 713,000 during the
next decade.22
The beginning of the f light from the South coincided with a period of dramatically
increased labor productivity, as mass production techniques and assembly lines were
introduced. But for blacks forced off the farms and trying to gain entry into the labor
market, times were always hard. Although there were not enough black migrants in the
cities for them to have political or economic clout, their numbers were sufficient to fos-
ter white hostility, both because of competition with whites for jobs and because of their
use, along with immigrants, as strikebreakers in labor disputes. Discrimination domi-
nated white–black relations, and blacks were successfully excluded f rom the ranks of
organized labor. Indeed, African Americans were even excluded from unskilled factory
jobs in most cities, even though these jobs were near the bottom of the occupational
ladder (see Figure 5.1).
P
er
ce
nt
in
m
an
uf
ac
tu
ri
ng
Atlanta, GA
Baltimore, MD
Chicago, IL
New Orleans, LA
New York-Northeastern
Philadelphia, PA/NJ
Pittsburgh, PA
St. Louis, MO-IL
W
ashington, DC/MD/VA
20
15
10
5
0
Race
Other races
African American
Representative metro areas
Figure 5.1 Racial discrimination in manufacturing jobs. African Americans migrated from
rural to urban areas during the early years of the 20th century; yet, they continued to face
severe discrimination. In most cities, even factory employment was closed to them.
Source: U.S. Census 1910, author’s calculation
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 120 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 121
A new feature of African American life in Northern cities was residential segrega-
tion. In the South, African Americans typically lived in small towns on isolated farms.
In the North, white residents and landlords conspired to push most black residents
into small, overcrowded enclaves. Yet, the growth of the black population in many
cities pushed black families to seek housing outside their neighborhoods. In response
to the expanding black sections of Baltimore, the city council passed the nation’s first
residential segregation plan in 1910. Clashes between whites and blacks over maintain-
ing the color line resulted in f requent riots, the most notorious of which took place in
Chicago in 1919.
The black population was generally unaffected by reform activities and the social wel-
fare benefits that resulted from them. In an era marked by economic progress and social
mobility, this group remained poor and powerless. More social legislation aiding and pro-
tecting the working class was passed during the Progressive Era than had been passed in any
previous century. For the most part, however, legislation affecting the labor of women and
children, workmen’s compensation, regulation of hours and wages, and industrial safety all
applied to industries in which black participation was minimal. This fact eluded social wel-
fare reformers who tended to view the problems of all minorities as coextensive with the
problems of immigrants. Despite periodic race riots, the relatively small number of blacks in
the cities of the North (where most agitation for social reform was concentrated) and their
segregation from the mainstream of economic, political, and social life made it possible to
ignore their special problems. When reformers did focus on the needs of African Ameri-
cans, they often provided help on a segregated basis. For example, in Chicago, philanthro-
pists funded social services in the black ghetto, so African Americans would not create white
reprisals by seeking help at settlement houses in white neighborhoods.23
For Native Americans, too, conditions improved very slowly. They were poor, largely
uneducated, and deprived of citizenship and suff rage. Of those living on reservations,
almost three-quarters of the children received no schooling. Much of the education that
occurred was in boarding schools, which alienated the children and left them prepared
for very little. Not until 1928 were federal funds increased, and not until the mid-1930s
did states receive special funds to provide public education for Native Americans.24 Only
in 1924 were Native Americans recognized as citizens of the United States of America.25
The first three decades of the 20th century marked a high-water mark for the f low
of European immigrants to the United States and the imposition of rigid controls on that
f low. During the depression of the 1890s, less than half a million immigrants entered the
United States each year, but with the return of prosperity, their numbers swelled to a
peak of 1.2 million in 1907, a number that was not surpassed until the 1990s.
Not only did the number of immigrants increase, but their composition changed
as well. Between 1820 and 1899, 18.7 million immigrants entered the United States,
a bit more than 233,000 per year. In the next 15 years, 13.4 million came, nearly
900,000 per year. Three countries had accounted for a majority of immigrants during
the 19th9century—Britain, Ireland, and Germany—but during the early years of the
20th century, national backgrounds that had been largely absent entered the United
States in increasing numbers. More than 3 million Italians, 2.6 million Russians (a
majority of whom were Russian Jews), and 1.3 million Hungarians entered the United
States. The number of Poles was large as well, although because they were divided
between the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, we do not have official
figures on their numbers.26
Anti-immigrant sentiment had been present in the United States since the early
Republic, but the new composition of immigrant f lows and the fears and disillusion-
ment of the white Protestant population after World War I propelled a major change in
In the North, white
residents and landlords
conspired to push most
black residents into
small, overcrowded
enclaves. Yet, the
growth of the black
population in many
cities pushed black
families to seek housing
outside their neighbor-
hoods. In response to
the expanding black
sections of Baltimore,
the city council passed
the nation’s first res-
idential segregation
plan in 1910.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 121 02/01/17 1:37 PM
122 Chapter 5
policy. Eventually, nativist sentiment prevailed, and the nation’s immigration laws grew
more restrictive between 1917 and 1924. The 1921 immigration act imposed national
quotas on European immigration that favored Northern and Western Europeans and
those quotas were tightened by the 1924 law. Ref lecting anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish
sentiments of the era, the quotas were intended to slow the immigration rates of south-
ern and eastern Europeans and to limit the total number of foreigners admitted.27
However, despite the constraints of World War I and the legislative
restrictions of the 1920s, the number of foreign born as a percentage of the
total population stayed at 13 to 14 percent—one of seven people were immi-
grants. An even larger number of people had at least one foreign-born par-
ent. Immigrants and their children accounted for more than one-third of the
population. Most—about 75 percent—lived in cities, where rapid population
growth meant a period of booming construction.28
innovations in soCial WElfarE
Middle- and upper-class white women, including the founders of social work, exercised
unprecedented political inf luence during these years. Although the search for gender
equality motivated many of them, their broadest inf luence was tied to their traditional
roles as mothers and wives. Maternalism—an ideology based on the moral authority
associated with women’s traditional role—provided a means of uniting women what-
ever their position on equality. A variety of reforms, including mother’s pensions, the
creation of the Children’s Bureau, child and women labor legislation, and efforts to
improve maternal and child health, were tied to the rise of maternalism.29
On the federal level, Congress, in 1907, banned political contributions by corpora-
tions. In 1913, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution provided for direct election of
senators. In 1919, the 19th Amendment, providing for women’s suffrage, was passed. It
was ratified by the required 36 states just one year later, bringing victory to this cause
after almost 75 years of campaigning.
On a state and local level, 20 states introduced the initiative (making it possible for the
citizenry to propose legislation) and the referendum (making it possible for voters to pass on
measures introduced in legislative bodies). By 1915, direct primary and presidential preference
laws were on the books of two-thirds of the states, challenging the power of political bosses.
Efforts to reform local politics highlighted a value conf lict among Progressives
between efficiency and democratic control. Although local governments and polit-
ical machines were often corrupt, they also were responsive to lower-middle- and
working-class voters. In many cases, upper-class professionals led efforts to reduce
the power of these voters by increasing the role of professionals and experts in run-
ning city government. The drive for efficiency, economy, and honesty in the admin-
istration of local governments began in Galveston, Texas, in 1900, when the entire
political machinery of mayor, council, and bureaus was abolished and replaced by
a board of commissioners. Thereafter, the commission form of government spread
rapidly, especially in smaller cities, where its structure—generally five commissioners
elected at large and each responsible for a particular department—was most appro-
priate. Starting with Dayton, Ohio, in 1914, many cities embraced the city manager
type of government—a government run by an appointed expert in city administra-
tion. Efforts to reform local politics highlighted a value conf lict among Progressives
between efficiency and democratic control.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 122 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 123
In public welfare administration, change resulted in an initial shift of responsibility
from local overseers of the poor to local or county departments of welfare. Kansas City,
Missouri, established a city department of welfare in 1910, with authority to provide for
the relief of the poor and the care of delinquents, the unemployed, and other needy
groups. St. Joseph, Missouri, established a county–city department of public welfare, and
Chicago set up the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, both in 1913.
The rise of public welfare marked a dramatic break with late 19th-century thought
about poverty. In place of a voluntary movement to limit “indiscriminate almsgiving,”
philanthropic leaders called for government action to reduce the distress of the poor.
Increasingly, Progressives came to see that poverty was primarily an economic, not a
moral, condition.
Nor did the country’s entry into World War I completely stop local governmental restruc-
turing. Westchester County, New York, established a department of welfare in 1916. In 1917,
an important reorganization of the Illinois state government occurred with the passage of the
Civil Administrative Code, which provided for the grouping of all state functions and activi-
ties into nine departments, each with its own director. Among the nine was a Department of
Welfare with its director of public welfare responsible for administering the state’s assistance,
services, and institutional programs. The Illinois code was emulated by other states and was
the start of a new era in public administration. In many states, for example, public welfare
services were consolidated into statewide systems administered by appointed heads of state
departments of welfare. Both in the statewide scope of the organizations and in the removal
of department executives “from current political responsibility, except through [the ultimate
political responsibility of ] the governor,”30 the trend foreshadowed the requirements of the
Social Security Act of 1935.
No reform activities were more representative of the Progressive Era than those that
occurred in the arena of social welfare. The reform movement responded to and fostered
the new profession of social work. Individual social workers, through research, per-
sistence, and expertise, moved to the forefront of advocacy for social legislation. Theo-
dore Roosevelt himself, acting on the commonly held conviction that all were personally
responsible for the current state of affairs depicted so graphically in muckraking liter-
ature, called upon each citizen to contribute to “reform through social work.”31 Social
work, acting on society’s will for social change, carried that projection in two sometimes
converging but basically different operations—the Charity Organization and Settlement
House movements.
Those who labored for social reform were primarily concerned, as a matter of social
justice, “to bring the power of the state and national governments into the economic
struggle on the side of women, children, and other unprotected groups.”32 Whether
prompted by the Charity Organization hope to sustain and strengthen individuals in their
own efforts to cope or by the Settlement House conviction that any intervention short
of intrinsic societal restructuring must be considered only “a down payment toward jus-
tice,”33 social workers could find common ground for the work that needed doing.
At the height of the reform movement, between 1905 and the beginning of World
War I, leaders of the Charity Organization and Settlement House movements came
together on behalf of social reform activity. Changing views of the family prompted
the participation of organized charity in reform. In 1900, Charles Faulkner’s presiden-
tial address at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections had labeled the
family “the unit of social order” and laid out a program of education in the home and
in the school for the moral improvement of individuals. His Darwinian bent took him
from a concern for the maintenance of “the blessings and protection of society through
The reform movement
responded to and
fostered the new pro-
fession of social work.
Individual social work-
ers, through research,
persistence, and exper-
tise, moved to the fore-
front of advocacy for
social legislation.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 123 02/01/17 1:37 PM
124 Chapter 5
its family life” to call for avoiding “unrestrained comingling of .9.9. defectives with the
people.”34 By 1908, however, Mary Richmond was arguing for the protection of family
life against the onslaughts of a hostile environment.
Richmond, whose Social Diagnosis was an important milestone in the evolution of
casework, referred to the family as “the great social unit, the fundamental social fact.”
She demanded changes in agency practices, action in regard to child labor laws, industrial
safety regulations, and protection of working women, as well as administrative changes
in industrial operations to strengthen family life. She challenged the members of her
social work audience to ask themselves, “Have we at least set plans in motion that will
make the children better heads of families than their parents have been?”35 Richmond’s
challenge was based on a new recognition of “the overwhelming force of heredity plus
the environment that we inherit.” Social workers and their allies advocated for legislation
to regulate tenement and factory construction; to prevent and compensate for industrial
accidents and diseases; to prohibit child labor and provide for compulsory education; to
improve sanitary and health conditions; to provide social insurance as security against
unemployment, retirement, or death of the breadwinner; and to protect workers—
especially women—in regard to minimum wages and working hours.
Improvement in housing conditions had been a concern of social workers at least
since 1882, when the Boston Associated Charities appointed a Committee on Dwellings
of the Poor. In the same year, the New York and Buffalo Charity Organization Societies
combined to get a tenement housing bill through the state legislature. During the next
decade, they allied themselves with settlement residents and others to investigate and
publicize the housing conditions of the poor. The New York City Tenement House Law
was passed in 1901. Aimed at preventing the construction of lightless, airless tenements,
the law became a model to follow. Similar legislation was passed for Chicago in 1902; by
1910, most large cities had inaugurated some housing reform.
Regulating Working Conditions
No reform crusade better illustrates Progressives’ belief in maternalism than their advo-
cacy of child and women’s labor legislation. In 1900, nearly 2 million children aged 10 to
15 and almost 5 million women over 15 were in a labor force totaling about 29 million.36
Twenty-eight states had already adopted some legal protections for children. By 1914, as
a result of the continued assault by the National Child Labor Committee, the National
Consumer’s League, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and others, almost all
the states had laws covering hours and conditions of child labor in factories, mills, and
workshops and setting minimum ages for leaving school.37
But the laws were weak and inadequate. Owen R. Lovejoy, secretary of the National
Child Labor Committee and chairman of the Committee on Standards of Living and
Labor of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, reported the following:
No state has made any adequate plan to protect its children to sixteen years f rom
bare-handed contact with the red hot tools of our industrial competition. Nearly
half the states have no effective way of protecting children even to the fourteenth
birthday. Several permit their employment at twelve or even younger.38
The first unsuccessful attempts to bring child labor under federal control were made
in 1906, when bills were introduced in Congress to prohibit the interstate shipment
of articles produced in factories or mines employing children. In 1912, the Children’s
Bureau was created to report, among other things, on “dangerous occupations, accidents
and diseases of children, employment legislation affecting children.”39 The bureau’s
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 124 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 125
investigations bolstered the report of the secretary of labor as to the need for child pro-
tections, and further efforts to obtain federal regulation of child welfare followed. The
Keating-Owen bill was passed by Congress in 1916, but it was found unconstitutional
two years later on the grounds that it transcended “the authority delegated to Con-
gress over commerce.”40 Subsequent improvements in child labor legislation remained
with the states; by 1930, all of the states and the District of Columbia had taken legal
measures to safeguard the employment and working conditions of children. In many
instances, old provisions had been strengthened.41
In the country as a whole, child labor had steadily declined so that by 1930, less than
5 percent of the children between 10 and 15 years of age were employed, compared
to 189percent in 1900. Even in the South, which had lagged in regulatory legislation,
the ratio of children employed in its newly developing textile industry was no higher
than that in its Northern counterpart. These advances were chronicled in the census of
1930. Despite within-industry equivalency, however, there were large industrial and geo-
graphic differences. For example, only 3 percent of children between 10 and 15 years
were at work in industrial Rhode Island, whereas 24 percent were at work in Mississippi,
a state in which child welfare laws were loosely enforced and the all-white legislature
cared little about the well-being of black children. Nor did the census takers secure infor-
mation concerning the paid employment of children under 10.42
Women, who constituted a fifth of the labor force in the early 20th century, were
also the focus of protective legislation. Maternalists argued that, like children, women
needed to be protected from the physical harm of long work hours.
The National Consumer’s League, under the leadership of its executive, Florence
Kelley, was particularly active in regard to legal protections for working women. Under
the aegis of the league, Kelley and Josephine Goldmark, a social worker, completed
research that was successfully used by Louis Brandeis in arguing the constitutionality of
Oregon’s law limiting working hours for women to 10 hours per day. Brandeis marshaled
data from around the world to support his case, that women’s physical well-being—and
ability to give birth and rear children—was threatened by an excessively long workday.
Ironically, when the Supreme Court sided with Brandeis in upholding the Oregon law in
1908, a Progressive victory was built on the assumption of women’s inherent weakness.
By 1912, the year in which the Committee on Standards of Living and Labor of the
National Conference of Charities and Corrections made its report, the battle had shifted
to the eight-hour day and the six-day workweek. The committee predicted, “The day will
come—come tripping on the heels of social regulation—when our manufacturers and
merchants will be able to distribute . . . [their products] without compelling the sacrifice
of the health of our mothers or burning out the eyes of our little children who now bend
over their work . . . at all hours of the night.”43
Progressive women, many of them social workers, were able to use women’s tra-
ditional roles as wife and mother to win successes in regulating women’s and children’s
labor. However, by basing their arguments on the special vulnerability of women and
children, they faced difficulties in extending labor law to the adult male population.
It9also prevented women’s groups from finding common cause with organized labor.
The average workday at the close of the Civil War remained at 11 hours.44 A move-
ment to limit the workday to eight hours collapsed in 1886, when the violence and after-
math of Chicago’s Haymarket Square riot proved disastrous to the Knights of Labor.
In91900, according to an estimate based on information of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the average standard workweek was still more than 57 hours, having declined very little
during the previous decade.45 For industry as a whole, there was wide variation so that
unorganized workers, such as those in the blast furnaces of steel mills, ordinarily worked
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 125 02/01/17 1:37 PM
126 Chapter 5
a 12-hour day and 84-hour week, whereas organized workers in the building trades had
achieved a 48-hour week, working 8 hours a day, six days a week.46
During the early years of the 20th century, workers struggled to develop responses
to the threat of unemployment. Workers viewed the eight-hour movement as a way to
increase the number of jobs by reducing the hours worked by each worker. Unionized
workers, who remained a small share of the total workforce, also experimented with
work-sharing systems, in which workers would reduce their weekly hours of work so
that fewer workers would be laid off, and voluntary unemployment funds, in which
union members would make weekly contributions and then draw benefits if they were
laid off. However, these efforts rarely were sufficient to cope with sharp increases in job-
lessness during depressions.
Differentials in work hours between unionized and nonunionized industries indicate the
significance of unionization for reduced work hours. Average weekly hours in 1900 for union-
ized manufacturing industries were 53, compared to 62 for nonunion manufacturing. By 1920,
unionized manufacturing hours had declined to 46 per week and nonunion manufacturing to
54. Unionized manufacturing had achieved the eight-hour day and nonunion manufacturing
had made significant gains. The gap between organized and unorganized labor narrowed.47
In response to the increased militancy of labor following World War I, major corpora-
tions pursued the “American plan” during the 1920s. This combined “welfare capitalism”—the
expansion of programs to employees, including unemployment and pension benefits—with
an aggressive antiunion campaign. Companies like the Ford Motor Company employed
“social secretaries” to provide social services to workers. Yet, without a fully developed set of
professional ethics, these social workers often reported “undesirable” behavior to employers,
including labor union membership and drinking. Although welfare capitalism died during the
Great Depression, the idea that employers would provide significant social welfare benefits to
their employees became one of the defining features of American social welfare.
Expanding Public Welfare
Progressive reformers struggled to find strategies to address the major hazards of an
industrial society—accident, illness, death of the breadwinner, old age and retirement,
and unemployment. Industrialization and urbanization required enormous change on
the part of the family. Economic survival required mobility, f reedom to move f rom
farms to industrial sites where jobs existed. The mobile family was almost by definition
a small family. Having moved to the cities, the families were then trapped by low wages
and a lack of resources and industrial skills. Most family members had to stand ready to
work to meet the costs of urban living. The family became increasingly dependent for
income on factory owners, who themselves felt no responsibility for their workers’ wel-
fare, and on nonfamily members for services previously performed internally—child care
for working mothers, for example. The family of the Progressive Era was a unit caught
in the stress of a period of social change, a unit socially and economically insecure in its
day-to-day living and vulnerable to anxieties about an unknown future.
Reformers proposed two strategies to cope with families’ increased economic vul-
nerability. Some suggested that social insurance—contributory plans that would provide
aid to workers—was the best model, while others focused on modernizing public assis-
tance programs—targeted to low-income families. During the Progressive Era, each won
a victory with the adoption of workmen’s compensation and mother’s pensions.
During the 19th century, legal precedent largely absolved employers f rom respon-
sibility for workers’ injuries. Workers were deemed to have assumed risk by accepting
employment. The “fellow servant” principle—that employers were not liable if another
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 126 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 127
worker contributed to the injury—ballasted this position. Yet, by the early 20th century,
local and state courts f requently found reasons to support lawsuits brought by injured
workers and encouraged employers to find ways of avoiding expensive litigation.
Workmen’s compensation for injuries resulting f rom industrial accidents was first
discussed at the American Sociological Conference of 1902. During this same year, when
the National Conference of Charities and Corrections appointed a committee to investi-
gate the topic, Maryland’s Workmen’s Compensation Act was declared illegal. The fact
that no one could be found to appeal this decision of the lower court did not impede
growing national enthusiasm for such a measure. Action was spurred by the realization
that “the industries of our country every year claim an army of 15,000 men killed, and
some half a million injured.”48 President Theodore Roosevelt’s enthusiastic support of
Senate action resulted in the Federal Employee’s Act of 1906.
Commissions in Massachusetts and Illinois recommended industrial insurance in 1904
and 1907, respectively, but failed to lead to legislative action. Discussion of workmen’s com-
pensation occurred again at the annual meetings of the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections in 1905 and 1906; a National Conference on Workmen’s Compensation was held
in 1909. By 1910, the year of the second National Conference on Workmen’s Compensation,
a groundswell of support had developed. Many industrial employers were attracted to work-
men’s compensation as a means of reducing lawsuits and bringing predictability to the cost
of industrial accidents. In 1911, the year regarded “as the beginning of an intelligent grappling
with the problem,” 10 states enacted workmen’s compensation laws.
Yet, other efforts to enact social insurance were less successful. The issue of old age
security was raised for discussion in the United States in the decade before World War
I. The number of older people in the population had risen as birthrates fell, and, at the
same time, industrialization increased the likelihood of dependency in old age. The more
advanced European industrial nations, France, Germany, and England, had already insti-
tuted old age support systems. Both the National Conference of Charities and Correc-
tions and the Progressive Party endorsed the principles of social insurance as a response
to economic need f rom unemployment, illness, and old age in 1912. Case studies doc-
umented the inability of individuals to save for their own old age, the inadequacy of
private charity, and the inability or unwillingness of industry to provide private pensions.
Nonetheless, attempts to provide income in old age either through public or through
private pensions failed. At the outbreak of World War I, only Arizona and Alaska had
even limited pension plans, and less than 1 percent of American workers were covered by
private insurance. The economic status of the elderly declined and their dependence on
public welfare rose steadily.
In the years immediately following World War I, reform groups, especially the
National Consumer’s League, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the
National Women’s Trade Union League, gave health insurance their first priority, and
the impetus toward old age pensions came to a standstill.
Only with the coming of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s did the old
age pension movement begin to gather support. Then the research and leadership of
social reformers, economists, and social scientists had a new grassroots base of support.
The Fraternal Order of Eagles, a broad-based popular group, began to organize commu-
nity pension clubs and lobby for state pension bills. Three states—Montana, Nevada, and
Pennsylvania—passed voluntary, limited pension bills in 1923. Most other states followed
suit in the next few years. By 1927, the American Association for Old Age Security, headed
by Abraham Epstein, was created to work for an income support program for the elderly.
Together with the American Association for Labor Legislation, they lobbied for old age
assistance pensions and laid the groundwork for the enactment of social security.49
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 127 02/01/17 1:37 PM
128 Chapter 5
By 1929, however, they had achieved little success. In all, 11 states had pensions for
the aging that reached only 1,000 beneficiaries with total benefits of $222,000. The first
mandatory system was legislated in California, where the percentage of people over 65
was twice the national average and unemployment among the aged was high. In every
state that had pensions, the payments were far too low and the coverage was woefully
inadequate.50
Protecting Vulnerable Families
Although the drive for social insurance stalled during the 1920s, maternalist efforts to
link reform to the protection of women and children succeeded. Legislation to regulate
the working conditions of women and children and to insure against loss of income due
to industrially caused illness and accident was one part of a package that might loosely
be identified with family welfare. The development of juvenile courts and federal efforts
to improve maternal and child health and widows’ pensions completed this agenda.
Social workers and other women professionals worked as researchers and advocates in
moving these proposals forward.
As professional services developed, social research became a tool for advancing social
legislation. Social work’s contribution to social reform during the Progressive Era was in
large measure derived from its introduction of systematic surveys to the study of social
problems. This was best illustrated by the Pittsburgh Survey of 1907–1908, directed
by Paul Kellogg, a social worker and assistant editor of Charities and the Commons, the
national journal published under the auspices of the New York Charity Organization
Society. An article in the March 1906 issue of Charities and the Commons, “Neglected
Neighborhoods in the Alleys, Shacks and Tenements of the National Capitol,” led to
the suggestion by the chief probation officer of the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania)
Juvenile Court that a similar investigation be made in the Pittsburgh area. The sugges-
tion was favorably received by the Publications Committee of the Charity Organization
Society and an advisory committee was formed. Among the members of the commit-
tee, in addition to Kellogg, were William H. Matthews, head worker at Kingsley House
in Pittsburgh; Robert A. Woods, another leading settlement house worker and former
Pittsburgh resident; Florence Kelley, director of the National Consumer’s League; and
John R. Commons, a well-known economist. Funding was secured f rom a number of
sources but primarily f rom the Russell Sage Foundation, which used the survey as its
initial large investment in social research.
The Pittsburgh Survey was “the first major attempt to survey in depth the entire life
of a single community,” and for this purpose, Kellogg pulled together a study team of
workers and students of social welfare and the social sciences. The findings, published
serially in Charities and the Commons and later in book form, covered “wages, hours, con-
ditions of labor, housing, schooling, health, taxation, fire and police protection, recre-
ation [and] land values.” They became widely known not only through their publication
in professional literature but also through their being brought to the public’s attention in
popular periodicals such as Collier’s Weekly.51
Similarly, social research was a major weapon of the National Child Labor
Committee, whose primary interest was child labor legislation. The officers of the
National Child Labor Committee included persons who were active on the many
f ronts of the social reform movement. Edgar Gardner Murphy had seen to the for-
mation of the committee. Also on the committee were Jane Addams, founder of Hull
House; Florence Kelley; Felix Adler of Columbia University and longtime crusader
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 128 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 129
for tenement housing reform; Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement
House; and Edward T. Devine and Robert W. DeForest, executive and president,
respectively, of the New York Charity Organization Society. An awareness of the value
of coalitions for achieving social welfare goals was demonstrated when the committee
set up headquarters in Chicago’s United Charities Building, which also sheltered the
Association for the Improvement of the Conditions of the Poor, the Charity Organiza-
tion Society, the Children’s Aid Society, and the National Consumer’s League.
As early as 1906, the National Child Labor Committee was able to have introduced
in Congress a bill for the establishment of a children’s bureau. As part of a campaign to
have the bill passed, the committee was successful in inf luencing President Roosevelt
to call the 1909 White House Conference on Child Dependency. The president estab-
lished the theme of the conference by extolling the virtues of home life and by urging
that children “not be deprived of it except for urgent and compelling reasons.”52 The
conference went on record as favoring home care for children—care in their own home
as well as foster home care—and recommended the creation of a publicly financed
bureau to collect and disseminate information affecting the welfare of children and a
national voluntary organization to establish and publicize standards of child care. The
first, the Children’s Bureau, was created in 1912; the Child Welfare League of America
followed in 1921.
The juvenile court movement was an expression of a growing consensus as to the
importance of differentiating the needs of children. The first juvenile court law, An Act to
Regulate the Treatment and Control of Dependent, Neglected, and Delinquent Children,
had been enacted in 1899 by Illinois, where the Illinois State Conference of Charities had
taken responsibility for having the act drafted. The law applied to children under 16 years
of age and provided for a special juvenile courtroom and record-keeping system and for
probation officers “to take charge of any child before and after trial as may be directed
by the court.” Within 10 years, similar laws had been passed in 22 states. By 1919, all the
states except Connecticut, Maine, and Wyoming had enacted juvenile court laws empha-
sizing the “principle of separate treatment of juvenile delinquents and . . . cure rather than
punishment.”53 Once again, Illinois set the character of juvenile probation services, when
several agencies assigned social workers to the court in the hope of making the state’s
new juvenile court law operate effectively by providing casework services.
A group of social workers associated with Hull House and Chicago’s School of
Social Service Administration, including Edith and Grace Abbott and Julia Lathrop, were
instrumental in the establishment of the Children’s Bureau in 1912, and Lathrop became
its first director. The Children’s Bureau documented the threats to maternal and child
health that was crucial to the passage of the Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and
Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, better known as the Sheppard–Towner Act, in 1921.
The Sheppard–Towner Act approved appropriations for five years to states des-
ignating a child hygiene or child welfare division to carry responsibility for the local
administration of the act’s provisions. The general purpose of the act was educational.
Instruction in maternal and infant care was offered by nurses and physicians through
itinerant conferences held either in homes or at established health centers. Instruction in
maternal and infant care was also offered to professionals involved in teaching or caring
for mothers and young children. The life of the Sheppard–Towner Act was extended for
two years in 1927, with the understanding that the act would lapse after June 30, 1929.
At the time of its expiration, 45 states and Hawaii were cooperating. Although organized
opposition by physicians led to the demise of the Sheppard–Towner Act, the programs it
established were ultimately incorporated into the Social Security Act in 1935.54
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 129 02/01/17 1:37 PM
130 Chapter 5
The recommendation of the White House conference that children not be deprived
of home care except for “urgent and compelling reasons” stimulated controversy. On one
side were those social workers who supported the conference’s position that private—
not public—funds be used to prevent the removal of children from their own homes. On
the other were prominent juvenile court judges such as Ben Lindsey and Merritt Pinck-
ney, whose daily practice required the institutionalization of children of poor (though
competent) mothers. There was an underlying conf lict, too, posed by the question of
whether mothers should work at all. Before the enactment of the first mother’s pension
in 1911, while the possibility of such pensions was still being explored, the question of
balance between pension and earnings was major. A speaker at the National Conference
of Charities and Corrections in 1910 stated the problem:
The first question to consider, after regular relief on a pension basis has been
decided upon, is whether it should be a full pension or whether the widow should
be encouraged to earn. At a recent meeting of the Secretaries of the Boston
Associated Charities .9.9. most .9.9. felt that a day or two of work a week outside was
really better for the mother than to keep her always at home, for life can be too
dull some times.55
The emergence of mother’s pensions represented changes in the ideas and insti-
tutions that guided social welfare in the early 20th century. Although leaders in the
Charity Organization Movement still held to their belief in strict investigation and
limited aid, f rontline social workers had come to learn that the inadequacy of aid to
widows with children had caused irreversible harm to these families. The old tenets
of voluntary charity were supplanted by a maternalist belief that women’s role as
mothers provided the surest compass to guide social welfare policy. Although often
advocated by women who had chosen to remain unmarried and childless, maternal-
ism provided a means for broadening public support for reform, because it did not
threaten traditional ideas about a woman’s sphere. As a result, mother’s pensions
were embraced by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the National Con-
gress of Mothers (predecessor to the Parent–Teachers Associations), support that was
critical to their passage.56
The first mother’s pension law was passed by Missouri in April 1911. The law had
been enacted at the behest of a single county and its provisions left the decision to pro-
vide assistance to the individual counties. The first statewide mandatory law, the Funds
to Parents Act, was passed by the General Assembly of Illinois in June 1911. Many social
work leaders were shocked by the sudden adoption of laws providing public funds for
the aid of dependent children in their own homes. Richmond’s objection that the Funds
to Parents Act had been “drafted and passed without consulting a single social worker”
expressed the view of an older generation of charity workers for which the expansion
of public welfare was anathema. Yet, a younger generation of social workers—the first
products of professional social work schools and training programs—embraced the idea
that public welfare was critical to improving the condition of the poor.57
After the passage of the act, social workers did rally to help establish the program
and to survey its operation. But Richmond, for all her concern with the burdens that
society placed on family life, maintained that the supervision of social workers was nec-
essary to ensure that “the children of the widow are in school, that they are morally pro-
tected, that their health is safeguarded, that they have a good chance to grow up right.”58
Frederic Almy, secretary of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, was more willing
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 130 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 131
to permit experiments in public relief giving. Nevertheless, he viewed private charity as
safer. He warned that “to the imagination of the poor the public treasury is inexhaust-
ible and their right, and that they drop upon it without thrift, as they dare not do on
private charity.” Almy stressed the importance of professional casework in investigating
the need for relief and for redeeming recipient families. And, since such a help was not
characteristic of public relief giving, he favored having public relief funds administered
by voluntary agencies. He objected to relief being dispensed without professional help,
for “like undoctored drugs, untrained relief is poisonous to the poor.9.9.9. Poor charity is
worse than none.”59
The number of states with Mother’s Assistance programs increased rapidly. Within
two years of the passage of the Illinois Funds to Parents Act, 20 states had provided cash
relief programs for widows with children, and within 10 years, 40 states had done the
same.60 The Children’s Bureau’s study of Mother’s Assistance, conducted in 10 represen-
tative localities during October 1923 to April 1924, reported that “the principle of home
care for dependent children as a public function is generally accepted in this country.”
The bureau also reported generally good relationships between the voluntary agencies
and the public agencies studied and, of most importance, that families were functioning
with the help of Mother’s Assistance “on a par with .9.9. self-supporting families.”61 By the
1920s, then, both the ideas and institutions of “scientific philanthropy” had come to a
dead end. Even before the Great Depression caused political upheaval, the public sector
had established itself as the innovator in addressing poverty and need.
Widows’ pensions were intended to provide sufficient income so mothers would
not have to enter the paid labor force, but state legislatures failed to match this intention
with sufficient funding. Emma O. Lundberg, director of the Children’s Bureau, and C. C.
Carstens, executive of the Child Welfare League of America, made this clear when they
addressed the national conference in 1921. Carstens noted:
The granting of this aid [mother’s pensions] was intended to meet the needs of the
budget. . . . In theory this was a clearly established policy . . . but in practice . . . in
many of the states the mother is expected to earn a very large share of the budget
and much more than it is best that she should earn in view of her own needs and
those of her children.62
A Children’s Bureau report of a study of the administration of mother’s pensions
suggests the latent intent of inadequate budgets.
It was the testimony of the workers in the field and of the executives that the aid
did not tend to develop a spirit of dependency but on the contrary developed self-
confidence, initiative, and generally a desire for economic independence as at early
a date as possible.63
The example of someone in the family working was important. To be
expected then was the failure of another intent of the various state mother’s
and widow’s pensions—that is, the education of women, particularly immi-
grant women, for American motherhood:
The degree to which mothers receiving aid were encouraged to join clubs
and classes of an educational character varied greatly. . . . In some commu-
nities the grants were too small to permit the mothers to give their time to
anything more than housekeeping and gainful employment.64
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 131 02/01/17 1:37 PM
132 Chapter 5
Although states’ responsibility for social welfare expanded during these years, federal
programs were restricted to insuring federal employees against a loss of income due to
retirement or disability and to insuring the families of veterans against the loss of the
breadwinner’s life. Insurance programs operated or required by the states were few, scat-
tered, and inadequate. In the private sector—notably in the railroad industry—pension
systems were started and then collapsed. For the most part, then, the responsibility for
resolving family economic problems continued to fall on local public welfare departments
or on private agencies. The sparseness of the public effort is shown in the data on public
welfare expenditures at federal, state, and local levels. In 1913, they totaled only $57 mil-
lion—1 percent of total government expenditures and only 0.1 percent of the GNP.65
Social Work and the Black Population
Neither the public nor the private sector was responsive to the needs of black families.
In 1905, the year in which W. E. B. Du Bois and his followers met at Niagara Falls to con-
sider legal solutions to Negro problems, an entire issue of Charities and the Commons was
devoted to “The Negroes in the Cities of the North.”66 In 1909 and 1910, The Survey gave
the news of the first and second national Negro conferences, respectively, at which the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized.67 In 1913,
The Survey, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation,
carried a special collection of articles on the status of Negroes.68
The primary interest of Charity Organization Societies, however, was not in
Af rican Americans, nor in their deprivation or segregation as factors requiring broad
social reform. Nonetheless, their emphasis on character reform might have helped fuel
public discussions of blacks’ ability to function in a civilized society. In the 1905 exam-
ination of blacks in the cities of the North, for example, the famous anthropologist
Franz Boas said:
There is every reason to believe that the Negro when given facility and opportu-
nity will be perfectly able to fill the duties of citizenship as well as his white neigh-
bor. It may be that he will not produce as many great men as the white race and
that his average achievement will not quite reach the level of the average achieve-
ment of the white race, but there will be endless numbers who will be able to
outrun their white competitors, and who will do better than the defectives whom
we permit to drag down and to retard the healthy children of our public schools.69
Such an interest in the plight of blacks as might have developed f rom direct contact
was constrained by the relatively few blacks in the caseloads of Charity Organization
Societies. Many agencies enforced a color line and refused to serve African Americans,
a ref lection of discrimination and the small number of African Americans living in cit-
ies. In Chicago in 1900, for example, blacks numbered 108,000 in a total population
of 1,698,000. They ranked 10th among the city’s ethnic groups.70 Following Booker T.
Washington’s call for self-reliance, the National Urban League was established in 1910
to address the economic struggles of urban African Americans and to promote interra-
cial cooperation.
Settlement houses in Americans’ expanding cities continued to accept segregated
services. Among the leaders and allies of the Settlement House Movement, how-
ever, many gave greater prominence to the race problem. Louise de Koven Bowen,
Sophonisba Breckenridge, and others spoke out in opposition to discrimination and prej-
udice that held minorities responsible for the economic and social condition to which
they had been condemned. Kelley and Wald were among those who gathered for the
Many agencies enforced
a color line and refused
to serve African Amer-
icans, a reflection of
discrimination and the
small number of Afri-
can Americans living in
cities.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 132 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 133
first meeting of the National Committee on the Negro held in New York on May 31,
1909. Addams was among a group of distinguished white reformers who joined Du Bois
and the Niagara group in founding the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. When antiblack discrimination surfaced at the Progressive Party’s pres-
idential convention of 1912, Addams debated leaving. Her decision to remain suggests
again the tenor of the times. The party’s nominee, Theodore Roosevelt, eventually lost
the election, partly because his having entertained Booker T. Washington at the White
House dashed any hope of gaining votes in the solid South.
Despite the many new ideas inf luencing social welfare and reform in these years,
many 19th-century beliefs about poverty and dependency still retained their power.
Family problems were indicative of the deviant family, the family that was unable and
unwilling to make use of its own potential and the abundant opportunities provided
by American society. Unquestionably, a great deal had been accomplished as America’s
attention shifted to the war in Europe.
The Social Welfare of Veterans
Throughout American history, veterans have received special treatment in the social
welfare system. During the early 20th century, two groups of veterans—those f rom
the Civil War and those f rom World War I—commanded the most attention. Most
men who had fought in the Civil War had reached retirement age by the early years
of the century, and their economic needs were a major domestic policy issue during
these years. As the Civil War generation aged, America’s entry into World War I cre-
ated a new generation of veterans. The entitlements of World War I veterans inf lu-
enced politics during the 1920s and dramatized the nation’s problems during the early
years of the Great Depression.
In the late 19th century, the federal government had enacted generous pensions for
Union veterans with disabilities and the dependents of soldiers who died in the Civil War.
These pensions had become important in competition between Republicans and Dem-
ocrats during many elections. Yet, in the first decade of the 20th century, a much larger
number of veterans reached old age. As their ability to support themselves declined, they
too turned to the federal government for support.
As in other periods of American history, poor veterans avoided the strict use of eligi-
bility rules used to deny aid to the needy. Indeed, in the early years of the century, eligi-
bility for pensions was liberalized by classifying old age alone as qualifying a veteran for
pension and by easing the length of service and the supporting documentation that were
necessary to qualify for a pension.
As a result, the number of veterans receiving pensions and their cost increased
during the first 20 years of the 20th century. By some estimates, nearly half of all native-
born elderly men living in the North at the turn of the century received pensions. The
number of pensioners peaked at around a million in the first decade of the century, but
disbursements for pensions increased until 1912, when it reached $170 million. Armed
forces participants in World War I numbered 4,744,000.71 The war brought about an
enormous expansion of benefits and services, first to attract enlistees, and later to com-
pensate veterans and their families for services rendered.
On September 2, 1914, only one month after the declaration of war in Europe,
Congress passed the War Risk Insurance Act, insuring enlistees in the merchant marines
against the hazards of submarine warfare. In 1917, President Wilson appointed the
Council of National Defense to review and make recommendations in regard to vet-
erans’ benefits. The Council’s report, incorporated shortly after into law, introduced a
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 133 02/01/17 1:37 PM
134 Chapter 5
new concept: the offer of readjustment and rehabilitation services, along with monetary
benefits. The new package of benefits and services included the following:
1. Compulsory allotments and allowances to families of soldiers, paid for by the
soldiers themselves and by the government
2. A system of voluntary insurance against death and total disability
3. Medical and surgical hospital treatment, as well as prosthetic appliances for
those injured in the line of duty
4. Vocational rehabilitation services for injured veterans who could not resume
prewar occupations
At the close of the war on November 11, 1918, Congress again addressed veterans’
benefits. Not only had an enormous number of Americans served in the armed forces,
but a large number—116,000—had died, and an even greater number—204,000—had
been wounded. By mid-1920, the Public Health Service had increased its total available
beds to 11,639 in 52 hospitals. A year later, Congress authorized the use of available beds
in army and navy hospitals and in National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. The
necessarily rapid expansion of in-hospital services to meet the needs of wounded veter-
ans helped clarify the returning veterans’ need for outpatient and nonmedical services.
By 1920, a haphazard system spread responsibility for veterans across a variety of agen-
cies—the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, the Rehabilitation Division of the Federal Board
for Vocational Education, the Public Health Service, and the armed services themselves.
Early in 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed the Dawes Commission to
devise a program for the immediate and future needs of ex-servicemen “to the end that
the intention of Congress to give the full measure of justice to ex-servicemen may be
adequately, promptly, and generously met.” The commission’s report concluded that “no
emergency of war itself is greater than is the emergency which confronts the Nation in
its duty to care for those disabled in its service and now neglected.”
Congress took up consideration of the commission’s report and incorporated most
of its recommendations in Public Law 67–47, passed on August 9, 1921. The commis-
sion’s most important recommendation, the creation of a single entity to administer vet-
erans’ affairs, resulted in the establishment of the Veterans’ Bureau. The bureau brought
together most veterans’ benefits, including medical care, insurance payments, and voca-
tional rehabilitation services.72
Congress, responding to pressure from veterans’ groups, expanded services in 1924,
adding hospital services for honorably discharged veterans with nonservice-connected
disabilities. The enactment of this law highlighted the strength of the constituencies
organized to advance and to protect the social welfare rights of this particularly “wor-
thy” group of Americans.
Professionalizing Social Work
The professionalization of social work had begun with the formation of voluntary
charitable associations after the Civil War. It expanded with the growth of reform
organizations. For a time during the Progressive Era, charity organizations and set-
tlements worked together for social reform, but eventually their different ideologies
drove them away f rom each other and toward professionalization as an alternative to
advocating reform.
No such constituencies as supported veterans’ rights—neither the Charity Organiza-
tion nor the Settlement House Movement—stood ready to support public relief giving as
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 134 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 135
a major requirement for the maintenance of family welfare. In voluntary social welfare
as well as in corporate management, the 1920s were years of bureaucratization and pro-
fessionalization. For Charity Organization Societies and for settlements, scientific philan-
thropy had led to internal organizational changes paralleling the managerial changes of
corporate enterprise. The developing of supervision, of supervisors accountable for the
successful operation of professional workers, was a further example of internal adher-
ence to structural authority. Beyond that, Charity Organization Societies were largely
responsible for the formation of Councils of Social Agencies accountable for social wel-
fare planning and of Federated Funds that undertook “effective economy” in funding the
social welfare establishment.73
The definition of scientific philanthropy was broadened to encompass develop-
ments in helping methodology. The failure of friendly visiting, the hiring of paid agents,
and, finally, the emergence of social workers were sequential steps in the search for tech-
niques to deal in an individualized manner with the challenges faced by poor families.
The body of techniques that were codified in Richmond’s Social Diagnosis (1917) and
What Is Social Casework? (1922) established casework as a major methodology of social
work. As codified by Richmond, casework was based on the thorough gathering of data
about a family. Only later did social workers incorporate the theories of Sigmund Freud
and others into the method. In addition, the development of casework f rom f riendly
visiting, at a time when these Charity Organization Societies were relinquishing respon-
sibility for social reform, not only reawakened an old image of the rich helping the poor,
but also strengthened the view of individual and family responsibility for social and eco-
nomic problems.
The overriding interest of Charity Organization Societies in relief, their longtime
charity organizing purposes, and their slowness in moving toward a focus on family wel-
fare are ref lected in the successive names given to the societies’ national association. Not
until 1919, when the era of professionalization had begun to take hold, did the associa-
tion’s name include the word family: American Association for Organizing Family Social
Work. Not until 1930, with the adoption of Family Welfare Association of America as
its name, did the title suggest an aggressive force for the welfare of families. This slow
evolution of purpose f rom charity organization to social work organization to family
welfare can be traced through a review of the Proceedings of the National Conference of
Charities and Corrections (1880–1929). Particularly striking is the extreme fragmentation
of topics discussed at the conference and the limited focus on the family as a unit or with
the interaction between family life and social institutions.74
The settlement movement moved toward its own brand of professionalism. Social
reform activity diminished as an area of functional responsibility, and “social group
work,” a methodological approach to helping through recreational and educational activ-
ities, became the core of Settlement House programming. The extent of the shift was
indicated by George Bellamy of Cleveland’s Hiram House in 1914, when he addressed
the National Conference on the use of recreational programs by neighborhood centers
to help neighborhood residents maintain community control and strengthen family life.
“It is far better,” he said, “for the city to throw the responsibility of self-support and
self-improvement upon the people themselves than to hire at great expense . . . others
to entertain the community. We need a recreation by the people, not, for the people.”75
In 1926, Mary K. Simkhovitch addressed the National Federation of Settlements on set-
tlement goals for the “next third of a century.” She argued that settlements had “turned
the social welfare corner” and were “launched on the larger task of social education” in
an effort to democratize and civilize industrial society by popularizing art and developing
the creative instinct.76
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 135 02/01/17 1:37 PM
136 Chapter 5
The definitive statement on the professionalization of social work was made by
Porter R. Lee in his presidential address at the National Conference in 1929, which argued that
the profession should abandon social reform and assume an institutionalized role in the commu-
nity. Lee traced the development of social work as “a movement directed toward the elimination
of an entrenched evil” and its culmination as a profession with a professional responsibility for
operating “a methodical, organized effort .9.9. to make enduring the achievement of the cause.”
In the last analysis I am not sure that the greatest service of social work as a cause
is contributed through those whose genius it is to light and hand on the torch. I9am
inclined to think that in the capacity of the social worker, whatever his rank, to
administer a routine functional responsibility in the spirit of the servant in a cause is
the explanation of the great service of social work.77
Amazingly rapid development occurred in social work during 1900–1929.
The Charity Organization and Settlement House movements claimed a con-
cern with the family as the core unit of society, and each, to its own lights,
developed its program so as to try to bring stability and fulfillment to family
living. While the economy appeared to prosper, social work turned to family
dynamics and individual personality development.78
soCial movEmEnts in thE
Early 20th CEntury
Coalitions for Reform
Progressivism grew out of middle-class concerns that the battle between big business
and labor would engulf American society. It was the first attempt to fashion a politi-
cal ideology between unregulated capitalism and a more radical alternative. Reform-
ers, however, found themselves pulled in two directions. Culturally, they had much in
common with the social and economic elite whose actions they feared. Although many
reformers had sympathy for the plight of workers, they were suspicious of the political
and labor leaders who were their representatives. Although many Progressives worked
hard to forge new coalitions for reform, their contradictory impulses often undermined
their effectiveness.
The industrial collapse of 1893 produced hardships for 4 million unemployed and for
small businessmen, farmers, and investors. Many demanded a change in power relationships
and the development of a more equitable system of distribution of wealth and income. The
march of “General” Jacob Coxey’s army of the unemployed on Washington, DC, in 1894, the
increased prevalence of strikes and industrial violence, the growth of union membership (par-
ticularly in the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers), and the strength
of the Populist movement were part of an agrarian/working-class coalition for reform.
In the early years of the 20th century, the reform movement shifted toward the
center. The AFL, representing more highly paid craft workers than the older, industrial
unions, became the dominant force in the labor movement. Writers and educators under-
took an exposé of big business; new political leadership took on the task of city and state
reforms; and social workers worked on behalf of the poor segregated into urban slums.
Social protest became the property of intellectuals and professionals.
It became clear to more and more Americans that laissez-faire and small business
no longer characterized their economy. The era of small business firms engaged in
Progressivism grew out
of middle-class concerns
that the battle between
big business and labor
would engulf American
society. It was the first
attempt to fashion
a political ideology
between unregulated
capitalism and a more
radical alternative.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 136 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 137
competition had supported a model of individual achievement, but the emergence of
large corporations or trusts engaged in monopolistic market control made this model
appear irrelevant. In a competitive, individualistic society, the dominant social theorists
had argued for social reform based on individual change; the corporate universe of the
20th century seemed to require a reform of institutions.
During most of the 19th century, it had been liberal dogma that the limited government
action was good for the economy and society. In the early 20th century, more Americans
were willing to ask if government had a role in creating a more just social order. A “new lib-
eralism” based on a belief in positive government action and the critical role of professional
expertise provided the ideological basis for many Progressives. Research would provide
knowledge of social and political problems, and the extension of democratic institutions in
government would lead to enactment of the appropriate legislation. In retrospect, it was a
romantic and an optimistic belief in rational, peaceful, and democratic social change.
Progressives wanted to maintain the cultural values of an earlier time—individuals,
opportunity, “lifting one’s self by one’s bootstraps”—even as the social order that supported
those values disappeared. This contradiction limited the effectiveness of many reform
efforts. No issue better illustrates the contradictory stance of Progressives than their belief
that immigrants would eventually adopt the language, tastes, and culture of white Protes-
tants. In settlement houses, southern and eastern Europeans were encouraged to eschew
olive oil and garlic in their cooking in favor of butter and bland ingredients.79 Efforts to
Americanize immigrants extended to the growing Latino population of the Southwest,
where children were encouraged to abandon their native language and culture (Figure 5.2).80
Figure 5.2 Scenes from “The Twig of Thorn” given by a club of working girls in
King Philip Settlement, Fall River, Massachusetts, 1916. Settlement houses worked to
improve living conditions, inter-group relations, and the cultural lives of the residents
of working-class neighborhoods.
Source: Library of Congress.
!”
#
$%
#
$&
‘”
%
($
)”
, *
+$
),
%
–
*(
.,
./
+0
*(
%
1$
2$
%$
.)
,
!$
3+
0+
4
.5
&
.)
/+
“%
%,
!
&-
1$
/-
)&
!&
-6
:6
;<
.
In the early 20th cen-
tury, more Americans
were willing to ask if
government had a role
in creating a more just
social order. A “new
lib-eralism” based on
a belief in positive
government action
and the critical role of
professional expertise
provided the ideo-
logical basis for many
Progressives.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 137 02/01/17 1:37 PM
138 Chapter 5
The reform activities of the Progressive Era were spearheaded by many groups,
some working independently, some working cooperatively as particular issues warranted
cooperation, some working for individual aggrandizement, and some working altruis-
tically for the larger society. One group was composed of small businessmen who were
anxious to control and stop the domination of trusts and banking establishments. They
were joined by writers, social workers, lawyers, and clergymen, as well as other pro-
fessionals who were suspicious of big business. Farmers, in search of easy credit, also
became a part of the struggle against the domination of “organized money.”
The growth of the Socialist Party in the early years of the century strengthened
the hand of reformers by raising the specter of more radical alternatives to Progres-
sive reform. Starting with a membership of less than 5,000 in 1900, it enrolled 118,000
members by 1912, including many of the nation’s leading intellectuals—John Dewey,
Stuart Chase, Paul Douglas, Jack London, Walter Lippmann, and Alexander Meikeljohn.
Eugene Debs, leader of the 1894 railroad strike, ran for president as the Socialist candi-
date in 1912 and polled 6 percent of the popular vote. More important, perhaps, was the
Socialists’ success that same year in electing more than 1,000 members to various public
offices. Socialist doctrines were widely reviewed, discussed, and quoted. Socialists were
sometimes allied in specific causes with other reform groups. The growth of the Social-
ist Party and its increased visibility served as a threat and a catalyst for more moderate
reform groups seeking regulation of industry. The Socialist Party’s opposition to Amer-
ican entry into World War I in 1917 led to government suppression and the jailing of
many leaders, including Debs.81
Regulating Business
During the Progressive Era, the federal government took some halting steps to regu-
late business in the public interest. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt instructed
the attorney general to bring suit under the Sherman Antitrust Act against the North-
ern Securities Company, a consolidation of railways including the Northern Pacific, the
Great Northern, and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy systems. The Supreme Court
sustained the government’s appeal and effectively frustrated the plan of E. H. Harriman
to bring all the important railways in the country under his control. In 1906, Congress
passed the Hepburn Act, which permitted the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
to fix the rates of railroads; of storage, refrigeration, and terminal facilities; and of sleep-
ing car, express, and pipeline companies. In 1910, authority was extended to the ICC to
regulate telephone and telegraph companies.
Economic and regulatory reforms took various shapes. As a result of Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle and of other exposés of the food and pharmaceutical industries, editors of pop-
ular journals and the American Medical Association, among others, formed a coalition to
secure passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1906. In 1909, the 16th Amendment, which
established a federal income tax, was introduced in Congress by Cordell Hull. By 1913, it
had been ratified by the states and became law. During this same year, Congress created the
Federal Reserve System, a first step by the federal government to regulate banking.
Organized Labor
Through much of the 19th century, federal and state courts had restricted the ability of
workers to organize unions. A new wave of organizing gained greater public attention
during these years. The passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914 represented the
success of small business and labor unions to unite behind efforts to control the power of
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 138 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 139
big business. The act also provided some safeguards for organizers, by restricting the use
of injunctions against unions. Although these provisions were ultimately watered down
by the Supreme Court, the Clayton Act represented an important step in acknowledging
working people’s right to organize. The Federal Trade Commission Act established a
commission whose purpose was to bring to bear the knowledge and advice of a group of
economic experts on “unfair” methods of competition and infractions of antitrust laws.
The democratic thrust of the Progressive Era made political reform a partner of
economic reform. Just as muckraking publications had reported lurid instances of fraud
and graft and of monopolistic control in industry, in railroading, and in public utilities,
they detailed corruption in state and local governments, in the courts, and in the U.S.
Senate.82 A veritable avalanche of widely read, eagerly awaited exposés of The Shame of
the Cities or “The Treason of the Senate” led the way to political change. The effort was
twofold: to expand citizen participation in political affairs and to increase governmental
responsiveness and honesty. Progressives worked for women’s suffrage, the secret ballot,
direct primaries, direct election of senators, initiative, referendum, recall, and municipal
home rule. In addition, they demanded civil service reform, the short ballot, the regu-
lation of campaign expenditures, accountability and leadership on the part of elected
officials, and the commission and city manager plans of municipal government.
Women, Work, and Suffrage
In 1900, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), representing
the joining of the two earlier rivals in the women’s suffrage movement, was still unclear
as to directions for achieving votes for women. The association’s f lirtation with “edu-
cated suffrage,” offering to counter the votes of lower-class blacks and immigrants with
those of middle-class women, contributed to conf lict between black and white women,
middle-class women f rom lower-class women, nonworking women f rom working
women, and native-born women from immigrant women. At the same time reform orga-
nizations, including the NAWSA, discovered that sewing these divisions could ultimately
prevent success. In addition, the limitations of a single-issue organization became apparent
as other women’s groups moved to the fore. These new organizations—for example, the
National Consumer’s League, the National Women’s Trade Union League, and the Young
Women’s Christian Association—were concerned both with matters affecting women and
social injustice issues that affected both women and others. For example, the NAWSA pub-
lication, The Woman’s Journal, supported the garment workers’ strike of 1909 and 1910 and
reported the tragic Triangle Shirt-Waist Company fire of 1911, which led to the death of
146 workers, as demonstrating the need for women’s votes to ensure “more effective factory
legislation and a larger number of [factory] inspectors.”83 This broadened view resulted in
increased membership. By 1910, the official numbers in NAWSA had risen to 100,000; in
1917, the membership stood at 2 million.
Part of the reality of the Progressive Era was the increasing participation
of women in the labor force. In 1900, there were more than 5 million gain-
fully employed female workers. Most worked as unskilled factory hands or as
domestics; most were foreign born or black; some were married. The number
of female workers increased rapidly to meet the demands of this generally pros-
perous era—later, the added demands of Europe at war, and finally, in 1917, the
demands of the United States itself as its own male workers, drafted for wartime
service, had to be replaced. By 1910, the number of gainfully employed women
had risen to 8 million. Although the end of World War I brought a return to
traditional gender roles for many men and women, by 1920, the number of
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 139 02/01/17 1:37 PM
140 Chapter 5
women in the paid labor force had risen to more than 8.5 million.84 The formation of the
National Women’s Trade Union League and its activities in supporting existing unions of
women wage earners testifies to the increase in the numbers of women workers, their
beginning entrance in skilled positions, and their increasing political consciousness.
Progress toward the unionization of women—like among men—was nevertheless
slow and difficult. Much of the history was characterized by spontaneous work stoppage
and strikes against low wages and torturous working conditions. These strikes resulted
in efforts to organize, but even when success in gaining demands followed, unioniza-
tion tended to fall apart. In skilled industry, the responsibility for this can be traced to
the overall antagonism of male workers, who accused women of scabbing during strike
actions on the part of male-dominated unions, of taking men’s jobs, and of lowering
wage rates. These antagonisms carried over in the half hearted attempts by the AFL, an
organization of craft unions made up of skilled workers, to organize women’s unions
or to admit women into existing organizations. The AFL, like its constituents, was sus-
picious of women’s commitment to work, of their staying power during strikes, and of
their effect upon wages. The AFL’s lack of interest was encouraged by the fact that by
far the largest number of women continued to work in unskilled jobs—in textiles, shirt
and waist making, laundries, and domestic service. Among these unskilled workers, for-
eign-born and black women predominated. Black women particularly suffered exclusion
from unionizing efforts, even from the efforts of other unskilled workers.
The task of bringing together the work-related and suff rage-related concerns of
women was not easy. Concern for their physical, moral, and emotional well-being sprang
from the conviction that “the prime function of woman must ever be the perpetuating of
the race. . . . The woman is worth more to society .9.9. as the mother of healthy children
than as the swiftest labeler of cans.”85 The result was a great deal of effort to estimate “a
living wage” for women and to clarify the special needs of women in regard to working
hours and working conditions. Although similar concerns were being explored in con-
nection with all workers, very special legislative protection was sought for the unique
circumstances of women. The culmination of these concerns for women, ref lecting the
additional burdens they had assumed during World War I, came with the establishment
by Congress in 1920 of the Women’s Bureau within the Department of Labor.
By the time of the armistice in 1918, women’s groups had become accustomed to coop-
eration. This unity of action comprised a powerful political force. Under the direction of
Carrie Chapman Catt, who had been reelected its president in 1915, the NAWSA was revi-
talized and led the final march toward victory. Catt was able to gain President Wilson’s sup-
port. Not the least of that support derived from the contribution of women and of women’s
organizations to the war effort. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was approved by
Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified by the required number of states on August 26, 1920.
The NAWSA went out of existence but was revived as the League of Women Voters.
The end of World War I also brought success to another women-led movement, the
drive for Prohibition. The battle against alcoholic beverages was long and complicated.
It combined a Progressive concern for the workers’ health and family stability with a
reaction by Protestant and rural people against the diversity and growth of urban pop-
ulations. In fact, the strength of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union
combined with the government’s wartime conservation efforts—that is, the need to
limit the use of grain for the production of liquors—to win congressional approval for
Prohibition sooner than women’s suff rage. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution
prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and import or export of liquor was ratified in 1919.
The success of Prohibition was short-lived. Its political success was derived from the con-
servative shift in politics during and after World War I. The suppression of socialists and other
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 140 02/01/17 1:37 PM
Progress and Reform: 1900–1930 141
antiwar groups and increasing antipathy toward immigrants buoyed the movement. Once
enacted, however, the practical difficulties of enforcing Prohibition were reinforced by the hos-
tility of an increasingly urban population. Al Smith, governor of New York and the Demo-
cratic nominee for president in 1928, was only the most celebrated of political leaders who
openly f launted the law. Rather than moralizing urban populations, Prohibition turned “boot-
legging” into a major industry that many law-abiding Americans patronized. Urban resistance
to Prohibition ultimately led to its repeal by the 21st Amendment to the Constitution in 1933.
Organized women were successful on a host of issues during the Progressive Era. Cer-
tainly, achieving suffrage and passing Prohibition were two significant victories. Women
would go on to serve important roles in other reform movements over the next half cen-
tury, but political feminism would not revive as a separate movement until the late 1960s.
The End of Reform
The end of World War I did not see a return to reform activity. The years between the
close of the war and the Depression of the 1930s were a time of peace during which
many Americans achieved individual prosperity. They found it through credit and install-
ment buying and through participation in the glittering promises of speculation. They
did not concern themselves with the problems of those left behind by economic growth
or with the obvious abuse of power and inf luence by those who led the way in specula-
tive activity. Despite the recession of 1921, urban standards of living improved. Booming
profits, high levels of employment, and rising real wages meant that Americans felt able
to purchase and enjoy a f lood of new products—cars, radios, home electricity, motion
pictures, and silk stockings. There was new life in the doctrine of laissez-faire and a
renewed belief that what was good for business was good for the nation. The solution to
poverty did not lie in corporate regulation, minimum wages, social insurance, or public
welfare, but rather in providing an atmosphere that was encouraging to business.
Americans were determined to believe assurances offered by President Herbert
Hoover in his inaugural address:
We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before
in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing among us. We have not yet
reached the goal, but given a chance .9.9. we shall soon with the help of God be in
sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.86
At the close of the war, the era of the reform coalition had come to an end, and
a new era of professionalization of social work had begun. The change seems attrib-
utable to a number of factors. The war itself had wrought havoc among social work
leaders who, prior to the events leading to the country’s involvement, had in the main
counted themselves pacifists. Addams was a leader in pacifist causes. Her membership
on the Platform Committee of the Progressive Party in 1912 was an effort to further
specific social goals despite her disagreement with the party’s stand in regard to war
and defense.87 World War I split those who could not abandon a lifetime’s philosophical
stance from those who supported the war and saw this support as serving their country
in a time of crisis. The Russian Revolution and the common misperception that the tri-
umphant Bolsheviks were German allies further split the reform spirit of social workers.
Government suppression played a role in quieting voices of dissent. During World War 9I,
antiwar activists were accused of disloyalty. The post office banned their literature and the
most vocal leaders were jailed. The Russian Revolution and labor unrest after the war sparked
a “Red Scare” orchestrated by U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. The wartime and post-
war fear of subversive activity, sparking a demand for law and order, led to severe political
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 141 02/01/17 1:37 PM
142 Chapter 5
repression, to expulsion of radical aliens, and, in turn, to hostility toward expressions of need
for political change or political redress. Even modest efforts at community revitalization, like
the pioneering Social Unit Plan in Cincinnati, were labeled “socialistic” and saw their fund-
ing cut off.88 Emphasis shifted to personality reform, as psychoanalysis—the work of Sigmund
Freud—offered a new professional direction for social workers and social work education.
The push for social reform was further dissipated by the stemming of the f low of immi-
grants. The increase in immigration during the early years of the 20th century, with masses
of immigrants coming from eastern Europe at a time of anarchy and revolution there and
of labor unrest and wartime preparation here, had stimulated efforts for social reform and
socialization. Severe legal restrictions caused the numbers to drop dramatically and almost
disappear during the late 1920s. As immigration declined, ethnic communities were increas-
ingly dominated by a second generation more oriented to life in the United States.
While the impetus toward social reform had waned, the Progressive Era was one of
major if limited importance. The first Mother’s Pension law was enacted in 1911 and estab-
lished the principle that single mothers of young children should receive support to stay at
home as parents. It was the beginning of a safety net that was to prevail for 85 years.
The prosperity of the 1920s—with its surge of economic growth and aff luence accom-
panied by the hope for the imminent disappearance of poverty—came on top of the seeming
achievement of many of the goals of the reform movement and decreased the pressure for
further social legislation. In actuality, the reform spirit of the agencies regulating business was
often reversed by administrative practices; new political bosses arose to negotiate the ballot
reforms, and much of the social legislation passed by the states was thrown out by the courts.
The moral fervor that pervaded the Progressive movement shifted to the drive against alco-
holic beverages. The success of Prohibition became a crowning moral victory.
With social reform abandoned, character reform was revived as an orientation
toward people in need. Emil Frankel’s Poor Relief in Pennsylvania, a statewide survey
published in 1925, demonstrated the persistent suspicion of public relief and of relief
recipients. In a report that generally attacked historic fears of public welfare, Frankel sup-
ported the significance of professional social work service, if only to allay the fear that
public aid would be considered a right. Frankel wrote:
Outdoor relief without constructive service can lead only to increasing dependency
because while a certain portion of the families receiving relief may pull themselves
out of a rut with the aid of the grants, a good many will not. . . .
A good many have the feeling that inasmuch as the poor fund is raised through public
taxation they have a right to demand relief and are entitled to it as a matter of course.
And a good many families feel that although they may not be in need of relief they can
see no reason why they should not get it when other families do.89
Public and voluntary orientations toward relief giving—especially toward pub-
lic relief—seemed to have changed little since the inception of the Charity Organization
in 1877. The views and foreboding of Frankel, a public official, were not unlike those of
Lowell, who had argued in 1890 that public relief should be given only in cases of extreme
distress, “when starvation is imminent.” The refuge from pauperism, according to Lowell,
was self-support or help provided by private sources. The similarity in their
views is probably not surprising when one considers the 1918 appeal of Francis
McLean, director of the American Association for Organizing Charities, that
member agencies aid “in the socialization [i.e., professionalization] of both staff
and methods of work of . . . public family social work agencies.”90 Not until 1921
was membership in the association extended to public agencies.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 142 02/01/17 1:37 PM
143
Progress and Reform
The three documents that follow, Florence Kelley’s statement on The Family and the
Woman’s Wage (1909), the text of the first Funds to Parents Act (1911), and the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections discussions of Public Pensions to Widows (1912),
highlight major tensions in social welfare during the Progressive Era and the role of
maternalism in driving change.
Kelley, both as an individual and as secretary of the National Consumer’s League,
was in the foref ront of social welfare reform activity during the Progressive Era. Her
close personal connections with leaders in the Settlement House Movement and the
coalitions they formed with other groups on behalf of an array of social welfare mea-
sures make her utterances a ref lection of the settlement view. She pictured the family
and family members as needing economic and legal protections against industrial and
political hindrances that prevented their full democratic participation in society. Kelley’s
special interest was in wages and working hours and their meaning for family welfare.
In The Family and the Woman’s Wage, she challenges the depth of the value placed on
the home as “the fundamental thing in our national life.” Her point is that truly valuing
the home and the family would require legislation to regulate the conditions and places
of employment of children, in this instance, girls—and the working hours and wages of
women. She is convinced of the importance of home life for children and, therefore, of
the necessity for making it financially possible for mothers and children to remain in the
home. Her outcry against the economic exploitation of women and children is, there-
fore, not only a demand for higher wages, but also a condemnation of conditions that
make it necessary for them to work at all. The necessity to work, she believed, distracted
the mother f rom the care of children: “if one really thought about the family and the
home .9.9. one should have none of that work today.”
Kelley’s argument can seem confusing to modern ears. Her assertion of women’s
and girls’ unique vulnerability seems to harken back to older ideas of separate spheres
for men and women, but she marshals these ideas to support the expansion of govern-
ment oversight of industry and to challenge society to bring its values and behavior into
alignment. By doing so, Kelley and other maternalists hoped to enlist more conservative
and conventional women in the struggle for social reform.
One result of the kind of agitation for reform encouraged by Kelley was the Funds
to Parents Act, passed by the state of Illinois in June 1911. The act provided public funds
for the care of dependent and neglected children, making it unnecessary to remove them
from their own homes when parents were otherwise adequate. The significance of the
act resides in its being the first demonstration of public responsibility for supporting the
care of children at home. The act is, therefore, the predecessor of the Aid to Dependent
Children program included in the Social Security Act in 1935.
The discussions of Frederic Almy, Mary Richmond, Homer Folks, and Merritt
Pinckney of “public pensions to widows” indicate the controversy resulting f rom the
passage of the Funds to Parents Act. Supporting widows and dependent children in their
own homes was still a controversial issue for workers in charities and corrections, despite
the recommendation of the first White House Conference on Children. By 1912, how-
ever, the discussants of public pensions no longer addressed themselves to this particular
DOCUMENTS
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 143 02/01/17 1:37 PM
144
question. Their arguments centered on the use of public, rather than private, funds and
on the necessity for social work professionals to oversee the use of funds.
Almy, secretary of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, wavers in his opinion.
He is not entirely afraid of public funds—”neglect is the great pauperizer, not relief ”—
but he is afraid of relief that is not professionally dispensed: “untrained relief is poison-
ous to the poor.” Richmond, a most eminent figure in social work, is also fearful of the
possible lack of supervision over the use of funds by recipients. For her, the question
is twofold. First, there is the issue of money versus service as a key to helping. Second,
there is the fear that increases in public funding will dry up sources of private funding—
that bad money will drive out good money—and that private agencies might themselves
become pauperized through dependence on government grants. Folks, secretary of New
York’s State Charities Aid Association, also argues for private funds and private agency
control. He concludes, however, “If we do not secure f rom private sources sufficient
funds, then, without hesitation we ought to have a system of public relief for widows.”
As might be expected, Judge Pinckney, who spearheaded the drive to make public funds
available for the care of dependent children, disagrees with opponents of public funding.
Speaking from experience, he insists that his court is “doing something toward adminis-
tering this law efficiently, intelligently, and honestly, too, and through public channels.”
PROCEEDINGS OF THE
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES
AND CORRECTIONS
1909
THE FAMILY AND THE WOMAN’S WAGE
34 =+%. 5!.+")&" '"!!"4, %"&+",0+4 .5 ,(" )0,$.)0!
&.)%>=”+’% !”0/>”
There is no subject concerning which we more persistently live in a fool’s paradise than
this of woman’s wage. We say on all occasions that we consider the home the fundamen-
tal thing in our national life. If we really valued the home, such things could not hap-
pen as I saw last Thursday in the night court in the city of New York. A girl, seventeen
years of age, was taken away by a policeman f rom her two-year-old, fatherless boy to
spend three years in a prison which, with the bitterest irony, we call a house of mercy. No
charge has been proved against her. As a little cash girl, at fourteen years, in the enlight-
ened city of New York, she went out from her home and worked under the temptations
of a great department store. Before her fifteenth birthday her little fatherless boy was
born, because of the conditions under which our laws allowed her to work. Her mother
thought that the home needed the little girl’s wages more than the little girl needed
protection. When she was seventeen years old she had been working nearly a year, every
night, in a telephone exchange, and she could bear it no longer. She was so weary that
she could not even endure being with her little boy during the day. Finally she left her
work, which meant taking six dollars a week out of her mother’s family budget. She
took her child and went away to look for other work, for her mother refused to keep the
child unless the six dollars a week were paid. After a week she confessed herself beaten
and sent the little boy back through a neighbor to his grandmother, with word that she
believed she would have work in a few days and could take care of him. This mother sent
her daughter to prison for three years under no other charge than that, for less than a
week, the girl had not been able to maintain herself and her little boy and was therefore
“a wayward girl.”
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 144 02/01/17 1:37 PM
145
That girl, after she comes out of prison, will never make a home for her little boy.
Her heart is effectively broken; three years hence it will be effectively hardened. There are
thousands of little cash girls working in our stores, and thousands of young girls never
before did in the history of the world, because there never were telephone exchanges to
be served in the dead of night.
If we valued home life as we hypocritically say that we do, there would not be one
of these young girls away f rom the family home in the dead of night serving the pub-
lic, not because they serve it better than men would do, but because they are cheaper
and because the interest of the stockholders and the bondholders of the corporation
is of greater importance than the sacrifice of these young girls. Now every man and
woman of us who passively consent, as we do, to be served by telephone exchanges
which employ these young victims in the night, everyone of us who is not striving to get
legislation, and protesting as only subscribers can protest, is particeps criminis with these
employers and stockholders. If there be a telephone exchange in this country which is
served at night exclusively by men over twenty-one years of age, I beg that its patrons
stand up now. I have never been able to hear of one in any city.
Lest anyone should believe that the young girls in New York City are less cherished
in this service than those of other cities, I know of a city not far f rom Buffalo, where,
within a month, a factory inspector took out of a leading hotel a girl under sixteen years
of age who worked regularly until three o’clock in the morning serving a telephone
exchange in that lobby, subject to the insults of passing travelers. But on her sixteenth
birthday there will be no legal offense if her cruel father sends her back insisting, like the
mother of the telephone girl, upon having six dollars a week.
The telephone exchange commands girls chief ly because there they are paid
fifty-two weeks in the year, while the rest of our industries are so ill-organized that very
few of them offer steady work throughout the year.
It may be said that I have spoken unjustly of the store where the first little girl was
working. It is true that many young girls go as cash girls into stores and advance until
they become clerks, and come out unhurt, so far as one can see, from that experience. It
is also true that some of our boys came home sound in mind and limb from the Cuban
war. Some children do not take scarlet fever, although exposed to it. Some unvaccinated
people never take smallpox. But the risk is not greater which the families took who sent
their sons to the Cuban war, than the risk these parents take who send their little girls
into department stores. The protest cannot be made too strong, to those who believe
that they value the home, against sending future mothers and makers of homes out
of the schools knowing nothing of that which they should know when they shall have
homes of their own, into institutions, commercial and otherwise, which, as Mr. Lee has
said, “diseducate” the children and unfit them for life in the home.
It is not only the earnings which the future mothers bring into the homes that are
earned at a frightful social price. The widows of working men, cleaning the filthy f loors
of railway stations, and hotels, and stores, and offices on their knees, after inhaling first
the dust from the dry broom—is there any greater exposure to tuberculosis conceivable
than that of the weary mother of little children doing such work at night? A f riend of
mine has conceived the monstrous idea of having a night nursery to which women so
employed might send their children. And this idea was seriously described in so mod-
ern a publication as Charities and the Commons “before it changed its name” without
a word of editorial denunciation. The mothers of young children cannot be sent away
f rom their homes to do such work without the gravest social injury, any more than
daughters can be sent away so young and untrained as they are sent in this country today.
The proper place for a workingman’s widow who has young children is in her home
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 145 02/01/17 1:37 PM
146
taking care of those children, unless she is a bad woman or a drunkard, or so ill that her
proximity is a menace to the health of her children. But assuming that the mother is bad
or ill, there is nothing gained by sending the children away for a few hours a day to a
nursery. If she is infectious she would infect the children in their close sleeping quarters.
There is no subject concerning which we are more foolish than this of the wages of
women in their homes, this idea of establishing institutions to take little children away
from good mothers during their working hours, insisting that widowed mothers shall per-
form the tasks of fathers while some hired person pretends to be mother to their little ones.
There are conditions under which the day nursery is acceptable. For instance, where
the mother is temporarily in the hospital for treatment f rom which her convalescence
may be reasonably prompt; or, if there is illness in a home and the mother ought to be
relieved temporarily of the care of the children. But when Americans boast of a national,
or state, or city society of day nurseries (instead of humbly apologizing that we need more
than one in Greater New York) we show how little we value the presence of the mother in
her home. The day nursery which encourages the mother to go out to work, leaving the
larger children to spend their day on the street and to buy penny lunches, is an argument
for school luncheons for the larger children. No money earned in the United States costs
so dear, dollar for dollar, as the money earned by the mothers of young children.
When we permit mothers to work in the homes industrially, on a large scale, as is the
case in New York, we have the degradation of the home by industry, and the mother dis-
tracted from the care of the children through the invasion of the home. If we really thought
about the family and the home as we say we do, we should have none of that work today.
***
LAWS
of the
STATE of ILLINOIS
Enacted by the
FORTY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
at the
REGULAR BIENNIAL SESSION
BEGUN AND HELD AT THE CAPITOL, IN THE CITY OF
SPRINGFIELD, ON THE FOURTH DAY OF JANUARY
A.D. 1 11, AND ADJOURNED SINE DIE ON THE
FIRST DAY OF JUNE, A.D. 1 11.
Printed by authority of the General Assembly
of the State of Illinois.
Juvenile Courts—Funds to Parents
1. Amends section 7, Act of 1907. 7. As amended, provides for
funds to parent or parents.
(Senate Bill No. 403. Approved June 5, 1911.)
AN Act to amend an Act entitled, “An Act relating to children who are now or may
hereafter become dependent, neglected or delinquent, to define these terms, and to
provide for the treatment, control, maintenance, adoption and guardianship of the
person of such children,” approved June 4, 1907.
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 146 02/01/17 1:37 PM
147
S”&,$.) 1. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the Gen-
eral Assembly: That section 7 of the Act entitled “An Act relating to children who are
now or may hereafter become dependent, neglected or delinquent, to define these
terms and to provide for the treatment, control, maintenance, adoption and guard-
ianship of the person of such children,” approved June 4, 1907, be and the same is
hereby amended so as to read as follows:
7. If the court shall find any male child under the age of seventeen years or any
female child under the age of eighteen years to be dependent or neglected within the
meaning of this Act, the court may allow such child to remain at its own home subject
to the f riendly visitation of a probation officer, and if the parent, parents, guardian or
custodian consent thereto, or if the court shall further find that the parent, parents,
guardian or custodian of such child are unfit or improper guardians or are unable or
unwilling to care for, protect, train, educate or discipline such child, and that it is for
the interest of such child and the people of this State that such child be taken from the
custody of its parents, custodian or guardian, the court may make an order appointing
as guardian of the person of such child, some reputable citizen of good moral charac-
ter and order such guardian to place such child in some suitable family home or other
suitable place, which such guardian may provide for such child or the court may enter
an order committing such child to some suitable State institution, organized for the care
of dependent or neglected children, or to some training school or industrial school or to
some association embracing in its objects the purpose of caring for or obtaining homes
for neglected or dependent children, which association shall have been accredited as
hereinafter provided.
If the parent or parents of such dependent or neglected child are poor and unable
to properly care for the said child, but are otherwise proper guardians and it is for the
welfare of such child to remain at home, the court may enter an order finding such facts
and fixing the amount of money necessary to enable the parent or parents to properly
care for such child, and thereupon it shall be the duty of the county board, through its
county agent or otherwise, to pay to such parent or parents, at such times as said order
may designate the amount so specified for the care of such dependent or neglected child
until the further order of the court.
APPROVED June 5, 1911.
***
PROCEEDINGS OF THE
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES
AND CORRECTIONS
1912
PUBLIC PENSIONS TO WIDOWS
EXPERIENCES AND OBSERVATIONS WHICH LEAD ME
TO OPPOSE SUCH A LAW.
By Frederic Almy, Secretary Buffalo Charity Organization Society.
This paper will not discuss the recent laws giving pensions to widows in Illinois, Mis-
souri, California, Michigan and Oklahoma, or the bills now pending in New York and
Ohio, or the State Commission studying this subject in Massachusetts, or the efforts in
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 147 02/01/17 1:37 PM
148
Colorado, but will discuss general principles. I find I am scheduled to oppose such laws,
though for over a year in the SURVEY and elsewhere I am on record as well disposed
towards them, though of the opinion that private charity is, for the present, safer.
Widowhood is a most innocent cause of poverty, especially pitiful because of its pain
and waste, and very costly to society because the poverty is apt to increase in geomet-
rical progression, two-fold, four-fold, or even more in each generation, as the neglected
children mature. Sickness is also usually an innocent cause of poverty, though there are
sexual diseases of appetite. The poverty of a family is still greater when the husband is
not dead but is a living cost and danger. In such cases, the children have a father’s counsel
but less food than if they had none.
Neglected childhood is, in all the world, the very most innocent, appealing and fre-
quent cause of poverty and crime. Poverty is often chosen, but the pauper child never
chooses his poverty and his curses punish the society which has so foolishly neglected
him. The cry of the children has been heard; street children are gone, factory children
are going and the institution child must go. Home made children give the best results
and even the foster home must go, unless the parents of the child are unfit.
A stupid fear of spending on the part of the Philistines of charity, who do not com-
prehend it, and a fear of pauperizing on the part of the Pharisees of charity, who have
made a creed of it has made us penny wise and pound foolish. Neglect is the great pau-
perizer, not relief. The devil of pauperizing has been made a bogy of. That devil has
his claws cut long ago by organized charity; but organized charity hates to give, and in
some cities gives only in secret. When organized charity learns to be generous, without
blushing, it will come into its own, and the widowhood of poverty will then get as liberal
indemnity as the widowhood of industrial disaster. Such widowhood is just as innocent;
and it is just as dangerous to society if not relieved.
I should like to see in every city a survey of all the children who are in institutions
and in foster homes, and then a statement of the cost of maintenance of those children
among them whose own homes are more fit except for poverty. I have always favored
private out-door relief, but it is inadequate, and to-day all over the country, except in a few
cities, families of widows are being ruthlessly scattered for lack of charity. Will public out-
door relief be more adequate or better? Students of public out-door relief know well how
it increases pauperism, but does not neglected childhood increase pauperism even more?
For nearly twenty years I have been a charity organization secretary and a special
student and opponent of public out-door relief. In Charities for 1899, I had elaborate
articles on the public and private out-door relief of forty cities. I know the dangers of
relief, but last year at Boston I said, with Devine, “Our resources for relief are woefully
inadequate. Our use of relief has been most sparing and timid. I am inclined to believe
that we have caused more pauperism by our failure to provide for the necessities of life,
for the education and training of children, and for the care and convalescence of the sick,
than we have by excessive relief, even if we include indiscriminate alms.” Can we harness
public relief as we have harnessed steam and electricity through skillful engineers, so
that we can have its power without its danger?
Why am I opposed to this plan of public pensions for widows? My opposition is not
academic. I do not care whether the relief is a public or a private function, or whether
it is given by the poor master, or by the Juvenile Court as in Chicago, or by children’s
guardians, or by a board of home assistance as proposed in New York. I think much,
very much, of Thomas Mackay’s classic argument that to the imagination of the poor
the public treasury is inexhaustible and their right, and that they drop upon it without
thrift, as they dare not do on private charity, and this argument is one that cannot be
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 148 02/01/17 1:37 PM
149
met by any excellence of administration; but I remember too that pauperizing by alms
is no worse than pauperizing by neglect. Moreover, Mackay’s argument applies mainly
to indolence and improvidence, which are voluntary. The poverty of widowhood is not
usually due to lack of thrift, and what widow ever became a widow because aid was pub-
lic rather than private?
The crux of my opposition to public pensions today is that the public does not stand
for fit salaries for relief. I am an advocate of more adequate relief, but I am an advocate
first of more adequate brains and work for the poor. Relief without brains is as bad as
medicine without doctors. I would much rather see doctors without medicine, or sal-
aries without relief, as is the practice of some of the best of our charity organization
societies. Like undoctored drugs, untrained relief is poisonous to the poor. Good charity
is expensive, and poor charity is worse than none, yet what city would support adequate
case work for its public aid?
In Buffalo where we have had organized charity for thirty-five years and for five
years much talk and less practice of adequate relief, public opinion supports adequate
salaries for a large staff in the charity organization society. Nevertheless, the city poor
office has but five investigators, while we have fourteen, of better ability. Moreover, the
city investigators merely investigate, while we make plans, find f riends and find money
f rom natural sources. Last month the money found by our paid visitors f rom relatives,
employers and friends nearly equalled the total of their salaries, and if we add the wages
for work found by them it would have exceeded their salaries. Of course these visitors
gave the poor also a service which is worth ten times more than the money they get for
them; but I find that the monthly statement of this money got by them for their poor,
does much to justify the salaries in the eyes of the public.
Will the voters stand in any city for the salaries without which charity is a pest and
curse? Even in Chicago where a bad law in a good cause is redeemed by a good judge, I
do not find any indication of adequate case work. Judge Pinckney has voluntarily asso-
ciated with himself a salaries case committee, paid for by private charities and not from
the public treasury; but the record stories, which I have glanced at in the few days since
I undertook this paper, would not pass muster for case work in some cities. They show
good diagnosis and study of temperament, but I have not noticed in them search for
relatives who can give, or attempts to find work or to find better paid work, or official
records of the school attendance of children as a condition of aid, or constructive plans
for removing poverty. A pension committee needs all of these things for its action. Even
under Judge Pinckney, the Chicago relief looks like mere relief, which keeps the family
from deteriorating after the bread-winner has gone. Indemnity relief may have no higher
function than to prevent deterioration, but charity relief aims to redeem the family. It is
not too much to ask that the tax payers’ money should be educational and constructive.
How does the adequacy of Judge Pinckney’s relief compare with private char-
ity relief ? I have only Buffalo to compare with. Judge Pinckney has pretty nearly carte
blanche; his work has been splendidly guarded and intelligent and is the high-water mark
of what can be expected today of public charity. In eleven months (to June 1, 1912) 316
families had an average of $262.00 each per year. In Buffalo, which is above the average
in private relief, 707 widows applied last year, of whom 230 had money aid, averaging
$35.00 a year each. This means nothing, however, for the figures include old widows
without children, widows who had one month’s casual aid, etc., twenty-four widows,
who had our aid for twelve consecutive months, averaged $152.00 per annum from us or
with city aid included, $180.00 per annum, which is 70 per cent of the Chicago aid. The
Buffalo families have earnings, however, and aid f rom relatives, as the Chicago families
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 149 02/01/17 1:37 PM
150
must have had also. The only fair comparison would be the budgets rather than the pen-
sions, and these I have not on tap for Buffalo, though I have been given the Chicago fig-
ures. The maximum C. O. S. pensions in Buffalo were $301.00 and $307.00 per year. An
adequate family budget for the poor is not less than $700.00 a year.
A fact of the very first importance in this connection was stated last year in my Bos-
ton paper at this Conference that out of 2,240 families treated in that year by the Buffalo
Society only seven were found to be absolutely dependent for as much as even six months
with no income at all f rom earnings, relatives, lodgers, or any source except charity. This
shows clearly both the danger of exaggeration and the need of investigation.
Salaries are usually far more adequate with private charity than with public.
Money relief is inadequate with either, but bad, very bad, as the relief given by pri-
vate charity has been in many cities it has not been so bad or so niggardly with indi-
vidual families as public outdoor relief. We still find doles with either public or private
charity, though $2.00 a week orders to widows every one, two, or three weeks (with
$2.00 weekly or $104.00 a year as a maximum for the family) is still typical with pub-
lic charity, but the rare exception with private. The private charity which has not the
energy to find adequate relief will not be likely to have the wisdom to use it wisely
when found. The valuable pension system of private charity is not half developed as
a money raiser. It is my belief that modern organized charity is the most liberal as
well as the most tender, personal and effective charity that the world has ever known.
Politics exist with either public or private charity, but more with public charity. Fit
men are more often found by private charity than by public where the tail of a long
ticket is often designated by party managers with little public attention. The valuable
co-operation of volunteers through case committees is a splendid part of the Chicago
plan and exists with Boston out-door relief but is as exceptional with public charity as
it is universal with private charity.
Will public relief check the giving of private relief as suggested in Chalmers “seven
fountains” so that nothing will be gained because private givers will leave it all to the
public treasury? My elaborate study in Charities, in 1899 seemed to show that just this
happened, and that private giving was trif ling in cities where public aid was given. Dr.
Devine thinks this and said at the last New York State Conference of Charities at Water-
town that public out-door relief would require at least a million dollars a year in New
York City and that he firmly believed f rom ample experience in Berlin, Paris, and this
country, that with it there would be more neglected poverty and distress than without it.
Dr. Devine thinks private relief most inadequate, however, and so do Alexander Johnson,
Folks, Hebberd, Tucker, Kingsley and many others who differ as to public pensions.
The question is active in New York State where the report of the congestion com-
mission February 28, 1911, which was reviewed at length in the Survey for March 11,
18, and 25, 1911, was followed by the report to the New York City Conference of Chari-
ties and Correction rendered last May after a year’s consideration. This report advocated
public pensions to widows. Both this report and the New York bill recognize the dan-
ger of public administration as inadequate and provide that the public money shall go
through private charities. If this is a return to public subsidies to private charities it seems
to me indescribably bad, for such subsidies lead to sectarian appeals, to lobbying and to a
scrambling at the public trough for patronage.
I have the detail of many of the state bills and laws, but they cannot be described in a
paper so short as this must be if there is to be time for discussion.
It is no light thing to reverse a policy of many years in regard to public out-door
relief. It was abolished in New York and Brooklyn thirty years ago, and in many of our
chief cities and it was thought to be a dead issue in this Conference. Times change,
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 150 02/01/17 1:37 PM
151
however, and I am not willing to believe that in this day public out-door relief cannot be
successful. It weighs with me that the equally delicate work of child placing is success-
fully done by public charity, though the arguments against it would be similar. Over and
over private charity has blazed the way for what became public safety after standards had
been developed and established, and this process I believe in. The curse of the old name
of city out-door relief is something and the new and better associations will make it eas-
ier to keep up the new and better standards.
I am myself still opposed to public pensions, though with their aims I am so much
in sympathy that I shall welcome experiments, in states not my own which may demon-
strate whether they will succeed. Even if in the beginning such public relief does not
reach the best standards of private relief I shall be willing to wait before judging if it
improves steadily. Universal suffrage does not give immediate good government.
This paper has been prepared under extreme pressure as a basis for discussion. It9is
not a straddle, but voices the doubts which I have been expressing publicly for some
time. I am here to learn.
DISCUSSION
MR. HOMER FOLKS—It seemed to me I could best make my thoughts on this matter
clear by asking a few questions in serial order and then answering them as best I could.
So far as I deal with facts I have in mind entirely the facts in New York City.
The first question is this: Is it desirable that children of widows of good character
and efficiency be kept with their mothers? Is poverty alone a sufficient cause for breaking
up families?
I think that all of us here probably without exception would answer this first ques-
tion in the affirmative. There are those who would answer it in the negative, but they
don’t come to conferences, and we have to deal with them when we get home. I think
we can assume that substantially all those present would agree with the conclusion of
the White House Conference in that regard. I, at least, stand without qualification on the
answer as stated in those conclusions.
Again, if such families should be kept together, should the relief come preferably
from private sources?
I take it that there is difference of opinion. A very considerable, and perhaps an
increasing number, probably, would say that they would have no special preference, or
even prefer public relief. Personally, I take the other side. Under present circumstances I
decidedly prefer the relief of such families from private sources for these three reasons:
First, it is desirable to develop and maintain private relief giving, and that this offers
a clear and easy division of the field—the public authorities to maintain the public insti-
tutions and the private societies to give the family relief.
Second, the administration of public family relief is perhaps admitted by all to be
decidedly difficult. I do not agree with Mr. Almy that the difficulty lies in getting ade-
quate salaries for relief officers. I think it is the rule that public work pays better salaries
than private work. Charity may be the one exception, but if it is, I believe we can change
that particular exception, and that adequate money for adequate salaries for an adequate
number of officers, could be had.
But the more difficult point is the clumsiness of the machinery by which public
employees are selected. It is still difficult, to be sure, by any process that we now know of
to get competent people at a given time for a given job in the public service.
But the most serious objection of the three is, that I think there is a subtle psycho-
logical, but very important difference between the feeling of reliance upon private relief
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 151 02/01/17 1:37 PM
152
and the feeling of reliance upon public charity claimed as a matter of right. I am not so
sure, in the case of widows, that it is not a matter of right. A feeling of reliance upon a
steady and regular income wisely adapted to the family needs and the family budget,
ought to be a good thing. I am not so sure that it is not a desirable thing in the home of
the widow or where the totally disabled wage earner is concerned, but certainly it is a
very dangerous thing in other households where there is a wage earner, able-bodied, but
disposed to shirk his responsibility.
If it is preferable that relief come from private sources, is sufficient relief now given
f rom private sources to such families? Speaking as to New York: I doubt if any person
would have the hardihood to say that such is the case at the present time and for one, I
have to state most emphatically, that it is not sufficient, and that families of that character
are not kept together and that considerable numbers of children of widows who should
be kept at home are committed, and that the process which Judge Pinckney described of
the tearing apart of children from their mothers for poverty alone, occurs f rom time to
time in every borough of the City of New York.
Third. If it is desirable that such families should be kept together and if the relief
should come preferably from private sources, and if sufficient relief does not come now,
is it, after all, a very serious thing to break up such families and send the children to insti-
tutions? I doubt whether any person present would answer that question thus put, in the
negative, and yet some of our best f riends do by their actions, answer it in the negative,
because, while this breaking up of families goes on admittedly and openly, they do not
actually do anything in a large way to stop it.
It is suggested sometimes that the proper course is to relieve in the best and finest
and most constructive and up-to-date method such families as can be aided by existing
resources. As to what is to happen to the other families not so aided, no particular reply
is made.
What should we think of a city which had a thousand destitute aged persons and
which was about to construct a new almshouse, and which proposed plans for an entirely
modern building to accommodate two hundred persons, and pointed with pride to its
sanitary arrangements, its bath rooms and cottage plan, and spoke of this as a model
provision for the aged poor, but refused to answer the question as to what is to happen
to the other eight hundred? What would the people of the city think of that sort of a
municipal policy? But in my judgment that would be far more defensive, far less serious
than to provide adequately for a few families leaving others to the tender resources of
nothing.
Now, if it is desirable that these families be kept together, and if the relief should
come preferably f rom private sources, and if it is really a very serious matter, is it pos-
sible to find f rom private sources sufficient relief ? Some say yes and some say no, and I
say that I do not think any of us know, for the reason that in New York it has never been
intelligently tried.
We have possibly between six and seven thousand children of widows in institutions
in New York City. Not all of them should be at home. Is it possible to secure from private
sources sufficient additional funds to provide for them? I am not sure, and I hope the
relief societies will make one more combined serious, final effort to secure such funds.
But I think they should distinctly realize that this is the last call for dinner, and if they
don’t get together and secure such funds they will be provided from some other source
in some other way.
Now, just one question more: If it develops that sufficient private resources are not
to be had, is the evil of breaking up families as we are now doing, a lesser evil than public
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 152 02/01/17 1:37 PM
153
relief to widows? A good many say yes. My opinion is distinctly not; and that if we do
not secure f rom private sources sufficient funds, then, without hesitation we ought to
have a system of public relief for widows.
HON. MERRITT W. PINCKNEY—I am not convinced, notwithstanding what I have
heard, against the “Funds to Parents” law—no, I am not convinced. I have listened with
great interest to a very able and intelligent paper read by Mr. Almy. Anybody who knows
him, knows of his ability to grasp this subject, must treat what he says with the highest
consideration, and I do. If I had known him as well and liked him as well as I do now,
before I came to Cleveland, I don’t know whether I would have taken the opposite side
of any question that he was to discuss. He certainly looks to me as though he was by
experience authorized to speak, and I want to thank him personally, too, for the way
he treated the subject. He didn’t shut the door in our faces and say, “Stay outside.” He
didn’t say to us, “The honest and judicious administration of the law of the Funds to Par-
ents Act is impossible, go away and don’t bother me.” He left the door open, as I always
believe he has left his mind open, for honest, intelligent thought, regardless of what his
years of experience have been, and regardless of what his thought was on any particular
subject, and I want to thank him for that consideration.
It comes to me now that someone of the speakers said it will cost a million dollars
to try this out in the City of New York. I have read with interest the report of the State
Board of Charities for the State of New York for the year 1911, and I recognize Mr. Heb-
berd as the Secretary of that Board. I assume that those gentlemen in their experience
and grasp of this subject, and in their study of it, in their service to the State of New
York, have made investigation and inquiry and have consulted with the various organiza-
tions, private and otherwise, through the State of New York, and therefore, when I read
in their report that it is confessedly admitted by the private charities in the City of New
York that they have not the adequate means to meet the needs of the dependents in that
city, that it stands for something; and when I see in that report that thirty-four thousand
five hundred and thirty children were in dependent institutions at the close of the fiscal
year ending September 30, 1910, that it must take three hundred and fifty thousand dol-
lars of New York’s money to take care of those children for one month and that it must
take for the year something over four million of dollars. I say, when these gentlemen,
after their investigation, tell us these things and report that many of the children could
have been taken care of at home in the normal condition of family life, that it means
something, and I say it would pay the City of New York, as an experiment, to keep some
of those children at home with their mothers instead of sending them away to institu-
tions, even if it did cost one million dollars.
I want to say to Judge Baker f rom Boston, when you say that the administration of
this relief ought not to be left to the Juvenile Court of Chicago, or to any Juvenile Court,
I say, Amen! but I do say it is possible to so frame a law that public officials will be able to
administer this relief.
Now, Mr. Persons, I want to say to you that it is probably due to the short time
allowed me that I did not explain about these eight hundred and fifty families who were
refused relief. I have the figures here on those families and I think there must be three
hundred and fifty of them who were, through undisclosed property interests, money or
funds of some kind, amply able to take care of themselves. That shows, if it shows any-
thing, that we have a committee that is doing its work of investigation and inquiry well.
So, out of eight hundred and fifty families, three hundred and fifty were able to take
care of themselves, and naturally, under the law, we couldn’t give them relief. And of
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 153 02/01/17 1:37 PM
154
the other five hundred there are various reasons set down for refusing them relief. They
were turned over to other agencies to be taken care of. Under the law, we say that these
families, for reasons set down by the conference group after consultation with the Court,
are not entitled to relief, but they are taken care of wherever it is necessary to take care
of them.
Now, with reference to supervision, I wish to say to Miss Richmond that she is mis-
taken when she says that there is no supervision in Chicago. I will admit, ladies and gen-
tlemen, after eleven months, under a law that is too brief, and into which we have had
to read certain essentials before we undertook to administer it—I will admit that the law
is not complete. I will admit that we are in the beginning of the dawn, but I say we are
doing something toward administering this law efficiently, intelligently and honestly, too,
and through public channels.
Don’t let us be satisfied with what is partial, but let us ask for all. Why, we have been
working for years now, for what? For compulsory insurance against accident, sickness,
old age and invalidity.
Let us nail our colors to the mast and insist on what we have been asking for these
many years, the full program; insurance against industrial accident, insurance against
sickness, insurance against old age, insurance against invalidity, and compulsory insur-
ance against all these four items in every State of the Union.
MISS M. E. RICHMOND—Mr. Senior has struck the keynote, I think. We must not
attempt to meet our present difficulties, serious though they be, in such a bungling way
as to put up permanent barriers against their solution. So far from being a forward step,
“funds to parents” is a backward one—public funds not to widows only, mark you, but to
private families, funds to the families of those who have deserted and are going to desert!
The breaking up of homes through poverty alone is, as I have said, a serious evil,
but its prevention demands elements that this Chicago experiment, so carefully watched
and safeguarded by some of the best known social workers in the country, conspicuously
lacks. Even here, with their hearty good will and earnest co-operation, and with a judge
willing to aid them, there has been practically no competent supervision of the pen-
sioned families; there has been, in some cases, less adequate relief than private charity
was giving, and far less supervision. If this has been the case in Chicago, what may we
expect, at this stage of social service development, f rom experiments less co-operative
and under administrations less able to withstand undue inf luence?
Another point in my too brief four minutes: This Illinois bill was drafted and passed
without consulting a single social worker, and then they had to ask the social workers to
come to their rescue in order that the worst might not happen. Watch your Legislatures
carefully, when you go back to your several states, and see that the social workers are
consulted in time.
Miss Lathrop has said that the private charities have been “pauperized” in Chicago
by the new law, and are turning their cases over to the court. There is another aspect of
that. No private fund for relief can successfully compete very long with a public fund,
whether the latter is adequate or not. Inevitably the sources of private charitable relief
dry up. A greater danger threatens in the state of New York, where it is actually proposed
publicly to pay private charities for the relief of widows one hundred cents for every
fifty that they spend in relief from their own funds—a two for a cent plan that will be an
admirable way of hammering down our standards of adequate treatment in such cases.
If we spend any of the fifty cents in seeing that the children of the widow are in school,
that they are morally protected, that their health is safeguarded, that they have a good
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 154 02/01/17 1:37 PM
155
chance to grow up right, we are to get less than a dollar for the family; but if we, or our
colleagues, spend all of the fifty cents on material relief, we get a dollar. The methods
of public pensioning so far proposed are full of such incongruities as I have pointed out.
When a widow is granted relief under the law, the last thing that is said to her in
court by myself, is to explain to her the necessity of accounting to a regular probation
officer as to how she spends her money. And she is cautioned to keep her receipts, and
that probation officer’s duty is to visit that family regularly, and report on that family,
giving it such supervision as it is possible for him or her to give. I don’t say that this is
enough, but I say that somewhere along the line, when we have had the experience and
we get right down to what is possible to do under public administration, that we can
rightly supervise and investigate and control this situation.
Now, I noticed in Mr. Almy’s paper, the argument which he read, that to the imag-
ination of the poor the public treasury is inexhaustible, and they drop on it without
thrift—that is a forceful statement, that is true, but which is the worse, the pauperizing
by alms or by neglect? For my part, I would rather have a pauper with a well-filled stom-
ach than a pauper who is starving to death.
?
M05_STER9913_09_SE_C05.indd 155 02/01/17 1:37 PM
156
The Depression and the
New Deal: 1930–1940
6
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Compare the impact of the reat
Depression to that of the recession
of 00 00 .
• Summarize the major program
innovations of the New Deal.
• E plain how the social movements
of the 1 0s had lasting impacts on
social welfare.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Changing Economic and
Demographic ealities 1
The Economic Collapse 156
Agricultural Crisis 158
Family Life 162
Innovations in Social elfare 1
The Hoover Response to Crisis 163
FDR and the First New Deal 164
The Second New Deal 168
The Changing Role of the Social
Work Profession 176
New Alignments in Social
Welfare 178
Mass Movements during the
1 0s 1 0
Veterans and the Bonus 181
Older Americans 182
Labor and Social Welfare 182
Setbacks for Women 185
The Eclipse of Reform 185
Conclusion 1
DOCUMENTS: The Depression
and the New Deal 1
Monthly Report of the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration,
1933 189
Social Security Act, 1935 195
!”
#$
%!
“&
”
‘(
)$
*+
,
“!
–
‘+
(%
‘-
,
“-
.
$!
$,
#’
“#
$%
!.
The economic prosperity of the 1920s was both real and imagi-
nary. Factory workers and second-generation ethnics experienced
better economic times than during any previous era of American
history. Like the subprime mortgage “bubble” of the early 2000s,
however, much of the economic growth of the 1920s was fueled by
speculation and plain fraud. Thanks to the availability of consumer
credit, working families no longer had to save patiently for years
to purchase an icebox or a radio; for a few dollars down and a few
more every month, they could bring these new consumer products
home. Like the 1990s, some economists and politicians believed that
depression was a thing of the past.
Changing EConomiC and
dEmographiC rEalitiEs
The Economic Collapse
The crisis that descended upon the country had not come with-
out forewarning. In addition to the large-scale stock speculation,
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 156 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 157
several other factors indicated the precariousness of the prosperity of the 1920s. A study
by the Brookings Institution analyzed the income and savings of families in the richest
pre-Depression year, 1929, and found that almost 6 million families, 21 percent of the
population, had annual incomes of less than $1,000. These families of necessity spent
$2.1 billion more than they earned. The next income group, the 5.8 million families with
incomes between $1,000 and $1,500, had very slight savings—less than $200 million.
Thus, 40 percent of the population had no reserves to fall back on when the Depression
set in. The fact was that 30 percent of American families had incomes under $3,100 and
saved little during 1929.
The Brookings study had declared that $2,000 in 1929 prices was sufficient to sup-
ply a family with only basic necessities. An annual income of $2,500 was a very mod-
erate one. Nevertheless, 60 percent of all families had incomes below $2,000, and 71
percent of all families had incomes below $2,500.1 Despite the talk of prosperity, low
incomes were the reality for the vast majority of American families even before the
Depression hit.
Equally clear is the reason for the collapse of consumption once the unsoundness
of the economic situation became evident and the fear of its consequences took hold.
Families reduced their consumption, provoking a new second round of increased unem-
ployment, f rom “overproduction of capital; overambitious expansion of business con-
cerns; overproduction of commodities ././. the maintenance of an artificial price level for
many commodities.”2 The gross national product (GNP) dropped yearly from an all-time
high of $103.1 billion in 1929 to reach $55.6 billion in 1933. GNP started upward in 1934,
reached $90.4 billion in 1937, but fell back to $84.7 billion the following year. Not until
1941 did national income reach pre-crisis levels.3
The crash of 1929 was the start of a 12-year period of deprivation. Other economic
indicators followed the same pattern. Unemployment, which had averaged about 4 per-
cent of the civilian labor force in the 1920s, rose by 4 million during 1930. In 1933, the
year that marked the depth of the Depression, an average of 13 million persons, some
25 percent of the civilian labor force, were unemployed, and many more could find only
part-time employment. Despite recovery programs, 14 percent of the American work-
force was still jobless in 1937, and by 1938, that figure had risen again to 19 percent.4
In a situation in which earnings for most workers were near poverty level, security
was necessarily measured in terms of steady employment. Unemployment of a bread-
winner was disastrous for a family. The finding of the Relief Census conducted by the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) during October 1933 that 3 million
families, consisting of more than 12.5 million persons (about 10 percent of the popula-
tion), were dependent upon unemployment relief suggests the scope of the disaster that
had befallen the country.
The clear barrier between the deserving and undeserving poor that had guided social
welfare policy for a century weakened as a result of mass unemployment. Through ear-
lier economic crises, Americans had retained their faith that the United States was the
land of opportunity and that anyone who really wanted to work could find a job. But
Progressivism had increased understanding of how structural forces could limit opportu-
nity and increase unemployment. In 1924, a century after the Yates report had provided a
rationale for using the almshouse to motivate the poor to find work, the venerable New
York Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor released a study that argued
that assistance levels were too low and that raising them might enable recipients to break
the “vicious circle of poverty.”5 The Depression demonstrated that one could be poor
and unemployed because of social—not individual—dysfunction. Both the temporary
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 157 02/01/17 1:37 PM
158 Chapter 6
relief programs developed to meet the exigencies of the Depression and later permanent
programs of the Social Security Act underlined the risks of a complex economy and the
vulnerability produced by economic breakdown.
The emergence of a distinctive subculture among professional social workers was
one contributor to this new understanding of need and deprivation. Illustrative and fac-
tual support for such dissent began to appear in the publications of the Family Welfare
Association of America (FWAA) and of the National Federation of Settlements. The
FWAA journal, The Family, reported a study of breakdown in family income during 1928.
One thousand cases, including 3,996 individuals known to three Boston family-relief
agencies, were analyzed for factors associated with dependency. Of the total 1,000 cases,
41 percent showed that “some form of physical incapacity made charitable aid neces-
sary,” while 30 percent of the families were dependent as a result of joblessness.6
Still, this new recognition that unemployment was a structural risk of an industrial
society sat uncomfortably with older characterizations of the poor. Thus, the Boston
agencies still concluded that 7 percent of their clients were dependent because they had
“bad character.” This was in sharp contrast with the results of Amos Warner’s classic
study, American Charities, of 1892, which found intemperance to be the cause of depen-
dency in one-fifth of the cases studied. The principal researcher of the later study hoped
that the analysis would contribute to an understanding of “the inevitable economic
maladjustments in a society which distributes its wealth to individuals capable of earn-
ing it ././. and assumes that the family system of consumption surviving f rom an earlier
economic organization will have its needs supplied.”7
In 1931, the Unemployment Committee of the National Federation of Settlements
sponsored Case Studies of Unemployment, an account of 150 cases offering “cross-sections
of human experience where unemployment is due to industrial rather than individual
causes.”8 Looking beyond the immediate crisis, the National Federation declared:
Experience has taught us to recognize broken work not merely as a symptom of
financial crises, but as a recurring fault of modern production. We are confronted
by unemployment, not as a single episode in the history of a household, but as
something that may come again and again, impeding and stopping the normal
development of the family.9
Agricultural Crisis
For farmers, generally, the Depression of the 1930s seemed an extension and deepen-
ing of a crisis that had descended during the 1920s with the collapse of domestic and
European demand for farm commodities. At first, the problem seemed part of the gen-
eral economic recession that plagued the country during 1920 and 1921; but subsequent
improvements, during the 1920s, in the overall situation did not bring full recovery to
farmers. Thus, whereas the share of agriculture in the national product had been 13 per-
cent in 1919, its share was only 10 percent in 1929.10 The situation became desperate
during the 1930s. The ratio of prices for commodities sold by farmers to prices paid for
purchases—using 1909–1914 as the base period—fell f rom 92 percent in 1929 to 58 per-
cent in 1932.11 Total farm income dropped to $2.5 billion in 1932, less than one-half of
total farm income in 1919. Individual farm income dropped from $945 per farm in 1929
to $379 per farm in 1933.12 Ironically, farm production fell by less than 5 percent, dash-
ing hopes for an increase in prices of farm commodities. Farm debt soared as the value
of farm property declined sharply. Farmers organized, demonstrated, and threatened a
nationwide strike.
The emergence of a
distinctive subculture
among professional
social workers was one
contributor to this new
understanding of need
and deprivation.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 158 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 159
Despite agricultural difficulties, the Depression brought about a brief reversal of the long-
term trend in the decline in the farm population. In 1929, 30.6 million persons—25 percent
of the total population—lived on farms; by 1933, the farm population had risen to 32.4 mil-
lion—26 percent of the total population. After 1933, the number of persons living on farms
resumed its downward trend.13 Disenchantment with the realities of farm living had set in,
industrial production had started a slow recovery, and, perhaps most important, relief, when
needed, was more readily available in the cities. As with farm population, the number of farms
rose during the early Depression years and then began to fall.
The human crisis of the Great Depression was exacerbated by ecological disas-
ter. After decades of plowing the semiarid land of the Great Plains and destroying the
grasses that held topsoil intact, drought hit the region in three waves—1934, 1936, and
1939—which led to a series of catastrophic dust storms. The worst of the storms, in May
1934, blew millions of pounds of Great Plains soil to Chicago and, a few days later, to
Eastern cities. Farmers who had held on through the agricultural depression of the 1920s
and 1930s were finally defeated as their farms literally blew away.
The Dust Bowl, in turn, provoked a humanitarian crisis as millions of families from
Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma—generically called “Okies”—headed west in search of
work and new homes. The population of California that was born in Oklahoma, for
example, increased by 118,000 between 1930 and 1940. John Steinbeck’s The
Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange’s photographs for the Farm Security
Administration preserved their jarring experience of economic deprivation,
exploitation, and personal trauma (Figures 6.1 and 6.2).14
The Roosevelt administration’s New Deal package responded to the
farmers’ plight and unrest with legislation and administrative regulations
designed to ease credit and to raise commodity prices through restricting
output. In particular, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), approved by
Congress on May 10, 1933, authorized the imposition of production controls
to achieve a balance between production and consumption of farm com-
modities at the index parity level of farm income enjoyed during 1909–1914.
The restriction of output contributed to a decline in the number of farms during the
Depression years. By 1940, the number of farms stood at 6,097,000, representing a 10-year
loss of almost 200,000 farms.15 Since the number of farms owned or operated by whites
remained essentially unchanged, the loss was almost entirely among black farms—down
from 15 percent of the total number of farms in 1930 to 12 percent in 1940. This rapid
decline testifies to the precarious position of black farmers in the Southern agricultural
economy. As farm prices fell, black tenant farmers were more likely to face eviction. At
the same time, many African Americans were evicted because of their involvement with
the Southern Tenant Farm Union that attempted to negotiate fairer conditions for poor
black and white farms. These efforts to push poor African Americans off rural farms con-
tributed to the rapid black migration to Northern cities over the next three decades.
Growth in farm ownership and in the average size of farms was stimulated directly and
indirectly by New Deal policies. As tenants were forced off the land, the percentage of fully
owned farms increased as the total number of farms fell. The percentage of fully owned farms
rose from 46 in 1930 to 51 in 1940; the percentage of black farms that were fully owned rose
from 17 to 23 in the same period.16 Farm ownership was accompanied by a steady increase in
farm size—from an average of 150.7 acres in 1930 to an average of 167.1 acres in 1940.17
Following his inauguration, President Roosevelt consolidated all federal agricultural
credit agencies into the Farm Credit Administration. Congress authorized loans to save
farmers from the immediate danger of foreclosures, to underwrite production costs, and
to regain lost property on easy credit terms. The result of this package of New Deal
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 159 02/01/17 1:37 PM
160 Chapter 6
farm legislation, including the AAA, was to raise net farm income f rom $2.5 billion in
1932 to more than $5.9 billion in 1935. Additionally, the $9.6 billion farm mortgage debt
load of 1930 was reduced to $7.6 billion in 1935 and to $6.6 billion in 1940.18
New Deal legislation, designed to help farmers through easy credit, supported
not only farm ownership but also the introduction of farm machinery, which, in turn,
encouraged the development of larger farms. The Farm Security Administration had
authority to lend money to make it possible, among other things, for farmers to become
landowners and to refinance and rehabilitate their lands.
Figure 6.1 Application for federal emergency funding to construct migrant
worker housing in California, 1935
0′
$!
#,
1
0
)%
#%
2′
“0
),
–
$*
$,
$%
!,
&
$3
‘”
‘4
%
5
(%
!2
‘+
,,
, &
(-
-$
2-
00
.
,(
“-
67
68
8.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 160 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 161
In its early years, New Deal legislation spelled disaster for the most marginal group
of farmers—tenants. In general, government support was for large farmers, with little
assistance going to the small farmer. Not until 1935 was a tenant clause added to the
AAA requiring farmers to keep the same number of tenants they had when they joined
the program.19 As the most marginal part of the farm population, tenant farmers and
sharecroppers bore the heaviest burden of the agricultural depression. Homeless, they
joined the other jobless and dispossessed who wandered the country.
The reduction in farm tenancy sparked two important migrations. Many African
American and white Southerners found their way to the industrial centers of the Mid-
west and the East, where they played an important role in the social and political crises
of those cities during the postwar years. More immediately, tens of thousands of dis-
possessed farmers streamed westward, where they joined Mexican Americans and Asian
Americans in the labor force for California’s expanding agricultural region. The Roos-
evelt administration stepped in both to improve conditions in California and, through
the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), to reduce wind erosion on the Great Plains.
The conf licting thrusts of New Deal policies were particularly dramatic in the devel-
opment of agricultural and land policy. Native Americans saw some relief f rom their
0′
$!
#,
1
0
)%
#%
2’
“0
),
–
$*
$,
$%
!,
&
$3
‘”
‘4
%
5
(%
!2
‘+
,,
, &
(-
-$
2-
00
.
,(
“-
67
68
9.
Figure 6.2 The application for migrant worker housing funds was accompanied by photographs by Dorothea
Lange of existing conditions. Kern County, California, February 1935
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 161 02/01/17 1:37 PM
162 Chapter 6
difficulties in land ownership during the period. The Dawes Act of 1887 had divided
their land. But, in too many cases, Native American land was allotted to white people.
In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act helped end this practice. Additionally, Congress
gave the tribes more than a million acres of new land, permitted greater autonomy in
local government, improved health services and education, and supplied credit for agri-
cultural development and industrial projects. Native Americans were given preferential
hiring in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the development of native crafts was encour-
aged. The secretary of the interior still exercised political control, regulated land man-
agement, and supervised expenditures. Nevertheless, New Deal policy provided a new
beginning for the relationship of the federal government and Native Americans, one that
acknowledged the government’s past mistakes and the importance of indigenous culture
and autonomy.20
Family Life
A summary of staff reports prepared in 1935 for the Committee on Economic Secu-
rity declared “the chief aim of social security is protection of the family life of wage
earners, and the prime factor in family life is the protection and development of
children.”21 As the Depression deepened, social workers insisted that the economic
base of the family be strengthened and that the federal government share in the cost.
The relative prosperity of the 1910s and 1920s had made working-class families
more vulnerable to economic hard times. The “breadwinner” family with a father
working, a full-time female homemaker, and children in school became more common
during these years, replacing the multi-earner family strategies of the 19th century.
When the Depression hit, male unemployment left the family without any income on
which to fall back.
In the mid-1930s, E. Wight Bakke’s studies of family life and unemployment docu-
mented the painful process of readjustment that loss of work initiated. In some cases,
unemployment led to strengthen family ties as members worked together to get through
the crisis, whereas in other cases, it led to a disintegration of both family relations and
connections to neighbors and kin.22
Changes in the family were particularly evident in the move of women working out-
side the home. The number of wage-earning women 16 years of age and over increased
f rom 1,701,000 in 1870, when the Bureau of the Census first collected such data, to
10,546,000 in 1930.23 During the 1920s, the increase in female employment was 29 percent,
while the increase in the female population was 22 percent. The number of employed
married women had reached 3,071,000 in 1930, a nearly 300 percent increase over the
769,000 employed at the beginning of the century. Were it not “for the retardation of
business activity which was well under way at the time of the 1930 census, probably even
more women would have reported themselves as occupied.” As it was, 33 percent of those
who worked were in domestic and personal services, 18 percent were in manufacturing
and mechanical industries, 19 percent were in clerical occupations, and 12 percent were in
trade and transportation.
The unemployment crisis of the 1930s delayed the formation of new families—
getting married and having children. The marriage rate per 1,000 unmarried women
declined from 92 percent in 1920 to 68 percent in 1930.24 In 1933, the birthrate was 18.4
per 1,000 of population, down from 27.7 per 1,000 of population in 1920 and from 21.3
in 1930.25
Unemployment struck women as well as men, with discrimination falling heavily
upon the former as jobs became scarcer and men displaced women. At the same time,
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 162 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 163
the well-paid industrial and construction work performed by most men was
more liable to layoffs than the lower-paid, unskilled work performed by most
women. One result was role reversal, wherein wives worked and supported
families, while husbands were confined to the home. Although the divorce
rate showed no appreciable change between 1920 and 1940, family instability
was evidenced by a sharp increase in suicide and desertions.26
innovations in soCial WElfarE
The economic crisis that began in 1929 pushed political leaders to scramble for solu-
tions. During the Hoover administration (1929–1933) and the first years of the Roosevelt
administration, these solutions very often looked backward to older economic orthodox-
ies. Only with the failure of those ideas, and with a push from social movements, did the
Roosevelt administration finally embrace newer ideas, including moving social welfare
from an afterthought to a central tenet of social and economic policy.
The Hoover Response to Crisis
President Herbert Hoover had been seen as a Progressive during the 1920s because
of his leadership of the effort to feed a hungry Europe after World War I, but he
had retreated to an advocacy of “rugged individualism” during his 1928 campaign.
He believed that government’s proper role was to encourage voluntary action, a con-
viction that failed to match the magnitude of the economic dislocation of the Great
Depression. In 1930, President Hoover engaged in a major campaign of optimistic
rhetoric and a minor campaign of public works that failed to stop the precipitous
economic decline. This refusal to depart f rom traditional ideas and policies imposed
serious limitations on the administration’s response to the crisis. Trapped by the hope
of his own prediction of an early return to economic normalcy and by his belief in
balanced budgets, laissez-faire, and states’ rights, Hoover was reluctant to have the
federal government assume new responsibilities and powers.27 This was especially
true in matters of social welfare, long considered a province for state and local activi-
ties as well as the special domain of private voluntary activity. Not until 1932 did Con-
gress charter the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) “to provide emergency
financing facilities for financial institutions to aid in financing agriculture, commerce
and industry, and for other purposes.”28
Hoover, like much of the country, was out of touch in two respects. First, the mag-
nitude of the economic crisis was hard to comprehend for those who had three meals a
day and no specter of foreclosure or joblessness haunting them. Just as importantly, the
demographic profile of the nation had changed. The children of the immigrant wave of
the early 20th/century were the first generation in American history that was predomi-
nantly industrial and urban. The older bromides of rugged individualism held little mean-
ing for them. In contrast, the expansion of urban liberalism at the local level underscored
the importance of government action in providing security and improving the life circum-
stances of ordinary citizens.
In effect, the RFC became federally mandated aid for businessmen, while individu-
als and families were left to the mercy of inadequate state and local treasuries. Later, in
1932, the powers of the RFC were extended to permit federal loans to states “for relief
and work relief to needy and distressed people and in relieving the hardship resulting
f rom unemployment.”29 But even then the need for direct relief, as indicated by the
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 163 02/01/17 1:37 PM
164 Chapter 6
findings of the National Federation of Settlements’ case studies of unemployed families,
generally went unheeded:
Neither savings in cash, nor in homes, furniture, or personal keepsakes, neither char-
ity nor getting into debt to butcher and baker, neither moving to cheaper quarters nor
scrimping on food, nor the enforced labor of mothers and children gave adequate assur-
ance of livelihood. . . . All combined, these makeshifts did not offer a reasonable solution
of their predicament nor one which we should tolerate as part of our going life.30
The platform statements of the Republican and Democratic Parties demonstrated
the essential conservatism of both parties in 1932. Ironically, the Republican platform gave
more explicit recognition to the human suffering occasioned by the Depression and to the
need “to bring encouragement and relief to the thousands of American families that are
sorely aff licted.”31 The Democratic platform did not use the word depression at all, and
although it did mention the “unprecedented economic and social distress of the times,” it
did not refer to the personal consequences of this distress. Nevertheless, the Democratic
platform called for public works and unemployment and old age insurance. The Republi-
can platform “true to American traditions and principles of government ./././ [confirmed]
the relief problem as one of State and local responsibility”—and voluntary action.
FDR and the First New Deal
During the 1932 presidential campaign, the Democratic nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
moved slowly toward a more innovative position as he pledged a New Deal for the Ameri-
can people. On the one hand, he advocated increased spending for the unemployed and more
public works; on the other hand, he advocated a 25 percent cut in federal expenditures.32
Roosevelt’s original program did not see social welfare programs as central to economic
recovery. He hoped that restricting competition through programs like the National Industrial
Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act would increase corporate profits and revive
the economy. Welfare payments were a short-term emergency measure that Roosevelt hoped
to end as soon as possible. During his first term, however, political and economic dynamics
served to make social welfare measures more central to New Deal economic policy. It slowly
dawned on government officials that increasing the purchasing power of ordinary people was
more important than business profits in stimulating economic growth.
Roosevelt was no radical. In his 1932 speech accepting the presidential nomination,
Roosevelt had stated:
The great social phenomenon of this depression, unlike others before it, is that it has pro-
duced but a few of the disorderly manifestations that too often attend upon such times.
Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I can pay to my
countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful
spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much.33
The eloquence of the speech could not mask the traditionalism of the proposed
program for recovery: economy in government, shorter working hours, public works
financed and self-sustained by the issuance of government bonds, protective tariffs for
industry and agriculture, and increased prices for industrial and farm products. The
pledge of assistance with “distress relief ” seemed almost an afterthought.
Between Roosevelt’s victory in November 1932 and his inauguration in March 1933,
the Depression deepened and spread globally. The effects of the crisis were visible for
all to see. In addition to the inability of the stock market to sustain a rally, banks were
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 164 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 165
closing, industries were failing, and farms were going into bankruptcy. Corporate profits,
farm income, and wage earnings all fell, and the need for money brought the meaning of
economic collapse into every home. By the time that Roosevelt came into office, govern-
mental intervention in social and economic affairs was expected and accepted—particu-
larly on the federal level.34
New Deal policy contained a combination of three contradictory strategies in eco-
nomic policy. First, there was a basic belief in the efficacy of the market system as a
tool of economic control, if only prices could be pushed upward. Second, there was the
traditional view of the importance of a balanced budget; whenever possible, the Roos-
evelt administration moved to cut expenditures and reduce deficits. Finally, and often in
conf lict with what was seen as sound fiscal policy, there was the Keynesian theory of
“effective demand,” which saw the key to recovery in increased spending—government
programs to increase purchasing power and direct spending for public works to increase
employment. The regulated economy and the f ree market economy, compensatory
finance and debt reduction, all played their parts in New Deal programs.
The early responses of the New Deal were, despite the rhetoric of change, conserva-
tive. Roosevelt’s initial emphasis was to try to instill confidence and specifically to induce
inf lation in the expectation that a price rise would increase profits and thus stimulate output.
The banking crisis required immediate attention. There were 4,400 bank failures
between 1930 and 1932, and by January 1933, panic was widespread. Runs and heavy
withdrawals led one state after another to declare “bank holidays.” When Roosevelt
took office on March 4, 1933, banks were either closed or severely curtailed in 47 states.
Within two days, on March 6, FDR had declared a national bank holiday, forbidden all
gold payments and exports, and instituted new penalties for hoarding gold. Three days
later, Congress met in special session, the start of the “Congress of the Hundred Days,”
and passed an emergency Banking Bill. The emergency legislation that supervised the
reopening of the banks and the more permanent banking reforms instituted within
the next few years demonstrated the determination of the Roosevelt administration to
maintain and restore the free enterprise system. Banking was not nationalized. Instead,
the federal government, through the Federal Reserve banks, the RFC, and the Treasury
Department, was to aid and regulate the banking industry to strengthen private financial
institutions. In order to extend the system of control and to offer increased security to
investors as well as to depositors, the Glass–Steagall Act regulated stock exchanges and
the financial operations of holding companies.
In housing, too, the New Deal moved to preserve the concept of private property.
The thousand homeowners threatened with foreclosure each month in 1933 were helped
to refinance their mortgages through the Home Owners Loan Corporation, established
in June 1933. The home construction industry, almost at a standstill in 1933, was revived
through the National Housing Act of 1934, which insured loans for home repairs and
mortgages for new houses.
Roosevelt hoped to induce inf lation through experimental monetary policy mea-
sures. There was a retreat from the gold standard, a forced devaluation of the dollar, and
a program of gold and silver purchases. He expected currency manipulation, support, and
regulation of credit institutions, along with rising prices, to increase business investment.
Despite the talk and promise of inf lation, prices did not rise. In part this was due
to the reluctance of the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply and in part due to
the def lationary impact of fiscal policy. The Economy Act of March 11, 1933, called for
major cuts in government spending in an effort to balance the budget. Although Con-
gress restored the cuts, political leaders were slow to understand that government spend-
ing was the key to stimulating the economy. Budget deficits were kept small, seen as a
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 165 02/01/17 1:37 PM
166 Chapter 6
problem more than a solution; and, in fact, when production started to show real signs
of recovery in 1937, government spending was cut and taxes increased. As a result, pro-
duction, which in 1937 finally reached 1929 levels for the first time since the stock market
crash, dropped precipitously in 1938, and unemployment rose again.35
In industry, as in agriculture, New Deal policy sought to regulate prices and output.
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was based on the belief that the
economy suffered f rom overproduction and called on industries to fix prices and limit
output. It was designed to meet labor’s demand for limited hours of work in order to
spread employment and business’s demand for the relaxation of antitrust laws in order to
stabilize output and raise prices and profits.
Title I of the NIRA established a set of industry codes that would end cutthroat
competition, raise prices, limit output, and provide for workers a shorter workweek at
a stable wage. Each industry was, in theory, to be regulated by a tripartite committee
representing management, labor, and the public. An interim, blanket code was estab-
lished with the Blue Eagle, as posted by business, as its symbol of acceptance. Within a
few weeks, almost 2.5 million employers, with 16 million workers, had signed codes. By
September, within three months of the inception of the codes, the ten largest industries
were brought under the National Recovery Administration (NRA). All the codes con-
tained minimum wage and maximum hour scales; all contained provisions for collective
bargaining. In practice, however, the industry codes ref lected the price and output pol-
icies of the dominant firms in each industry, and competition restraint operated to the
serious disadvantage of small businessmen. When the Supreme Court declared the NRA
unconstitutional in May 1935, it was already under severe attack.
Although the economy revived a bit as a result of the NIRA, in 1935, 20 percent of
the labor force was still unemployed, industrial output was still far below its 1929 level,
and GNP was still far below the level of prosperity. Paralleling the irony of
the AAA’s curtailment of food production and destruction of livestock when
people were starving, the NRA limited competition and output, while much
of the public faced daily deprivation.
Title II of the NIRA allocated $3.3 billion for a Public Works Admin-
istration (PWA) program. Had this money been used speedily to increase
employment and purchasing power, it might have been an extremely help-
ful stimulant. PWA was intended, however, for capital investment and pump
priming. Under the cautious direction of Harold Ickes, its immediate expan-
sionary potential was never realized.
ublic Money for elief
One of the most urgent and immediate problems of Roosevelt’s first year in office was the
problem of relief. In response, he proposed three types of remedial legislation: (1) grants to
states for direct relief, (2) public works programs to stimulate investment, and (3) immediate
public employment programs.
Even before the Depression, a large share of relief was paid with public funds,
although it was generally administered by voluntary family agencies directly or by
family agency workers. This realization stimulated a reconsideration of alignments
between voluntary family and public welfare agencies. In effect, the Depression had
created a functional crisis for family agencies. These agencies had historically opposed
the giving of public relief and the development of public welfare agencies, arguing
that they were best equipped to handle relief problems. Now, with the coming of the
Depression, they could not meet the financial demands regardless of how much they
wanted to help. Furthermore, mushrooming caseloads of newly poor families whose
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 166 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 167
only need was money distracted attention f rom families requiring professional case-
work services.
Noting that the four large family agencies of Manhattan had received, during
November 1930, 5,739 applications for “material need” and only 669 other types of
applications, social worker Gordon Hamilton admitted that voluntary agencies had
“attempted to carry ././. many types of problems which should be carried under public
auspices.” She suggested the appropriateness of a public family agency geared primarily
to offering financial help but also offering casework help when requested by the family. In
such a realignment of public–private welfare relationships, “the contribution of private
social work to welfare administration is chief ly through urging a professional rather than
political considerations in the selection of personnel, the idea of budgeted rather than
fixed relief, and the attempt to offer trained casework service to those who desired it.”36
Even before the Great Depression, relief efforts were dominated by public funds.
A compilation of the Department of Statistics of the Russell Sage Foundation of relief
expenditures of 81 American cities showed that 74 percent of such expenditures ($31
million) had come f rom public funds during the last year before the Depression, 1929.
Expenditures in 1930 for relief were about double those of in 1929. Seventy-five percent
of relief expenditures ($51 million) had come from public funds. An emergency appeal
for private funds reduced the share of public relief expenditures to 66 percent during
1931, but public relief expenditures had, nevertheless, increased to $54 million.37
By 1931, it was clear, too, that local units of government could not keep pace with
the need for public funding. Municipal welfare payments, where they existed, were pain-
fully small. As the Depression deepened, the need for relief increased, and the local relief
resources were exhausted in more and more cities and counties.
As governor, Roosevelt had advocated for New York’s Temporary Relief Adminis-
tration in 1931, the first state program to appropriate funds to be disbursed to cities and
counties for home-relief and work-relief programs. Other states followed suit so that by
the close of 1931, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylva-
nia had joined New York in making relief funds available to localities. Efforts to obtain
federal participation in relief funding also occurred during 1931, but were defeated by
presidential veto. These state efforts, and particularly New York’s, provided the model for
the federal program.
ederal Emergency elief Administration E A
On May 12, 1933, acting on the overwhelming need of states for money for relief, Congress
established FERA to channel a half-billion dollars in relief money through state and local
welfare agencies. That same month, the PWA was established as a stimulant to business
investment. In November 1933, recognizing the urgent need for jobs, and interpreting f lex-
ibly the provisions of the NIRA, President Roosevelt established the Civil Works Admin-
istration (CWA) and made $400 million of PWA money available to finance programs of
“civil works.” Both FERA and CWA came under the direction of Harry Hopkins. When
CWA proved too expensive a means of job creation, the Emergency Work Relief Program
was established within FERA. Subsequent temporary measures to deal directly with unem-
ployment and the needs of the unemployed led to the creation of the Federal Surplus
Commodities Corporation, and the CCC. From the beginning of the New Deal, a three-
fold approach to income maintenance was envisioned: cash relief, short-term work relief,
and the expansion of employment through the pump-priming effects of public works.
FERA remained the major relief program of the New Deal during its first 2 years.
In authorizing direct grants to states for relief, the legislation established a new relation-
ship between the federal government and the states and overturned earlier definitions
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 167 02/01/17 1:37 PM
168 Chapter 6
of federal responsibility (according to the Constitution) to “provide for the general wel-
fare.” It was established “to provide for cooperation by the Federal government with the
several States and Territories and the District of Columbia in relieving the hardship and
suffering caused by unemployment and for other purposes.” Half of the appropriation
was to be made available to the states on a matching basis—$1 of federal money for
every $3 of state and local expenditures; the other $250 million was to be distributed to
the states on the basis of need without matching funds.38
Of more immediate importance, however, was the speedy f low of cash to the needy.
Grants for seven states were approved one day after Hopkins took office in May 1933,
and by the end of the following month, $51 million had been paid out to 45 states, the
District of Columbia, and the territory of Hawaii. During the last half of 1933, about
3.5 million people were supported, and by the end of December 1933, $324.5 million
had been distributed—with all states and territories participating. In the 3 years of its
existence, FERA spent more than $3 billion. The states also increased their relief expen-
ditures during this period. In all, something over $4 billion was distributed in cash and
work relief by federal and state governments.39
Relief money was not always distributed fairly. Racial discrimination in the
administration of funds was a major problem. As with other New Deal programs,
particularly in Southern rural areas, the black population found it diff icult to get
on relief rolls. For example, the CCC had racial quotas, the AAA distributed funds
based in part on race, and the codes for pay rates of the National Labor Adminis-
tration discriminated against people of color. Blacks were more apt to receive relief
in Northern cities. Overall, they suffered much higher rates of unemployment
and poverty, and this was ref lected in the relief rolls. In 1933, nearly 18 percent
of all black family heads were certif ied for relief—about twice the rate for white
breadwinners.40
In part, the shortfalls of the relief effort ref lect the speed with which the federal gov-
ernment tried to establish a federal–state public welfare program. The need was wide-
spread and immediate, and the administrators of FERA tried to provide cash to meet
that need as quickly as possible. Difficulties arose, too, from a conf lict between ideology
and necessity. The philosophy of the New Deal was relief for the unemployed through
the provision of jobs. Direct relief was to be a temporary, necessary expedient until those
who were employable could be employed. For the moment, in the emergency, “employ-
ables” and “unemployables” were brought together in one program, but direct relief for
the able-bodied was only a stopgap measure.
Hopkins, the president’s mentor on welfare matters, had indicated as much in
his clarification of the purpose of the Federal Emergency Relief Act. Addressing the
National Conference of Social Workers, Hopkins had said:
The intent of this act is that relief should be given to the heads of families who are
out of work and whose dependency arises f rom the fact that they are out of work,
and to transient families, as well as the transient men and women roaming about
the country././. .
Our job is to see that the unemployed get relief, not to develop a great social work
organization throughout the United States.41
The Second New Deal
The president didn’t fully share Hopkins’s commitment to relief. As he formulated a sec-
ond round of social legislation—the Second New Deal—in 1935, cash relief again took a
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 168 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 169
back seat to social insurance and work relief. In proposing a large work relief program,
FDR’s distaste for relief was evident:
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.
I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped. . . . We must pre-
serve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect,
their self-reliance and courage and determination.42
However, Roosevelt’s condemnation of relief as the “subtle destroyer of the human
spirit” did not lead him to ignore government’s important role in social welfare.43 To
the contrary, he contrasted cash relief with the positive role that work relief and social
insurance should play for Americans. Roosevelt established the Committee on Economic
Security to develop a permanent plan of income security for individuals and families. The
committee’s recommendations were to echo the president’s belief that promoting the eco-
nomic security of the public did not conf lict with the preservation of a market economy.
In his congressional message of January 4, 1935, President Roosevelt had separated
the productive f rom the nonproductive poor, accepting primary responsibility for the
former, the group that was “the victim of a nation-wide depression caused by conditions
which were not local but national.”44 Approximately 5 million families and single people
were then on the relief rolls. FERA estimated that 3.5 million of these recipients were
employable, and FDR was determined to give them employment “pending their absorp-
tion in a rising tide of private employment.” Although not abandoning the additional
1.5 million people remaining on the relief rolls, he nevertheless stated his intention that
those who in the past had been “dependent upon local efforts” be maintained again “by
State, by counties, by towns, by cities, by churches, and by private welfare agencies.”
The New Deal sought to use social insurance—unemployment compensation—as a
substitute for cash relief for the unemployed. As the Committee on Economic Security
was developing such a plan, the president’s interim solution was the establishment of
the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to “supersede the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration with a coordinated authority/././. charged with the orderly liquidation
of our present relief activities and the substitution of a national chart for the giving of
work.” As for those who could not work, said the president, “I stand ready through my
personal efforts, and through the public inf luence of the office that I hold, to help these
local agencies to get the means necessary to assume this burden.”45
The WPA, funded in 1935 at $4.9 billion, actually spent more than twice that
amount in its lifetime. Eventually, it provided jobs for 8 million Americans in a wide
range of activities, f rom heavy construction to the painting of murals in local libraries
and orchestral performances in schools. For those for whom jobs were provided, life was
much improved. Wages were higher than relief payments, and there was no deterrent
income eligibility test. But work projects got underway slowly, and many employables
never found work at all.
The federal government did not immediately substitute work relief for all cash
relief. Congress did not pass the Emergency Appropriation Act until April 1935, and the
act included requested funds to cover a period of transition f rom cash relief to work
relief. The work was constituted by executive order in May, and Hopkins was appointed
its administrator. Actual liquidation of FERA did not begin until the closing months of
the year, and the final emergency relief grants went out to the states in December 1935.
By the end of 1935, with the phasing out of federal participation in direct relief
underway, with the inability or unwillingness of many states to replace the lost funds,
and with the transfer of employables to WPA projects slower than had been contem-
plated, the transition period became a “bitter one for families on relief in many parts
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 169 02/01/17 1:37 PM
170 Chapter 6
of the country.”46 The problem was exacerbated by the slowness with which the public
assistance programs of the Social Security Act—programs designed to help some catego-
ries of unemployables—were implemented by the states.
Social workers were wary of the phasing out of federal funding for direct relief.
Some had been catalysts for the organization of client groups of which they were them-
selves members. Many had a personal and professional intimacy with problems resulting
from unemployment and a new understanding of poverty and the poor.47
Private agencies were not able to pick up the slack even as much as they had prior to
1933 because the events of the Depression had begun to define a new role for them. Hop-
kins’s administration of FERA had formalized the changed relationship between public
and voluntary family agencies. Regulation No. 1 of the Rules and Regulations promulgated
by FERA required that public relief funds be administered by public agencies. Recogni-
tion was given to the thousands of private family and child welfare agency workers who
had helped with the administration of public funds, but Regulation No. 1 required that
they be designated as public officials working under the control of public authority.48 The
process by which private family agencies had already begun to delineate the uniqueness
of their service was now accelerated and suddenly required consideration of alignments
not only with public agencies, but also with private child welfare agencies.
FERA’s Regulation No. 3 clarified further the separation of public and private agen-
cies in regard to administering public relief funds. At the same time, the regulation
revealed the extent to which public officials were inf luenced by private agency experi-
ence. Regulation No. 3 required the investigation and the demonstration of need on the
part of the individual family. Means testing and budgeting to ensure that “no relief is
given to persons unless they are actually in need and that such relief ././. is adjusted to
././. actual needs”49 was the outcome. The use of trained and experienced investigators,
at least in supervisory positions, regular home visiting, and attention to state relative
responsibility laws, were required.
FERA’s Rules and Regulations represented an advance in standard-setting over pre-De-
pression approaches to public giving. They also established certain operating principles
that would have negative consequences in later years: administrative discretion, rather
than legal definitions, for establishing eligibility for aid; a professional casework service
orientation toward relief giving; and a subtly pervading, if unnoted, reservation that
relief was somehow a necessary evil. For the moment, however, people were helped, and
their need was of primary importance. Hopkins stated:
We are now dealing with people of all classes. It is no longer a matter of unemploy-
ables and chronic dependents, but of your friends and mine who are involved in this.
Everyone of us knows some family of our friends which is or should be getting relief.50
Hopkins’s statement, his administration of FERA, and his realization that “however
well this thing is administered, this enormous relief business can never be anything more
than a makeshift”51 set the stage for a major shift in the federal approach to income main-
tenance. The change had several facets. For the short run, there had been a switch in the
allocation of federal funds to employment—work relief—programs and a return to the
states of responsibility for the direct relief of unemployables. For the long run, there
were to be permanent social security programs.
The Social Security Act
The Social Security Act, signed into law by President Roosevelt on August 15, 1935, was
the major legislative achievement of the New Deal. It was a landmark in American polit-
ical and social history, ref lecting a public commitment to the economic rights of people
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 170 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 171
and, consequently, extending federal responsibility for social welfare. The act, f rom the
point of view of program provisions, administrative structuring, and federal–state fiscal
arrangements, represented a watershed for the mingling of old and new orientations
toward people as social and economic beings.
During the early decades of the 20th century, Congress considered, but did not
accept, plans to provide old age and unemployment insurance. By 1935, however, demo-
graphic, economic, and political pressures for federal action were overwhelming.
The aged as a percentage of the population were increasing at twice the rate of gen-
eral population growth as life expectancy rose and birthrates fell. They suffered severe
unemployment and for the most part had little in the way of savings to fall back upon.
Existing state pensions reached only 5 percent of the aged and, in any case, were unable
to provide anywhere near adequate support. Private pensions were virtually nonexistent.
The elderly and their adult children were faced with an unbearable burden. Roosevelt’s
Advisory Council on Economic Security noted that:
Many children who previously supported their parents have been compelled
to cease doing so, and the great majority will probably never resume this
load. . . . The Depression has deprived millions of workers past middle life of
their jobs. . . . Regardless of what may be done to improve their condition,
this cost of supporting the aged will continue to increase. In another genera-
tion it will be at least double the present total.52
The Social Security Act evolved f rom the work of the Committee on Economic
Security, which submitted its report to the president on January 15, 1935. The report was
accompanied by drafts of bills representing an expedient “piecemeal approach” whose
primary aim was “the assurance of an adequate income to each human being in child-
hood, youth, middle age, or old age in sickness or in health.”53 Within an overall recom-
mendation that the federal government assume responsibility for employment assurance,
the committee made specific recommendations in regard to security against the risks of
unemployment, retirement in old age, and ill health. Additional recommendations pro-
vided for the current security of old people and children through the provision of feder-
ally aided, state-administered pensions. Finally, the committee recommended an array of
employment, health, educational, and rehabilitative services. Many of these were to be
administered by the states, with standard setting to be stimulated by the federal govern-
ment through the offer of financial and other types of assistance.
Having made sweeping recommendations in regard to federal involvement in a pro-
gram of assurances against the hazards of life, the committee recognized the need for
residual relief for “genuine unemployables—or near unemployables.” The committee
commended the care and guidance of this group to the states—and to social workers:
With the Federal Government carrying so much burden for pure unemployment,
the State and local governments ././. should resume responsibility for relief. The
families that have always been partially or wholly dependent on others for support
can best be assisted through the tried procedures of social casework, with its indi-
vidualized treatment.54
President Roosevelt recommended the committee’s report to Congress as the basis
for legislation. His message emphasized the soundness of the committee’s proposals and
the caution with which they should be considered.
The detailed report of the Committee sets forth a series of proposals that will appeal
to the sound sense of the American people. It has not attempted the impossible nor
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 171 02/01/17 1:37 PM
172 Chapter 6
has it failed to exercise sound caution and consideration of all the factors concerned:
the national credit, the rights and responsibilities of States, the capacity of industry
to assume financial responsibilities and the fundamental necessity of proceeding in
a manner that will merit enthusiastic support of citizens of all sorts.55
The president’s sense of fiscal and political realities led him to specify legislative prin-
ciples that necessarily emphasized a modest beginning program of social insurance: no
health insurance, no federal administration of relief programs, state leadership in unem-
ployment compensation and public assistance, and no use of the general revenues for
old age insurance. Not unexpectedly, then, the Social Security laws, when enacted, were
more conservative than the recommendations of the Committee on Economic Security.
The policy of the United States in regard to permanent programs of income mainte-
nance was stated in the preamble to the Social Security Act of 1935:
An Act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age
benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for
aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child
welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensa-
tion laws.56
The law’s program provisions covered loss of income due to unemployment
(Unemployment Compensation), inability to participate in the labor force due to age
or disability (Federal Old Age Insurance, Old Age Assistance, Aid to the Blind, Aid to
Dependent Children [ADC]), the promotion of the welfare of mothers and children
(Maternal and Child Health Services, Services for Crippled Children, Child Welfare Ser-
vices), and the encouragement of adequate state and local public health services. Provi-
sions for the extension and improvement of maternal and child health services offered
by local health authorities restored programs that had languished or collapsed when the
Sheppard–Towner Act had been permitted to expire in 1929.
Coverage for health care remained Social Security’s unfinished business for the next
75 years. Successive administrations and Congresses entertained proposals for closing the
gap, which ultimately led to the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 and the
Affordable Care Act in 2010. In future years, as the economics and politics of health care
became more complex, the failure to include health insurance in the 1935 act closed off
possibilities for the emergence of a rational and comprehensive approach to health care.
E panding Social Security: The 1 Amendments
The enactment of Federal Old Age Insurance and Grants to States for Unemployment
Compensation in 1935 recognized f laws in the country’s private enterprise market sys-
tem and the need for institutional change to mitigate unavoidable economic and social
distress. Insurance against the hazards of unemployment and of retirement in old age
bolstered the security of beneficiaries and of the private enterprise system itself because
these institutional reforms, aimed at meeting universal needs, guaranteed permanent
economic stabilizers for both.
The structure of Social Security was meant to fit the demographic and market struc-
ture of most families: one wage earner, working full time for a full year with just a few
employers during a working life. It was a model for an industrial economy. In future
years, changes in family life—increasing divorce rates, declining widowhood, and the
expansion of married women’s labor force participation—exposed f laws in the pro-
gram’s structure. They also revealed the difficulties in reforming a program that inf lu-
enced the expectations of a large share of the adult population. Liberals were frustrated
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 172 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 173
by the constraints on program expansion, and conservatives discovered roadblocks in
their efforts to privatize the program.
Social insurance started out closely modeled on private insurance, with benefits
tightly tied to contributions. Although the 1935 law was conservative, the 1939 amend-
ments added benefits for the spouses and children of deceased workers and expanded
the number of workers covered by old age insurance. The formula for calculating bene-
fits was adjusted to become more redistributive in its structure.
The desire to model social insurance after private insurance programs was ref lected
in the concept of a reserve fund to hold the assets of the program. A trust fund is essen-
tially a bookkeeping mechanism for specifying that particular revenues be related to spe-
cific programs. The original concept in 1935 was to establish a fund in accordance with
accepted actuarial principles; at any time, the fund should be large enough to pay off all
future obligations. But by 1939, Congress began to worry that the assets might grow
too large. The law required Social Security assets to be invested exclusively in special
issues of U.S. government bonds. The fear was that there would not be enough govern-
ment debt for appropriate investment. After 1939, the trustees abandoned a full actuarial
reserve to a partial or contingency reserve fund that would build assets to meet needs for
a limited period of time.
The 1935 Social Security Act and its 1939 amendments had many f laws. Many workers,
including domestic workers and farm laborers, were excluded from coverage (a problem
that was addressed only in 1950). In addition, other common sources of poverty, including
disability and the desertion of one’s spouse, were ignored by its insurance provisions.
Although it was hard to see at the time, the greatest f law of the Social Security Act
was its construction of a two-class social welfare system. Workers who were regularly
employed in established industries were protected against the major risks of an industrial
society—old age, unemployment, and (eventually) disability. Workers with less stable
industries would continue to rely on the old poor law system for aid. The decisions of
Congress to exclude the major industries that employed African Americans—domestic
and farm labor—quickly imposed a racial division on this class structure.57
ublic Assistance
Although the Depression had obscured the line between the worthy and unworthy
poor, the New Deal often revived this division. The Social Security Act established a dual
system for federally supported income maintenance. The result for the country was a
three-part approach to public relief. The act provided for federally administered insur-
ance programs and federally aided, state-administered assistance programs for selected
groups. The grant-in-aid, state-administered financial assistance programs served to sep-
arate again the old poor from the new. The new poor, the unemployed, were covered by
social insurance and the old “worthy” poor by categorical public assistance. Left to the
states was the third group, the “unworthy” poor, for whom states and localities were to
develop programs without federal aid.
The creation of federally aided categories of assistance evolved f rom longtime
state efforts to help certain classes of the poor whose circumstances could not readily
be attributed to personal inadequacy and who, therefore, were not to be stigmatized as
recipients of the dole. State provisions of aid for the aged, the blind, and the widowed
were generally viewed as pensions without stigma. By 1935, aid to the blind was available
in 24 states; aid to the aged in 34 states; and aid to mothers in all states and jurisdic-
tions except Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The decision of Congress to lend
federal support for the beneficiaries of these programs acknowledged the legitimacy of
their claim. Besides, many policy makers believed that public assistance would eventually
Although it was hard
to see at the time, the
greatest flaw of the
Social Security Act was
its construction of a
two-class social welfare
system.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 173 02/01/17 1:37 PM
174 Chapter 6
wither away as federal measures for social insurance, maternal and child welfare, and
public health work took hold.58
The contrast between the act’s social insurance and public assistance programs was
striking. While old age insurance became a federal responsibility, Congress chose to
allow states to continue to define their own welfare policies, albeit with increased federal
funding and oversight. By focusing federal aid on specific categories of the needy—the
elderly, the blind, and dependent children—the Social Security Act reinforced earlier pol-
icy decisions for differentiating these groups f rom the able-bodied poor. Indeed, until
1950, mothers of dependent children did not qualify for their own grant.
Still, the public assistance titles of the Social Security Act were not simply a return
to older policy traditions. The federal public assistance categories were community-
oriented, in that they required that recipients be living in their own homes. Furthermore,
the Social Security Act defined assistance as “money payments,” requiring that grants be
made in cash. Finally, the act mandated the opportunity for a fair hearing for any indi-
vidual whose claim for assistance was denied. In future years, Supreme Court decisions
would use this mandate to broaden residents’ welfare rights.
Federal oversight of public assistance pushed recalcitrant states—especially in the
South—to bring greater transparency and professionalism to their assistance programs.
The act required states to submit plans making assistance programs mandatory in all polit-
ical subdivisions, appointing a single state agency responsible for administering or supervis-
ing the state’s assistance program, ensuring the efficiency of state program administration,
and guaranteeing compliance with the Social Security Board’s regulations and reporting
requirements. Of equal significance was that the federal government pushed states to
reduce or eliminate burdensome residency requirements, a break with public assistance’s
Poor Law legacy. For all the differences still possible under its essentially permissive require-
ments, the act did succeed in bringing the federally funded public assistance programs to
all the states and in giving the various programs an identifiable common base.
The Social Security Act had profound significance for family welfare generally, and
for the roles of family members in particular. For women, the addition to Old Age Insur-
ance of dependents’ benefits in 1939 reinforced their roles as wives and homemakers.
Despite the increase in the labor-force participation of women, the act did not cover
many traditionally female jobs. It penalized heavily for interrupted employment and
compensated inadequately for pay discrimination. Thus, over the years, many women
workers discovered that their contributions to Social Security counted for nothing,
because their spousal benefits were higher than those they had earned through work.
For the larger society, Old Age Insurance and Old Age Assistance meant that a major
portion of the financial burden of caring for aged parents was lifted from adult children.
The money thus f reed could be shifted to the care of minor children. The adequacy of
ADC benefits was questionable from the start.
The Committee on Economic Security had described mothers’ pensions as “defen-
sive measures for children.”
They are designed to release from the wage-earning role the person whose natural
function is to give her children the physical and affectionate guardianship necessary
not alone to keep them from falling into social misfortune, but more affirmatively
to rear them into citizens capable of contributing to society.59
Despite the committee’s encouragement and the seeming popularity of Mothers’
Aid among the states, the social work profession gave limited attention to ADC during
congressional hearings. Katherine Lenroot, chief of the Children’s Bureau,60 and Jacob
Kepecs, president of the Child Welfare League (CWL) of America,61 were the only social
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 174 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 175
workers to testify in favor the new program.62 Edwin Witte, executive for the committee,
stated after the passage of the Social Security Act that the poor outcome of provisions
for dependent children, as compared to provisions for other needy groups, was mainly
due to this lack of interest.63
The inattention to provisions for dependent children resulted, first, in the adminis-
tration of ADC along with the adult categories of assistance, instead of the Children’s
Bureau as originally intended. Second, as the title “aid to dependent children” suggested,
caretakers did not receive their own grant until 1950. Third, the grant-in-aid formula
limited federal payments to one-third of a total of $18 per month per family provided
for one dependent and to one-third of $12 per month provided for additional dependent
children. The formula contrasted sharply with that used for Old Age Assistance. In the
latter instance, the federal government offered payment monthly of one-half of $30 for
each eligible person. The contrast between the provisions for dependent children and
for the aged and the blind foreshadowed future development of the programs. Aid for
the elderly and blind (later expanded to include people with disabilities) would eventu-
ally become full federal programs with more generous benefits, while ADC—equated
with welfare—experienced repeated attacks at the federal and state levels for the next six
decades and was eventually scrapped.
ADC retained mother’s pensions’ bias toward divorced or unmarried women. The
older, states’ Mothers’ Aid programs, for the most part, did not provide for payments for
children born out of wedlock. Many social workers felt unprepared either to accept these
clients or to fight for them. By June 1938, 604,142 children in 40 states were being helped by
ADC. It is estimated that less than 4 percent of these children lived with unmarried mothers.
Sixteen percent of the reporting states had not accepted any children of unwed mothers.
The low coverage rate ref lects the unwillingness to move from the old Mothers’ Aid
to the less restrictive coverage. While neither the Social Security Act nor the Social Secu-
rity Board regulations restrict coverage to children of unmarried mothers, the decision
to give localities administrative authority for ADC assured that older, moralistic inter-
pretation of “immoral” women would inf luence who received benefits. In a 1939 article,
Mary S. Labaree noted the variation in local policies:
There is surprising little of a censorious attitude towards girls with limited opportu-
nities in our mountain counties. . . . Give aid to dependent children/././. to an unmar-
ried mother f rom an undesirable home but ././. consider ././. the unmarried f rom a
good family with good background has committed an inexcusable act.
Any mother is considered fit to care for her child unless she is so unfit that a petition
for neglect should be filed.
If all the children in a family were illegitimate the commission would decide this was
not a fit mother. If only one or two were illegitimate it might be overlooked or forgiven.
It is a matter of state policy that the parent must not have had an out-of-wedlock child
within a year.64
Local administration also assured racial discrimination in the public assistance. As
with other New Deal programs, Southern senators and congressmen provided decisive
votes for many pieces of New Deal legislation, but the price of their support was to
allow their states to discriminate against African Americans. Local control became the
most convenient mechanism for allowing discrimination without violating the Constitu-
tion. With congressional authority, local welfare administrators denied benefits to most
eligible African Americans. In some rural counties, ADC was used to support families
when plantation owners didn’t need workers and then cut off during planting and har-
vesting seasons. As one field supervisor put it, “Communities . . . see no reason why
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 175 02/01/17 1:37 PM
176 Chapter 6
the employable Negro mother should not continue her usually sketchy seasonal labor
or indefinite domestic service rather than receive a public-assistance grant.”65 From its
start, the economics of the marketplace, concepts of morality and appropriate sexual
behavior, and racism combined to limit the scope and the effectiveness of this program.
The Social Security Act of 1935 put federal social welfare policy on its trajectory
for the remainder of the 20th century. The division between insurance programs that
were “earned” and assistance programs that were not grew stronger during the next 50
years. The groups that received insurance coverage, including people with disabilities
who were added to the program in 1956, saw their poverty rates decline steadily between
1940 and 2000. Over the same years, poor mothers and their children were left behind;
their proportion of all poor people increased steadily in subsequent decades.
The Changing Role of the Social Work Profession
Thus the attitude of the social work and social welfare community toward the Social
Security Act as a family welfare measure is noteworthy. The act itself had been approved
on August 15, 1935, but federal funds did not become available until February 1936.
Beyond that, the process of having states submit plans for the administration of public
assistance and of having those plans approved by the newly created Public Assistance
Board proved slow. By mid-November 1936, 42 states had finally received grants for Old
Age Assistance. Only 26 states had received grants for ADC, bearing out the lack of con-
cern for this group of recipients. The states, in their reluctance to move into this cat-
egory of assistance, ref lected the attitude of the federal government in its differential
treatment of children.
All in all, social workers were alarmed by the course of events, and the delegate
conference of the American Association of Social Workers, held in Washington, D.C.,
February 14–16, 1936, considered carefully “this business of relief.” The delegates gave
public hearing to a number of convictions and concerns.66
1. That the factors that made relief necessary were demoralizing, not the act of
receiving relief itself
2. That the work provided by WPA should be productive in itself and not just a
technique for avoiding idleness
3. That need should be the criterion for federal assistance and that separating
employables from unemployables left the matter to the uncertain mercies of
states and localities
4. That there was a residual relief problem caused by the fact that WPA work
relief payments were inadequate to cover the needs of large families and by the
fact that some groups were not covered by the federally aided public assistance
categories at all
5. That permissive requirements for state participation in federally aided public
assistance programs threatened irresponsibility
The dissatisfaction expressed at the delegate conference did not alter the course of
events. The collapse of social work’s pressure for a return to a federal program geared
primarily to direct relief seems first of all due to the political odds against such a return
but also to a conf lict among social workers as to their professional view of the poor and
of the needs of the poor.
Aubrey Williams, deputy administrator for the WPA, expressed his bewilderment
and concern at the “growing disposition on the part of social workers to advocate the
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 176 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 177
return of the federal government to direct relief.” He implied that this pressure resulted
f rom the tendency on their part to see caseworkers as necessary to the poor and case-
work as a necessary adjunct to poor relief. “To put caseworkers into the old poor relief
system,” Williams argued, “is to put new wine into old bottles that will crack.” He
warned that the demolition of the WPA would give social workers “3.5 million people
on direct relief and nothing else” and, in a final thrust, said that “the sooner social work
as a profession can turn its back on direct relief as a valid form of social treatment, the
better off will be the nation and the higher the standing of social work.”67 Like Hopkins
back in 1933, Williams seemed to be saying that federal programs should not be used “to
develop a great social work organization throughout the United States.” Those who led
the attack against the WPA could not easily dismiss the accusation.
Having been admonished by Williams to think of new approaches to unemployment
and income security, the delegates were also treated to Ewan Clague’s description of the
potentialities of the provisions of the Social Security Act.68 Perhaps because it did join, no
matter how uneasily, new social insurance and old public relief measures, the act offered
some satisfaction to those social workers who had urged social reform through social
insurance and to those who urged reform through the professionalization of relief giving.
During the early years of the Depression, social workers clarified their own views
about relief and about people who needed financial help. The professional literature
between 1930 and 1935 abounds with discussion and controversy. One issue, federal ver-
sus state and local responsibility for relief, was settled quite easily. State and local cof-
fers were empty. The issue of public versus private responsibility for relief was similarly
resolved. A third issue was that of cash versus in kind. In 1933, Dorothy Kahn, director
of the Philadelphia County Relief Board and soon to become chairman of the American
Association of Social Workers, made “an ardent appeal for one form [of relief giving],
namely, cash.”69 As demonstrated by the categorical programs of the Social Security Act,
the proponents of cash payments won the day. The literature would suggest that social
workers believed the issue of right versus privilege as a basis for financial aid to have been
settled in favor of the right to assistance. Certainly, this was true for the social insurances
whose benefits were related to worker contributions. As for the categorical programs,
the Social Security Act’s use of the word claim in connection with the receipt of benefits
distributed in cash and the right to a fair hearing both indicated an entitlement to public
assistance, no matter how conditioned that entitlement might be. Hopkins thought the
federal administering agency, along with state and local boards, would pass benefits on
“as a pension without stigma.”70
Perhaps most important to an understanding of the fate of ADC was the issue
of social insurance versus public assistance. Although both types of programs were
included in the Social Security Act, the reality was that the social insurance mechanism
was favored as an approach to income security. The strengthening of the work ethic by
relating premiums and benefits to earnings and the attempted simulation of actuarial,
private insurance soundness (with almost no contribution from the general revenue) was
designed to ensure the political attractiveness of social insurance.
Of course, the current unemployment crisis required public relief programs, but
whatever fears remained about supporting public, non-work-related programs could be
allayed with the belief that such programs would wither away. The need for Old Age
Assistance would disappear as Old Age Insurance matured and covered an increasing
number of workers. Of importance, too, was the fact that survivors of workers, although
not sufficiently provided for, had not been entirely forgotten. The Committee on Eco-
nomic Security had recommended that a death benefit be paid to a worker’s surviving
dependents should the worker die before the age of 65 or before the amount of his own
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 177 02/01/17 1:37 PM
178 Chapter 6
contributions had been paid to him as an annuity.71 The committee had also given con-
sideration to the future when “families and widows would be given primary consider-
ation in broad plans for survivors’ insurance or insurance for widows and orphans.”72
The Social Security Act did in fact provide for a lump sum benefit to survivors as rec-
ommended by the Committee on Economic Security. There was reason to believe that
insurance coverage eventually would be extended to widows and orphans and that ADC,
like Old Age Assistance, would fade in significance. Perhaps that is one reason why the
Senate and House committees heard only perfunctory social work support for ADC and
little social work criticism of its deficiencies as a program.
New Alignments in Social Welfare
An exploration of social work’s attitude toward ADC must take into account that the
Depression required social workers to clarify not only their views about relief and relief
recipients but also alignments between public and private social welfare. Inevitably, this
meant a reconsideration of the functions of professional social work. Regulation No. 1
had begun the reversal of a tradition whereby voluntary agencies shaped the contribution
of public agencies to social welfare. The enactment of the Social Security Act furthered
the process and established the dominance of public welfare. The impact on voluntary
agencies—on voluntary family agencies, in particular—was enormous. Voluntary fam-
ily agencies and family agency personnel had impeded the development of public wel-
fare prior to the Depression. And, despite their beginning development of casework as a
professional methodology and of family counseling as a professional function, they had
remained absorbed with problems of relief giving. With the onset of the Depression,
they became involved in cooperative efforts to help families needing relief because of
the unemployment crisis, and their day-to-day practice consisted chief ly of relief-related
activities. The FWAA described the extent of its member agencies’ involvement:
Every good public program owes something to the pioneer work of private agen-
cies. . . . Private agencies have readily loaned or released trained persons for service
in public agencies, often at a great cost to their own programs. Supervisory and
advisory aid have been accorded continuously by many private agencies to public
agencies. In addition . . . private agencies have also engaged actively in obtaining
general support of public welfare programs.73
Now, with the passage of the Social Security Act, family agencies seemed devoid
of a viable social welfare function. Family agency workers, who in large measure car-
ried the professional status for social work, seemed similarly affected. Both agencies and
workers needed to find a raison d’être, and perhaps the knowledge of this, as much as
anything else, underlay the heated discussions of public welfare at the February 1936
delegate conference of the American Association of Social Workers. The apparent col-
lapse of organized social work support for unemployment relief suggests a perception
that professional social work practice and relief giving were separate entities, however
overlapping their concerns.
This recognition was confirmed in March 1936, when the FWAA published a report
of responses by member agencies to questions related to “the crisis in community pro-
grams.” Of the 93 agencies responding, agreed that “it would be folly for private agen-
cies . . . to attempt to meet any appreciable part of the unemployment relief burden . . .
being abandoned by the Federal Government.” They agreed that it was essential “to hold
firmly to the principle that intensive casework treatment is the primary function of a fam-
ily service organization.” Nevertheless, when asked to list developments of new or more
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 178 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 179
clearly defined channels of services to the community, the agencies gave “a great variety
of answers which constitute[d] a confusing picture.” Many listed their emphasis on “inten-
sive casework” as a new development.74
The extent to which voluntary agencies were threatened by the Social Security Act’s
establishment of a permanent public welfare structure and by the vacuum created by the
loss of a primary relief-giving responsibility can also be discerned f rom FWAA’s report
of responses to its questionnaire. When asked what they were doing to rally community
support for public welfare, one-third of the respondents expressed interest in helping but
were inactive; another one-third were indifferent. Perhaps they felt all the more upset
by the fact that the problem was again largely of their own making. If earlier they had
impeded the development of an adequate public sector of social welfare, now they must
share responsibility for the existence of a permanent, powerful establishment they could
not control. Furthermore, the existence of such an establishment required change at the
core of the voluntary agency.
Despite the frequent reference in the social work literature to a “right to assistance,”
this view was inconsistent with the philosophy that guided the development of voluntary
social welfare. The latter had begun with an assumption of a character f law for which—
as with man’s original fall—man was himself responsible. This view of human nature as
essentially evil and of society as the blameless victim of human f railty led to religious,
eventually voluntary, social welfare efforts to change the human being. The Protestant
ethic was particularly concerned with work, thrift, and financial independence. When
voluntary social welfare secularized this ethic, the family agency tied social work practice
and relief giving into a single package. Public welfare was to be avoided at all costs.
The Depression of the 1930s revolutionized conventional thinking about social need.
The discovery that people could be unemployed and in need through no fault of their
own led, first, to an admission of fault in the economic and social system and, second,
to a conception of the individual-at-risk in the system. Society, therefore, had an obliga-
tion to help. In such a circumstance, financial need was truly secularized—one might say
publicized—and the need for public welfare was inherent. Furthermore, the acceptance
of social responsibility for financial need led quite naturally to the depersonalization of
relief giving. Relief recipients needed money, not service. They did not require the skill
of professional service and could best be helped by government aid administered objec-
tively. Federal and state aid represented a decision to separate financial assistance and
service provision.
Voluntary social agencies renewed efforts to define a unique professional service
function. The widespread dissemination of Freudian theory demonstrating the signifi-
cance of parent–child relationships brought home the psychological underpinnings of
family survival. Having moved away f rom providing relief for families, voluntary fam-
ily agencies moved to the further development of highly skilled “casework treatment
to assist individuals in removing their own handicaps.” The Freudian symbiotic tie of
parent to child suggested family, rather than individual, treatment, and attention was
focused on the relationship between voluntary family and children’s agencies and on the
possibility of their merging.
In November 1937, the FWAA distributed an outline of points discussed in meetings
of its Committee on Relationship between Family and Children’s Work in a meeting of
that committee with a similar committee of the CWL of America.
In considering the relationship between family and children’s case work . . . it is evi-
dent that they have the same roots in social case work, as far as the basic knowledge
and equipment of the case worker are concerned. . . .
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 179 02/01/17 1:37 PM
180 Chapter 6
Any family case work agency is also a children’s case work agency, in the sense that it
has the same obligation for skilled treatment of the problems of children in families as it
does for meeting the needs of adults. Any children’s case work agency, dealing with chil-
dren in their own homes or in foster homes, is or should be a family case work agency,
in so far as it attempts to treat children’s needs in relation to the family setting, or to deal
with those difficulties in family relationships that affect the child.75
Relationships between voluntary family and children’s agencies would be the subject
of controversy throughout the 1940s and 1950s; but already in 1937, mergers between
family and children’s agencies were considered because of similarities in method and
overlaps in their clients. As casework with individuals eclipsed social work with groups
and communities, differences between family and children’s agencies seemed less import-
ant. In the Social Work Year Book, 1951, Frank J. Hertel reported:
Figures available to FSAA [Family Service Association of America] over the past
eight years show that the number of its member agencies engaging in this multiple
service [family and child welfare services] increased f rom 46 in 1942 to 82 (33 per-
cent of the member agencies) by the close of 1949. Of these, 42 had expanded their
services to include child placement, whereas 40 represented the merging of two or
more agencies ././. to provide the services formerly considered special to each.76
By 1960, the number of merged family and children’s agencies holding common
membership in FSAA and CWL had risen to 60. In 1974, FSAA and CWL were them-
selves considering a merger, which they finally rejected.
At the same time that there was a strong trend toward the merging of concerns
of family and child welfare agencies, specialized services for each appeared in
response to the strains the Depression put on family life. Marital counseling
emerged as a particular concern, and the first marriage clinic opened in 1930.
A variety of family support programs—visiting housekeepers and parent edu-
cation programs, to name just two—developed and the number of child guid-
ance clinics increased.
mass movEmEnts during thE 1930s
Through most of American history, social movements served as a bellwether of future
developments in social welfare and social justice concerns. Often, decades would pass
between the emergence of a social movement and the realization of its objectives.
Indeed, many social movements of the Progressive Era saw their ambitions fulfilled
during the New Deal.
The 1930s were unique, however, in that a number of social movements enjoyed a
more direct impact on social legislation. Two factors contributed to this success. First,
the scope of the economic and social emergency served both to dramatize the problems
and broaden the appeal of social movements. Second, the economic emergency pro-
voked an institutional crisis that allowed ideas that would typically have been excluded
from “respectable” consideration to receive a hearing. The role of social movements in
the New Deal was particularly significant in its early years, when (what one historian
called) “thunder on the left” drove the New Deal agenda to a more radical policy agenda
than it had previously considered.
The immediate institutional impact of the “thunder” was a massive shift in the com-
position of Congress. After the 1930 elections, Republicans still controlled both houses
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 180 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 181
of Congress; but 4 years later, Democrats held a 69–25 majority in the Senate and a
322–117 majority in the House of Representatives. Many Democrats were newly elected
members who were committed to taking stronger steps to address the emergency.
The major social movements of the period focused on the distress experienced by
veterans, older Americans, and the labor movement. Less successful efforts included the
organization of unemployment councils in many American cities and the Communist
Party.
Veterans and the Bonus
The Depression years were years of distress for veterans as for others, but the difference
was that their visibility as veterans and as a strongly organized constituency meant a
continuing ability to elicit special consideration. Almost immediately after World War I,
veterans began pushing for a bonus that would provide an economic redress to balance
the wartime earnings of workers in industry. A bill making such provisions in the form
of “adjustment compensation certificates” was passed over President Calvin Coolidge’s
veto in 1924. Payments were to come due in 1945. By 1930, with unemployment mount-
ing, demands for immediate payment began to be made. The demand culminated in
June 1932 in the “bonus march” on Washington, DC, of some 15,000 to 20,000 veter-
ans, many accompanied by their families. The march ended a month later when, on the
order of President Hoover, army troops were dispatched to clear the veterans from their
Washington campsites. However, despite Hoover’s objections and over his veto, Con-
gress passed a bill allowing veterans to obtain, in cash, half the value of the certificates.
Smaller bonus marches were attempted in 1933 and 1934, but with little immediate
success. Payment of the bonus was made in 1937, the year of a disastrous reversal of the
long climb out of the Depression. The bonus succeeded in putting almost $3.5 billion
into the hands of veterans and, eventually, into the nation’s economy.
Veterans’ social welfare policy led to confrontations between Congress and the Roo-
sevelt administration. The bonus marches of 1933 and 1934 were triggered by the Econ-
omy Act of March 1933, the same act that had cut congressional salaries and reduced
federal expenditures. The act also cut the amount of veteran’s benefits and the number
of eligible recipients. Especially hard hit were thousands of veterans who needed care
for nonservice-connected conditions and who were unemployed because of the Depres-
sion. The resulting outcry was such that in 1934, Congress passed new legislation that in
effect rescinded the Economy Act. The expansion of veterans’ cash, medical, and hospi-
tal benefits led President Roosevelt to veto the bill, but it became law when both houses
of Congress voted to override the veto. In connection with the provisions for money
payments, the new legislation stressed the word compensation to define the uniqueness of
such payments to veterans.
Veterans were given special attention in the matter of job opportunities, too. From
the bonus armies of 1933 and 1934, more than 10,000 veterans— transients stranded in
Washington—were enrolled in the CCC and assigned to work camps. Additional camps
were established by the FERA for veterans whose physical condition made them ineli-
gible for CCC camps. Still other veterans were assigned to WPA projects. In all, some
17,000 veterans were certified by the Veterans Administration for CCC, FERA, or WPA
employment between 1933 and 1935.77 The bonus payment of 1937 was, of course, of
much greater significance because of the number of individuals reached and the dol-
lar amount of benefits received. The bonus concept, joined to the benefit structure of
the veterans’ legislation of 1934, set a pattern that would inf luence veterans’ legislation
during and after World War II.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 181 02/01/17 1:37 PM
182 Chapter 6
Older Americans
There was strong political pressure for the federal government to act to provide old age
insurance. In California, the Townsend movement, a major lobby for aged pensions
under the direction of Francis E. Townsend, gained enormous support with its demand
for a $200-a-month pension for all over the age of 60, provided they left the
labor market and spent the money. There were many other popular schemes.
The Old Folks Picnic Association, End Poverty in California (EPIC), the Ham
and Eggs movement, and many others suggested a variety of plans for help-
ing the aging that ranged from free fishing licenses to monthly payments of
$400. The proposal of Senator Huey Long of Louisiana to “share our wealth”
and provide a minimum income of $5,000 a year for all received enthusiastic
support around the nation. Overall, popular pressure pushed the Roosevelt
administration to adopt a moderate pension plan for the aged.78
Labor and Social Welfare
Perhaps the most significant and long-lasting result of the experiment in industrial con-
trol was its impact on organized labor and the precedent for social legislation it estab-
lished. As the United States entered the 1930s and economic depression, labor was
largely unorganized. Union gains made during World War I were lost in a postwar envi-
ronment of generally steady employment, increasing real wages, and political repres-
sion. Furthermore, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), representing skilled labor,
tended to cooperate with management in a “welfare capitalism” effort. Ignored by that
effort was the great mass of unskilled workers in the basic manufacturing industries.
Trade union membership declined f rom 5 million in 1920 to 3.4 million in 1930; mem-
bership in the AFL declined f rom 4.1 million in 1920 to 3 million in 1930.79 The violent
and largely unsuccessful strikes led by the United Mine Workers in 1921 and 1922 and
by the United Textile Workers in 1929 further weakened organized labor as the Depres-
sion settled in.
The fortunes of labor began to turn in 1932 with the passage of the Norris–LaGuar-
dia Act, which restricted the right of the federal courts to issue injunctions against unions
engaged in peaceful strikes and to enforce “yellow dog” contracts. In 1933, the newly
formulated codes of the NRA reaffirmed the right of collective bargaining in covered
industries, established the 44-hour week, outlawed child labor, and set minimum wages
ranging f rom 30 to 40 cents an hour. The policy rationale for these provisions was to
maintain wages at the same time that the elimination of child labor and the reduction
in working hours spread jobs among a larger number of adult workers. Falling wages
stimulated workers to organize and unions to recruit membership. By 1935, union mem-
bership had grown to 3.7 million.80
Although the most lasting policy outcome of labor mobilization was the National
Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, much of the most militant union activity took
place before the Supreme Court declared the Wagner Act constitutional in 1937. Long-
shoreman on the West Coast and truck drivers in Minneapolis called general strikes in
1934 that paralyzed American cities. The same year, the autoworkers used the “sit-down
strike”—occupying factories to prevent the use of strikebreakers—to wrest concessions
from General Motors in Flint, Michigan. Their actions sparked a nationwide wave of sit-
down strikes that subsided only when the Wagner Act declared them illegal.
In fact, after the Wagner Act, the expansion of organized labor faltered. Although
the largest steel company—U.S. Steel—accepted unionization in 1937, smaller steel
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 182 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 183
companies resisted organizing, which led to the Memorial Day massacre in Chicago
and the ultimate defeat of the unions. Only during World War II—during which unions
accepted a no-strike pledge in return for government support of organizing—did unions
again gain the initiative.
The labor movement was only one of many efforts at social reform during the period
that eventually pushed the Roosevelt administration to a more aggressive set of policies.
During the early years of the Depression, unemployment councils in many large cities
organized protests to demand the expansion of relief. The colorful governor and U.S.
senator f rom Louisiana, Huey Long, promoted a “share our wealth” plan that would
have taxed corporate and individual wealth and used the proceeds to reduce poverty.
Third parties, like the Farm-Labor Party, also enjoyed significant support, especially in
Minnesota, where the party elected three governors and two senators during the 1930s.
One of the Farm-Labor senators, Ernest Lundeen, sponsored a more-radical social insur-
ance bill that competed with Roosevelt’s Economic Security Act (that eventually became
law as the Social Security Act).81
Labor’s success was not easily attained. Its efforts to organize and to force conces-
sions were matched by management’s determination to prevent unionization and to pre-
serve the open shop. In August 1933, President Roosevelt established the National Labor
Board to mediate labor disputes. When it failed for lack of authority to enforce deci-
sions, it was replaced by the National Labor Relations Board. The new board, authorized
to hold elections to determine the right of unions to conduct collective bargaining, but
lacking authority to prevent unfair management practices, was equally unsuccessful in
preventing and settling labor disputes. By May 1935, when the NRA was declared uncon-
stitutional, business had generally revolted against the labor provisions of the codes.
The National Labor Relations Act—the Wagner Act—was signed into law on July 5,
1935. The new law contained all that had been foreshadowed in the Norris– LaGuardia
Act and NIRA. In addition, it outlawed company-dominated unions and gave the new
National Labor Relations Board authority to supervise elections and determine the
appropriate bargaining unit, to hear complaints of unfair labor practices, and, when
necessary, to petition the courts to enforce its orders. The legal authorization of collec-
tive bargaining led to the unionization of large numbers of unskilled workers in basic
industries.
The AFL’s reliance on craft unions hamstrung its efforts to organize the manufac-
turing sector. Rather than form an industrial union that would include all autoworkers
or steelworkers, the AFL sought to divide workers into a number of distinct crafts and
have each craft organized separately. Advocates of industrial unions split with the AFL
in 1937 to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Through an aggressive
organizing campaign, the CIO and its member unions achieved major victories in the
automobile and steel industries.82
The CIO also abandoned the AFL’s tolerance of racial segregation in unions. Many
Af rican Americans were active in union organizing, and A. Phillip Randolph, leader
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, emerged as an outspoken leader for both
unions and civil rights.
The Roosevelt administration failed to embrace the cause of Af rican Americans.
Conservative Southern Democrats demanded that nondiscrimination language be
excluded f rom laws, and they persuaded Roosevelt to refuse support of a federal
antilynching bill. Roosevelt sought to use the 1938 election to replace conservative
Democrats with those more supportive of New Deal legislation, but this effort failed. As
a result, the coalition of conservative Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) and Republicans
blocked liberal legislation after 1939.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 183 02/01/17 1:37 PM
184 Chapter 6
Although African Americans overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt and
the Democratic Party in the 1930s, Roosevelt—fearing a Southern reaction—
kept his distance from the civil rights movement. His wife Eleanor, however,
became the chief connection between the administration and black leaders.
When the famed contralto, Marian Anderson, was denied use of the Daugh-
ters of the American Revolution’s hall for a concert, Mrs. Roosevelt resigned
f rom the organization and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln
Memorial in April 1939, a venue to which she would return during the March
on Washington in 1963.
A report of the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, the first part of
which was made public in December 1937, strengthened the hand of the
National Labor Relations Board and ultimately ensured the passage of the
Fair Labor Standards Act of June 1938. The report publicized in detail industry’s disre-
gard for labor’s legal rights. Not the least of its revelations was the fact that a selected list
of companies had spent a total of $9.4 million for labor spies, strikebreakers, and muni-
tions between 1933 and 1936.83 The disclosures were important in moving management
toward collective bargaining. As the 1930s ended, organized labor could boast a total
membership of 10.6 million. Of the total, 5 million workers belonged to the CIO and 4.6
million belonged to the AFL.84
The Fair Labor Standards Act legislatively retrieved those provisions of the NRA
that had dealt with work hours, minimum wages, and child labor. The act established
a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour (rising to 40 cents an hour in 7 years), a 44-hour
week to be reduced to 40 hours in 3 years, and 16 years old as the age below which a
child could not work in industries whose products entered interstate commerce. The
act’s provisions were, for the most part, already a reality for much of organized labor,
so those largely affected were nonunionized, unprotected workers—women, minors,
and minority group members, the rank and file of the unskilled. As a result, the hourly
pay of 300,000 workers was immediately raised, and the workweek was shortened for
2,382,000 people.85
The success of the CIO in its efforts to organize the mass industries was enormously
significant for unskilled workers. Such workers were f requently members of minority
groups, women, and children, and their status was easily exploited in times of labor strife
or economic recession. In the strikes of 1921 and 1922, unorganized blacks had been
extensively used as strikebreakers. Blacks were often the first to feel the crush of the
Depression of the 1930s as social discrimination played its role in decisions to release
workers. A National Urban League survey of 106 cities disclosed that 20 to 30 percent
of the black population was unemployed in 1931.86 As the economic situation worsened,
many industries replaced men with women at cheaper rates; many replaced men and
women with children. In other situations, “desperate heads of families took women’s
jobs at women’s wages, Negro jobs at Negro wages, leaving the minority groups without
means of support.”87
Social workers also experimented with unionization. Many social workers—espe-
cially those working for public agencies—demanded more sweeping action to address the
Depression that put them to the left of the New Deal and their professional organizations.
The Rank-and-File movement and its publication Social Work Today became the voice of
this concern. At its peak, the Rank-and-File movement claimed 15,000 members. The
Rank-and-File movement represented an attempt to redefine social workers both as pro-
fessionals and as workers, workers with the right and need to organize into labor unions.
The idea of social workers’ unions outlived the demise of the movement in 1942.88
Although African
Americans over-
whelmingly supported
Roosevelt and
the Democratic
Party in the 1930s,
Roosevelt— fearing a
Southern reaction—
kept his distance
from the civil rights
movement.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 184 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 185
Setbacks for Women
The size of the labor force increased between 1930 and 1940. This was true for both male
and female workers.89 As with blacks, the severity of the unemployment situation aggra-
vated long-established patterns of prejudice and discrimination against women. The
notion of women’s “proper place” was enhanced by the urgency of a drive to “get the
men back to work.” The country as a whole was convinced that employment for men
was the priority, and this was the view of many social workers and social scientists, as
well as the official position of unions and government. Congresswoman Florence Kahn
said, “Woman’s place is not out in the business world competing with men who have
families to support.”90 In 1932, Congress established a “married persons’ clause” for all
federal and service employees, whereby the first employees to be considered redundant
when reductions in personnel were necessary were those whose spouses were also fed-
eral employees.91 For the most part, this meant that women were dismissed.
Actually, the get-the-men-back-to-work slogan was aimed at all women, and single
women seem to have suffered even greater discrimination than married women. Never-
theless, the percentage of married female workers rose. In 1920, married women com-
prised 23 percent of female workers; by 1930, one of the earlier years of the Depression,
the percentage had risen to 28.9; and in 1940, married women represented 36.7 percent
of women in the labor force.92 During the 1930s, the labor force participation rate of
married women increased f rom 11 to 14 percent. Married or single, the fact was that
employers found in women a pool of workers suitable for employment at low wages.
The Eclipse of Reform
The expansion of federal social welfare legislation during the Roosevelt administration
was largely confined to the years 1935–1938. In 1937, the administration decided to cut
spending on social welfare in an effort to balance the government’s budget. Within a
few months, the economy had descended into recession, and unemployment, which had
never fallen below 10 percent, spiked. Roosevelt’s and the Democratic Party’s popularity
suffered a setback. The 75th Congress that convened in 1939 still boasted a large majority
in support of New Deal legislation, although conservative Southern Democrats were
able to use their voting strength to tailor legislation to their liking. In particular, they
steadfastly blocked policy that would interfere with their states’ rights to discriminate
against African Americans.93
Federal public housing policy as it was defined by the Housing Act of 1937 (Wagner–
Steagall Act) demonstrated the political constraints on the New Deal, even when it enjoyed
large congressional majorities. Efforts to provide decent housing for poor and working-class
families dated from the late 19th century. Typically initiated by charitable organizations, a
variety of “social housing” developments advanced the idea that shelter could not be left
simply to the laws of supply and demand. During World War I, the federal government had
created the United States Housing Corporation and the Emergency Fleet Corporation to
help the war effort by building housing in shipbuilding centers; but at the end of the war,
these efforts were terminated.94
During its early years, the Roosevelt administration initiated a variety of experiments
in housing and community development. The Resettlement Administration, under the
leadership of Rexford Tugwell, constructed three model towns—including Greenbelt,
Maryland; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Greenhills, Ohio—before its efforts were declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. A collaboration of the hosiery-workers’ union
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 185 02/01/17 1:37 PM
186 Chapter 6
and the PWA led to the construction of a model housing project, the Carl Mackley
Houses, in Philadelphia in 1934.95
Yet, the path f rom experimentation to a permanent public housing program was
a difficult one. Developers, construction companies, and their allies—the strength of the
private housing industry—opposed public intervention in their sector, while conserva-
tive politicians railed against the centralization of power in Washington. In the end, the
Wagner–Steagall Act included significant limits on the success of public housing. First, pub-
lic housing projects were initiated by local housing authorities, not by the federal govern-
ment. As a result, most public housing was limited to central cities; suburban communities
often did not even establish housing authorities. Second, stringent limits were placed on the
amount that could be spent to construct a unit of public housing. This requirement was
included in the legislation to assure that public housing would never compete with the pri-
vate sector for any but the lowest-quality shelter. Finally, Southern politicians were able to
block any attempts to include antidiscrimination language in the bill. As a result,
throughout the nation, public housing was constructed on a segregated basis.96
Public housing was an early example of how court, private-industry, and
Southern opposition could limit the reform impulse of the New Deal. The
start of World War II in Europe in 1939 ended the Roosevelt administration’s
focus on social reform.
ConClusion
The Depression of the 1930s left an indelible mark on the United States and on a
generation of Americans. Despite the effort expended in the attempt to wrest the coun-
try out of the crisis, neither the Franklin Roosevelt nor the New Deal programs achieved
success until World War II boosted the economy to full employment. Nevertheless, the
president had been able to invest the people with psychological endurance and, in the
face of severe challenges f rom both the political right and the left, to preserve the basic
economic system of private property.
The essential conservatism of the New Deal, however, does not negate the fact that
the federal government had emerged as the prime promoter of social welfare. Voluntary
welfare as well as state and local governments had been tried and found wanting. The
extent to which a new realism had taken hold was exhibited in the Supreme Court opin-
ion delivered by Justice Benjamin Cardozo upholding the constitutionality of the Social
Security Act:
The concept of the general welfare is not static. Needs that were narrow or paro-
chial a century ago may be interwoven in our day with the welfare of the nation.
What is critical or urgent changes with the times.97
The United States emerged from the Depression aware of the hazards of the indus-
trial society and having accomplished a major structural change in its income transfer
system. The provision of social insurance—and, for the moment, public assistance,
too—represented aggressive federal responsibility for guaranteeing minimum financial
security as a matter of right.
Unquestionably, the Social Security Act was the major legislative accomplishment of
the New Deal. The act declared the birth of the welfare state and established a direction
for its growth and development. As a start, the necessity of opening up jobs for young
adults (which required that the elderly be retired from the labor market) and the political
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 186 02/01/17 1:37 PM
The Depression and the New Deal: 1930–1940 187
clout of older people meant that the welfare measures of the act were geared primar-
ily to persons over age 65. The risks suffered by children and young adults were given
short shrift, a situation not really repaired by the minimum wage and hour or child labor
provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. For the most part, the Fair Labor
Standards Act did little more than give federal sanction to provisions that already existed
in many of the states. Nevertheless, precedent for societal protection for all had been
established and would serve as a base for substantial expansion of old programs and the
creation of new ones.
For social work, the return to prosperity meant a return to a period of further
introspection and professionalization. In the early years of the New Deal, many social
workers had been active social reformers and community organizers. In 1934, the gen-
eral sessions and section meetings of the National Conference of Social Work empha-
sized unemployment, health, and justice as social welfare policy concerns and social
legislation as the route to social change. By the end of the decade, professional meet-
ings emphasized social work methodology, social agency administration, and social work
education.98 The Rank-and-File movement, which had fueled radical social work in the
early years, attracted less attention and support as the nation came to terms with the
approaching world war.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 187 02/01/17 1:37 PM
188
The Depression and the New Deal
The documents used to demonstrate social welfare issues during the Depression of the
1930s are excerpts from the Monthly Reports of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
(1933) and from the Social Security Act (1935) as originally passed by Congress. The two
documents illustrate continuity and change in social policy.
The monthly reports of the FERA set forth the famous Rules and Regulations, which
not only governed the administration of developing public welfare programs, but also
revolutionized the relationship between the public and private sectors of social welfare.
The most famous of these regulations, Regulation No. 1, ordered that relief funds be
administered by public agencies. This new principle—“public funds in public hands”—
removed voluntary agencies f rom the business of relief. Taking into account the enor-
mous significance of cash relief for social welfare during the Depression, the dominance
of the public sector was immediately established.
Nevertheless, the inf luence of voluntary agency experience and tradition can be
detected. Regulation No. 3 requires that need be determined on the basis of individual
budgeting and that a variety of individual and family resources be taken into account in
establishing the final amount of the relief grant. The requirements for individualized
budgeting and resource determination led directly to the investigations of applications
and the use of trained investigators at least in supervisory positions.
The Social Security Act was the most important piece of social welfare legislation
of the Depression era. It substituted a group of permanent programs for the temporary
programs of FERA and, in so doing, acknowledged long-term federal responsibility for
social welfare. This new thrust did not, however, make a total break with the past. In fact,
a major characteristic of the act is its dual nature, its putting together of old and new
orientations.
On the one hand, the Social Security Act establishes a number of social insurance
programs to meet the hazards of old age and unemployment. The insurance programs
are meant to cover those with former or current workforce connections. They are
financed through payroll-tax deductions. Simultaneously, the act provides for a group of
categorical non-work-related programs of assistance for the elderly, the blind, and depen-
dent children. These programs are funded through a grant-in-aid formula providing a
joint federal–state funding device. They are to be administered by states and provide an
income safety net for this population.
The social insurance and public assistance programs differ markedly in their orien-
tation to people in need. The former, perhaps because of the direct taxation involved,
makes carefully spelled-out benefits available to claimants as a matter of right. The pub-
lic assistance categories, because they are based on a “demonstrated need” approach,
continue the practice of investigation and individualized budgeting.
The delineation of categories of public assistance recipients indicates the extent to
which need per se as a determinant for helping was compromised. Nevertheless, the
new public assistance programs were also a break with the past. The Social Security Act
requires that each participating state develop a state plan for public assistance and that
the plan meet certain requirements. In this regard, the act is standard setting. In addition,
the act requires that grants be made in cash and to people living in their own homes,
DOCUMENTS
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 188 02/01/17 1:37 PM
189
marking the end of institutional almshouse care for the poor. Finally, the act provides
for a fair hearing for those applicants who believe they have been unfairly treated. The
changes are such that social welfare workers began to talk of a “right to assistance.”
MONTHLY REPORT
OF
THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
JULY 1, 1933
S$’: Pursuant to subsection (d) of section 3 of the Federal Emergency Relief Act of
1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration has the honor to submit this report
of its activities from May 22, 1933, to June 30, 1933, inclusive. . . .
RULES AND REGULATIONS
Rules and Regulations Nos. 1, 2, and 3 were promulgated by the Federal Emergency
Relief Administrator, and were printed and distributed to the governors and State Emer-
gency Relief Administrators. They read as follows:
No. 1
(a) Grants of Federal emergency relief funds are to be administered by public agen-
cies after August 1, 1933.
Just as all State commissions responsible for the distribution of Federal and State
funds to local communities are public bodies, so in turn should those local units be pub-
lic agencies responsible for the expenditure of public funds in the same manner as any
other municipal or county department.
This policy obviously must be interpreted on a realistic basis in various parts of the
United States. Hundreds of private agencies scattered throughout the land have f reely
and generously offered their services in the administration of public funds. It would be a
serious handicap to relief work if the abilities and interests of these individuals were lost.
But these individuals should be made public officials, working under the control of public
authority. Thousands of these workers are serving and will continue to serve without pay,
but if paid, they should be compensated in the same manner as any other public servant.
It is not the intention of this regulation to instruct the several States to make hasty
changes in agreements which the State administration may have made with the private
agencies. Adjustment, however, to this policy is to be made no later than August 1, 1933.
This ruling prohibits the turning over of Federal emergency-relief funds to a private
agency. The unemployed must apply to a public agency for relief, and this relief must be
furnished direct to the applicant by a public agent.
(b) Grants made to the States f rom Federal funds under the Federal Emergency
Relief Act of 1933 may be used for the payment of medical attendance and medical sup-
plies for those families that are receiving relief.
(c) These funds may also be used to pay the cost of shelter for the needy unem-
ployed.
(d) These funds may not be used for the payment of hospital bills or for the boarding
out of children, either in institutions or in private homes, or for providing general insti-
tutional care. These necessary services to the destitute should be made available through
State or local funds.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 189 02/01/17 1:37 PM
190
(e) The personnel employed on work relief projects by the States or their subdivi-
sions are not Federal employees and must not be considered as such; therefore, premi-
ums for accident insurance in connection with work relief programs may not be paid
from Federal funds, but should be paid out of State or local moneys.
No. 2
Grants of Federal relief funds cannot be made on the basis of expenditures for rental
of buildings used for relief operation; salaries of regularly employed public employees
other than those employed full time in connection with emergency unemployment
relief and under the supervision of the unemployment relief authority; salaries of relief
workers not working directly under the supervision of the unemployment relief author-
ity; and the purchase of automobiles and other equipment used in connection with relief
administration.
No. 3
SUPPLEMENT TO RULES AND REGULATIONS NO. 1
Rule No. 1 stated: “Grants of Federal emergency relief funds are to be administered
by public agencies after August 1, 1933.” The rule further stated, “This ruling prohib-
its the turning over of Federal Emergency Relief funds to a private agency. The unem-
ployed must apply to a public agency for relief and this relief must be furnished directly
to the applicant by a public agent.”
Three points need to be clarified:
(a) Public agency.
(b) Public agent or public official.
(c) Use of private agency personnel.
(a) Public agency.—A public welfare department, supported by tax funds and con-
trolled by local government, if approved by the State emergency relief administration
to administer unemployment relief, is a “public agency.” Where a public welfare depart-
ment does not exist and a local unemployment relief administration is responsible for
unemployment relief this local unemployment relief administration, in order to be rec-
ognized as a “public agency” in the meaning of that term as used in Rules and Regula-
tions No. 1, must have the following factors:
(1) It must have the full sanction and recognition of the State emergency relief
administration.
(2) It must be vested with full authority and control in the expenditure of State and
Federal public funds appropriated for local relief purposes.
(3) It must conform to the rulings of the State emergency relief administration.
(4) It must keep such records and forms as are required by the State emergency relief
administration.
N%#+.—This interpretation recognizes as a “public agency,” an agency created and
sustained by Executive action in the absence of creative local legislation.
(b) Public official or public agent.—“Public official” or “public agent” in the meaning of
the term as used in Rules and Regulations No. 1, includes every person who is engaged in
carrying out the purposes of the public agency, and so must be:
(1) A member of the official staff of the public agency responsible to the chief exec-
utive employed by the public agency to administer the entire organization of unem-
ployment relief. This relationship must be made official by definite appointment and
acceptance of such appointment.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 190 02/01/17 1:37 PM
191
(2) The compensation of the “public official” or “public agent” may or may not be
paid f rom public funds. Such official may be loaned by a private agency, but when so
loaned must become a member of the official staff of the public agency.
(c) Use of personnel loaned by private agency.—The public agency may make use of per-
sonnel of private agencies provided—
(1) Where such personnel is used for the giving of unemployment relief it becomes
for the time being an integral part of the public agency. The public agency must assume
full responsibility over personnel loaned by the private agency.
(2) That visible evidence of the integration into the public agency is provided as fol-
lows:
a. The name of the public agency clearly set out on the office door so that clients
may know that they are applying to a public agency for relief.
b. All order forms must be those of the public agency; receipts must be made out
to the public agency; identification cards of relief workers must be as staff members of
the public agency and relief workers at all times in handling unemployment relief clients
must report themselves as public agents or officials.
c. All bills for direct relief, wages for work relief, service or administration costs
must be paid directly by the public agency; e.g., when grocery orders are issued by the
relief worker the bills must be paid by the public agency directly to the grocer and not
through a private agency.
d. It is expected that on other matters than the determination of relief there will be
cooperative relationships established between public agencies and private agencies, but
the public agency shall not pay for supplemental services so rendered by private agencies.
ADEQUACY OF RELIEF
(Either work relief or direct relief )
Relief shall be given as provided in this act to all needy unemployed persons and/
or their dependents. Those whose employment or available resources are inadequate to
provide the necessities of life for themselves and/or their dependents are included.
This imposes an obligation on the State emergency relief administration and on all
the political subdivisions of the States administering relief, insofar as lies in their power,
to see to it that all such needy unemployed persons and/or their dependents shall receive
sufficient relief to prevent physical suffering and to maintain minimum living standards.
It also imposes an obligation on the part of the State emergency relief administra-
tion and the local relief administration to see that no relief is given to persons unless
they are actually in need, and that such relief as is allowed is adjusted to the actual needs
of each individual or family.
At the same time the obligation exists to develop maximum efficiency and economy
in the furnishing of relief, with a minimum of delay in providing relief to those in distress.
The amount of relief to be given must be based on the following:
(1) An estimate of the weekly needs of the individual or family including an allow-
ance for food sufficient to maintain physical well-being, for shelter, the provision of fuel
for cooking and for warmth when necessary, medical care and other necessities. Taxes
may be allowed in lieu of allowances for shelter, and not to exceed the normal rent
allowance providing such tax allowance is necessary in order to maintain the shelter or
home of the relief recipient.
(2) An estimate of the weekly income of the family, including wages or other cash
income, produce of farm or garden, and all other resources.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 191 02/01/17 1:37 PM
192
(3) The relief granted should be sufficient to provide the estimated weekly needs to
the extent that the family is unable to do so from its own resources.
Any or all of the following types of relief may be allowed under direct relief or
under work relief:
(1) Food, and/or food orders or allowance, determined by the number, ages, and
needs of the individual members of the family in general accordance with standard food
schedules.
(2) Orders or allowances for the provision of shelter, or its equivalent, where necessary.
(3) Orders or allowances for light, gas, fuel, and water for current needs.
(4) Orders or allowances for necessary household supplies.
(5) Clothing or orders or allowances for clothing sufficient for emergency needs.
(6) Orders or allowances for medicine, medical supplies, and/or medical attendance
to be furnished in the home.
See further interpretation under “Direct relief.”
INVESTIGATION AND SERVICE
(Work relief and direct relief )
To carry out the purposes of the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933 the inves-
tigation of all applications for direct and/or work relief is required. The following rules
are hereby established:
(1) Each local relief administration should have at least one trained and experienced
investigator on its staff; if additional investigators are to be employed to meet this emer-
gency, the first one employed should have had training and experience. In the larger public
welfare districts, where there are a number of investigators, there should be not less than 1
supervisor, trained and experienced in the essential elements of family case work and relief
administration, to supervise the work of not more than 20 investigating staff workers.
(2) Registration records of all local applications for relief should be kept at a central
office. Where no such central registration index now exists, one should be established by
the local relief administration. This is absolutely necessary if duplication is to be avoided
where there is more than one agency, either public or private, administering relief.
(3) The minimum investigation shall include a prompt visit to the home; inquiry as
to real property, bank accounts, and other financial resources of the family; an interview
with at least one recent employer; and determination of the ability and agreement of
family, relatives, f riends, and churches and other organizations to assist; also the liability
under public welfare laws of the several States, of members of a family, or relatives, to
assume such support in order to prevent such member becoming a public charge.
(4) Investigation shall be made, not only of persons applying directly to the office but
also of those reported to it. In this emergency, it is the duty of those responsible for the
administration of unemployment relief to seek out persons in need, and to secure the
cooperation of clergymen, school teachers, nurses, and organizations that might assist.
(5) There must be contact with each family through visits at least once a month,
or oftener if necessary. The local field worker should be in sufficiently close touch with
the family situation to avoid the necessity of applicants reapplying to the office for each
individual order.
(6) Investigators should not be overloaded with cases. While no exact standard is
being set as to the number of cases per worker, State emergency relief administrators
should see to it that a sufficient number of workers are utilized in each local relief dis-
trict to insure reasonable investigation procedure.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 192 02/01/17 1:37 PM
193
(7) Relief should be given only to persons in need of relief, and on the basis of bud-
getary deficiency established after careful investigation.
(8) Duplication of relief must be avoided, and every precaution should be taken to
prevent overlapping of relief agencies, both public and private.
(9) Frequent and careful reinvestigation should be undertaken at regular intervals
in order to establish the continued need of those who are receiving relief in order to
determine whether or not some member of the family may have obtained part or full-
time work, which would indicate the necessity for cutting down or cutting off on relief.
Where adequate staff for investigation is provided, under able direction and supervision,
these reinvestigations may be carried out automatically and the relief rolls kept clear of
those who do not qualify.
DIRECT RELIEF
Such relief shall be in the form of food, shelter, clothing, light, fuel, necessary house-
hold supplies, medicine, medical supplies, and medical attendance, or the cash equivalent
of these to the person in his own home.
Direct relief does not include relief—where provision is already made under existing
laws—for widows or their dependents, and/or aged persons. There is further disallowed
the payment of hospital bills or institutional care, and the costs of the boarding out of
children.
Any or all of the following types of relief may be granted:
(1) Food, in the form of food orders, determined by the number, ages, and needs of
the individual members of the family in general accordance with standard food sched-
ules.
(2) Orders for the payment of current rent, or its equivalent, where necessary.
(3) Orders for light, gas, fuel, and water for current needs.
(4) Necessary household supplies.
(5) Clothing or orders for clothing sufficient for emergency needs.
(6) Orders for medicine, medical supplies, and/or medical attendance to be fur-
nished in the home.
A broad interpretation of direct relief may be followed by the State relief adminis-
tration where such is called for in meeting the immediate needs of individuals or fam-
ilies, or in aiding such needy persons in providing the necessities of life for themselves
and/or their dependents.
Feed for livestock cannot be allowed as a relief expenditure except feed for domestic
livestock may be allowed as a relief expenditure where such allowance makes it possible
for the distressed family to produce additional food for the immediate family need.
Seed for gardens under the same reasoning may likewise be allowed as a relief mea-
sure.
Tax or mortgage interest payments on real property (home and land) may be allowed
in lieu of rent as a relief measure where such allowance is no greater than the normal
minimum relief rent allowance and when such payment of tax or mortgage interest is
vitally necessary in preventing the loss of the home and the eviction of the owner.
A liberal interpretation of direct relief as above indicated must be controlled by the
rule of reason and public policy. Under no circumstances shall an allowance be made
which makes provision for other than the emergency needs of the immediate family.
State relief administrations are not authorized to make allowances for feed or seed to
such an extent that provision is made possible for more than the individual family require-
ments. Likewise, tax or mortgage interest payments in lieu of rent shall be allowed only
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 193 02/01/17 1:37 PM
194
on properties occupied and held title to by relief recipients. In no event shall a relief
grant be made which directly or indirectly makes possible an increased capital invest-
ment in private properties.
WORK RELIEF
(Work relief wages and projects)
Work relief wages in cash or in kind are to be interpreted as follows:
(1) All work relief wages shall be based upon the relief need of the individual and/
or his dependents.1
(2) The rate of wages should be a fair rate of pay for the work performed. Total
compensation should meet the budgetary requirement of the relief recipient.
(3) Payment shall be by check, in cash, or in kind.
(4) Allowance should be on the basis of days’ wages, or the equivalent, for the hours
worked.
(5) Work relief should be allowed only to those who are employable.
(6) There shall be no discrimination because of race, religion, color, noncitizenship,
political affiliation, or because of membership in any special or selected group.
(7) Where skilled personnel is required, skilled wages for skilled work must be paid.
Such personnel taken from the work relief lists should be staggered. Where such skilled
personnel is required full time, it should be provided otherwise than on a work relief
basis.
(8) Work relief projects must be projects undertaken on Federal, State, or local pub-
lic properties. Work projects for private institutions or agencies, nonprofit or otherwise,
are therefore prohibited except as such projects, undertaken by governmental units, may
benefit the public health or welfare as, for example, the prosecution of a drainage project
which may benefit private interests but is withal of definite benefit to the public health
of the community.
It therefore follows that work relief may not be used in the improvement of hospi-
tals, libraries, churches, parks, cemeteries, etc., which are privately owned or incorpo-
rated, except that if State or local public moneys are regularly contributed to the support
of such institutions, and such public support creates a quasi-public institution which may
receive the benefit of work relief.
(9) Work relief projects under this act must be for work undertaken by a State or
local relief administration independent of work under a contract or for which an annual
appropriation has been made. It must be, in general, apart f rom normal governmental
enterprises and not such as would have been carried out in due course regardless of an
emergency.
The construction, as a work relief project, of public buildings, such as schools, fire-
houses, garages, etc., would in general not be acceptable as a proper work relief project,
such construction falling within the usual contract work which would provide labor for
those unemployed at large.
(10) Persons employed on work relief projects are not Federal employees and the pre-
miums for their compensation or accident insurance may not be paid from Federal funds.
If such insurance is provided, it therefore must be carried by State or local moneys.
1See further interpretation under “Direct relief ” and “Adequacy.” Allowances on work
relief may be made to cover food, shelter, clothing, light, fuel, necessary household sup-
plies, medicine, supplies, and medical attendance.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 194 02/01/17 1:37 PM
195
Persons employed on work-relief projects by the States and their subdivisions ought
to be covered by compensation or accident insurance.
(11) All local work relief projects must be submitted for approval to the State emer-
gency relief administration.
***
THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT
Approved, August 14, 1935
[P:3&$(—NO. 271—74#) C%!2’+,,]
[II. R. 7260]
AN ACT
To provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age bene-
fits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged per-
sons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public
health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a
Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled,
TITLE I—GRANTS TO STATES FOR OLD-AGE ASSISTANCE
APPROPRIATION
S+(#$%! 1. For the purpose of enabling each State to furnish financial assistance, as
far as practicable under the conditions in such State, to aged needy individuals, there is
hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the sum
of $49,750,000, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year
thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title. The sums made avail-
able under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submit-
ted, and had approved by the Social Security Board established by Title VII (hereinafter
referred to as the “Board”), State plans for old-age assistance.
STATE OLD-AGE ASSISTANCE PLANS
S+(. 2 (a) A State plan for old-age assistance must (1) provide that it shall be in
effect in all political subdivisions of the State, and, if administered by them, be manda-
tory upon them; (2) provide for financial participation by the State; (3) either provide
for the establishment or designation of a single State agency to administer the plan, or
provide for the establishment or designation of a single State agency to supervise the
administration of the plan; (4) provide for granting to any individual, whose claim for
old-age assistance is denied, an opportunity for a fair hearing before such State agency;
(5) provide such methods of administration (other than those relating to selection, ten-
ure of office, and compensation of personnel) as are found by the Board to be necessary
for the efficient operation of the plan; (6) provide that the State agency will make such
reports, in such form and containing such information, as the Board may f rom time
to time find necessary to assure the correctness and verification of such reports; and
(7) provide that, if the State or any of its political subdivisions collects f rom the estate
of any recipient of old-age assistance any amount with respect to old-age assistance fur-
nished him under the plan, one-half of the net amount so collected shall be promptly
paid to the United States. Any payment so made shall be deposited in the Treasury to
the credit of the appropriation for the purposes of this title.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 195 02/01/17 1:37 PM
196
(b) The Board shall approve any plan which fulfills the conditions specified in sub-
section (a), except that it shall not approve any plan which imposes, as a condition of
eligibility for old-age assistance under the plan—
(1) An age requirement of more than sixty-five years, except that the plan may
impose, effective until January 1, 1940, an age requirement of as much as seventy years; or
(2) Any residence requirement which excludes any resident of the State who has
resided therein five years during the nine years immediately preceding the application for
old-age assistance and has resided therein continuously for one year immediately preced-
ing the application; or
(3) Any citizenship requirement which excludes any citizen of the United States.
PAYMENT TO STATES
S+(. 3. (a) From the sums appropriated therefore, the Secretary of the Treasury shall
pay to each State which has an approved plan for old-age assistance, for each quarter,
beginning with the quarter commencing July 1, 1935, (1) an amount, which shall be used
exclusively as old-age assistance, equal to one-half of the total of the sums expended
during such quarter as old-age assistance under the State plan with respect to each indi-
vidual who at the time of such expenditure is sixty-five years of age or older and is not an
inmate of a public institution, not counting so much of such expenditure with respect to
any individual for any month as exceeds $30 and (2) 5 per centum of such amount, which
shall be used for paying the costs of administering the State plan or for old-age assistance,
or both, and for no other purpose: Provided, That the State plan, in order to be approved
by the Board, need not provide for financial participation before July 1, 1937 by the State,
in the case of any State which the Board, upon application by the State and after reason-
able notice and opportunity for hearing to the State, finds is prevented by its constitution
from providing such financial participation./././.
DEFINITIONS
S+(. 6. When used in this title the term “old-age assistance” means money payments
to aged individuals.
TITLE II—FEDERAL OLD-AGE BENEFITS
OLD-AGE RESERVE ACCOUNT
S+(#$%! 201. (a) There is hereby created an account in the Treasury of the United
States to be known as the “Old-Age Reserve Account” hereinafter in this title called the
“Account.” There is hereby authorized to be appropriated to the Account for each fis-
cal year, beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1937, an amount sufficient as an
annual premium to provide for the payments required under this title, such amount to
be determined on a reserve basis in accordance with accepted actuarial principles, and
based upon such tables of mortality as the Secretary of the Treasury shall f rom time to
time adopt, and upon an interest rate of 3 per centum per annum compounded annually.
The Secretary of the Treasury shall submit annually to the Bureau of the Budget an esti-
mate of the appropriations to be made to the Account./././.
OLD-AGE BENEFIT PAYMENTS
S+(. 202. (a) Every qualified individual (as defined in section 210) shall be entitled to
receive, with respect to the period beginning on the date he attains the age of sixty-five,
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 196 02/01/17 1:37 PM
197
or on January 1, 1942, whichever is the later, and ending on the date of his death, an old-
age benefit (payable as nearly as practicable in equal monthly installments) as follows:
(1) If the total wages (as defined in section 210) determined by the Board to have
been paid to him, with respect to employment (as defined in section 210) after December
31, 1936, and before he attained the age of sixty-five, were not more than $3,000, the old-
age benefit shall be at a monthly rate of one-half of 1 per centum of such total wages;
(2) If such total wages were more than $3,000, the old-age benefit shall be at a
monthly rate equal to the sum of the following:
(A) One-half of 1 per centum of $3,000; plus
(B) One-twelfth of 1 per centum of the amount by which such total wages
exceeded $3,000 and did not exceed $45,000; plus
(C) One-twenty-fourth of 1 per centum of the amount by which such total
wages exceeded $45,000.
(b) In no case shall the monthly rate computed under subsection (a) exceed $85.
(c) If the Board finds at any time that more or less than the correct amount has
theretofore been paid to any individual under this section, then, under regulations made
by the Board, proper adjustments shall be made in connection with subsequent pay-
ments under this section to the same individual.
(d) Whenever the Board finds that any qualified individual has received wages with
respect to regular employment after he attained the age of sixty-five, the old-age benefit
payable to such individual shall be reduced, for each calendar month in any part of which
such regular employment occurred, by an amount equal to one month’s benefit. Such
reduction shall be made, under regulations prescribed by the Board, by deductions from
one or more payments of old-age benefit to such individual.
PAYMENTS UPON DEATH
S+(. 203. (a) If any individual dies before attaining the age of sixty-five, there shall be
paid to his estate an amount equal to 3 1/2 per centum of the total wages determined by
the Board to have been paid to him, with respect to employment after December 31, 1936.
(b) If the Board finds that the correct amount of the old-age benefit payable to a
qualified individual during his life under section 202 was less than 3 1/2 per centum of
the total wages by which such old-age benefit was measurable, then there shall be paid
to his estate a sum equal to the amount, if any, by which such 3 1/2 per centum exceeds
the amount (whether more or less than the correct amount) paid to him during his life as
old-age benefit.
(c) If the Board finds that the total amount paid to a qualified individual under an old-
age benefit during his life was less than the correct amount to which he was entitled under
section 202, and that the correct amount of such old-age benefit was 3 1/2 per centum or
more of the total wages by which such old-age benefit was measurable, then there shall
be paid to his estate a sum equal to the amount, if any, by which the correct amount of
the old-age benefit exceeds the amount which was so paid to him during his life.
PAYMENTS TO AGED INDIVIDUALS NOT QUALIFIED FOR BENEFITS
S+(. 204. (a) There shall be paid in a lump sum to any individual who, upon attaining
the age of sixty-five, is not a qualified individual, an amount equal to 3 1/2 per centum
of the total wages determined by the Board to have been paid to him, with respect to
employment after December 31, 1936, and before he attained the age of sixty-five.
(b) After any individual becomes entitled to any payment under subsection (a), no
other payment shall be made under this title in any manner measured by wages paid to
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 197 02/01/17 1:37 PM
198
him, except that any part of any payment under subsection (a) which is not paid to him
before his death shall be paid to his estate. . . .
OVERPAYMENTS DURING LIFE
S+(. 206. If the Board finds that the total amount paid to a qualified individual under
an old-age benefit during his life was more than the correct amount to which he was
entitled under section 202, and was 3 1/2 per centum or more of the total wages by
which such old-age benefit was measurable, then upon his death there shall be repaid to
the United States by his estate the amount, if any, by which such total amount paid to
him during his life exceeds whichever of the following is the greater: (1) Such 3 1/2 per
centum, or (2) the correct amount to which he was entitled under section 202. . . .
DEFINITIONS
S+(. 210. When used in this title—
(a) The term “wages” means all remuneration for employment, including the cash
value of all remuneration paid in any medium other than cash; except that such term
shall not include that part of the remuneration which, after remuneration equal to
$3,000 has been paid to an individual by an employer with respect to employment during
any calendar year, is paid to such individual by such employer with respect to employ-
ment during such calendar year.
(b) The term “employment” means any service, of whatever nature, performed
within the United States by an employee for his employer, except—
(1) Agricultural labor;
(2) Domestic service in a private home;
(3) Casual labor not in the course of the employer’s trade or business;
(4) Service performed as an officer or member of the crew of a vessel documented
under the laws of the United States or of any foreign country;
(5) Service performed in the employ of the United States Government or of an
instrumentality of the United States;
(6) Service performed in the employ of a State, a political subdivision thereof, or an
instrumentality of one or more States or political subdivisions;
(7) Services performed in the employ of a corporation, community chest, fund, or
foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary,
or educational purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part
of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.
(c) The term “qualified individual” means any individual with respect to whom it
appears to the satisfaction of the Board that—
(1) He is at least sixty-five years of age; and
(2) The total amount of wages paid to him, with respect to employment after Decem-
ber 31, 1936, and before he attained the age of sixty-five, was not less than $2,000; and
(3) Wages were paid to him, with respect to employment on some five days after
December 31, 1936, and before he attained the age of sixty-five, each day being in a dif-
ferent calendar year.
TITLE III—GRANTS TO STATES FOR UNEMPLOYMENT
COMPENSATION ADMINISTRATION
APPROPRIATION
S+(#$%! 301. For the purpose of assisting the States in the administration of their
unemployment compensation laws, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated, for
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 198 02/01/17 1:37 PM
199
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the sum of $4,000,000, and for each fiscal year there-
after the sum of $49,000,000, to be used as hereinafter provided.
PAYMENTS TO STATES
S+(. 302. (a) The Board shall f rom time to time certify to the Secretary of the Trea-
sury for payment to each State which has an unemployment compensation law approved
by the Board under Title IX, such amounts as the Board determines to be necessary for
the proper administration of such law during the fiscal year in which such payment is to
be made. The board’s determination shall be based on (1) the population of the State; (2)
an estimate of the number of persons covered by the State law and of the cost of proper
administration of such law; and (3) such other factors as the Board finds relevant. The
Board shall not certify for payment under this section in any fiscal year a total amount in
excess of the amount appropriated therefor for such fiscal year.
(b) Out of the sums appropriated therefor, the Secretary of the Treasury shall, upon
receiving a certification under subsection (a), pay, through the Division of Disbursement
of the Treasury Department and prior to audit or settlement by the General Accounting
Office, to the State agency charged with the administration of such law the amount so
certified.
PROVISIONS OF STATE LAWS
S+(. 303. (a) The Board shall make no certification for payment to any State unless
it finds that the law of such State, approved by the Board under Title IX, includes provi-
sions for—
(1) Such methods of administration (other than those relating to selection, tenure of
office, and compensation of personnel) as are found by the Board to be reasonably calcu-
lated to insure full payment of unemployment compensation when due; and
(2) Payment of unemployment compensation solely through public employment
offices in the State or such other agencies as the Board may approve; and
(3) Opportunity for a fair hearing, before an impartial tribunal, for all individuals
whose claims for unemployment compensation are denied; and
(4) The payment of all money received in the unemployment fund of such State,
immediately upon such receipt, to the Secretary of the Treasury to the credit of the
Unemployment Trust Fund established by section 904; and
(5) Expenditure of all money requisitioned by the State agency f rom the Unem-
ployment Trust Fund, in the payment of unemployment compensation, exclusive of
expenses of administration; and
(6) The making of such reports, in such form and containing such information, as
the Board may f rom time to time require, and compliance with such provisions as the
Board may from time to time find necessary to assure the correctness and verification of
such reports; and
(7) Making available upon request to any agency of the United States charged with
the administration of public works or assistance through public employment, the name,
address, ordinary occupation and employment status of each recipient of unemploy-
ment compensation, and a statement of such recipient’s rights to further compensation
under such law.
(b) Whenever the Board, after reasonable notice and opportunity for hearing to the
State agency charged with the administration of the State law, finds that in the adminis-
tration of the law there is—
(1) a denial, in a substantial number of cases, of unemployment compensation to
individuals entitled thereto under such law; or
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 199 02/01/17 1:37 PM
200
(2) a failure to comply substantially with any provision specified in subsection (a);
the Board shall notify such State agency that further payments will not be made to the
State until the Board is satisfied that there is no longer any such denial or failure to com-
ply. Until it is so satisfied, it shall make no further certification to the Secretary of the
Treasury with respect to such State.
TITLE IV—GRANTS TO STATES FOR AID TO DEPENDENT
CHILDREN
APPROPRIATION
S+(#$%! 401. For the purpose of enabling each State to furnish financial assistance,
as far as practicable under the conditions in such State, to needy dependent children,
there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936,
the sum of $24,750,000, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal
year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title. The sums made
available under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have sub-
mitted, and had approved by the Board, State plans for aid to dependent children.
STATE PLANS FOR AID TO DEPENDENT CHILDREN
S+(. 402. (a) A State plan for aid to dependent children must (1) provide that it shall
be in effect in all political subdivisions of the State, and, if administered by them, be
mandatory upon them; (2) provide for financial participation by the State; (3) either pro-
vide for the establishment or designation of a single State agency to administer the plan,
or provide for the establishment or designation of a single State agency to supervise the
administration of the plan; (4) provide for granting to any individual, whose claim with
respect to aid to a dependent child is denied, an opportunity for a fair hearing before such
State agency; (5) provide such methods of administration (other than those relating to
selection, tenure of office, and compensation of personnel) as are found by the Board to
be necessary for the efficient operation of the plan; and (6) provide that the State agency
will make such reports, in such form and containing such information, as the Board may
from time to time require, and comply with such provisions as the Board may from time
to time find necessary to assure the correctness and verification of such reports.
(b) The Board shall approve any plan which fulfills the conditions specified in sub-
section (a), except that it shall not approve any plan which imposes as a condition of
eligibility for aid to dependent children, a residence requirement which denies aid with
respect to any child residing in the State (1) who has resided in the State for one year
immediately preceding the application for such aid, or (2) who was born within the State
within one year immediately preceding the application, if its mother has resided in the
State for one year immediately preceding the birth.
PAYMENT TO STATES
S+(. 403. (a) From the sums appropriated therefor, the Secretary of the Treasury
shall pay to each State which has an approved plan for aid to dependent children, for
each quarter, beginning with the quarter commencing July 1, 1935, an amount, which
shall be used exclusively for carrying out the State plan, equal to one-third of the total
of the sums expended during such quarter under such plan, not counting so much of
such expenditure with respect to any dependent child for any month as exceeds $18, or if
there is more than one dependent child in the same home, as exceeds $18 for any month
with respect to one such dependent child and $12 for such month with respect to each of
the other dependent children. . . .
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 200 02/01/17 1:37 PM
201
DEFINITIONS
Sec. 406. When used in this title—
(a) The term “dependent child” means a child under the age of sixteen who has been
deprived of parental support or care by reason of the death, continued absence f rom
the home, or physical or mental incapacity of a parent, and who is living with his father,
mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother,
stepsister, uncle, or aunt, in a place of residence maintained by one or more of such rela-
tives as his or their own home;
(b) The term “aid to dependent children” means money payments with respect to a
dependent child or dependent children.
TITLE V—GRANTS TO STATES FOR MATERNAL AND
CHILD WELFARE
P”‘# 1—M”#+’!”& “!- C)$&- H+”&#) S+’*$(+,
“00’%0’$”#$%!
S+(#$%! 501. For the purpose of enabling each State to extend and improve, as far as
practicable under the conditions in such State, services for promoting the health of moth-
ers and children, especially in rural areas and in areas suffering from severe economic dis-
tress, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year, beginning with the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the sum of $3,800,000. The sums made available under
this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submitted, and had
approved by the Chief of the Children’s Bureau, State plans for such services.
ALLOTMENTS TO STATES
S+(. 502. (a) Out of the sums appropriated pursuant to section 501 for each fiscal
year the Secretary of Labor shall allot to each State $20,000, and such part of $1,800,000
as he finds that the number of live births in such State bore to the total number of live
births in the United States, in the latest calendar year for which the Bureau of the Census
has available statistics.
(b) Out of the sums appropriated pursuant to section 501 for each fiscal year the
Secretary of Labor shall allot to the States $980,000 in addition to the allotments made
under subsection (a), according to the financial need of each State for assistance in carry-
ing out its State plan, as determined by him after taking into consideration the number
of live births in such State.
(c) The amount of any allotment to a State under subsection (a) for any fiscal year
remaining unpaid to such State at the end of such fiscal year shall be available for payment
to such State under section 504 until the end of the second succeeding fiscal year. No pay-
ment to a State under section 504 shall be made out of its allotment for any fiscal year until
its allotment for the preceding fiscal year has been exhausted or has ceased to be available.
APPROVAL OF STATE PLANS
S+(. 503. (a) A State plan for maternal and child-health services must (1) provide
for financial participation by the State; (2) provide for the administration of the plan
by the State health agency or the supervision of the administration of the plan by the
State health agency; (3) provide such methods of administration (other than those relat-
ing to selection, tenure of office, and compensation of personnel) as are necessary for
the efficient operation of the plan; (4) provide that the State health agency will make
such reports, in such form and containing such information, as the Secretary of Labor
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 201 02/01/17 1:37 PM
202
may from time to time find necessary to assure the correctness and verification of such
reports; (5) provide for the extension and improvement of local maternal and child-
health services administered by local child-health units; (6) provide for cooperation with
medical, nursing, and welfare groups and organization; and (7) provide for the develop-
ment of demonstration services in needy areas and among groups in special need.
(b) The Chief of the Children’s Bureau shall approve any plan which fulfills the con-
ditions specified in subsection (a) and shall thereupon notify the Secretary of Labor and
the State health agency of his approval./././.
P”‘# ;—S+’*$(+, 5%’ C’$00&+- C)$&-‘+!
“00’%0’$”#$%!
S+(. 511. For the purpose of enabling each State to extend and improve (especially
in rural areas and in areas suffering from severe economic distress), as far as practicable
under the conditions in such State, services for locating crippled children, and for providing
medical, surgical, corrective, and other services and care, and facilities for diagnosis, hospi-
talization, and aftercare, for children who are crippled or who are suffering from conditions
which lead to crippling, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year,
beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the sum of $2,850,000. The sums made
available under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submit-
ted, and had approved by the Chief of the Children’s Bureau, State plans for such services.
ALLOTMENTS TO STATES
S+(. 512. (a) Out of the sums appropriated pursuant to section 511 for each fiscal
year the Secretary of Labor shall allot to each State $20,000, and the remainder to the
States according to the need of each State as determined by him after taking into consid-
eration the number of crippled children in such State in need of the services referred to
in section 511 and the cost of furnishing such services to them.
(b) The amount of any allotment to a State under subsection (a) for any fiscal year
remaining unpaid to such State at the end of such fiscal year shall be available for payment
to such State under section 514 until the end of the second succeeding fiscal year. No pay-
ment to a State under section 514 shall be made out of its allotment for any fiscal year until
its allotment for the preceding fiscal year has been exhausted or has ceased to be available.
APPROVAL OF STATE PLANS
S+(. 513. (a) A State plan for services for crippled children must (1) provide for finan-
cial participation by the State; (2) provide for the administration of the plan by a State
agency or the supervision of the administration of the plan by a State agency; (3) provide
such methods of administration (other than those relating to selection, tenure of office,
and compensation of personnel) as are necessary for the efficient operation of the plan;
(4) provide that the State agency will make such reports, in such form and containing
such information, as the Secretary of Labor may from time to time require, and comply
with such provisions as he may f rom time to time find necessary to assure the correct-
ness and verification of such reports; (5) provide for carrying out the purposes specified
in section 511; and (6) provide for cooperation with medical, health, nursing, and welfare
groups and organizations and with any agency in such State charged with administering
State laws providing for vocational rehabilitation of physically handicapped children.
(b) The Chief of the Children’s Bureau shall approve any plan which fulfills the con-
ditions specified in subsection (a) and shall thereupon notify the Secretary of Labor and
the State health agency of his approval./././.
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 202 02/01/17 1:37 PM
203
P”‘# <—C)$&--W+&5"'+ S+'*$(+,
S+(. 521. (a) For the purpose of enabling the United States, through the Children’s
Bureau, to cooperate with State public-welfare agencies in establishing, extending, and
strengthening, especially in predominantly rural areas, public-welfare services (hereinafter in
this section referred to as “child-welfare services”) for the protection and care of homeless,
dependent, and neglected children, and children in danger of becoming delinquent, there
is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year, beginning with the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1936, the sum of $1,500,000. Such amount shall be allotted by the Secretary
of Labor for use by cooperating State public-welfare agencies on the basis of plans devel-
oped jointly by the State agency and the Children’s Bureau, to each State, $10,000, and the
remainder to each State on the basis of such plans, not to exceed such part of the remain-
der as the rural population of such State bears to the total rural population of the United
States. The amount so allotted shall be expended for payment of part of the cost of district,
county or other local child-welfare services in areas predominantly rural, and for developing
State services for the encouragement and assistance of adequate methods of community
child-welfare organization in areas predominantly rural and other areas of special need. The
amount of any allotment to a State under this section for any fiscal year remaining unpaid to
such State at the end of such fiscal year shall be available for payment to such State under this
section until the end of the second succeeding fiscal year. No payment to a State under this
section shall be made out of its allotment for any fiscal year until its allotment for the preced-
ing fiscal year has been exhausted or has ceased to be available. . . .
P"'# =—V%("#$%!"& R+)"3$&$#"#$%!
S+(. 531. (a) In order to enable the United States to cooperate with the States and
Hawaii in extending and strengthening their programs of vocational rehabilitation of the
physically disabled, and to continue to carry out the provisions and purposes of the Act
entitled “An Act to provide for the promotion of vocational rehabilitation of persons dis-
abled in industry or otherwise and their return to civil employment,” approved June 2,
1920, as amended (U.S.C., title 29, ch. 4; U.S.C., Supp. VII, title 29, secs. 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39,
and 40), there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal years ending June 30,
1936, and June 30, 1937, the sum of $841,000 for each fiscal year in addition to the amount
of the existing authorization, and for each fiscal year thereafter the sum of $1,938,000. Of
the sums appropriated pursuant to such authorization for each fiscal year, $5,000 shall be
apportioned to the Territory of Hawaii and the remainder shall be apportioned among the
several States in the manner provided in such Act of June 2, 1920, unamended./././.
P"'# 8—A-.$!$,#'"#$%!
S+(. 541. (a) There is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year end-
ing June 30, 1936, the sum of $425,000, for all necessary expenses of the Children’s
Bureau in administering the provisions of this title, except section 531.
(b) The Children’s Bureau shall make such studies and investigations as will promote
the efficient administration of this title, except section 531.
(c) The Secretary of Labor shall include in his annual report to Congress a full
account of the administration of this title, except section 531./././.
TITLE X—GRANTS TO STATES FOR AID TO THE BLIND
APPROPRIATION
S+(#$%! 1001. For the purpose of enabling each State to furnish financial assistance,
as far as practicable under the conditions in such State, to needy individuals who are blind,
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 203 02/01/17 1:37 PM
204
there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the
sum of $3,000,000, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year
thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title. The sums made available
under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submitted, and
had approved by the Social Security Board, State plans for aid to the blind.
STATE PLANS FOR AID TO THE BLIND
S+(. 1002. (a) A State plan for aid to the blind must (1) provide that it shall be in effect
in all political subdivisions of the State, and if administered by them, be mandatory upon
them; (2) provide for financial participation by the State; (3) either provide for the estab-
lishment or designation of a single State agency to administer the plan, or provide for
the establishment or designation of a single State agency to supervise the administration
of the plan; (4) provide for granting to any individual, whose claim for aid is denied, an
opportunity for a fair hearing before such State agency; (5) provide such methods of
administration (other than those relating to selection, tenure of office, and compensa-
tion of personnel) as are found by the Board to be necessary for the efficient operation
of the plan; (6) provide that the State agency will make such reports, in such form and
containing such information, as the Board may f rom time to time require, and comply
with such provisions as the Board may f rom time to time find necessary to assure the
correctness and verification of such reports; and (7) provide that no aid will be furnished
any individual under the plan with respect to which he is receiving old-age assistance
under the State plan approved under section 2 of this Act.
(b) The Board shall approve any plan which fulfills the conditions specified in sub-
section (a), except that it shall not approve any plan which imposes, as a condition of
eligibility for aid to the blind under the plan—
(1) Any residence requirement which excludes any resident of the State who has
resided therein five years during the nine years immediately preceding the application for
aid and has resided therein continuously for one year immediately preceding the applica-
tion; or
(2) Any citizenship requirement which excludes any citizen of the United States.
PAYMENT TO STATES
S+(. 1003. (a) From the sums appropriated therefor, the Secretary of the Treasury
shall pay to each State which has an approved plan for aid to the blind, for each quarter,
beginning with the quarter commencing July 1, 1935, (1) an amount, which shall be used
exclusively as aid to the blind, equal to one-half of the total of the sums expended during
such quarter as aid to the blind under the State plan with respect to each individual who
is blind and is not an inmate of a public institution, not counting so much of such expen-
diture with respect to any individual for any month as exceeds $30, and (2) 5 per centum
of such amount, which shall be used for paying the costs of administering the State plan
or for aid to the blind, or both, and for no other purpose. . .
SHORT TITLE
S+(. 1105. This Act may be cited as the “Social Security Act.”
Approved, August 14, 1935.
?
M06_STER9913_09_SE_C06.indd 204 02/01/17 1:37 PM
205
The period from 1940 to 1968 was one of contradiction—of growth
and of conf lict, of aff luence and of the rediscovery of poverty. The
United States fought major wars, first in Europe and the Pacific, and
later in Indochina. The military mobilization and wartime produc-
tion of World War II led initially to economic recovery and subse-
quently to a “revolution of rising expectations” at home. The 1950s
and 1960s—after a century of neglect—refocused the nation on civil
rights, as African Americans and women forged a new understand-
ing of the nature of discrimination and exclusion and demanded
redress of their grievances.
Supported by military and civilian demands, the years f rom
1940 to 1968 were prosperous ones that marked a transition f rom
the consumer demand deficiency of the Depression to the threat of
inf lation of the 1970s, f rom the problems of mass unemployment
to the problems of spiraling inf lation. The gross national product
(GNP) had managed to climb to almost $100 billion by 1940 as a
result of efforts to rearm and to supply future allies. Corrected
for inf lation, GNP had tripled by 1970.1 Real disposable personal
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Identify the ways in which orld
ar II inf luenced the development
of the American economy and
society in the following decades.
• E plain the major social welfare
innovations of the postwar period
and their relationship to social and
economic change.
• Specify the lin s between the social
status of blac Americans and
women and the origins of the civil
rights movements of the period.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Changing Economic and
Demographic ealities 0
Population Shifts 207
Technology, Productivity, and
Economic Insecurity 210
World War II 212
Wartime Economic and Social
Advances 214
Postwar Optimism 215
Innovations in Social elfare 1
Veterans and the GI Bill 218
The Attack on Public Welfare 219
Poverty and the Reform of
Welfare 220
The War on Poverty 225
Expanded Benefits for the Aging 230
Controlling Public Assistance 230
Social Movements and eform After
orld ar II
Expanding the Civil Rights of
African Americans 232
A Renewed Feminist Movement 234
Civil Rights and Juvenile Justice 235
War and Prosperity:
1940–1968
7
!"
#$
%&
'(
#)
*+
"
,$
)-
)%*
#"
*)
.-
-
.!
!)
'&
.
! /
"#
)-
!.
#$
"*
).
-
01
.*
.2
#"
01
'
.3
3&
'*
).
-,
0#
)-
*%
4
01
.*
.2
#"
01
% ,
)5
)%)
.-
, 3
)6
#"
#+
.
! '
.-
2#
&%
%,
3'
-,
)2
-!
%"
-7
&8
98
::
.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 205 02/01/17 1:37 PM
206 Chapter 7
income—that is, purchasing power available to consumers—more
than doubled by 1970, and per capita consumer expenditures and sav-
ings rose dramatically.2 Family income, and therefore, family welfare
measured in terms of money, showed significant improvement. All
income groups of the population shared in the prosperity, as did most
racial and ethnic groups. Median family income grew for whites and
nonwhites. Nonwhite families had a median income of $1,614 in 1947,
51 percent of white family median income. In 1950, nonwhite median
family income was 54 percent of white median family income; in
1960, 55 percent; and in 1970, 61 percent. This was an improvement
in one sense, but the actual dollar gap between white and nonwhite families widened as
all incomes grew. The gap went from $1,543 in 1947, to $1,576 in 1950, to $2,602 in 1960,
and to $3,957 in 1970.3
The same mixed picture of prosperity is demonstrated through the use of the pov-
erty index developed by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to measure the min-
imum income needed to purchase a subsistence level of goods and services. In 1960, a
nonfarm family of four required $3,022 to escape poverty, as defined by the SSA. In that
year, almost 40 million individuals were counted as poor, 22.4 percent of the population.
In 1970, the poverty index for a nonfarm family of four had risen to $3,968. The number
of poor Americans had dropped to 25.4 million, 12.6 percent of the population. But again,
there was a difference between the progress of whites and nonwhites. The 17.5 million
whites counted poor in 1970 represented 10 percent of all whites in the population; the
8 million nonwhites counted poor represented 32 percent of all nonwhites. The poverty
rate for blacks was more than three times that for whites.4 Conditions were particularly
harsh for those in the South and Southwest. Mexican Americans and Native Americans as
well as African Americans experienced very high poverty rates and severe discrimination.
The increase in income was in part a result of the expansion of the labor force. The
civilian labor force grew from 55.6 million in 1940 to 82.7 million in 1970. The expansion was
due to population growth and a long-term increase in labor-force participation rates from 56
percent of the population in 1940 to 61 percent in 1970.5 The trend was accelerated by World
War II, when many women entered the labor force to replace men serving in the armed
forces. Although the end of the World War II forced some women out of their wartime jobs,
the labor-force participation rate of women never returned to its prewar level. In 1940, 24
percent of all women of working age were in the labor force; by 1970, the figure had risen to
more than 43 percent. In 1970, as in 1940, economic necessity made for a higher labor-force
participation rate among black women—49;percent as against 42 percent for white women—
but the gap had closed appreciably.6
The strength of the economy was demonstrated by its ability to resist major reces-
sions at the same time that it absorbed an ever-expanding labor force. In 1940, the unem-
ployment rate stood at 14.6 percent. In 1943, with war production in full
swing, the unemployment rate dipped as low as 1.2 percent. Unemployment
averaged 4.5 percent during the 1950s, 5.7 percent between 1960 and 1965,
and 3.8 percent between 1965 and 1970.
The apparent strength of the economy obscured the extent to which
unemployment struck disproportionately at certain groups. In 1960, when
white unemployment averaged 4.9 percent, the rate for nonwhites was 10.2
percent. For teenagers, it stood at 14.7 percent. Structural imbalance persisted
throughout the era. The unemployment rates for whites and nonwhites in
1970 were 4.5 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively.7
DOCUMENTS: ar and
rosperity
Message on the Public Welfare Program,
1962 237
Economic Opportunity Act, 1964 243
In re Gault, 1967 246
CHAPTER OUTLINE (Continued)
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 206 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 207
Although part of the increased prosperity of the postwar years was a result of
economic growth, few people recognized the critical role of social welfare programs in
reducing poverty. Besides the growth of wages, income transfers in the form of veterans’
benefits, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and, to a lesser extent, public assis-
tance also played a part in the improved well-being of families. The entrance of women
into the labor force also played an underappreciated role in reducing poverty in two-
adult households. For well over half of the households in which the man was earning a
poverty income, the income of the wife became the route out of poverty.8
Gender discrimination had been largely condoned during the Depression and World
War II. Only the exigencies of war allowed women to hold a “man’s job.” Increasingly
during the 1960s, however, women challenged their economic oppression. By the close
of the 1960s, women’s wages averaged only 59 percent of wages and salaries received by
male workers.9 Although women’s work played a critical role in many family’s economic
well-being during the 1950s, only in the late 1960s did the modern feminist movement
begin to bring attention to its implications for both public and private life. Their growing
financial independence had implications for the development of new family forms, for
changes in the roles of family members, and for new child-care arrangements.
Changing EConomiC and dEmogRaphiC
REalitiEs
Population Shifts
The military and social eruptions of 1940–1970 were accompanied by enormous changes
in population size and distribution. Total U.S. population grew f rom 132.1 million in
1940 to 204.8 million in 1970. Because of the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, the
proportion of American residents who were foreign-born declined f rom 9 percent in
1940 to 5 percent in 1970. However, the changing position of the United States in the
world after World War II emerged as a powerful countertrend. First, after turning its
back on refugees during the 1930s, the United States accepted displaced persons after
World War II. Later, refugees f rom Communist regimes in Eastern Europe entered as
well. Finally, immigration reform in 1965 caused a fundamental shift in U.S. immigration
policy, although the immigrant f low before 1970 remained small. Immigration f rom
1961 to 1970 reached 3,300,000 people.10
Immigration policy changed slowly during the postwar years, ref lecting the gen-
eral biases of the American electorate. During the Depression years, immigration was
low—in part because of the lack of job opportunities and in part because of the stricter
enforcement of the “likely to become a public charge” (LPC) rule, which was used to
reinforce defensive and nativist feelings. Emigration was large, primarily for economic
reasons. Many returned to their home countries. In particular, many destitute Mexicans
and Mexican Americans were forcibly repatriated to Mexico, where they had families and
significant support networks.
After the forced deportation of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression,
immigration from Mexico increased in response to the labor-force demands of World War
II. Increased demand for manual labor, particularly in the fields and on the railroads of the
Southwest, meant a growth in the presence of Mexican immigrants. There were 80,000
immigrants in the 1940s, 275,000 in the 1950s, and more than 440,000 in the 1960s—a
Although part of the
increased prosperity of
the postwar years was
a result of economic
growth, few people
recognized the critical
role of social welfare
programs in reducing
poverty.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 207 02/01/17 1:37 PM
208 Chapter 7
third of all legal immigrants. There is no agreement about the number of illegal entrants;
estimates range widely, varying from 1 million to 8 million at any one time.11
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, he continued the restrictive immigra-
tion policies of the 30 years preceding him. No open door was extended to the refugees
f rom Hitler’s Germany. Despite the clear evidence that Roosevelt knew of the events in
Germany and the desperate situation of its Jewish population, he neither intervened for
their admission nor interfered with the anti-refugee position of the State Department.
To the contrary, Jewish refugees were systematically denied admission. The quotas that
had been established for Germany and Italy were not increased. In fact, only 48 percent
of the existing quota was used in 1941.12 During the war years, an array of bureaucratic
hurdles was used to prevent the admission of Jews into the country.
World War II represented a fundamental pivot in American policy toward Asian
immigrants. Since the later 19th century, Asians had been barred f rom legal entry into
the United States and were ineligible for citizenship. The tenuous legitimacy of Asian
Americans was clear in the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Early in the war, 120,000 Japanese residents—many of whom were American citizens—
were removed from their homes on the West Coast to internment camps in the Western
deserts and the swampland of Arkansas. Japanese internment left a permanent scar on
thousands of internees and the farms and neighborhoods left behind. The federal govern-
ment accepted responsibility for its mistake only in 1988, when the Civil Liberties Act of
that year apologized for the internment and offered reparations to the surviving internees.
Yet, the wall of racial exclusion began to crumble during the war. The wartime
alliance of the United States and the Nationalist government of China had domestic
implications. Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (and its subsequent
additions and amendments), established a small token quota for Chinese immigration,
and made Chinese immigrants eligible for naturalization. Even more important to the
Chinese community, the War Brides Act of 1946 expedited the entry of Chinese wives
and children of members of the armed forces. During 1945–1952, 11,000 Chinese immi-
grated to the United States, 10,000 of whom were non-quota wives.
The 1946 War Brides Act eased the entry of wives, husbands, and children of ser-
vicemen and women. For this group, it waived visa requirements, ignored racial and eth-
nic restraints, and eliminated prohibitions based on physical and mental handicaps. It
was the beginning of a shift in policy from an emphasis on national origins to an empha-
sis on family affiliation.
Refugee policy changed as well. After World War II, the gates began to open for
European refugees. The first Displaced Persons Act, passed in 1948, admitted victims
of fascism and also many who were f leeing communist regimes. In 1952, as part of the
severe anticommunist spirit of the period, strict anticommunist screening and depor-
tation were introduced. The same act did, however, eliminate all exclusion of entrants
on the basis of race or ethnicity. In addition, it laid the basis for emergency, non-quota,
admission of those f leeing communism or experiencing emergency hardship. Future
legislation allowed for refugees from many parts of the world, including Hungary, Cuba,
Tibet, and Vietnam. Not incidentally, the f low of new refugees meant new social welfare
needs that, increasingly, were met by voluntary agencies.
The 1965 Immigration Act (Hart–Celler Act) formalized the new criteria for entry
into the United States. Race, national origin, and ancestry quotas were replaced by admis-
sion standards of family relationship, occupation, and skill. The new preference system
exempted spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens f rom all quotas and gave spouses
and children of resident aliens high priority. Married children and siblings also received
preferential treatment. Although lawmakers anticipated that the act would stimulate the
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 208 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 209
resumption of European immigration, once immigration was opened to Latin Ameri-
cans and Asians, their numbers increased rapidly.
Although immigration increased, most of the population expansion f rom 1940 to
1970 was due to changes in birth and death rates. By the middle of the 1930s, decisions
to delay marriage and childbearing had lowered the birthrate to about 17 per 1,000 per-
sons in the population. As the Depression ended at the beginning of World War II and
as young people faced the initial prospect of separation, the birthrate brief ly increased—
and then fell again. Immediately after the war, however, the birthrate soared, reaching a
high of 26.6 per 1,000 persons in 1947 and remaining high until the mid-1960s.13
The baby boom was accompanied by an increase in life expectancy and a decline in
the death rate. In 1940, the estimated average length of life in the United States was 62.9
years. Thirty years later, it stood at 70.8 years. During this period, the estimated aver-
age life expectancy among nonwhites rose from 82.7 percent to 90 percent of estimated
average life expectancy among whites. Simultaneously, death rates declined for the total
population from 10.8 per 1,000 individuals in the population in 1940 to 9.4 in 1970. Most
significantly, the death rate among nonwhites declined from 13.8 in 1940 to approximate
the national average at 9.5 in 1970.14 Native Americans also shared in the general decline
in mortality rates and rise in life expectancy. But despite improvements in infant and
maternal death rates and from some infectious diseases, Native Americans continued to
have the lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in the United States.15
The changes in life expectancy ref lected better nutrition as incomes rose and sulfa,
penicillin, and new medical and surgical procedures became widely available. Poliomy-
elitis or infantile paralysis—a disease that caused widespread epidemics and even more
widespread fear through the first half of the 20th century—was defeated with the
development of the first vaccine during the 1950s. The visibility of actual and potential
results f rom improved medical and health care increased demands for broader efforts to
improve the nation’s health.
Changing birth and death rates produced changing demographic patterns. Over the
years, the country’s population grew both younger and older. The percentage of those less
than 19 years of age grew from 34.2 percent of the total population in 1940 to 37.9 percent
of the population in 1970. The percentage of the population over 65 years of age grew
from 6.8 percent to 10.2 percent in the same time. Clearly, a declining percentage of “pro-
ductive” individuals were being called upon to support a growing percentage of the “non-
productive.” Added to this was the lack of productivity of those who wanted jobs but could
not find them. In this regard, the effect of racial discrimination upon employment opportu-
nities for blacks intensified as the percentage of blacks in the total population grew.16
Population growth was accompanied by population shifts and dislocations. World
War II accelerated the historical process of industrialization and mechanization. The
wartime necessity for spreading industry, shipping, and the training of service personnel
across the country to engage in a war being fought on two f ronts reinforced the con-
tinuous westward movement of the center of population. Defense policy spurred the
growth of port cities on the Gulf and Pacific Coasts. Equally important was the move-
ment of the population from rural to urban areas. The pull of jobs in urban centers and
the push of technical advances that made small marginal farms obsolete and unprofit-
able impelled the move of 20 million people f rom rural to urban areas between 1940
and 1970. Of the total, about 16 million were whites and about 4 million were blacks.17
By 1950, 64 percent of the country’s total population lived in urban areas—64 percent of
the white population and 62 percent of the nonwhite population—and the rest lived in
rural areas. By 1970, 72 percent of the white population and 81 percent of the nonwhite
population lived in urban areas.18
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 209 02/01/17 1:37 PM
210 Chapter 7
Yet, the long movement of Americans to metropolitan areas took a decisive turn
during the 1940s and 1950s. Many central cities, like Philadelphia and St. Louis, attained
their highest population during the early 1950s and began a steady decline. Between
World War II and 1970, the United States became a suburban nation. In 1940, two out
of three metropolitan residents lived in a central city. By 1960, three out of five lived
in a suburb. The growth of suburbs was sharply defined by race. By the 1960s, cities
with large black populations surrounded by white suburbs were common throughout
the nation.
In the search for factory employment, large numbers of African Americans had left
the South. The percentage of the black population residing in the South dropped f rom
77 percent in 1940 to 52 percent in 1970.
Perhaps of more importance than place of residence was the fact of black urbaniza-
tion itself, a response to changes in agriculture. For the country as a whole, the relative
share of employment in agriculture fell f rom 15 percent of the civilian labor force in
1940 to 4 percent in 1970.19 At the same time, mechanization increased the real value of
farm output by $6.4 billion between these years. Technological developments—increased
mechanization that had led to increased productivity—had necessitated the development
of larger farms to ensure adequate monetary returns. Average farm size increased from
167 acres in 1940 to 373 acres in 1970. The size of farms owned by whites more than
doubled, but the size of farms owned by blacks grew by only 20 percent.20 Since average
black-owned and black-operated farm holdings had historically been small and only mar-
ginally profitable, black families and farm workers suffered disproportionate dislocation.
Black migration was inherent in the changed economic situation.
The black migration of the early 1940s was caught up and hidden in the general
necessity for wartime mobility. More than 16 million men were transported for military
reasons; women, wives, and families followed. An additional 16 million men and women
moved for job-related reasons. The general wartime atmosphere was characterized by
migration and mobility. Mobility was linked to family disruption. Between 1940 and
1946, the number of divorces increased from 264,000 to 610,000 annually.21 The divorce
rate had shot upward f rom 2.0 to 4.3 per 1,000 of population. Between 1940 and 1950,
the number of births per 1,000 single women, 15 to 44 years, increased f rom 3.6 to 6.1
for white women and f rom 35.6 to 71.2 for nonwhite women.22 Many high school stu-
dents left school to take jobs. In September 1942, for example, the National Child Labor
Committee reported that of the 4 million juveniles who had been employed in industry
and agriculture during the preceding summer months, 3 million were still employed as
the new school term began. About 75,000 were under age 16. During the midst of the
war, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reported an alarming
increase in juvenile delinquency.23
The postwar years aggravated, even institutionalized, the trend toward mobility and
its concomitant social risks. Moving was no longer unusual or f rightening in a world
made familiar by commercial civilian f lying and by television. And as automobile owner-
ship mushroomed and discontent with city dwelling surfaced, suburbanization followed
upon urbanization. As families moved from their home base, they moved, too, from the
support and help of relatives and longtime friends.
Technology, Productivity, and Economic Insecurity
Economic productivity—the increasing output per hour of work—was the key to post-
war aff luence, consumerism, and leisure. A continuous development of new materials,
new products, and new industries stimulated new processes involving greater efficiency
The long movement
of Americans to met-
ropolitan areas took a
decisive turn during the
1940s and 1950s. Many
central cities, like Phil-
adelphia and St. Louis,
attained their highest
population during
the early 1950s and
began a steady decline.
Between World War II
and 1970, the United
States became a subur-
ban nation.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 210 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 211
in harnessing the uses of energy. The building of specialized, labor-saving machinery,
the increasing attention to standardization and use of interchangeable machinery parts,
and the extension of mass production techniques further increased productivity. These
new processes were enhanced by the development of computer technology, advanced
information systems, and systems engineering. World War II had given a big boost to
the chemical and airplane industries, to the development and exploitation of synthetics
such as nylon and metals such as aluminum, and to the expansion of the importance of
electricity. The postwar period saw the continued preeminence of the automobile indus-
try but saw, too, the emergence of major new industries—television, space technology,
commercial aviation, and information technology. Industrial and technological advances
were ref lected in worker productivity and work hours. Between 1950 and 1970, the real
GNP per capita rose 50 percent while average annual working hours per worker dropped
8.5 percent.24
The impact of industrial and technological change on worker output was ref lected
not only in a reduction in average work hours but also in the occupational distribution
of employees. After 1950, the proportion of employment in manufacturing began to
decline, falling to 25 percent by 1970.
At the same time, growing wealth and increasing societal complexity led to rapid
expansion in service industries—health, recreation, and so on—and in government. By
1970, employment in services had risen to 17 percent and in government to 18 percent of
the total employment picture.25
In the wake of depression and war, the American public accepted an expanded role
of government in their everyday lives. The Employment Act of 1946 had set “maximum
employment, production and purchasing power” as goals of governmental policy. The
act’s creation of the Council of Economic Advisors led to the conscious use of fiscal
and monetary policy and of the federal budget as tools to control employment, produc-
tion, and price levels—that is, to strive for economic stability. In a related area, there was
continued and growing acceptance of the responsibility of government for the income
security of those with lifetime attachments to the labor force.
The government’s program of Old Age and Survivors Insurance was expanded first
to disability and then to health insurance for the aged. The popularity of Social Security
showed little sign of abating. With little opposition, payroll taxes were increased from 2
percent of the first $3,000 of income in 1940 to 9.6 percent of $7,800 in 1970.
The public continued to support the expansion of public assistance, especially those
titles of the Social Security Act that provided aid for older Americans and people with
disabilities. Yet, the increasing number of families that collected Aid to Dependent Chil-
dren began to attract unfavorable attention. Social Security administrators and Congress
had expected income-tested public assistance to “wither away” as more families became
eligible for Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. The increasing number of poor
families with children in which the caretaker was not a widow but rather a divorced
or unmarried woman, however, fueled ADC’s expansion. An additional demographic
change—the migration of poor African Americans to the North during these years—
exacerbated the issue. Increasingly, many Americans viewed ADC as a “black” program
even though the majority of recipients were white.
The Depression had shaken the confidence of Americans in the ability of society
to control economic f luctuations. It introduced fears of a permanent mature economy
that would stagnate. The events of World War II and the postwar period seemed to most
Americans to demonstrate the ability of government to develop control mechanisms to
moderate the ups and downs of business cycles and the continued vigor of the economy.
A renewed faith in the productive process took hold.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 211 02/01/17 1:37 PM
212 Chapter 7
The final reality was that organized labor, as its members became more aff luent, was less
likely to share political interests with the poor. Beginning with the New Deal, government had
legitimated many of labor’s demands: the right to organize and bargain collectively, workmen’s
compensation, minimum wages, old age insurance and unemployment insurance, limitations
on hours, and the prohibition of injunctions. Through the process of collective bargaining,
labor had not only been able to raise and even control its wage position relative to prices, but
it had also been able to have a whole series of fringe benefits instituted comprising a private
health and welfare security system. Membership in unions rose to 20 million by 1970.26 Orga-
nized labor increasingly identified itself with the status quo and separated itself from the poor.
World War II
The most dramatic changes of the 30-year period f rom 1940 to 1970 occurred during
World War II. The upheaval of war brought full employment and rising incomes. For
oppressed groups, particularly blacks and women, the period offered increased opportu-
nity for economic, educational, and social equality and laid the groundwork for the civil
rights and feminist movements of the 1950s and 1960s.
Indicators of change between 1940 and 1945 abound. The GNP, for example, rose
f rom $99.7 billion in 1940 to $211.9 billion in 1945, and although this was a period of
rapidly advancing prices, GNP rose 56 percent in “real” terms—that is, corrected for
inf lation.27 Furthermore, full employment and progressive taxation brought about basic
changes in income distribution—changes that the New Deal had failed to achieve.
In 1940, the total noninstitutional population of the United States was 100.4 million. Of
this total, 56 million were in the labor force, including 540,000 in the armed services. Civilian
employment stood at 47.5 million. By 1945, the population had risen to 105.5 million. The
total labor force had increased to 65.3 million, including the 11 million men and women in
the armed forces. This increase in the number of armed forces personnel took these people
out of the civilian work force. Nevertheless, total civilian employment rose by 5 million, or
11.1 percent. The increase was made possible by the sharp decline in unemployment and the
expansion of the labor force as women, retirees, and children went to work. By 1945, civil-
ian employment had reached 52.8 million. Between 1940 and 1945, unemployment declined
from 8 million to 1 million.
Whereas income redistribution during the 1930s had benefited middle-income
groups, redistribution during the World War II period favored the lowest income groups.
Real income rose for families in all income ranges between 1941 and 1947, but it rose
proportionately more for poor families than for rich ones. The average increase in real
income of families in the lowest fifth of family income rankings was 41.6 percent; the
average increase of families in the highest fifth was 18.3 percent.
In spite of continued economic growth, poverty remained a common feature of
American life. A third of Americans still lived on incomes below minimum adequacy in
1949. Even among workers employed full time for the full year, poverty was common.
In 1949, more than 20 percent of workers who were fully employed still did not earn
enough to pull their families out of poverty.28 Nevertheless, the expansion of the econ-
omy during and after World War II did equalize incomes. Between 1941 and 1947, the
share of income that went to the richest 5 percent of households fell f rom 23 to 17 per-
cent.29 A combination of factors—decrease in unemployment, an increase in the num-
ber of multi-earner families, the opening up of job opportunities for minority groups,
and the expansion of government welfare benefits—propelled this shift. The inf lux of
women into the labor force and the shift of blacks f rom farms to higher-paying factory
jobs reinforced the redistribution of income.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 212 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 213
Rising incomes combined with restrictions on the availability of civilian goods
increased personal savings. During the worst of the Depression in 1933, savings were
negative; Americans spent almost $1 billion more than they saved during the Depression.
In 1940, personal savings totaled $3.8 billion. It climbed throughout the war, reaching
a peak of $37.3 billion in 1944.30 Thus, during the war years, a huge backlog of savings
developed—about 24 percent of annual disposable income, as compared to 3.4 percent
of disposable income in prewar years and 6 to 7 percent in postwar years. These savings
were really an indicator of deferred consumption. With the end of the war, they fueled
the expansion of America’s consumer society.
Discrimination and resistance to discrimination in defense employment pushed the
Roosevelt administration to create a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC),
which was largely ineffective (Figure 7.1).31 Discrimination in public accommodations
and the armed forces also resulted in a series of racial clashes in Newark, New Jersey;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Centreville, Mississippi; and Mobile, Alabama. A particularly
severe outbreak in Detroit left 35 dead, 700 wounded, and 1,300 under arrest. In Los
Angeles, off-duty sailors precipitated the “zoot suit” riots in 1943, in which hundreds of
Mexican youths were attacked and arrested.32
The growing militancy of minority groups resulted in the creation of a second
FEPC in May 1943 with greater enforcement powers. By 1943, black workers held
1 million factory jobs, though largely as unskilled laborers. Black union membership had
increased to 500,000. The number of blacks in government rose f rom 50,000 in 1939 to
200,000 in 1944. Resistance to the induction of blacks under the provisions of the Selec-
tive Service Act of 1940 yielded, so that by the end of the war, about 1 million black men
and women had served in the armed forces—a remarkable achievement considering that
only about 2,000 were drafted during the first year of the act’s operation. The war had
brought about gains for blacks as a response to economic pressures and to the successful
mobilization of protest.33
Figure 7.1 Racial segregation in education, and employment—even drinking foun-
tains—was part of everyday life in the South before the 1950s. Halifax, North Carolina.
!"
#$
%&
'(
#)
*+
"
,$
)-
)%*
#"
*)
.-
-
.!
!)'
&
.!
/
"#
)-
!.
#$
"*
).
-
01
.*
.2
#"
01
'
.3
3&
'*
).
-,
0#
)-
*%
4
01
.*
.2
#"
01
% ,
)5
)%)
.-
, 3
)6
#"
#+
.
! '
.-
2#
&%
%,
3'
-,
)2
-!
%"
-7
"8
<:
:7
.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 213 02/01/17 1:37 PM
214 Chapter 7
Other people of color benefited as well. The military draft reduced the supply of
workers, while the production needs of the war increased the demand for factory labor.
Employment opportunities for minority groups expanded. In addition to women and
young adults, African Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans and Mexican Americans,
and Puerto Ricans found new opportunities in the busy factories.
During World War II, nearly half a million Native Americans left reservations to
work in war industries, and about 25,000 served in the armed forces. When they returned
as veterans, they were entitled to job preferences, housing, and the GI Bill for education.
Native American veterans became part of the leadership of the Native American protest
movement of the 1960s and 1970s.34
Wartime Economic and Social Advances
As incomes rose during World War II, the nation’s health improved as well. As in other
countries, World War II focused the American government on the fitness of its male
population and their suitability for military service. Concern about physical and mental
health developed as armed services induction procedures revealed serious deficiencies;
the inability of large numbers of young people to meet induction standards caused a
high rejection rate. To counter this pattern, the military provided routine health care,
including dental care, for servicemen and their families. For servicemen themselves, the
armed services offered both corrective and preventive care through regular physical and
dental examinations and emergency clinic care for minor illnesses. Beyond that, “military
medicine” fostered improvements in standards of physical fitness through balanced diets,
better clothing, and “more and better hospitals completely staffed.”35
The federal government demonstrated concern as well for the health of the civil-
ian population. In 1943, Congress appropriated special funds for the Emergency Mater-
nity and Infant Care Program. This program, which was administered by the Children’s
Bureau through state health departments, provided regular health care for the wives and
children of servicemen in the lower pay grades of the armed services. More than 1.2 mil-
lion women and 230,000 infants were given care during the war years.36
Rising incomes made it possible for the civilian population to take advantage of
the discovery and development of new drugs and new medical and surgical procedures.
Attention to health needs and health care as matters of daily living was demonstrated in
new practices such as the stepping up of various inoculation programs. Increased labor
participation by women led to improved safety conditions in factories. The National
Mental Health Act of 1946 provided new funding for research and training programs, as
well as the establishment of community mental health services.
At the same time, the 1940s witnessed the revival of conservatives’ political fortunes.
Democratic majorities in Congress dwindled during the war, which allowed Republicans
and conservative Democrats to kill the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1941 and the
WPA in 1943. Expenditures for work relief declined from $1.9 billion in 1940 to less than
$5 million by the end of the war.37 The National Youth Administration (NYA) survived
only as a mechanism for administering vocational training for recruits to war industries.
In 1948, President Harry Truman proposed a national health insurance scheme, which
was killed by the conservatives.
The social legislation of the time was related primarily to the needs of communities dis-
rupted by army camps and war plants and to the needs of families dislocated by the absence of
husbands and fathers as they left for the armed forces or for war industries and by the absence
of mothers as women took jobs. Housing, day care, education, health, recreation, and trans-
portation needs as they affected “home front” preparations became the focus of concern.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 214 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 215
War production, too, created social and cultural challenges. The creation of virtually
“instant” cities around massive defense plants, like the Willow Run bomber plant in Mich-
igan, forced government and the private sector to create housing and other essentials for
their burgeoning workforces. Throwing so many migrants together with poor housing and
little social or cultural infrastructure created social problems as well. Juvenile delinquency
and race and ethnic antagonism often accompanied the growth of these establisments.38
In November 1940, President Roosevelt named the administrator of the Federal Secu-
rity Agency coordinator of the Office of Health, Welfare, and Related Defense Activities,
with special responsibility for providing service in defense communities and communities
near training camps. In May 1941, the Office of Civilian Defense was created in the Office of
War Management for the purpose of integrating the provision of health, welfare, and rec-
reation services with other defense activities. The two departments underwent considerable
reorganization as experience demonstrated conf licting areas of jurisdiction and the need for
clarifying their relationships with a variety of national and local public and voluntary social
welfare organizations. By 1943, the government had organized the Office of Community
War Services under the Federal Security Agency to take responsibility for coordinating state
and local efforts to provide health, welfare, recreation, family, and community services for
members of the armed forces and for the civilian population. The Community Facilities Act
of 1941 (Lanham Act) provided federal funds for the construction of houses, schools, day-
care centers, hospitals, water and sanitation plants, and recreational facilities.
Lanham Act funds helped many communities, but many others suffered upheaval
without federal funds to ease the problems of population movement. Local community
chests and councils of social agencies took on some of the planning and financing of
social services early in the war. Six major voluntary agencies—YMCA, YWCA, National
Catholic Community Service, Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army, and National
Travelers Aid Society—combined efforts through the United Service Organization for
National Defense (USO) to provide services for military personnel, war workers, and
transients. More than 1,000 USO centers were established.
Fund-raising efforts in the voluntary sector were united by the National War Fund,
which combined and regulated the money-raising campaigns of community chest funds
with those of the war relief agencies so that traditional social services of local agen-
cies could be financed. Overall control of the whole effort was exercised by the federal
government through the War Relief Control Board, which licensed agencies and held
authority over all secular wartime charities except for the Red Cross.39
Wartime measures for education, like those for health, had implications for future devel-
opments. Army examinations had revealed an illiteracy rate of one in five among recruits. At
the start of the war, the army asked the WPA to set up programs of adult and worker edu-
cation and the NYA, a student vocational work program. Their activities were phased out or
reduced as the army itself took on some of their tasks and after the U.S. Office of Education
was expanded. Perhaps most important in the long run, federal aid was made available for ele-
mentary and secondary education in “impacted areas” and for agricultural extension services
in rural areas. Education on the college level was also fostered as the federal government let
out enormous contracts for research in engineering, science, and civil aeronautics, for educa-
tion in defense industry management, and for Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
Postwar Optimism
The widely expected postwar recession never did occur. The liberal monetary and edu-
cational provisions of the GI Bill and the beginning contribution of the provisions of
the Social Security Act to economic stability were two cushioning factors. Even more
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 215 02/01/17 1:37 PM
216 Chapter 7
important were the combination of increased savings during the full-employment war
years and the enormous backlog of demand for major consumer goods that had been
unavailable during the war. The postwar spurt in marriages and births added to market
demand for goods. Technologies that had been developed during the Depression—televi-
sion is the great example—finally could generate market demand. The Depression-born
fear of a mature, stagnating economy was replaced with a new faith in the vigor of the
economic system.
With concern about a return to economic recession and unemployment allayed,
the United States entered a period of social complacency. Many in the country seemed
pleased with continuing economic growth and intrigued with the promise of automa-
tion, of a cybernetic revolution that would provide aff luence for all.
The desire for a return to “normalcy” often ran headlong into new realities. The war
had given a boost to women’s entry into the labor force—a trend that had begun during
the Depression. Although many women were forced out of good-paying factory jobs
to make room for returning GIs, working wives became a permanent part of the social
landscape. Between 1940 and 1950, the share of all households that had a working wife
increased from 7 to 13 percent.
However, despite this postwar air of social optimism and political conservatism,
some new welfare programs were legislated: the National School Lunch Program in
1946; the Housing Act of 1949; the special Milk Program in 1954; the Indian Health Ser-
vice in 1955; and finally, in 1960, the Kerr–Mills Act, which provided aid to the medically
indigent.
Public welfare had expanded early in the decade through incremental legislative
changes that increased the number of potential program recipients and through benefit
formula changes that liberalized payments. In 1956, Congress added disability insurance
to the Social Security programs. It also legislated health coverage for welfare recipients
and added funding for “caretakers” (typically mothers) to the Aid to Dependent Children
program. Later in the decade, amendments to the Social Security Act expanded eligi-
bility and funding for states to offer social services to individuals and families likely to
become welfare dependent.
For Native Americans, however, the postwar period was very difficult. In 1949, Con-
gress began to shift Native American programs f rom the federal government to state
governments and to back away f rom the federal protections of the 1934 Reorganiza-
tion Act. By 1960, several dozen tribes were no longer protected by federal guardianship.
While giving Native Americans equal rights with other citizens, the termination of pro-
tected status and the return of control to the states meant loss of social programs and
aid as well as new taxes and sharp increases in unemployment. For some tribes, it was
a disaster. In 1961, President Kennedy ended the termination policy, but not before it
became a rallying point for Native American militancy.40
During the late 1940s and 1950s, employer-provided f ringe benefits became a
central element of the American system of social welfare. Three trends converged
to produce this shift. First, beginning with the Revenue Act of 1942, the federal
government began to encourage corporations to expand pensions and health cover-
age through the granting of generous tax incentives. Second, in 1948, the Supreme
Court ruled (Inland Steel v. NLRB) that unions had the right to negotiate over ben-
efits as well as wages. Finally, the significant organizing setbacks for labor unions
after the war, especially Operation Dixie—a failed attempt to expand unionization
in the South—convinced many unions that it was wiser to expand employer-based
systems for health care and pensions than to count on the expansion of the Social
Security system.41
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 216 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 217
At the same time, the successes of Social Security had a decisive impact on the
politics of social welfare. Historically, many of the “deserving poor” had had to rely
on public assistance. By the middle of the 1950s, however, the unemployed, older
Americans, people with disabilities, and widows and their children could all count
on social insurance programs to protect them against poverty. Although the assis-
tance programs for the elderly and people with disabilities were still important, the
public assistance population was increasingly composed of groups that were consid-
ered undeserving. Because most widows were eligible for Social Security survivors’
benefits, ADC recipients were more likely to live in families headed by a divorced or
never-married woman. The departure of the unemployed f rom assistance programs
meant that general assistance recipients were increasingly likely to have spotty work
histories. Whereas in the 1930s, the various elements of the Social Security Act were
supported by the same constituencies, by the 1950s, its social insurance and assis-
tance programs for the elderly and people with disabilities had remained broadly
popular while ADC could count on a much narrower constituency for political
support.
Other social policies exacerbated the difference between well-off working fami-
lies and the poor. The Housing Act of 1949 provided long-term mortgages for new,
suburban construction while making it more difficult to gain financing for the pur-
chase of homes in older urban neighborhoods. Rather, the act provided two solutions
for declining cities: slum clearance that would eventually displace thousands of fam-
ilies and the expansion of public housing that concentrated the poorest urban resi-
dents in a few high-rise projects. During the 1950s, Congress provided new funding
for highway construction (but not for mass transit), fueling the abandonment of old
urban neighborhoods by better-off workers.42
All of these trends—the shift to employer-provided benefits, the split between
social insurance and public assistance, and rapid suburbanization—included a
racial dimension. Bowing to the demands of Southern conservatives, Congress
intentionally excluded farm laborers and domestic workers f rom Social Security
during the 1930s, which left Af rican Americans unprotected. Although this exclu-
sion was eliminated, black workers were more likely than whites to work in jobs
without unions or f ringe benef its after the war. The plague of chronic jobless-
ness meant that black workers and their families were less likely to qualify for
social insurance than public assistance. By the end of the 1950s, politicians and the
public increasingly saw black women and children as the primary beneficiaries of
ADC. Finally, the move to the suburbs was almost wholly a white phenomenon.
Black families—whatever their economic status—were largely confined to deteri-
orating urban neighborhoods. Even those Af rican Americans who could purchase
homes rarely could count on the appreciation of their value to the extent that
whites could.
Although often pictured as a quiet decade of aff luence and stability, the character
of social welfare and its inf luence on American society had been transformed between
1950 and 1960. By the end of the decade, relatively aff luent white suburban workers
could count on tax-subsidized, employer-provided f ringe benefits and Social Security
to provide expanding protection against the risks of an industrial society.
Black and Hispanic workers and families increasingly found themselves
living in declining urban neighborhoods, threatened by slum clearance or
herded into public housing projects and dependent upon public assistance
programs. As a result, the late 1950s saw increasingly virulent attacks on
public welfare.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 217 02/01/17 1:37 PM
218 Chapter 7
innovations in soCial WElfaRE
Veterans and the GI Bill
Over 16 million Americans participated in the war. Over 400,000 of them died and
another 671,000 were wounded. The income needs of the dependents of members of
the armed forces were met through a program of family allotments financed jointly
by the individual soldier, through a pay deduction, and by the federal government.
The allowances were provided for by the Servicemen’s Dependents Allowance Act
of 194243 and were administered by the Office of Dependency Benefits of the War
Department. During its first year of operation, ending June 30, 1943, a total of $797
million was disbursed, of which the government had contributed 50 percent. By 1945,
allotment payments totaled $3 billion, with the government’s contribution rising to
$2 billion.44
All wives and children of soldiers in the six lowest pay grades of the armed forces
qualified for family allotments regardless of income. In addition, soldiers received life
and disability insurance as part of the National Life Insurance Act of 1940.
Benefits for veterans of World War II moved beyond those available to veterans of
previous wars. In the past, concern had been primarily with income security for depen-
dents of the dead and disabled and with the vocational rehabilitation of the latter. There
had long been dissatisfaction with the fact that “veterans without service-connected dis-
abilities were left to their own devices in the matter of their readjustment to civilian
life.”45 A first approach to help with readjustment problems was contained in the Selec-
tive Training and Service Act of 1940, which provided that inductees “be reemployed at
the termination of their period of service in positions of like seniority, status and pay.”
On November 13, 1942, President Roosevelt appointed the Armed Forces Committee on
Postwar Education Opportunities for Service Personnel to study the educational prob-
lems that servicemen and servicewomen might encounter after the war. The president’s
appointment followed upon the urging of the resolution, adopted earlier in 1942, by the
American Legion at its annual convention. The Legion was the critical lobbyist for the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944—the famous GI Bill of Rights.
The GI Bill represented the convergence of two key policy rationales—one old
and one new. Governments that engage in war require a supply of healthy young bod-
ies to fight. As during previous American wars, the government took an interest in the
health and well-being of young men during World War II. In addition, the New Deal
had cultivated an expanded view of the role of government in guaranteeing the health
and well-being of the population. Although many of the New Deal’s programs were
blocked during the late 1930s and early 1940s by conservative opposition, tying the “wel-
fare state” to the sacrifice of veterans provided an effective strategy for expanding gov-
ernment programs.
The GI Bill was described by the Senate Finance Committee as “a fundamental bill
of rights to facilitate the return of service men and women to civilian life”:
It is a comprehensive statement of the measures presently necessary and . . . rep-
resents the very least that should be done at this time in justice to veterans and in
enlightened self-interest for the remainder of the country.46
The GI Bill represented the triumph of “the idea that the country owes an obligation to
the veteran to restore him to the civilian status and opportunities he would have enjoyed
had there not been a war.”47 Restoration to civilian status was to be facilitated through
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 218 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 219
provisions for education and training; loans for the purchase of a home, business, or
farm; unemployment insurance payments; and veterans’ employment services.
A number of factors converged to aid the passage of the GI Bill. There was, of
course, very real concern for the welfare of veterans, especially as they returned to an
uncertain economy in the midst of reconversion to peacetime operation. The war had
also dramatized the poor health and low educational achievement of many potential
soldiers.
The GI Bill had a broader economic rationale as well. Many policy commentators
feared the resumption of the Depression and economic stagnation at the end of the war.
In particular, they feared the return of millions of veterans to a civilian economy with
few available jobs. The discharge of millions of veterans into the labor force at a time
when war production had ended and thousands of workers were already looking for jobs
was seen as a major problem. Thus, the GI Bill was designed to slow the pace at which
veterans reentered the labor force.
Actual federal government expenditures for veterans’ services and benefits rose to
about $3.4 billion for fiscal year 1946. They reached a peak of $9.3 billion, 23 percent of
total federal expenditures, in 1950.48
The Attack on Public Welfare
At the end of World War II, the elderly were the primary recipients of public assistance
in the United States. Then, in 1950, a new public assistance program for the permanently
and temporarily disabled was added to the Social Security Act. In addition, Congress
added payments for the caretakers of dependent children under the ADC program.
Yet, the steady expansion of public assistance soon provoked a backlash. The
increased eligibility of the elderly for old age insurance led to a steady decline in recipi-
ents of old age assistance. In addition, recipients of ADC began to shift f rom the families
of widows to those of unmarried mothers.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, welfare reform focused on restricting eligibil-
ity. Federal public assistance programs had been designed during the 1930s to give
local authority broad discretion, and the Eisenhower administration (1953–1961) was
not inclined to expand federal oversight of those programs. In state after state, puni-
tive administrative policies were used to remove recipients f rom the welfare rolls and
to deter new applications. State residency requirements were strictly enforced, so that
black migrants who moved from the South to Northern cities, for example, were barred
from receiving assistance. Drives to publicize the names of welfare recipients were wide-
spread. As a way of weeding out suspected “f raud,” entire caseloads were closed, and
all recipients were required to undergo new application investigations. Beyond the overt
intention of weeding out ineligible recipients was the covert hope that attrition would
result from the unwillingness of many individuals to experience new eligibility investiga-
tions set up to deter them.
In a number of states, “suitable home” and “man-in-the-house” policies became
bases for determining that the presence of an unrelated man made a home unsuitable for
children. The presence of a man, even though unrelated, also was considered evidence
that financial need did not exist. In the summer of 1960, the state of Louisiana was found
to have used the “suitable home” pretext for closing 6,281 cases, involving 23,549 chil-
dren. The practice was halted in 1961, when Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
Arthur Fleming ruled that cases could no longer be closed as a result of unsuitable home
findings, unless other suitable living arrangements had been made for the children.49
Midnight raids to uncover men living with ADC mothers continued well into the 1960s,
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 219 02/01/17 1:37 PM
220 Chapter 7
when they were effectively halted by the March 27, 1967, decision of the Supreme Court
of California, which declared that public assistance workers could not be fired for refus-
ing to participate in an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.50
The most notorious example of attempts to reduce the welfare rolls occurred in
Newburgh, New York. In 1961, the Newburgh city manager promulgated a 13-point code
of welfare regulations that included many of the devices being used across the country
to control the size of the welfare rolls and to reduce welfare expenditures.
For example, applicants new to Newburgh were to give evidence of having
come to the city with a concrete offer of employment; assistance was to be
denied to applicants who had left a job voluntarily; all new cases were to be
reviewed in the city manager’s office prior to certification; active cases were
to be reviewed monthly by the city’s corporation counsel; work was to be
mandated for all able-bodied males receiving money payments; and voucher
payments were to be substituted for cash. State welfare officials in New York
feared that Newburgh officials’ behavior could threaten federal funding for
the entire state system of welfare benefits. As a result, they pressured the
town’s welfare administrators to ignore the city manager’s directive.51
The various attacks on public assistance programs highlighted a slowly changing
perception of the adult recipient of public assistance. Thanks to Social Security, the per-
centage of older Americans and widows receiving public assistance dropped. Increas-
ingly, the public assistance caseload was composed of divorced and single mothers and
jobless men. Most significantly, attention was focused on urban ADC mothers who were
perceived as women who had children out of wedlock as a way of avoiding work and as
predominantly African American, despite the fact that residency requirements had effec-
tively prevented black migrants f rom swelling the expanding rolls. During the 1950s, at
least, increased expenditures for public welfare resulted from normal population growth,
expanded programs, and liberalized benefits. Be that as it may, the new image of the wel-
fare recipient undermined public support for public welfare.
Poverty and the Reform of Welfare
By the 1960s, some of the optimism of the postwar era began to fade. During World War
II, high employment and wages combined with the lack of available consumer goods
to increase the savings rate. The end of the war and the reconversion to civilian pro-
duction fueled years of rapid economic growth. A series of recessions started in 1948:
1948–1949, 1953–1954, 1957–1958, and 1961–1963. A renewed and growing concern with
unemployment developed when unemployment rates approached 7 percent in 1958 and
again in 1961. After each recession, the economy bounced back, but with less than full
vigor. Indeed, each period of recovery was less energetic than that which preceded it.
While economists defined “full employment” as 2 percent during the war, by the late
1950s, many experts considered 4 percent as unrealistically low.
Despite this, the general view of the 1950s as the era of the aff luent society held.
What had changed was the view of poverty and of the poor. John Kenneth Galbraith,
writing in 1958, implied that poverty was spotty and scattered, not systemic. He iden-
tified two types of poverty: insular and case. Insular poverty covered problems that
arose from structural unemployment and differential unemployment rates—the special
problems of the Appalachian region, for example. Case poverty denoted poverty arising
f rom a personal deficiency, such as ill health, lack of education, or even racial or sexual
discrimination. Whether insular or case in nature, the problem was considered one of
employability rather than of poverty per se.52
Thanks to Social Secu-
rity, the percentage of
older Americans and
widows receiving pub-
lic assistance dropped.
Increasingly, the public
assistance caseload was
composed of divorced
and single mothers and
jobless men.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 220 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 221
In fact, the United States rediscovered poverty as a serious social problem only in
the early 1960s, when a series of studies and publications made reality unavoidable.
The SSA, using 1959 data, established a poverty index and, for the first time, pro-
vided an official statistical measure of individuals and groups in poverty. Increased
attention came with the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Pov-
erty in the United States in 1962 and Dwight MacDonald’s “Our Invisible Poor” in
1963.53 The 1964 Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers dealt with the situ-
ation at length and was transmitted to the Congress along with the Economic Report
of the President.54
Slowly, the response to poverty emerged, shaped by three factors: (1) the identifica-
tion of depressed geographical areas, (2) the civil rights revolutions, and (3) the shift in
the composition of public assistance rolls that began early in the 1960s. Overall, there
was a programmatic emphasis on employment: the opening up of employment oppor-
tunities and the upgrading of labor market skills of the poor.
The first thrust of legislation was directed at the specialized problems of depressed
areas. The Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 focused on problems of regional unemploy-
ment. If the poverty in an area was due to a depletion of natural resources and a decline in
the demand for the traditional products of the area, then new industry was to be induced
to move into the area. If the people of Appalachia suffered from the decrease of jobs in coal
mining, then the expansion of factory employment seemed appropriate. In subsequent
years, the 1961 legislation was expanded and a broader program, the Economic Develop-
ment Act, was passed in 1965. Federal grants and loans provided aid to build industry in six
depressed regions of the United States: Appalachia, New England, the Coastal Plains, the
Ozarks, the Upper Great Lakes, and a poverty-stricken sector of the Southwest.
The statistical count of the poor made the special plight of the minority population
clear. The risk of poverty for African Americans was three times as great as that for whites
during the 1960s. Discriminatory employment practices were scored as one major factor.
The developing civil rights movement of the 1960s was increasingly forceful in pointing
out areas of social, political, and economic discrimination and the consequences of this
discrimination for unemployment and relief rolls. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included a
title prohibiting racial, sexual, or ethnic discrimination in employment and established an
enforcement mechanism, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The change in the public assistance rolls in the 1960s was the third major force
behind the social legislation of the decade. During the previous decade, the number of
unemployed had risen faster than the number of relief recipients, but the increases could
be related to each other—they went up and down together. But, in 1963, this shifted,
and f rom 1963 to 1970, unemployment rose by less than 300,000 while the number of
public assistance recipients increased by more than 6 million.55 The sharp rise in public
assistance recipients was really a jump in ADC recipients, despite the fact that by 1960,
the Survivor’s Insurance program was covering 1.5 million children and 396,000 widows.
Increasingly, a picture of ADC as harboring, and even creating, families broken by illegit-
imacy, divorce, and desertion developed. This new picture was brought into even sharper
focus by the program’s continuing emphasis on the unemployable female parent in the
home—the worthy-widow halo—at a time when the larger society was increasingly
labeling that parent unworthy and employable.
Solutions to case poverty, whatever the cause, were sought in employment training,
work incentives, and, above all, counseling services. The addition of federal funding for
services to ADC recipients in 1956 was an expression of alarm at the new composition of
the ADC rolls and of hope that services might lead to employment and financial indepen-
dence. In 1962, the Manpower Development and Training Act was intended to provide
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 221 02/01/17 1:37 PM
222 Chapter 7
training or retraining for workers displaced by economic or technological change. This
reemphasis on labor market participation—on enhancing occupational potential—was,
in part, an extension of the intent of the GI Bill. Regarding welfare recipients, however,
it represented a shift f rom the cash programs of the New Deal to a service approach,
which came to full development in the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962.
President Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961 and the appointment of Abraham
Ribicoff as secretary of health, education, and welfare provided the opportunity to get
public assistance moving toward two new objectives: “Eliminating whatever abuses have
crept into these programs and developing more constructive approaches to get people
off assistance and back to useful roles in society.”56
The 1960s marked a high-water mark for the social work profession’s inf luence on
welfare policy. In May 1961, the secretary appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on Public
Welfare to study “the problems and prospects for public assistance in the next decade.”
At about the same time, George K. Wyman, an administrator with experience in local,
state, and federal welfare and in voluntary social welfare posts, was asked to make a
report offering “recommendations and suggestions for administrative and program
actions relating to procedures and operations in the Children’s Bureau and the Bureau
of Public Assistance.”57 The ad hoc committee was composed of 25 public and voluntary
social welfare leaders, mostly social workers. Three members of the committee were
deans of schools of social work, and a fourth was appointed to be the committee’s con-
sultant. Wyman drew on essentially the same group in preparing his report.
The recommendations of the committee were released in September and were
“designed to reinforce and support family life through rehabilitation, prevention and pro-
tection.” Basic to the committee’s proposals were adequacy of financial assistance to needy
persons and families, efficient administration and organization of public welfare programs,
research into the causes of dependency and family breakdown, and, foremost, the provision
of rehabilitative services by professionally trained personnel. In a statement reminiscent of
Frederic Almy’s 1912 warning against the provision of “untrained relief,” the committee
wrote, “Financial assistance to meet people’s basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing is
essential, but alone is not enough. Expenditures for assistance not accompanied by rehabil-
itation services may actually increase dependency and eventual costs to the community.”58
It was convinced that public welfare, through rehabilitation services, could become a “pos-
itive wealth-producing force in society” by contributing to an “attack on such problems as
dependency, juvenile delinquency, family breakdown, illegitimacy, ill health, and disability.”
Of the committee’s 10 recommended immediate steps for change in public welfare,
4 were aimed directly at ADC. It was recommended:
1. that “Aid to Dependent Children Families” be strengthened by the initiation of
an accelerated, intensive program of rehabilitation services offered by trained
personnel;
2. that the temporary (1961) provisions of federal support for unemployed par-
ents and for foster home care for ADC children be extended and a provision to
include support for disabled and unemployed fathers living at home be added;
3. that measures for studying and dealing with the problems of illegitimacy be
undertaken; and
4. that earnings of youths be exempted as a deduction from the amount of assis-
tance granted to a family.
Other recommendations for immediate action included appropriations for day care, the
removal of residence requirements that conf lict with “the f reedom of movement . . .
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 222 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 223
essential to economic progress,” the limited use of voucher payments for persons with
severe problems of money management, and the support of research and demonstra-
tion projects concerned with dependency and family breakdown. Although these recom-
mendations applied to all public assistance programs, they, too, held special meaning for
change in ADC.
Social work used its inf luence to push for the expansion of social services and the
professionalization of welfare administration. The ad hoc committee strongly recom-
mended that the role of professionally trained social workers in the program be consid-
erably expanded. It urged “that one-third of all persons engaged in social work capacities
in public welfare should hold masters’ degrees in social work.” The significance of pro-
fessionally trained social workers went beyond the direct provision of service. The com-
mittee had interpreted the occurrence of f raud in public welfare as a ref lection of a
“basic weakness in the standards of moral responsibility in modern society.” Committee
members thought that well-qualified social workers could offer knowledgeable, well-di-
rected help to build self-respect and reinforce “capacities of persons to meet their prob-
lems and to behave responsibly.” No wonder, then, that the Public Welfare Amendments
of 1962, which were based largely on the committee’s recommendations, were familiarly
known as the Social Services Amendments.
The Kennedy administration adopted the committee’s commitment to social ser-
vices and professionalization. Secretary Ribicoff addressed a memorandum to the com-
missioner of Social Security setting forth a series of changes that would be made in
public welfare programs. Along with encouraging the locating of deserting fathers and
the detection of f raud, the changes were designed “to promote rehabilitation services
and develop a family-centered approach.” Each state was to be required to have “a state-
wide staff development plan which would include in-service training and opportunities
for professional and technical education.” And, in order to emphasize that “our efforts
must involve a variety of helpful services, of which giving a money payment is only one,
and . . . that the object of our efforts must be the entire family,” the name of the Bureau
of Public Assistance was to be changed to the Bureau of Family Services.59
The reports of the ad hoc committee and of Wyman, the memoranda of Ribicoff
to the commissioner of Social Security and to the administrators of state welfare depart-
ments, and a combined report of the state welfare administrators were all preludes to
President Kennedy’s message to Congress on February 1, 1962—the first presidential
message entirely on the subject of public welfare. The president expressed concern about
poverty that persisted in the midst of abundance and stated that the “reasons are often
more social than economic”:
Merely responding with a relief check to complicated social or personal problems . . .
is not likely to provide a lasting solution. Such a check must be supplemented, or in
some cases made unnecessary, by positive services and solutions, offering the total
resources of the community to meet the total needs of the family to help our less
fortunate citizens help themselves.60
The legislative actions recommended by the president were those previously designated
by Ribicoff as necessary to reduce the welfare rolls. He suggested, in addition, the appoint-
ment of an Advisory Council on Public Welfare to evaluate public welfare programs in
light of “the changing nature of the economic and social problems of the country.”
President Kennedy’s recommendations had considerable inf luence upon the sub-
stance of the amendments to the Social Security Act, the Public Welfare Amendments of
1962. Their promise of a new approach to the problems of dependency was based upon
extensive advice from social welfare experts who implied future savings in public welfare
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 223 02/01/17 1:37 PM
224 Chapter 7
expenditures. Yet, beneath its new rhetoric, the Kennedy administration’s approach to pub-
lic welfare had a long history. It proposed a return to seeking the cause of poverty within
the individual—a return to helping individuals change themselves in order to operate suc-
cessfully in an apparently well-functioning economy. This time, however, the personal
counseling was to be buttressed by employment services—job training and job placement.
A significant outcome of this return to tradition was the president’s recommenda-
tion that federal money be available for services not only for persons who are already
dependent, but also for those likely to become dependent. The extent to which the preven-
tion of dependency was focused on mothers with children was shown by the suggestion
that Congress offer the states the option of combining into a single category of assis-
tance their programs for the aged, blind, and disabled. The drive to simplify and coordi-
nate the administration of public assistance programs did not extend to that category of
assistance for families whose members were potentially employable.
Public Law 87-543, the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962, demonstrated the social
work profession’s success in making rehabilitation services central to welfare policy. The
new law, incorporating the recommendations of the president’s message, encouraged
the states to provide social services leading to self-care and self-support. Encouragement
took the form of a change in the grant-in-aid formula, making the federal share of costs
75 percent of expenditures for services to reduce dependency and for training staff to
achieve the intent of the law. In line with this intent, the law offered federal money for
services not only to current recipients of public assistance but also to former recipients
and to persons who were likely to become recipients. The intent was further strength-
ened by the provision of funding for demonstration projects aimed at experimenting
with new methods for offering money payments and social services.
Although the amendments brought about change for all categories of public assis-
tance and for the Child Welfare provisions of Title V of the Social Security Act, the most
striking were those dealing directly or indirectly with Title IV, Aid to Dependent Chil-
dren. The name of the program was changed to Aid and Services to Needy Families with
Children, and the program would henceforth be known as AFDC, Aid to Families with
Dependent Children. The law reframed the policy rationale for public assistance:
For the purpose of encouraging the care of dependent children;.;.;. by enabling
each State to furnish financial assistance and rehabilitation and other services .;.;.
to needy dependent children and the parents or relatives with whom they are living
to help maintain and strengthen family life and to help such parents or relatives to
attain or retain capability for the maximum self-support and personal independence
consistent with the maintenance of continuing parental care and protection.61
The temporary legislation enacted in 1961 authorizing federal financial participation in
aid to children deprived of parental care and support because of the unemployment of
a parent was extended, but assistance was denied to an unemployed parent who refused
to accept retraining without good cause. In providing for community work and train-
ing programs, the amendments attempted to heed President Kennedy’s suggestion that
work projects “be an opportunity for the individual on welfare, not a penalty.” The proj-
ects were to be “of a constructive nature, [geared to] the conservation of work skills and
the development of new skills.” The secretary was to ensure appropriate health, safety,
and pay standards for those projects and appropriate arrangements for the care and pro-
tection of the child during the parent’s absence. An additional work incentive provided
that expenses reasonably attributable to work participation be considered in determining
the amount of the family’s assistance grant. Congress chose to use a carrot, not a stick,
to move the unemployed off the welfare rolls.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 224 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 225
The 1962 amendments required that states develop a service plan for each child
recipient in light of his or her particular home conditions. Such a plan would include the
use of protective payments, if the assistance grant were being mismanaged. Funds for
day care for children of working parents were authorized, as were funds for the exten-
sion of public child welfare services to all political subdivisions of the separate states, in
effect paralleling the coverage of AFDC. The services were to be provided, to the extent
feasible, by trained personnel.
The Public Welfare Amendments put the social work profession on the spot. Inf lu-
ential members of the profession had asserted not only that increased social service
would improve the family life of the poor, but also that this would reduce the number
of recipients and the cost of public assistance. However, within a few years, the rolls
expanded, leading to embarrassing questions about the effectiveness of social services.
The 1962 amendments and their consequences undermined the credibility of the social
work profession in public welfare policy.62 The American Public Welfare Association, a
national organization of people concerned with public welfare issues, had predicted such
difficulties.63 Although the social service focus on the 1962 law would carry over to the
War on Poverty, social workers and social work services would never again wield such
significant inf luence in welfare policy.
For the moment, however, the enormous expansion in public services gave renewed
attention to relationships between public and private agencies and between family and child
welfare agencies. It became clear that developments in social welfare were being shaped
by public welfare agencies. The development of a professional generalist method of social
work helping and the growing need for administrative economy had earlier sparked a series
of mergers between voluntary family and children’s casework agencies. The enactment of
the 1962 amendments to the Social Security Act (moving the public agency into the family
and children’s counseling services areas) and the voluntary agencies’ continuing problem of
funding raised questions about the necessity for voluntary agency services at all.64
The possibility of a new era of partnership had to await a new technique of funding.
The purchase-of-service mechanism was embedded in the service amendments. The Social
Security Act made federal funds available for contracting for services
prescribed by the Secretary which in the judgment of the State agency cannot be
as economically or as effectively provided by the staff of such State or local agency
and are not otherwise reasonably available to individuals in need of them, and
which are provided . . . (whether . . . by contract with public . . . or nonprofit private
agencies).65
In 1962, whatever the problem with relationships between voluntary and public agencies,
the future of social work as a profession seemed assured. The social service amendments
had reversed Harry Hopkins’s 1933 decision that public funding should be distributed
through private agencies. The extent of the reversal was indicated by the announcement
of prescribed social services to be offered by “State public assistance agencies .;.;. in order
to claim increased Federal funds.” The commissioner of Social Security also announced
the means by which services were to be made effective: “caseloads of no more than 60 per
worker, 1 supervisor for each 5 workers, and home visiting as frequently as necessary.”66
The War on Poverty
The War on Poverty is one of the most celebrated and maligned episodes in the
history of American social welfare policy. The Johnson administration’s initiative
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 225 02/01/17 1:37 PM
226 Chapter 7
ultimately deserves neither the praise nor the condemnation it received. Its origins in
the new economics” of the 1960s belied any radical intent. Yet, because it took place
just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s emerged, it became one of the most
visible responses of the federal government to the demands of Af rican Americans
for full civil, political, and economic citizenship. Like the civil rights movement, its
political popularity among white Americans was short-lived. As the nation distanced
itself f rom the broader movement for Af rican American equality, conservatives were
able to cast the War on Poverty as one of the great failures of social policy. Three
decades after its end, a conservative generation of welfare reformers saw themselves
as undoing its work.
Poverty, which had been nearly invisible during the 1950s, became increas-
ingly prominent in public discussions of the 1960s. The annual reports of the
U.S. Department of Commerce were especially effective in identifying poverty
groups, those individuals and families particularly vulnerable to the risks of an
industrial society. Year after year, the poverty groups were identif ied as children,
the aged, large families, and families headed by women. Rural families and people
of color suffered a double risk. Surprisingly, work—even full-time work—was no
guarantee against poverty; the “working poor” became identif ied as one at-risk
population group.
The social theories that drove the War on Poverty were often contradictory. On
the one hand, they had their origins in the Kennedy administration’s economic pol-
icy advisors who believed that expanding Americans’ capacity to consume was a key
to sustained economic growth. The work of scholars like John Kenneth Galbraith
had demonstrated that even after a generation of federal income support programs,
a significant share of the population did not have even minimally adequate incomes.
At the same time, Oscar Lewis’s “culture of poverty” theory—and the populariza-
tion of the idea of a “vicious cycle” of poverty by Michael Harrington in The Other
America—focused more on the values and behaviors of the poor as their primary
obstacle. Lewis identified more than 50 traits that characterized the culture of pov-
erty, including an inability to delay gratification, fatalism, and sexual promiscuity.
As he noted:
The people in the culture of poverty have a strong feeling of marginality, of help-
lessness, of dependency, of not belonging. They are like aliens in their own country,
convinced that the existing institutions do not serve their interests and needs. Along
with this feeling of powerlessness is a widespread feeling of inferiority, of personal
unworthiness.67
The War on Poverty’s efforts to address juvenile delinquency and youth employment,
centered in the Justice Department, led to experimenting with a new approach to youth
engagement called “community action” as a means of overcoming the apathy and alien-
ation that hampered poor urban residents.
Support for an attack on hunger and poverty was furthered by the growing
strength of the civil rights movement. A demonstration climaxed by an historic
speech by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. brought an unprecedented 200,000 people
to Washington, D.C., on a march for “jobs and f reedom” and an interracial display of
solidarity (Figure 7.2). President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to include the elimination
of poverty among his plans for a “Great Society” came at a fortuitous time. A tax cut in
1964 had succeeded in accelerating economic growth, and a renewed faith in an aff luent
society made a successful War on Poverty seem feasible.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 226 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 227
The Kennedy administration had begun planning programs to attack poverty before
the president was assassinated in 1963. Upon assuming the presidency, Johnson sought to
make poverty policy his own by adopting a war metaphor. In his message urging Con-
gress to “declare war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our Nation
and the welfare of our people,” President Johnson wrote, “Today, for the first time in our
history, we have the power to strike away the barriers to full participation in our society.
Having the power, we have the duty.”68
The Economic Opportunity Act was passed on August 20, 1964. Its declaration of
purpose established public policy in relation to the elimination of poverty:
The United States can achieve its full economic and social potential as a nation
only if every individual has the opportunity to contribute to the full extent of
his capabilities and to participate in the workings of our society. It is therefore
the policy of the United States to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst
of plenty in this Nation by opening to everyone the opportunity for education
and training, the opportunity to work, and the opportunity to live in decency
and dignity.69
The various titles of the act represented a continuation and intensification of the Ken-
nedy administration’s policies—that is, a further continuation of work training, work
incentives, social services, and special programs for particular regions.
The Economic Opportunity Act authorized a set of youth programs designed to give
young people of low-income and minority group families the education, skills, and expe-
riences deemed necessary for success. The youth programs included federally established
Job Corps training centers for out-of-school and unemployed youths requiring general
Figure 7.2 The March on Washington in August 1963 is remembered for Martin Luther
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It was supported by a large coalition of social change or-
ganizations that demanded jobs and decent housing for all Americans, as well as an end
to racial segregation.
/
"#
#&
-
=.
3
&!
!3
&#
, 0
#)
-*
% 4
0
1.
*.
2#
"0
1%
,
)5
)%
).
-,
3
)6
#"
#+
.
!
'.
-2
#&
%%
,
3'
-,
)2
-0
0$
%'
"-
8>
:9
?.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 227 02/01/17 1:37 PM
228 Chapter 7
and vocational education and help with social and physical difficulties; a work-training
program supporting state and local governmental and private nonprofit activities aimed
at preventing school dropouts; and a work-study program enabling young people to con-
tinue their education in secondary schools, colleges, and universities.
Titles III and IV provided for special programs to combat poverty in rural areas
and for programs of employment and investment incentives in poverty areas beyond
the reach of the provisions of the Area Redevelopment Act. Grants and loans to farm-
ers and small businesses were the core of these titles. The aim of Title V, described as
“Family Unity Through Jobs” by presidential assistant Sargent Shriver, was the develop-
ment of short-term training and retraining courses leading to the transfer of trainees
f rom relief rolls to jobs. Its central concern was for unemployed parents—fathers and
mothers—receiving assistance through the AFDC–UP program. Title V was meant to
“demonstrate that public assistance with work and training could be used as a positive
instrument to keep families together, to increase employability, and to brighten our com-
munities.”70 Another section of the Economic Opportunity Act created an adult volun-
teer corps—Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)—to help with the rehabilitation
and improvement of slums and other impoverished areas.
The most controversial—and important—provisions of the Economic Opportunity
Act were those included in Title II, Urban and Rural Community Action Programs. Com-
munity action programs (CAP) were defined as those that promised progress toward the
elimination of poverty; that provided for the “maximum feasible participation” of resi-
dents of the geographic areas of group members covered; and that were conducted by
public or private, nonprofit community action organizations. The initial popularity of
the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) stemmed from its ability, through the CAP
concept, to fund projects administered by public and voluntary agencies f reed from the
administrative control of city halls and united funds. Among the more popular programs
funded were Head Start (a preparatory education program for preschool, low-income
children), Upward Bound (an educational program meant to prevent school dropout and
to encourage dropouts to return to school), day-care centers, neighborhood recreation
centers, and neighborhood health centers.
The Economic Opportunity Act reinforced the 1962 view that work and jobs were
the keys to strengthened family life. The act accelerated the spate of programs designed
to remove parents and children f rom the home and f rom each other. Job training, job
placement, and counseling for a variety of psychological and social ills represented a
crash effort to reduce the welfare rolls. Day care, Head Start, and Upward Bound served
several purposes at once. For children, they were to be compensation for the failures of
parental upbringing and enhancement of potential for adult economic independence.
For parents, they were intended to eliminate a barrier to steady employment. The act
clearly indicated that employment, as an American value, was at least equal to the value
placed on family life and family unity.
At the same time, community action posed a challenge to social work. Efforts to
involve the poor in planning new programs implied that professional “experts” were part
of the problem, not the solution to the problems of low-income people. Although many
social workers were active in efforts to mobilize the poor, other social workers—those
who staffed and directed existing welfare bureaucracies—often became the targets of sus-
picion and protests. The two elements of early 1960s welfare policy—expanding services
and professionalization—were split apart during the early years of the War on Poverty.
The OEO soon came under attack. Mayors of cities around the country were polit-
ically threatened by the federal funding of projects over which they had no control.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 228 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 229
Members of Congress were upset by legal suits brought by government-funded com-
munity legal services against federal programs. Communities were shaken by the
aggressiveness and hostility of the poor who had found voice in the “maximum feasi-
ble participation” concept. Stories of mismanagement, radicalism, and fraud abounded.
In time, President Johnson, increasingly enmeshed in the Vietnam War, became disen-
chanted with community action that not only was costly but also was creating political
and social dissensions while seeming to make little direct contribution to its stated goal.
The race riots of the summer of 1967—especially those in Newark, New Jersey, as well
as Detroit—brought renewed attention to the problems of the ghetto poor, but led more
frequently to calls for increased spending on police and prisons than for the expansion of
social services.71
The Economic Opportunity Act and the War on Poverty did make important con-
tributions to change. The maximum feasible participation concept opened new sources
of psychological, financial, and political power as the poor found themselves having a say
in, and in some instances even controlling, the programs and institutions that affected
their lives. The concept became integral to other legislated social welfare programs,
such as the Model Cities legislation of 1966. The poor and other consumers of services
became increasingly involved in education and health, as well as welfare, programs. As
skills developed, their participation ranged f rom service to managerial to policy-mak-
ing positions. CAP opened opportunities for large numbers of minority group members
who were educationally prepared for executive and professional jobs but to whom such
opportunities had been closed by discrimination. They helped make the “invisible” poor
and the members of minority groups more visible and better heard.
An equally significant legacy of community action was the development of com-
munity legal services. These services were not specifically mentioned in the Economic
Opportunity Act as originally enacted. Once developed as CAP, the importance of legal
services for testing and securing the legal rights of the poor through a wide variety of
class action suits became obvious, and amendments to the act made specific provision
for inclusion. Community legal services, applying pressure for administrative action to
implement judicial victories, appeared to be a most important governmental contribu-
tion to the welfare of the poor.
An unexpected result of the development of community action was a shift in social
workers’ views of social welfare, of social agencies, and of their profession. Originally
ignored by officials of the OEO, social workers were soon brought into CAP because
of their competencies in community organizing, administration, and direct work with
clients and client groups. Many social workers viewed the War on Poverty with great
enthusiasm and saw it as an opportunity to incorporate social reform into their practice.
In contrast to the claims of expertise that the profession had made a few years earlier,
many social workers called for community and consumer participation in policy making
and decision making, for the input of nonprofessionals into service design and delivery,
and for social action to change the system. The National Welfare Rights Organization—a
coalition of professionals and welfare clients—played an important role in the policy
debates over welfare reform during the late 1960s and early 1970s.72
Reform efforts went beyond the issues of community action and welfare reform.
The Community Mental Health Act, which provided funds and set up community men-
tal health centers, was passed in 1963. In 1964, Congress passed the Food Stamp Act to
help meet the nutritional needs of the poor. Culminating three decades of advocacy,
Medicare—health insurance for retirees and people with disabilities—and Medicaid—
health insurance for low-income families and individuals—were added to Social Security
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 229 02/01/17 1:37 PM
230 Chapter 7
in 1965. The same year, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act marked the first
extension of federal aid for general purposes to local schools. In 1966, the Demonstra-
tion (Model) Cities Act sought to address urban decline through a concentration and
coordination of housing, health, education, employment, and social services. The Hous-
ing and Urban Development Act of 1968 expanded funding for low- and moderate-in-
come housing over the next decade.
Expanded Benefits for the Aging
The aging in particular benefited from the prosperity of the postwar period. Social Secu-
rity benefits expanded steadily as professionals in the field pushed Congress to increase
the number of workers covered and to liberalize payment levels. In 1940, only 58 per-
cent of the workforce was covered; by 1970, more than 90 percent of all workers were
included. Coverage was extended to most self-employed, ministers, doctors, farmers,
domestic workers, employees of nonprofit organizations, members of the armed forces,
and, optionally, state and municipal workers. The number of beneficiaries rose f rom
only 220,000 in 1940 to 3.5 million in 1950 and to well over 25 million in 1970.
In the context of an expanding economy, with increased productivity and output, pay-
ment levels were raised throughout the period. In 1950, the program became more redis-
tributive as the replacement rate (the ratio of benefits to a recipient’s previous earnings) was
increased for low-income workers. Early retirement at age 62 was introduced for women
in 1956 and for men in 1961. The program was responsible for a significant decline in the
poverty rate for those older Americans. Although benefits still prevented many retirees from
escaping poverty, the program’s expansion allowed older workers to retire with dignity.73
The expansion of Social Security during these years was made simpler by the fiscal
structure of the system. Although a large share of the labor force paid into the system
through payroll taxes, only a small proportion of the elderly qualified for full benefits. As
a result, the Social Security trust funds continued to grow. Congress could expand bene-
fits without worrying about the fiscal health of the system. However, as inf lation—the
declining value of the dollar—became a public concern in the late 1960s, it created new
worries about the future growth of public retirement income.
Older Americans mobilized to make their special needs more visible to the public
and to policy makers during the 1950s. Independent organizations and those aligned with
organized labor provided crucial support for the passage of Medicare and the expansion
of Social Security benefits during the 1960s and after. In 1961, the White House hosted its
first Conference on Aging. Congress passed the Older Americans Act in 1965 to help meet
the broad social service, legal, nutritional, and economic needs of older people. The act
established the Administration on Aging within the federal government and called on the
states to create their own agencies on aging. Ultimately, the Older Americans Act led to the
creation of a network of local Area Agencies on Aging that provided community services,
coordinated and planned activities, sponsored research, established senior centers, and ful-
filled other service needs of older Americans. It not only provided money for many activ-
ities, but it institutionalized the voice of senior citizen groups in national policy making.74
Controlling Public Assistance
Not all groups fared as well as the aged. In particular, recipients of AFDC found them-
selves subject to increased monitoring. Neither the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962
nor the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 succeeded in reducing the AFDC rolls. The
number of recipients and total expenditures continued a steep climb. More of the poor
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 230 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 231
were being helped, but not in the way Congress had intended. Despite this, the 1966
report of the Advisory Council on Public Welfare urged a continuation of the services
approach to change.
But as the American family changed, the nature of public assistance began to change
as well. The original purpose of mother’s pensions at the beginning of the 20th century
was to allow mothers to stay home and care for their children. Yet, by the 1960s, the
model “breadwinner” family with a working husband and a stay-at-home mother was
in decline. Increasingly, Congress began to demand that welfare mothers, as well, make
efforts to achieve self-sufficiency. Nineteen sixty-seven marked the beginning of a trend
that would culminate in the abolition of the entitlement to aid in the 1996 welfare law.
The 1962 amendments called on the secretary of health, education, and welfare to
appoint an advisory council on public welfare. The council’s report, Having the Power, We
Have the Duty, called on Congress to make public assistance more effective by providing
more aid and more services “as a matter of right.” The federal government should set
nationwide standards for relief grants and assume their full cost above individually stip-
ulated state shares. Discrepancies among state standards would thus be eliminated, and
the states, f reed of pressures to find new sources of revenues, would be able to concen-
trate on meeting human needs.75
The recommendations of the Advisory Council have been cited as “the last hur-
rah of the social welfare professionals who had long dominated public assistance policy
development.”76 Indeed, those who inf luenced the shape of the report, despite its f resh
declaration of a right to assistance and service, were in many ways out of touch with
fellow professionals who were moving in a different direction. Led by James Dumpson,
the New York City welfare commissioner, a group of inf luential professionals began to
recommend the separation of cash assistance and services as a means of reducing any
possible coercion of welfare recipients by their caseworkers.77
Yet, by 1967, the reaction against the War on Poverty had shifted congressional inter-
est from protecting the poor to controlling the expansion of the AFDC. The Social Secu-
rity Amendments of 1967 legislated both a stick and a carrot attack on the rising AFDC
caseload. The law imposed a f reeze on children being added to the program because of
absence of a parent f rom the home. By exempting dependency related to the death or
unemployment of a parent, the freeze sought to target cases related to divorce or deser-
tion. The law also established the first Work Incentive Program (eventually known as
WIN, after having been initially and disastrously labeled “WIP”). WIN disqualified adults
and out-of-school older children—female as well as male—from AFDC payments if they
refused to accept employment or to participate in training programs without good cause.
To increase the work incentives for recipients, the 1967 amendment also eliminated
the 100 percent “tax” on the earnings of recipients. Before 1967, any earnings reported
by a recipient led to a dollar-for-dollar cut in his or her benefits. After the passage of the
amendments, recipients were allowed to keep the first $30 of their earnings each month;
their welfare check would be reduced only by two-thirds of any additional income.
“Thirty and a third,” as the policy was called, and the expansion of child-care subsidies
set a new path for welfare policy. No longer was welfare a “mother’s pension” to allow
mothers to focus on child-rearing. Now, mothers on welfare would be encouraged, and
eventually required, to seek paid labor.
In contrast to the elderly, poor women with children soon faced a backlash. The
punitive aspects of the 1967 welfare amendments caused dismay and then outrage
among client groups interpreting the freeze as punishment of helpless children, among
state administrations facing the prospect of increased and intolerable burdens on state
budgets, and among social welfare professionals foreseeing state reductions in relief
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 231 02/01/17 1:37 PM
232 Chapter 7
grants. President Johnson and his successor, President Richard M. Nixon, both delayed
implementation of the freeze, which was repealed by congressional action in 1969.
The full effects of the WIN program were temporarily delayed by the administrative
discretion permitted state and local departments of welfare in requiring recipient partic-
ipation. Nevertheless, the intent of Congress and of the secretary of health, education,
and welfare was proclaimed in a 1967 announcement of a major administrative restruc-
turing of the department. The Welfare Administration and Bureau of Family Services,
established in 1962, were abolished, and a new agency, the Social and Rehabilitation Ser-
vice (SRS), was created to administer public assistance, rehabilitation, and social services.
The secretary’s announcement deemphasized family and community services and the
substitution of “services aimed at rehabilitation in the broadest sense of the word.”78
The work orientation of SRS was further indicated by the appointment of the former
commissioner of the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration as administrator of the
new unit.
The separation of social service f rom cash assistance became standard public assis-
tance policy by 1974. “Separation” was attractive on a number of counts. For those who
were determined to infuse AFDC with a work orientation, separation quite literally
meant separation of recipients from the requirement of services offered by professional
social workers. In line with this, the institution of simple client declaration systems for
establishing eligibility for cash benefits eliminated the need for professional skills in all
aspects of the money payment process. For clients, separation meant the right to choose
service voluntarily, when needed, without fear of losing a grant. For most professionals,
separation meant a further delineation of the rights of clients as well as of the poor and
of minority group members.
The National Association of Social Workers supported separation and pointed
out that:
1. Service, when offered within the context of eligibility investigation, tends to
become a condition for obtaining financial assistance. This undermines the
concept of assistance as a right and .;.;. interferes with .;.;. self-determination in
seeking and accepting service.
2. There is no reason to assume that financial need, in itself, necessarily calls for
the provision of social services. .;.;. Separation of assistance from social services
will make it possible to organize services so that they reach those who have
specific need for them.79
Social workers were now free to join other social scientists and social wel-
fare theorists in a search for new forms of income transfers and for new ways
of achieving a more equal distribution of income.
soCial movEmEnts and REfoRm aftER
WoRld WaR ii
Expanding the Civil Rights of African Americans
From the end of Reconstruction during the 1870s until World War II, the status of Afri-
can Americans was largely ignored by the federal government. With the overwhelm-
ing proportion of Af rican Americans residing in the rural South, the rights supposed
secured after the Civil War were largely ignored by state governments and federal courts.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 232 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 233
However, the Great Migration during World War I initiated a massive movement that
resulted in black Americans becoming a largely urban and Northern population over the
next two generations.
The movement of black Americans to Northern cities sparked a revival of move-
ments to secure their civil rights. While Southern blacks were largely disenfranchised
by Jim Crow laws, Northern Af rican Americans became a large and critical voting
bloc in a number of Northern cities. At the same time, urban and Northern Af rican
Americans were more easily organized and less easily intimidated than their Southern
counterparts.
World War II renewed the migration of African Americans to the North, especially
to centers of war production. They soon encountered discrimination, which excluded
them f rom better jobs. Even highly skilled African Americans found themselves rele-
gated to low-paying unskilled and dangerous jobs. While the discrimination was not
new, the role of the federal government in funding the work and the increasingly orga-
nized civil rights community challenged the status quo.
White workers often resisted the employment of blacks in defense industries, and
race riots occurred in 1940 and 1941. Faced with widespread exclusion from war indus-
tries, black workers mobilized to force the government’s hand. A. Philip Randolph, the
president of the predominantly black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened a
march on Washington to demand black access to defense jobs. The March on Washing-
ton movement spurred grassroots organizing in the black community even though the
march itself never took place.
In exchange for cancelling the march, the Roosevelt administration agreed to
Executive Order 8802 that established the Committee on Fair Employment Practices
(FEPC) and promised “no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense
industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin . . . [and]
the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without dis-
crimination.”80 Without strong enforcement powers, the FEPC met with widespread
defiance that it was unable to overcome. Yet, the connection between grassroots orga-
nizing and pressuring government for action was not wasted. Two decades later, in
1963, Randolph again led a march on Washington that secured landmark civil rights
legislation the following year.
The response of the black community to the failure of FEPC was strong and imme-
diate, as several factors came together. First, of course, was the fact that blacks had been
migrating to urban industrial centers, where their congregating under conditions of seg-
regation lent strength for joint action. Second, a significant number of African Amer-
icans had been educationally prepared and were ready for greater participation in the
work opportunities opened up by the war. Experience on Works Progress Administra-
tion (WPA) projects, vocational training received by way of the NYA’s vocational work
program, and defense training financed through programs sponsored by the U.S. Office
of Education, all pointed to a source of untapped and underutilized labor. The training
was in itself a promise of opportunity that remained unfulfilled, joining other promises
to a string of disappointments. The National Defense Advisory Committee’s statement
against discriminatory hiring practices in defense plants and President Roosevelt’s inclu-
sion of a similar statement in a message to Congress, both in 1940, failed to change the
situation. The efforts of the Office of Production Management’s Negro Employment
and Training Branch to facilitate the hiring of blacks in defense industries were unsuc-
cessful. Finally, the ineffectiveness of FEPC was demonstrated when its scheduled public
hearings into discrimination on railroads were canceled by the War Manpower Commis-
sion despite widespread support by the black press and civil rights leaders.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 233 02/01/17 1:37 PM
234 Chapter 7
To white Americans, the civil rights movement seemed to appear f rom nowhere,
but it was based on years of institutional and intellectual effort by blacks and whites
who were committed to equality and justice. Within the black community, the com-
mitment to pursuing integration by legal and political means grew out of organi-
zations like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that systematically attacked the legal
foundations of segregation. In addition, African American churches, which for decades
had accepted segregation, became central institutions for organizing the black com-
munity. Churches and labor unions were among the few places in the United States
where black and white Americans could come together as equals. Randolph’s Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters worked with other unions to put pressure on politicians
to support change and to spread methods to mobilize resistance to segregation. In
addition, an inf luential Af rican American press—Baltimore’s Afro-American, Harlem’s
Amsterdam Star News, the Chicago Defender, the Houston Informer, and so on—pushed
editorially for black rights and simultaneously encouraged blacks to make their own
demands.
After the war, the legal foundations of discrimination were systematically under-
mined by court decisions sparked by the Legal Defense Fund and other advocacy groups.
Discrimination in education, public accommodations, and real estate practices—like the
restrictive covenants that banned owners f rom selling to Jews or black Americans—were
declared unconstitutional. The court battles culminated in 1954 when in Brown v. Board
of Education, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that in public school education,
separate facilities for racial groups were inherently unequal.
The legal strategy was soon joined by direct action. Martin Luther King led the
Montgomery bus boycott to integrate public transportation. Students at historically
black colleges like Fisk University developed a set of tactics, including the sit-in, to press
their demand. During the early 1960s, organizations like the Southern Christian Lead-
ership Council, Congress for Racial Equality, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee led a series of actions to dramatize the impact of Jim Crow on black lives.
Future congressman John Lewis led the Freedom Rides to integrate public transporta-
tion in the South. In 1963, the growing civil rights movement organized a new March on
Washington to press for jobs and freedom. In contrast to previous efforts, the movement
of the early 1960s was successful in pushing the Congress to action—the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year.81
By late 1965, the movement entered a new stage. As it turned atten-
tion to continuing discrimination in the North, Northern white support for
the movement declined. Many poor urban African Americans, caught in a
revolution of rising expectations, engaged in riots in Los Angeles in 1965,
Newark and Detroit in 1967, and several cities including Washington, D.C.,
after King’s assassination in 1968. A housing act, outlawing discrimination in
selling or renting housing, marked the end of legislative efforts during the
Johnson administration.
A Renewed Feminist Movement
The entry of women into the labor force during World War II sparked significant
changes in the status of women during the next several decades. Although many women
resumed roles as homemakers after the war, feminist writers like Betty Friedan in her
1963 book explained the dissatisfaction that resulted from women’s restricted economic,
social, and political role.
During the early 1960s,
organizations like the
Southern Christian
Leadership Council,
Congress for Racial
Equality, and the Stu-
dent Nonviolent Coor-
dinating Committee led
a series of actions to
dramatize the impact of
Jim Crow on black lives.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 234 02/01/17 1:37 PM
War and Prosperity: 1940–1968 235
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to outlaw wage dispari-
ties based on gender, although those disparities continued. But the key legislative turning point
for the postwar feminist movement occurred almost by accident. At the end of the debate of
the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia successfully inserted
“sex” in the list of classes protected by the bill. Practically “below the radar,” equal rights for
women became the law of the land. Following the African American movement, feminists
also turned to direct action, including a protest at the Miss America contest in 1968 at which
products associated with traditional women’s roles were thrown into a “Freedom Trash Can.”
Although women’s undergarments were not one of the products, thanks to a New York Post
headline, the protest gave birth to the equation of feminists with “bra burners.”82
The civil rights movement, with its combination of direct action and legislative and
legal strategies, inspired other groups, including members of other ethnic and racial groups,
people with disabilities, and gay Americans to undertake similar actions. Taken together,
these efforts remade the nature of citizenship and rights over the following decades.
Civil Rights and Juvenile Justice
Social workers saw separation of money payments and services as a part of a new con-
cern for the rights of the poor. Spurred by the civil rights revolution, questions about the
rights of various groups in our society to social well-being were asked and answers were
demanded. Judicial and administrative decisions strengthened the rights of the aged, the
rights of the mentally ill, the rights of the retarded, the rights of tenants, the rights of
prisoners, the rights of minority groups, and the rights of women.
The rights of children, too, were reexamined. The Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in
In re Gault challenged the structure of juvenile justice that had existed since the Progres-
sive Era. As originally conceived in 1899, the juvenile court sought to protect children
f rom the impersonal legal processes of adult courts. Instead of an adversary approach,
the child was to be offered the friendly help of a fatherly judge who would see to individ-
ualized treatment and, if necessary, rehabilitation. Seventy years of experience with juve-
nile courts had demonstrated the reality that services for rehabilitative purposes were a
myth. In practice, the pretext of service was a substitute for justice. Children were incar-
cerated for indefinite periods. The rhetoric claimed training for a productive adult life;
the actuality most often proved quite the contrary.
In 1967, the Supreme Court decided that children in trouble with the law had many
of the legal rights of adults, including the right to counsel, to confidentiality, and to pro-
tection from self-incrimination. Justice Abe Fortas, writing the majority decision, stated:
While due process requirements will .;.;. introduce a degree of order and regularity
to juvenile court proceedings to determine delinquency, and in contested cases will
introduce some elements of the adversary system, nothing will require that the con-
ception of the kindly juvenile judge be replaced by its opposite.83
The child could have both, justice and service. The juvenile’s sudden right to “due pro-
cess” galvanized the entire judicial and probation systems to a reconsideration of legal
practices. In addition, the fact that there are legal aspects to all child welfare
programs and that workers in these programs have f requent contacts with
courts and lawyers fostered a reawakening of interest in the law on the part of
all social agencies and social welfare personnel engaged in services to children.
The Gault decision pointed out the need for a resolution of continuing value
conf licts in all areas of social welfare.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 235 02/01/17 1:37 PM
236
DOCuMEnTS
War and Prosperity
The documents used to support post–World War II occurrences in social welfare are Pres-
ident Kennedy’s Message on the Public Welfare Program (1962), excerpts from the Economic
Opportunity Act (1964), and the Supreme Court decision, In re Gault (1967). The documents
are all products of the 1960s and represent the climax of post–World War II effort to bring
economic aff luence to bear on the promises of American democracy. The documents rep-
resent executive, legislative, and judicial responses to the social welfare issues of the period.
President Kennedy’s message to Congress on public welfare programs was historic
in its having been the first presidential message entirely devoted to the subject. The
message, in effect, reiterates the thrust of Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
Abraham Ribicoff ’s memorandum to the commissioner of Social Security. That mem-
orandum bridged the efforts of the late 1950s to contain the growth of the public assis-
tance rolls and the new approach to public welfare legislated by the 1962 Public Welfare
Amendments. The secretary’s concern was to eliminate f raud, but more than that to
infuse public welfare—in reality, AFDC—with a philosophy geared to family stability and
family independence. The approach implied a pathological base for poverty and depen-
dence; therefore, the secretary pointed out the need for each state to assess its personnel
and training needs to carry out the objectives of a service-oriented program.
President Kennedy’s message announces the new orientation to family welfare. It
demonstrates administrative discretion at the federal level in shaping and regulating the
public assistance programs. It shows, too, the need for congressional action for autho-
rizing and funding new programs. In his leadership capacity, the president recommends
congressional support of a new approach to public assistance by providing for the relief
of unemployed parents, for community work and training projects, for the expansion
and upgrading of social work personnel, and for a consultative Advisory Council on Pub-
lic Welfare. The president’s recommendation of the “rehabilitative road” to change in
public welfare is couched in terms that plead for a demonstration of “the compassion of
free men .;.;. in the light of . . . constructive self-interest.”
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and its heralded War on Poverty were Presi-
dent Johnson’s extension of his predecessor’s compassion for the poor. The act was also
a response to a rediscovery of poverty, this time in the midst of economic plenty. The
demand of the poor and particularly of the black minority for participation in the country’s
economic life, for a share of its wealth, seemed eminently reasonable. In 1964, the country
was not yet so embroiled in the Southeast Asia conf licts that decisions about guns or butter
had to be made. It seemed possible to have both, and the president, believing that we had
the power to eliminate poverty, convinced the Congress that we had the duty to do so.
Ultimately, the Economic Opportunity Act was an abortive attempt to eliminate pov-
erty. Nevertheless, it was historically important as an effort to do so. Additionally, the
act made significant, perhaps permanent, contributions to social welfare in the United
States through the introduction of the maximum feasible participation concept, which,
at the least, led to some psychological and political gains in the power of minorities. This
new power was demonstrated and furthered by the CAP, among them Head Start and
community legal services, funded by the act. It must be pointed out, however, that the
overall thrust of the Economic Opportunity Act was one of “blaming the victim.” The act
was meant to change the poor and, in this way, open opportunities for them. Only inci-
dentally did organizations for structural change in “the system” arise.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 236 02/01/17 1:37 PM
237
The War on Poverty was waged in the context of a civil rights revolution. Led by the
black community, the United States was swept by demands for increased political, social,
and economic equality. Other racial and ethnic groups—Puerto Ricans and Native Amer-
icans, for example—added their protests. Many other groups banded together in a fight
for social justice. The Supreme Court decision in In re Gault represents a judicial response
to demand on behalf of the rights of one group of children.
The juvenile court had been formed to provide individualized treatment for chil-
dren. The erosion and subversion of the intent of the juvenile court is delineated in the
opinion written for the Supreme Court by Justice Abe Fortas. In effect, the court’s opin-
ion requires attention to due process, to legal rights, as the path to individualized justice
for children. The opinion denies that legal justice necessarily eliminates sympathy and
compassion or attention to therapeutic and rehabilitative needs of children. In fact, sug-
gests the opinion, “The essentials of due process . . . may be a more impressive and more
therapeutic attitude so far as the juvenile is concerned.”
The Fortas opinion had sweeping significance for children, for juvenile courts, and
for professionals operating in juvenile courts. By extension, the opinion had significance
for all of social welfare.
MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
PUBLIC WELFARE
February 1, 1962
H. Doc. No. 325
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
Few nations do more than the United States to assist their least fortunate citizens—
to make certain that no child, no elderly or handicapped citizen, no family in any circum-
stances in any State, is left without the essential needs for a decent and healthy existence.
In too few nations, I might add, are the people aware of the progressive strides this coun-
try has taken in demonstrating the humanitarian side of freedom. Our record is a proud
one—and it sharply refutes those who accuse us of thinking only in the materialistic
terms of cash registers and calculating machines.
Our basic public welfare programs were enacted more than a quarter century ago.
Their contribution to our national strength and well-being in the intervening years has
been remarkable.
But the times, the conditions, the problems have changed—and the nature and
objectives of our public assistance and child welfare programs must be changed, also, if
they are to meet our current needs.
The impact of these changes should not be underestimated.
People move more often—from the farm to the city, from urban centers to the sub-
urbs, from the East to the West, f rom the South to the North and Mid-west.
Living costs, and especially medical costs, have spiraled.
The pattern of our population has changed. There are more older people, more chil-
dren, more young marriages, divorces, desertions, and separations.
Our system of social insurance and related programs has grown greatly: In 1940,
less than 1 percent of the aged were receiving monthly old-age insurance benefits; today
over two-thirds of our aged are receiving these benefits. In 1940, only 21,000 children, in
families where the breadwinner had died, were getting survivor insurance benefits; today
such monthly benefits are being paid to about 2 million children.
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 237 02/01/17 1:37 PM
All of these changes affect the problems public welfare was intended to relieve as
well as its ability to relieve it. Moreover, even the nature and causes of poverty have
changed. At the time the Social Security Act established our present basic f ramework
for public aid, the major cause of poverty was unemployment and economic depression.
Today, in a year of relative prosperity and high employment, we are more concerned
about the poverty that persists in the midst of abundance.
The reasons are often more social than economic, more often subtle than sim-
ple. Some are in need because they are untrained for work—some because they can-
not work, because they are too young or too old, blind or crippled. Some are in need
because they are discriminated against for reasons they cannot help. Responding to
their ills with scorn or suspicion is inconsistent with our moral precepts and incon-
sistent with their nearly universal preference to be independent. But merely respond-
ing with a relief check to complicated social or personal problems—such as ill health,
faulty education, domestic discord, racial discrimination, or inadequate skills—is not
likely to provide a lasting solution. Such a check must be supplemented, or in some
cases made unnecessary, by positive services and solutions, offering the total resources
of the community to meet the total needs of the family to help our less fortunate citi-
zens help themselves.
Public welfare, in short, must be more than a salvage operation, picking up the debris
from the wreckage of human lives. Its emphasis must be directed increasingly toward preven-
tion and rehabilitation—on reducing not only the long-range cost in budgetary terms but the
long-range cost in human terms as well. Poverty weakens individuals and nations. Sounder
public welfare policies will benefit the Nation, its economy, its morale, and, most importantly,
its people.
Under the various titles of the Social Security Act, funds are available to help the
States provide assistance and other social services to the needy, aged and blind, to the
needy disabled, and to dependent children. In addition, grants are available to assist the
States to expand and strengthen their programs of child welfare services. These pro-
grams are essentially State programs. But the Federal Government, by its substantial
financial contribution, its leadership, and the standards it sets, bears a major responsibil-
ity. To better fulfill this responsibility, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
recently introduced a number of administrative changes designed to get people off assis-
tance and back into useful, productive roles in society.
These changes provided for:
The more effective location of deserting parents;
An effort to reduce that proportion of persons receiving assistance through willful
misrepresentation, although that proportion is only a small part of the 1.5 percent of
persons on the rolls found to be ineligible;
Allowing dependent children to save money for educational, employment or medi-
cal needs without having that amount deducted from their public assistance grants;
Providing special services and safeguards to children in families of unmarried par-
ents, in families where the father has deserted, or in homes in danger of becoming mor-
ally or physically unsuitable; and
An improvement in the training of personnel, the development of services and the
coordination of agency efforts.
In keeping with this new emphasis, the name of the Bureau of Public Assistance has
been changed to the Bureau of Family Services.
But only so much can be done by administrative changes. New legislation is required
if our State-operated programs are to be fully able to meet modern needs.
238
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 238 02/01/17 1:37 PM
239
I. PREVENTION AND REHABILITATION
As already mentioned, we must place more stress on services instead of relief.
I recommend that the States be encouraged by the offer of additional Federal
funds to strengthen and broaden the rehabilitative and preventive services they offer
to persons who are dependent or who would otherwise become dependent. Additional
Federal funds would induce and assist the States to establish or augment their reha-
bilitation services, strengthen their child welfare services, and add to their number of
competent public welfare personnel. At the present time, the cost of these essential
services is lumped with all administrative costs—routine clerical and office functions—
and the Federal Government pays one-half of the total of all such costs incurred by
the States. By separating out and identifying the cost of these essential rehabilitation,
social work and other service costs, and paying the States three-fourths of such ser-
vices—a step I earnestly recommend for your consideration—the Federal Government
will enable and encourage the States to provide more comprehensive and effective ser-
vices to rehabilitate those on welfare. The existing law should also be amended to per-
mit the use of Federal funds for utilization by the State welfare agency of specialists
f rom other State agencies who can help mount a concerted attack on the problems of
dependency.
There are other steps we can take which will have an important effect on this
effort. One of these is to expand and improve the Federal–State program of voca-
tional rehabilitation for disabled people. Among the 92,500 disabled men and women
successfully rehabilitated into employment through this program last year were
about 15,000 who had formerly been receiving public assistance. Let me repeat this
figure: 15,000 people, formerly supported by the taxpayers through welfare, are now
back at work as self-supporting taxpayers. Much more of this must be done—until
we are restoring to employment every disabled person who can benefit f rom these
rehabilitation services.
The prevention of future adult poverty and dependency must begin with the care
of dependent children—those who must receive public welfare by virtue of a parent’s
death, disability, desertion, or unemployment. Our society not only refuses to leave
such children hungry, cold, and devoid of opportunity—we are insistent that such chil-
dren not be community liabilities throughout their lives. Yet children who grow up
in deprivation, without adequate protection, may be poorly equipped to meet adult
responsibilities.
The Congress last year approved, on a temporary basis, aid for the dependent chil-
dren of the unemployed as a part of the permanent aid-to-dependent-children pro-
gram. This legislation also included temporary provisions for foster care where the
child had been removed f rom his home, and an increase in Federal financial assistance
to the aged, blind, and disabled. The need for these temporary improvements has not
abated, and their merit is clear. I recommend that these temporary provisions be made
permanent.
But children need more than aid when they are destitute. We need to improve our
preventive and protective services for children as well as adults. I recommend that the
present ceiling of $25 million authorized for annual appropriations for grants to the
States for child welfare services be gradually raised, beginning with $30 million for 1963,
up to $50 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1969, and succeeding years.
Finally, many women now on assistance rolls could obtain jobs and become self-sup-
porting if local day-care programs for their young children were available. The need for
such programs for the children, the children of working mothers has been increasing
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 239 02/01/17 1:37 PM
240
rapidly. Of the 22 million women now working, about 3 million have children under 6,
and another 41/2 million have school-age children between 6 and 17. Adequate care for
these children during their most formative years is essential to their proper growth and
training. Therefore, I recommend that the child welfare provisions of the Social Security
Act be changed to authorize earmarking up to $5 million of grants to the States in 1963
and $10 million a year thereafter for aid in establishing local programs for the day care of
young children of working mothers.
II. PROMOTING NEW SKILLS AND INDEPENDENCE
We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to indepen-
dence. We must find ways of returning them to a participating and productive role in the
community.
One sure way is by providing the opportunity every American cherishes to do
sound and useful work. For this reason, I am recommending a change in the law to
permit States to maintain, with Federal financial help, community work and training
projects for unemployed people receiving welfare payments. Under such a program,
unemployed people on welfare would be helped to retain their work skills or learn
new ones; and the local community would obtain additional manpower on public
projects.
But earning one’s welfare payments through required participation in a community
work or training project must be an opportunity for the individual on welfare, not a
penalty. Federal financial participation will be conditioned upon proof that the work will
serve a useful community or public purpose, will not displace regular employees, will
not impair prevailing wages and working conditions, and will be accompanied by certain
basic health and safety protections. Provisions must also be made to assure appropriate
arrangements for the care and protection of children during the absence from home of
any parent performing work or undergoing training.
Moreover, systematic encouragement would be given all welfare recipients to
obtain vocational counseling, testing, and placement services from the U.S. Employment
Service and to secure useful training wherever new job skills would be helpful. Close
cooperative arrangements would be established with existing training and vocational
education programs, and with the vocational and on-the-job training opportunities to be
created under the manpower development and training and youth employment opportu-
nities programs previously proposed.
III. MORE SKILLED PERSONNEL
It is essential that State and local welfare agencies be staffed with enough qualified
personnel to insure constructive and adequate attention to the problems of needy indi-
viduals—to take the time to help them find and hold a job—to prevent public depen-
dency, and to strive, where that is not possible, for rehabilitation—and to ascertain
promptly whether any individual is receiving aid for which he does not qualify, so that aid
can be promptly withdrawn.
Unfortunately, there is an acute shortage of trained personnel in all our welfare pro-
grams. The lack of experienced social workers for programs dealing with children and
their families is especially critical.
At the present time, when States expend funds for the training of personnel
for the administration of these programs, they receive Federal grants on a dol-
lar-for-dollar basis. This arrangement has failed to produce a sufficient number of
240
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 240 02/01/17 1:37 PM
trained staff, especially social workers. I recommend, therefore, that Federal assis-
tance to the States for training additional welfare personnel be increased; and that
in addition, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare be authorized to make
special arrangements for the training of family welfare personnel to work with those
children whose parents have deserted, whose parents are unmarried, or who have
other serious problems.
IV. FITTING GENERAL CONDITIONS OR SAFEGUARDS
TO INDIVIDUAL NEEDS
In order to make certain that welfare funds go only to needy people, the Social Secu-
rity Act requires the States to take all income and resources of the applicant into consid-
eration in determining need. Although Federal law permits, it does not require States to
take into full account the full expenses individuals have in earning income. This is not
consistent with equity, common sense, or other Federal laws such as our tax code. It only
discourages the will to earn. In order to encourage assistance recipients to find and retain
employment, I, therefore, recommend that the act be amended to require the States to
take into account the expenses of earning income.
Among relatives caring for dependent children are a few who do not properly han-
dle their assistance payments—some to the extent that the well-being of the child is
adversely affected. Where the State determines that a relative’s ability to manage money
is contrary to the welfare of the child, Federal law presently requires payments to be
made to a legal guardian or representative, if Federal funds are to be used. But this gen-
eral requirement may sometimes block progress in particular situations. In order to
recognize the necessity for each State to make exceptions to this rule in a very limited
number of cases, I recommend that the law be amended to permit Federal sharing to
continue even though protective payments in behalf of children—not to exceed one-half
of 1 percent of ADC recipients in each State—are made to other persons concerned with
the welfare of the family. The States would be required to reexamine these exceptions at
intervals to determine whether a more permanent arrangement such as guardianship is
required.
When first enacted, the aid to dependent children program provided for Federal
sharing in assistance payments only to the child. Since 1950, there has been Federal shar-
ing in any assistance given to one adult in the household as well as to the child or chil-
dren. In as much as under current law, there may be two parents in homes covered by
this program, one incapacitated or unemployed, I recommend in the interest of equity
the extension of Federal sharing in assistance payments both to the needy relative and to
his or her spouse when both are living in the home with the child.
V. MORE EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION
Under present public assistance provisions, States may impose residence require-
ments up to 5 of the last 9 years for the aged, blind, and disabled. Increased mobility, as
previously mentioned, is a hallmark of our times. It should not operate unfairly on either
an individual State or an individual family. I recommend that the Social Security Act be
amended so as to provide that States receiving Federal funds not exclude any otherwise
eligible persons who have been residents of the State for 1 year immediately preceding
their application for assistance. I also recommend that the law be amended to provide a
small increase in assistance funds to those States which simplify their laws by removing
all residence requirements in any of their federally aided programs.
241
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 241 02/01/17 1:37 PM
242
In view of the changing nature of the economic and social problems of the
country, the desirability of a periodic review of our public welfare programs is obvi-
ous. For that purpose I propose that the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
be authorized to appoint an Advisory Council on Public Welfare representing broad
community interests and concerns, and such other advisory committees as he deems
necessary to advise and consult with him in the administration of the Social Security
Act.
No study of the public welfare program can fail to note the difficulty of the prob-
lems faced or the need to be imaginative in dealing with them. Accordingly, I recom-
mend that amendments be made to encourage experimental, pilot or demonstration
projects that would promote the objectives of the assistance titles and help make our
welfare programs more f lexible and adaptable to local needs.
The simplification and coordination of administration and operation would greatly
improve the adequacy and consistency of assistance and related services. As a step in
that direction, I recommend that a new title to the Social Security Act be enacted which
would give to States the option of submitting a single, unified State plan combining their
assistance programs for aged, blind and disabled, and their medical assistance programs
for the aged, granting to such States additional Federal matching for medical payments
on behalf of the blind and disabled.
These proposed far-reaching changes—aimed at far-reaching problems—are in
the public interest and in keeping with our finest traditions. The goals of our public
welfare programs must be positive and constructive—to create economic and social
opportunities for the less fortunate—to help them find productive, happy, and inde-
pendent lives. It must stress the integrity and preservation of the family unit. It must
contribute to the attack on dependency, juvenile delinquency, family breakdown, ille-
gitimacy, ill health, and disability. It must reduce the incidence of these problems, pre-
vent their occurrence and recurrence, and strengthen and protect the vulnerable in a
highly competitive world.
Unless such problems are dealt with effectively, they fester, and grow, sapping the
strength of society as a whole and extending their consequences in troubled families
from one generation to the next.
The steps I recommend to you today to alleviate these problems will not come
cheaply. They will cost more money when first enacted. But they will restore human dig-
nity; and in the long run, they will save money. I have recommended in the budget sub-
mitted for fiscal year 1963 sufficient funds to cover the extension of existing programs
and the new legislation here proposed.
Communities which have—for whatever motives—attempted to save money
through ruthless and arbitrary cutbacks in their welfare rolls have found their efforts to
little avail. The root problems remained.
But communities which have tried the rehabilitative road—the road I have recom-
mended today—have demonstrated what can be done with creative, thoughtfully con-
ceived and properly managed programs of prevention and social rehabilitation. In those
communities families have been restored to self-reliance, and relief rolls have been
reduced.
To strengthen our human resources—to demonstrate the compassion of f ree
men—and in the light of our own constructive self-interest—we must bring our welfare
programs up to date. I urge that the Congress do so without delay.
***
242
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 242 02/01/17 1:37 PM
THE WAR ON POVERTY
THE ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964
Document
No. 86
PUBLIC Law 88-452—Aug. 20, 1964 [78 Stat.]
AN ACT
To mobilize the human and financial resources of the
Nation to combat poverty
in the United States
Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled. That this Act may be cited as the “Economic Oppor-
tunity Act of 1964.”
FINDINGS AND DECLARATION OF PURPOSE
S&’. 2. Although the economic well-being and prosperity of the United States have
progressed to a level surpassing any achieved in world history, and although these ben-
efits are widely shared throughout the Nation, poverty continues to be the lot of a sub-
stantial number of our people. The United States can achieve its full economic and social
potential as a nation only if every individual has the opportunity to contribute to the full
extent of his capabilities and to participate in the workings of our society. It is, therefore,
the policy of the United States to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty
in this Nation by opening to everyone the opportunity for education and training, the
opportunity to work, and the opportunity to live in decency and dignity. It is the pur-
pose of this Act to strengthen, supplement, and coordinate efforts in furtherance of that
policy.
TITLE I—YOUTH PROGRAMS
P”#* A—J.6 C.#0%
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 101. The purpose of this part is to prepare for the responsibilities of citizenship
and to increase the employability of young men and young women aged sixteen through
twenty-one by providing them in rural and urban residential centers with education,
vocational training, useful work experience, including work directed toward the conser-
vation of natural resources, and other appropriate activities.
P”#* B—W.#=-T#”)-)-2 P#.2#”$%
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
SEC. 111. The purpose of this part is to provide useful work experience opportuni-
ties for unemployed young men and young women, through participation in State and
community work-training programs, so that their employability may be increased or
88th Congress
2d Session
August 20, 1964
(s 2642)
Economic
Opportunity
Act of 1964
Unemployed
youth, work-
experience
opportunities
Public Law 88-452
243
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 243 02/01/17 1:37 PM
244
their education resumed or continued and so that public agencies and private nonprofit
organizations (other than political parties) will be enabled to carry out programs which
will permit or contribute to an undertaking or service in the public interest that would
not otherwise be provided, or will contribute to the conservation and development of
natural resources and recreational areas. . . .
P”#* C—W.#=-S*(,+ P#.2#”$%
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 121. The purpose of this part is to stimulate and promote the part-time
employment of students in institutions of higher education who are f rom low-income
families and are in need of the earnings f rom such employment to pursue courses of
study at such institutions. . . .
TITLE II—URBAN AND RURAL COMMUNITY
ACTION PROGRAMS
P”#* A—G&-&#”3 C.$$(-)*+ A’*).- P#.2#”$%
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 201. The purpose of this part is to provide stimulation and incentive for urban
and rural communities to mobilize their resources to combat poverty through commu-
nity action programs.
COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS
S&’. 202. (a) The term “community action program” means a program—
(1) which mobilizes and utilizes resources, public or private, of any urban or rural,
or combined urban and rural, geographical area (referred to in this part as a “commu-
nity”), including but not limited to a State, metropolitan area, county, city, town, multic-
ity unit, or multicounty unit in an attack on poverty;
(2) which provides services, assistance, and other activities of sufficient scope and
size to give promise of progress toward elimination of poverty or a cause or causes
of poverty through developing employment opportunities, improving human perfor-
mance, motivation, and productivity, or bettering the conditions under which people
live, learn, and work;
(3) which is developed, conducted, and administered with the maximum feasible
participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served; and
(4) which is conducted, administered, or coordinated by a public or private non-
profit agency (other than a political party), or a combination thereof. . . .
P”#* C—V.3(-*”#+ A%%)%*”-‘& P#.2#”$
!.# N&&,+ C1)3,#&-
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 219. The purpose of this part is to allow individual Americans to participate in a
personal way in the war on poverty, by voluntarily assisting in the support of one or more
needy children, in a program coordinated with city or county social welfare agencies.
Students,
part-time
employment
244
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 244 02/01/17 1:37 PM
AUTHORITY TO ESTABLISH INFORMATION CENTER
S&’. 220. (a) In order to carry out the purposes of this part, the Director is autho-
rized to establish a section within the Office of Economic Opportunity to act as an infor-
mation and coordination center to encourage voluntary assistance for deserving and
needy children. Such section shall collect the names of persons who voluntarily desire
to assist financially such children and shall secure f rom city or county social welfare
agencies such information concerning deserving and needy children as the Director shall
deem appropriate.
(b) It is the intent of the Congress that the section established pursuant to this part
shall act solely as an information and coordination center and that nothing in this part
shall be construed as interfering with the jurisdiction of State and local welfare agencies
with respect to programs for needy children. . . .
TITLE III—SPECIAL PROGRAMS TO COMBAT
POVERTY IN RURAL AREAS
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 301. It is the purpose of this title to meet some of the special problems of rural
poverty and thereby to raise and maintain the income and living standards of low-in-
come rural families and migrant agricultural employees and their families.
P”#* A—A(*1.#)*+ *. M”=& G#”-*% “-, L.”-%
S&’. 302. (a) The Director is authorized to make—
(1) loans having a maximum maturity of 15 years and in amounts not exceeding
$2,500 in the aggregate to any low income rural family where, in the judgment of the
Director, such loans have a reasonable possibility of affecting a permanent increase in
the income of such families by assisting or permitting them to—
(A) acquire or improve real estate or reduce encumbrances or erect improvements
thereon,
(B) operate or improve the operation of farms not larger than family sized, includ-
ing but not limited to the purchase of feed, seed, fertilizer, livestock, poultry, and equip-
ment, or
(C) participate in cooperative associations; and/or to finance nonagricultural
enterprises which will enable such families to supplement their income.
(D) Loans under this section shall be made only if the family is not qualified to
obtain such funds by loan under other Federal programs. . . .
TITLE IV—EMPLOYMENT AND INVESTMENT INCENTIVES
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 401. It is the purpose of this title to assist in the establishment, preservation, and
strengthening of small business concerns and improve the managerial skills employed in such
enterprises; and to mobilize for these objectives private as well as public managerial skills and
resources. . . .
Small business
concerns,
assistance
245
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 245 02/01/17 1:37 PM
TITLE V—WORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAMS
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
S&’. 501. It is the purpose of this title to expand the opportunities for constructive
work experience and other needed training available to persons who are unable to sup-
port or care for themselves or their families. In carrying out this purpose, the Director
shall make maximum use of the programs available under the Manpower Develop-
ment and Training Act of 1962, as amended, and Vocational Education Act of 1963. . . .
VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA
S&’. 603. (a) The Director is authorized to recruit, select, train, and—
(1) upon request of State or local agencies or private nonprofit organizations, refer
volunteers to perform duties in furtherance of programs combating poverty at a State or
local level; and
(2) in cooperation with other Federal, State, or local agencies involved, assign vol-
unteers to work (A) in meeting the health, education, welfare, or related needs of Indi-
ans living on reservations, of migratory workers and their families, or of residents of
the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa,
the Virgin Islands, or the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands; (B) in the care and reha-
bilitation of the mentally ill or mentally retarded under treatment at non-profit men-
tal health or mental retardation facilities assisted in their construction or operation by
Federal funds; and (C) in furtherance of programs or activities authorized or supported
under title I or II of this Act.
***
U.S. SUPREME COURT’ DECISION
In re Gault et al. No. 116
Argued December 6, 1966; Decided May 15, 1967
I
On Monday, June 8, 1964, at about 10 “.$., Gerald Francis Gault and a friend, Roland
Lewis, were taken into custody by the Sheriff of Gila County. Gerald was then still subject
to a six months’ probation order which had been entered on Feb. 25, 1964, as a result of his
having been in the company of another boy who had stolen a wallet from a lady’s purse.
The police action on June 8 was taken as a result of a verbal complaint by a neighbor of
the boys, Mrs. Cook, about a telephone call made to her in which the caller or callers made
lewd or indecent remarks. It will suffice for purposes of this opinion to say that the remarks
or questions put to her were of the irritatingly offensive, adolescent, sex variety. . . .
The judge committed Gerald as a juvenile delinquent to the State Industrial School
“for the period of his minority [that is, until 21], unless sooner discharged by due process
of law.” [Gerald was 15.] . . .
II
It is claimed that juveniles obtain benefits f rom the special procedures applicable to
them which more than offset the substance of normal due process. As we shall discuss,
the observance of due process standards, intelligently and not ruthlessly administered, will
not compel the States to abandon or displace any of the substantive benefits of the juve-
246
76 Stat. 23, 42
USC2571 note.
77 Stat. 403, 20
USC 35 note
Recruitment and
assignment
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 246 02/01/17 1:37 PM
247
nile process. But it is important, we think, that the claimed benefits of the juvenile process
should be candidly appraised. Neither sentiment nor folklore should cause us to shut our
eyes, for example, to such startling findings as that reported in an exceptionally reliable
study of repeaters or recidivism conducted by the Stanford Research Institute for the Presi-
dent’s Commission on Crime in the District of Columbia. This commission’s report states:
“In fiscal 1966 approximately 66 per cent of the 16- and 17-year-old juveniles referred to
the court by the Youth Aid Division had been before the court previously. In 1965, 56 per cent
of those in the receiving home were repeaters. The S.R.I. study revealed that 61 per cent of
the sample juvenile court referrals in 1965 had been previously referred at least once and that
42 per cent had been referred at least twice before.”
Certainly, these figures and the high crime rates among juveniles could not lead us
to conclude that the absence of constitutional protections reduces crime, or that the
juvenile system, functioning f ree of constitutional inhibitions as it has largely done, is
effective to reduce crime or rehabilitate offenders. We do not mean by this to denigrate
the juvenile court process. . . .
But the features of the juvenile system which its proponents have asserted are of
unique benefit will not be impaired by constitutional domestication. For example, the
commendable principles relating to the processing and treatment of juveniles separately
from adults are in no way involved or affected by the procedural issues under discussion.
Further, we are told that one of the important benefits of the special juvenile
court procedures is that they avoid classifying the juvenile as a “criminal.” The juvenile
offender is now classed as a “delinquent. . . .” It is disconcerting, however, that this term
has come to involve only slightly less stigma than the term “criminal” applied to adults.
It is also emphasized that in practically all jurisdictions, statutes provide that an adjudica-
tion of the child as a delinquent shall not operate as a civil disability or disqualify him for
civil service appointment. There is no reason why the application of due process require-
ments should interfere with such provisions.
Beyond this, it is f requently said that juveniles are protected by the process f rom
disclosure of their deviational behavior. As the Supreme Court of Arizona phrased it in
the present case, the summary procedures of Juvenile Courts are sometimes defended by
a statement that it is the law’s policy “to hide youthful errors f rom the full gaze of the
public and bury them in the graveyard of the forgotten past.”
This claim of secrecy, however, is more rhetoric than reality. Disclosure of court
records is discretionary with the judge in most jurisdictions. Statutory restrictions almost
invariably apply only to the court records, and even as to those the evidence is that many
courts routinely furnish information to the F.B.I. and the military, and on request to gov-
ernment agencies and even to private employers. Of more importance are police records.
In most states the police keep a complete file of juvenile “police contacts” and have com-
plete discretion as to disclosure of juvenile records. Police departments receive requests
for information from the F.B.I. and other law-enforcement agencies, the Armed Forces,
and social service agencies, and most of them generally comply. . . .
In any event, there is no reason why consistently with due process, a State cannot
continue, if it deems it appropriate, to provide and to improve provision for the confiden-
tiality of records of police contacts and court action relating to juveniles. It is interesting
to note, however, that the Arizona Supreme Court used the confidentiality argument as
a justification for the type of notice which is here attacked as inadequate for due process
purposes. The parents were given merely general notice that their child was charged
with “delinquency.” No facts were specified. The Arizona court held, however, that in
addition to this general “notice,” the child and his parents must be advised “of the facts
involved in the case” no later than the initial hearing by the judge. Obviously, this does
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 247 02/01/17 1:37 PM
not “bury” the word about the child’s transgressions. It merely defers the time of disclo-
sure to a point when it is of limited use to the child or his parents in preparing his defense
or explanation. . . .
The early conception of the juvenile court proceeding was one in which a fatherly
judge touched the heart and conscience of the erring youth by talking over his problems, by
paternal advice and admonition, and in which, in extreme situations, benevolent and wise
institutions of the state provided guidance and help “to save him from a downward career.”
Then, as now, goodwill and compassion were admirably prevalent. But recent stud-
ies have, with surprising unanimity, entered sharp dissent as to the validity of this gentle
conception. They suggest that the appearance as well as the actuality of fairness, impar-
tiality and orderliness—in short, the essentials of due process—may be a more impres-
sive and more therapeutic attitude so far as the juvenile is concerned. . . .
It is not suggested that juvenile court judges should fail appropriately to take
account, in their demeanor and conduct, of the emotional and psychological attitude of
the juveniles with whom they are confronted. While due process requirements will, in
some instances, introduce a degree of order and regularity to Juvenile Court proceedings
to determine delinquency, and in contested cases will introduce some elements of the
adversary system, nothing will require that the conception of the kindly juvenile judge
be replaced by its opposite, nor do we here rule upon the question whether ordinary due
process requirements must be observed with respect to hearings to determine the dispo-
sition of the delinquent child.
Ultimately, however, we confront the reality of that portion of the Juvenile Court
process with which we deal in this case. A boy is charged with misconduct. The boy is
committed to an institution where he may be restrained of liberty for years. It is of no
constitutional consequence—and of limited practical meaning—that the institution to
which he is committed is called an Industrial School. The fact of the matter is that, how-
ever euphemistic the title, a “receiving home” or an “industrial school” for juveniles is
an institution of confinement. His world becomes “a building with white-washed walls,
regimented routine and institutional hours. . . .”
Instead of mother and father and sisters and brothers and f riends and classmates,
his world is peopled by guards, custodians, state employees, and “delinquents” confined
with him for anything from waywardness to rape and homicide.
In view of this, it would be extraordinary if our Constitution did not require the
procedural regularity and the exercise of care implied in the phrase “due process.” Under
our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court.;.;.;.
If Gerald had been over 18, he would not have been subject to Juvenile Court proceed-
ings. For the particular offense immediately involved, the maximum punishment would
have been a fine of $5 to $50, or imprisonment in jail for not more than two months.
Instead, he was committed to custody for a maximum of six years. If he had been
over 18 and had committed an offense to which such a sentence might apply, he would
have been entitled to substantial rights under the Constitution of the United States as well
as under Arizona’s laws and constitution. The United States Constitution would guar-
antee him rights and protections with respect to arrest, search and seizure, and pretrial
interrogations. It would assure him of specific notice of the charges and adequate time
to decide his course of action and to prepare his defense. He would be entitled to clear
advice that he could be represented by counsel, and, at least if a felony were involved, the
state would be required to provide counsel if his parents were unable to afford it.
If the court acted on the basis of his confession, careful procedures would be
required to assure its voluntariness. If the case went to trial, confrontation and oppor-
248
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 248 02/01/17 1:37 PM
249
tunity for cross-examination would be guaranteed. So wide a gulf between the State’s
treatment of the adult and of the child requires a bridge sturdier than mere verbiage, and
reasons more persuasive than cliche can provide. . . .
III
Notice of Charges
Appellants allege that the Arizona juvenile code is unconstitutional or alternatively
that the proceedings before the juvenile court were constitutionally defective because of
failure to provide adequate notice of the hearings.
No notice was given to Gerald’s parents when he was taken into custody, on Mon-
day, June 8. On that night, when Mrs. Gault went to the Detention Home, she was orally
informed that there would be a hearing the next afternoon and was told the reason why
Gerald was in custody. The only written notice Gerald’s parents received at any time was a
note on plain paper from Officer Flagg delivered on Thursday or Friday, June 11 or 12, to the
effect that the judge had set Monday, June 15, “for further hearings on Gerald’s delinquency.”
A “petition” was filed with the court on June 9 by Officer Flagg, reciting only that he
was informed and believed that “said minor is a delinquent minor and that it is necessary
that some order be made by the honorable court for said minor’s welfare.”
The applicable Arizona statute provides for a petition to be filed in juvenile court, alleg-
ing in general terms that the child is “neglected, dependent, or delinquent.” The statute
explicitly states that such a general allegation is sufficient, “without alleging the facts.” . . .
We cannot agree with the court’s conclusion that adequate notice was given to this
case. Notice, to comply with due process requirements, must be given sufficiently in
advance of scheduled court proceedings so that reasonable opportunity to prepare will
be afforded, and it must “set forth the alleged misconduct with particularity.” . . .
IV
Right to Counsel
Appellants charge that the Juvenile Court proceedings were fatally defective because
the court did not advise Gerald or his parents of their right to counsel, and proceeded
with the hearing, the adjudication of delinquency and the order of commitment in the
absence of counsel for the child and his parents or an express waiver of the right thereto.
The Supreme Court of Arizona pointed out that “[t]here is disagreement [among the
various jurisdictions] as to whether the court must advise the infant that he has a right to
counsel.” . . . It referred to a provision of the juvenile code which it characterized as requir-
ing “that the probation officer shall look after the interests of neglected, delinquent and
dependent children,” including representing their interests in court. The court argued that
“the parents and the probation officer may be relied upon to protect the infant’s interests.”
Accordingly it rejected the proposition that “due process requires that an infant have
a right to counsel.” It said that juvenile courts have the discretion, but not the duty, to
allow such representation; it referred specifically to the situation in which the juvenile
court discerns conf lict between the child and his parents as an instance in which this dis-
cretion might be exercised.
We do not agree. Probation officers in the Arizona scheme are also arresting offi-
cers. They initiate proceedings and file petitions which they verify, as here, alleging the
delinquency of the child; and they testify, as here, against the child.
The probation officer cannot act as counsel for the child. His role in the adjudicatory
hearing is as arresting officer and witness against the child. Nor can the judge represent
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 249 02/01/17 1:37 PM
250
the child. There is no material difference in this respect between adult and juvenile pro-
ceedings of the sort here involved. In adult proceedings, this contention has been fore-
closed by decisions of this court. A proceeding where the issue is whether the child will
be found to be “delinquent” and subjected to the loss of his liberty for years is compara-
ble in seriousness to a felony prosecution.
The juvenile needs the assistance of counsel to cope with problems of law, to make
skilled inquiry into the facts, to insist upon regularity of the proceedings, and to ascer-
tain whether he has a defense and to prepare and submit it. . . .
We conclude that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires
that in respect of proceedings to determine delinquency which may result in commit-
ment to an institution in which the juvenile’s freedom is curtailed, the child and his parent
must be notified of the child’s right to be represented by counsel retained by them, or if
they are unable to afford counsel, that counsel will be appointed to represent the child.
At the habeas corpus proceeding, Mrs. Gault testified that she knew that she could
have appeared with counsel at the juvenile hearing. This knowledge is not a waiver of
the right to counsel which she and her juvenile son had, as we have defined it. They had
a right expressly to be advised that they might retain counsel. . . .
V
Confrontation, Self-Incrimination, Cross-Examination
Appellants urge that the writ of habeas corpus should have been granted because
of the denial of the rights of confrontation and cross-examination in the Juvenile Court
hearings, and because the privilege against self-incrimination was not observed. . . .
It would indeed be surprising if the privilege against self-incrimination were avail-
able to hardened criminals but not to children. The language of the Fifth Amendment,
applicable to the states by operation of the 14th Amendment, is unequivocal and with-
out exception. . . .
With respect to juveniles, both common observation and expert opinion emphasize
that the “distrust of confessions made in certain situations” is imperative in the case of
children from early age through adolescence.
In New York, for example, the recently enacted Family Court Act provides that the
juvenile and his parents must be advised at the start of the hearing of his right to remain
silent. The New York statute also provides that the police must attempt to communicate
with the juvenile’s parents before questioning him, and that a confession may not be
obtained f rom a child prior to notifying his parents or relatives and releasing the child
either to them or the Family Court. . . .
It is also urged, as the Supreme Court of Arizona here asserted, that the juvenile and
presumably his parents should not be advised of the juvenile’s right to silence because
confession is good for the child as the commencement of the assumed therapy of the
juvenile court process, and he should be encouraged to assume an attitude of trust and
confidence toward the officials of the juvenile process.
United States Reports, Vol. 387, Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), pp. 1–81.
?
M07_STER9913_09_SE_C07.indd 250 02/01/17 1:37 PM
251
LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Describe the major economic and
social trends that inf luenced social
welfare between 1 and 1 .
• Summarize the major changes in the
social welfare system during these
years.
• E plain how social movements
inf luenced social welfare policy
between 1 and 1 .
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Economic and Social Trends
A Struggling Economy 252
Changing Employment
Patterns 253
The Changing Family 254
Poverty and Income
Distribution 256
Innovations in Social elfare
Expenditures for Social Welfare 258
Challenging the Welfare State:
Welfare Reform 260
Child Welfare and the Aging 263
The Unemployed 266
Veterans 268
Personal Social Services 268
Social Movements
The New Right 269
The Expansion of Civil Rights 270
Women 274
Conclusion
DOCUMENTS: Conservative
esurgence and Social Change
Message on Reform in Welfare,
1969 277
Standard of Review for Termination of
Disability Benefits, 1984 283
8
Conservative
Resurgence and Social
Change: 1968–1992
In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed the amendments to the
Economic Opportunity Act. The veto was not that surprising.
After all, this legislation carried on many War on Poverty programs
that Nixon and his party had opposed. What was startling was the
tone of his objections. Nixon abandoned traditional mainstream
conservative objections to the cost and potential waste associated
with social welfare programs and instead focused on its potential
for undermining the American family. In his veto message, Nixon
asserted that “for the Federal Government to plunge headlong
financially into supporting child development would commit the
vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of
communal approaches to child-rearing over [and] against the fam-
ily-centered approach.”1 Within a year, the battle over the family
widened with the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade that
American women had a constitutional right to abortion services.
Congressional passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution in 1972 set off another symbolic battle over the nature
of gender and the relationship of the public and private spheres.
!”
#$
%&
‘
“(
)*
#+
,&
‘,
,’
*.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 251 02/01/17 1:38 PM
252 Chapter 8
Two major forces framed the history of social welfare between 1968 and 1992. First,
in contrast to the previous two decades, the economy grew at a much slower pace. The
transition to a postindustrial, information economy combined with a deliberate effort to
control inf lation to keep economic growth slow and unemployment high. As a result,
public welfare faced a host of new demands for services and benefits at a time when
there was little economic growth to pay for them.
Second, the 1971 veto message marked the beginning of a sustained ideological
attack on social welfare programs. The conservative New Right was deeply suspicious
of all government programs and saw social welfare as connected to the declining com-
petitiveness of the American economy, the weakening of its family structure, and the
general decline of American moral character.
For a time, the economic conservatism of the battle against inf lation and the social
conservatism of the battle over the family combined to form a powerful social move-
ment that sought to reduce fundamentally the public commitment to social welfare.
President Ronald Reagan used the early years of his presidency to lay out a new depar-
ture for social welfare, one that would shift power f rom the federal government to the
states, f rom the public sector to voluntary associations, from open-ended “entitlements”
to federal aid to limited block grants.
For the most part, “Reaganism” did not accomplish its goals. The structure of social
welfare in 1992 looked more or less the way it had a decade earlier. However, the large
tax cuts implemented by Congress and the president in 1981 combined with slow eco-
nomic growth to limit the reach and effectiveness of existing programs. Rather than
marking a new departure in social welfare, the 1980s were a period of declining effective-
ness and the neglect of new, pressing social problems such as homelessness and the AIDS
epidemic.
The United States was not unique. The welfare state came under attack through-
out the Western world. One response to the poor performance of the economy was the
abandonment of social welfare programs and efforts to mitigate the inequalities of the
marketplace. In constant dollars, per capita expenditures for social welfare had increased
at an annual rate of 6.5 percent in 1970. It continued to increase during the 1970s, but at a
slower rate. By the late 1980s, the rate of increase had fallen to 1 percent. The impact of
conservatism was not the elimination of programs, but incremental declines in funding
for them.2
Economic and Social TrEndS
A Struggling Economy
Unemployment during the 1970s averaged 5.4 percent in the first half of the decade
and jumped to 8.3 percent in the recession of 1975, before falling to 5.8 percent in 1979.
Consumer prices, driven by the sharp rise in oil prices, went up throughout the decade.
Inf lation remained out of control until the recession of 1982–1983. The recession
slowed the inf lation rate, but at a heavy price for American workers. Unemployment
rose to 9.5 percent and declined only slowly in the years following. At the end of the
1980s, another recession increased unemployment again.
Nowhere were the slowdown of economic growth and the shortfall in its distribu-
tion to American families f rom 1970 to 1990 clearer than in the data on gross national
product (GNP) and on family income. GNP and median family income grew during
The United States was
not unique. The welfare
state came under
attack throughout the
Western world.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 252 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 253
the period, but at a disappointing pace. After adjusting for inf lation, the rise in GNP
between 1970 and 1990 was just over 40 percent. Household median income in constant
dollars rose and fell during the period in response to changes in levels of unemploy-
ment and to price increases. But in 1990, it was roughly what it had been in 1979 and
only slightly higher than it was in 1970.3 While median income remained level, the gap
between the very rich and the very poor grew markedly. The number of billionaires
quadrupled during the 1980s; the number of people below the poverty line increased by
35 percent.4
During the 1970s, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
twice restricted output to increase the price of oil. As millions of Americans waited
in line at gas stations, it became clear that the United States was one part of a global
economy. Domestic inf lation had disturbing implications for those who lived on fixed
incomes especially, as well as for those who worked and found their ability to purchase
goods and services declining. Rising prices combined with rising unemployment hit
most heavily those least able to withstand wage and job loss.
Economic security had grown more elusive for many Americans. From World War
II until the 1970s, Americans had assumed that economic growth, consumerism, and
aff luence were the answers to the nation’s social and economic problems. During the
1970s and 1980s, however, a new set of concerns—the environment, urban decline, and
globalization—framed unregulated economic growth as part of the problem, not the
solution. Where the War on Poverty had assumed that economic growth could increase
the incomes of the poor without harming the rest of society, a “zero sum” economy
increasingly pitted social groups against one another. Unions demanded wage and bene-
fits increases to offset the erosions of inf lation. Employers sought a more f lexible labor
market and lower taxes to stimulate investments.
Changing Employment Patterns
The transition to an information economy was complicated by government monetary
policy and its implication for unemployment. Since 1946, the federal government had
committed itself to pursuing maximum employment policies, a pledge it had reiterated
with the passage of the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth
Act of 1978. Yet, the same year, the Federal Reserve Board began using high interest
rates as a means of slowing inf lation. As a result, unemployment began a steady rise,
reaching 11 percent in 1982, the highest level since the Great Depression. How could
government commit itself both to “full employment” and to using unem-
ployment to fight inf lation? Economists had provided an answer with one
acronym: NAIRU. The “nonaccelerating-inf lation rate of unemployment”
was defined as the lowest unemployment rate that was consistent with low
inf lation. This rate—estimated at around 6 percent during the 1980s—was
redefined as the “natural” rate of full employment. Thus, for more than a
decade, government policy defined a stagnant economy with more than
6 million unemployed workers as full employment.
The fight against inf lation during the 1970s and 1980s harmed not
only those who were unemployed; the loss of production because of slow
economic growth harmed all Americans. Indeed, a conservative estimate
of the lost production between 1974 and 1995 was equal to $1.6 trillion—
nearly three months of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995.5 The
years between 1968 and 1992 were characterized by a shift f rom an indus-
trial economic base to a service economy. From 1970 to 1990, employment
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 253 02/01/17 1:38 PM
254 Chapter 8
increased by 47 percent, but manufacturing employment increased by only 2 percent,
while the number of jobs in service industries rose by 92 percent. Of the 18 million new
jobs created between 1980 and 1990, 88 percent were in services, finance, and sales. Fac-
tory employment declined during this period, although manufacturing productivity and
output increased.6
For displaced workers of the industrial labor force, the result was unemploy-
ment and increased economic uncertainty. The expanding service sector had histor-
ically been a major source of employment for women and ethnic minorities, albeit
one with generally low wages and poor working conditions. In 1990, 45 percent of
the workforce was female, but 61 percent of those employed in services were women;
10 percent of those in the workforce were Af rican Americans, 12 percent of those in
services. In the lowest-paying sector of the service industry, personal services and hos-
pitals, about 75 percent of the employees were female and 15 percent black; less than
10 percent were white men. The new service jobs were likely to carry lower wages
and be subject to involuntary temporary, part-time, and part-year employment. These
workers were less likely to receive pensions or health care through their employer. As-a
result, the proportion of workers who did not receive employer-provided health care,
but could not afford individual policies, increased.
The Changing Family
Conservatives were right that family life was changing in important ways during the
1970s and 1980s, although they erred in seeing all of the trends as negative.7 At the start
of the 1990s, family life was very different f rom the typical domestic unit for which our
social programs had been designed 55 years earlier. In 1935, at the time of the passage of
the Social Security Act, a majority of families consisted of a mother who was a home-
maker, a father who went to work, and perhaps three children. In contrast, the average
household in 1990 was no longer a two-parent home with several children. This descrip-
tion applied to less than 30 percent of American households and 38 percent of families.
Only 13 percent of families included two parents, one wage earner, one homemaker,
and one or more children. The median age of first marriage rose during the 1980s, and
single-person households increased as young adults were likely to spend a number of
years living on their own before they married. The continuing popularity of marriage
was countered by rising divorce rates.
The number of female-headed households rose sharply, with the fastest increase
during the 1970s. In the 1980s, the increase in families headed by a single woman or by
a grandmother continued, but at a slower pace. By 1990, 51 percent of all black children
under age 18, 27 percent of Hispanic children, and 16 percent of white children were
living with just one parent. In 20 years, the proportion of families that were headed by
women had doubled. The number of such families increased by 75 percent among Afri-
can Americans and by 106 percent among whites. Because absent parents rarely provided
sufficient child support, the children in these households were being supported largely
by their mothers.
The average size of the U.S. household decreased about 21 percent f rom 1970 to
1990. However, this drop was not distributed equally throughout the population. There
were more people who never married, more families that had no children, and more
families that had just one child. In 1990, half of all American families had no current
child-rearing responsibilities. There were also families that continued to have three, four,
or five children. The result was that 80 percent of children were supported by only 30
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 254 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 255
percent of the adult population. This unequal distribution of the task of supporting chil-
dren had a racial dimension. The birthrate was significantly higher in the black commu-
nity than in the white community.
The distribution of children had political implications. The sentimental view of
mothers and children that had fueled maternalism earlier in the century was in decline.
Single mothers were no longer the objects of pity. Rather, they were often seen as at
fault and expected to both work and rear their children. As a result, it became harder to
obtain money for programs for the support of women and children that were seen as a
less universal need than it was in the past. Some indications of this effect were seen in the
increasing reluctance to support public education in some parts of the country.
The battle over the government’s role in helping families was seen in the effort to
guarantee family leave for new parents. The Democratic-controlled Congress passed the
Family and Medical Leave Act in 1990, but George H. W. Bush vetoed the bill and Con-
gress upheld his veto. That bill would have required employers with 50 or more employ-
ees to provide unpaid leave to new parents as well as to workers who needed to care for a
sick family member. At the time, about 15 states had legislation protecting jobs for work-
ers when they needed extended time away for family or medical reasons, but for most
American families, there was no parental leave. Finally, the Family and Medical Leave Act
became the first legislation signed into law by President Clinton in 1993.8
Many Americans had fond memories of the “traditional” breadwinner family of the
1950s. Even though American families were better off because of women’s earnings,
and men and women shared the responsibilities of parenthood more equally, nostalgia
prompted many Americans to decry the changes in family life. As a result, efforts by the
Carter administration to reach a consensus on “family policy” foundered. Debates over
abortion, equal rights, and the proper role of the federal government found no middle
ground during these years.
In 1935, when the Social Security Act was passed, persons 65 years of age and over
represented 6 percent of the total population. Between 1970 and 1990, this percentage
increased from 9.7 to more than 12. The proportion of the working population—persons
between 18 and 64 years of age—declined. Falling birthrates, combined with increased
life expectancy, led to a new population pattern and a new set of social welfare needs.
They also led to many concerns about the dependency ratio—the ratio between workers
and nonworkers in society. Although increasing productivity more than compensated for
the increasing dependency ratios, many academic and political leaders called for radical
changes in retirement and Social Security policies to respond to the new demographic
realities.
With increased numbers, the aging became more politically effective. They needed
and demanded new programs and expanded benefits, as the working population may
have felt less able to provide them.9 This was offset in part by the increase of women in
the labor force. The proportion of women working rose sharply in the 20th century. In
1900, 20 percent of adult women worked. The proportion of adult women who were in
the labor force increased from 49 percent in 1970 to 69 percent in 1990.10 The reality of
women in the workforce and the increased expectation that women hold jobs outside the
home had an impact not only on family social and economic status, but also on many
social welfare programs. The social insurance system came under scrutiny for its treat-
ment of working women. Issues of child care moved to the fore of public attention, while
programs for poor women “not expected to work” became more suspect than in the past.
The decade of the 1970s brought a current of economic, social, and political mal-
aise to American life. As in other eras leading to periods of reform, old values and old
beliefs were scrutinized. But the f rustrations and disappointments of the 1970s made
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 255 02/01/17 1:38 PM
256 Chapter 8
“traditional” values more attractive to many Americans. Indeed, as distrust of govern-
ment and of political leaders deepened, and the economic situation worsened, the gen-
eral citizenry seemed to lose hope that positive change would occur for the country as
a whole; individuals and self-interest groups began to look even more to their own. As
faith in collective action faded, the traditional American confidence in the efficacy of
individual effort prevailed. Ronald Reagan won the presidential election of 1980 on the
promise of a return to conservative values that would restore the country’s greatness.
The cost of high unemployment during the late 1970s and early 1980s fell dispropor-
tionately on low-income families. Their situation was further undermined by the budget
policies of the Reagan administration. Although President Reagan failed to secure the
large cuts in domestic programs he sought early in his administration, he did succeed in
reducing federal income taxes, especially for those in high-income brackets. As a result,
throughout the 1980s, there was great pressure on the federal government to reduce
spending. The resulting scramble to protect existing programs meant that new social
needs—such as the increased visibility of the homeless and the emergence of the AIDS
epidemic—had a hard time securing the funding they needed. Increasingly, government
returned to a “residual” approach to the problems of the poor. Public programs acted
only as a tattered safety net for those who could not fend for themselves.
Poverty and Income Distribution
The American economy had hit the equivalent of the trifecta between World War II and
1970. Rapid economic growth and the expansion of social welfare programs had reduced
both the poverty rate and overall income inequality across the nation. During the early
1970s, a number of commentators suggested that “the goal of eliminating income pov-
erty as stated by President Johnson in 1964 had been virtually achieved before the onset
of the 1974–75 recession.”11 If Americans felt like they had hit the jackpot during the
early postwar years, the 1970s and 1980s made many Americans feel snakebitten. Sud-
denly, in the late 1970s, economic inequality began to increase, a trend that would persist
for most of the next four decades.
The War on Poverty had led to a dramatic decrease in poverty in the late 1960s.
During the 1970s, the poverty rate remained stable at about 11 to 12 percent, but rose
to 15.2 percent during the Reagan recession of 1982–1983. Indeed, by 1990, 33.6 million
people were counted poor—32 percent more than in 1970.
Second, the distribution of poverty was far f rom random. On the contrary, it was
structured by race, ethnicity, sex, family situation, age, and employment status. For
whites, the official poverty rate was about 11 percent in 1990; for Hispanics, 25 percent;
for African Americans, 30 percent; and for Native Americans, 31 percent. The rate for
households where the head worked full time was 4 percent; the rate for nonworking
households, 25 percent.
Poverty among two-parent families decreased sharply while that of single-parent
families rose. By the end of the period, 34 percent of one-parent, female-headed house-
holds were poor. During much of the 1970s, increased job opportunities and wage hikes
helped. But much of the financial success was dependent upon the higher labor-force
participation of women, of working wives and mothers. Obviously, two-parent (and pos-
sibly two-earner) families were in better financial shape, but the implications of having
both parents working and out of the home remained unexplored. Major questions about
marriage, family life, and child care remained unanswered.
The biggest decline in poverty was among the aging. Although Social Security had
constructed a f loor under retirement income, that f loor still left nearly a quarter of older
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 256 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 257
Americans living in poverty. While the national poverty rate remained stable during the
1970s and 1980s, the rate for older Americans was cut in half, reaching 12 percent in 1990.
This dramatic decline in poverty was due largely to the expansion of Social Security and
other programs for the aging during the early 1970s. Old Age, Survivors, and Disability
Insurance (OASDI) benefits had increased by only 27 percent between 1959 and 1968;
but in the next three years, they increased by 52 percent. Starting in 1975, increases in
program benefits were indexed, so they kept pace with increases in prices and average
wages. In 1974, Congress passed legislation that combined Old Age Insurance (OAI), Aid
to the Blind, and Aid to the Temporarily and Permanently Disabled to create Supple-
mental Security Income (SSI). Where benefits and eligibility had been left to the states
in the old programs, SSI was federalized with a uniform level of benefits and eligibility
criteria across the nation, although some states decided to add a supplement to federal
benefits. Additionally, the passage of the Supplemental Security Act, which began oper-
ation in January 1974, provided a means-tested income transfer program guaranteeing
a minimum income for the elderly and disabled. Furthermore, SSI benefits, like social
insurance, were indexed to keep pace with inf lation. Automatic increases in transfer pay-
ments continued to help this group when food, heat, and housing costs did not outstrip
gains. Nevertheless, the aging continued to be vulnerable to poverty. Many, if not “in
poverty,” lived close to poverty. More than 20 percent of the aged lived below 125 percent
of the poverty line.
At the same time, changes in family structure placed more children at risk of poverty.
In 1959, the poverty rate for children under the age of 18 was 26 percent, about one-quar-
ter higher than that for the population as a whole. During the 1960s, the poverty rate for
children fell faster than that for the entire population, to 15 percent in 1970. However,
over the next 20 years, much of this improvement was lost. By 1990, the child poverty rate
stood at 20 percent, nearly 1. times the total population figure of 13.5 percent.
A number of social realities increased the risk of poverty for American children.
Changes in fertility rates meant that poorer groups in the population were having a
larger share of all children. In addition, increased rates of divorce and single parenthood
meant that a larger proportion of children relied on the income of one parent. Finally,
beginning in the middle of the 1970s, states began a concerted effort to restrict Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). States used a variety of administrative bar-
riers to restrict the growth of the welfare rolls and failed to adjust benefits for inf lation,
leading to a decline of more than a third in the value of benefits, when corrected for
inf lation. African American and Hispanic children suffered the most f rom all of these
changes. By 1990, nearly 40 percent of them were living in poverty.
For Native Americans, the years of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter were a mix of
progress and retreat. There were improvements in health services and education. There
was even some political representation in Western states. But the loss of land was still in
progress, with only minimal repayments.
Reagan administration policies hit Native Americans very hard. Unemployment
on the reservations reached 80 percent during the early 1980s. Partly in response to the
leasing of tribal reservation land to white families, partly in response to the high unem-
ployment rates and lack of opportunities on the reservations, many Native Americans
migrated to urban areas. They still fared very poorly. High unemployment rates and very
low incomes were typical. Native Americans were not eligible for state social services or
support. They had to rely on federal programs for job training, housing assistance, and
child welfare services. Thus, the social service cutbacks of the Reagan years affected this
population with particular force. Poverty rates reached as high as 57 percent in some
parts of the West.12
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 257 02/01/17 1:38 PM
258 Chapter 8
Frustration in regard to the eradication of poverty was aggravated by failure to agree
on how to define it. Measuring poverty as an absolute dollar amount, as with the annu-
ally computed poverty index, was increasingly questioned. In 1959, the poverty line for a
family of four was about one-half the median family income ($2,793 versus $5,417). As
the growth of family incomes outstripped inf lation, the gap between the two increased.
In 1990, the median family income of $35,353 was nearly three times the poverty line for
a family of four ($12,293). The deprivation of the poor resulted both from their lack of
income and from the fact that they were falling behind the experience of average families.
Since the end of World War II, income distribution in the United States became less
equal. As shown in Table 8.1, most of this change occurred after 1980. This happened despite
economic growth, a War on Poverty, an increase in the labor-force participation of women,
and an expansion of social insurance benefits and social services. Control of income and of
wealth in the United States became more concentrated at the top. The growth of wealth of
the top-income quintile, increased inequality of wages, rising regressive Social Security taxes
and state and local sales taxes, and a decrease in the progressivity of federal income taxes all
played their part. A combination of market factors and government policy led to a situation
in which the rich became richer and the poor, poorer.13
Property and other assets were even less equally distributed than income. Whereas
the top 1 percent of families controlled 4 percent of all income in 1988, they controlled
20 percent of all net financial assets, a larger share of the nation’s wealth than
the bottom 80 percent of the population. The economic gap between the
races was more dramatic for wealth than income. African American married
couples had a family income in 1988 that was about 80 percent that of white
couples, but the net worth of the average black couple ($17,437) was just 27
percent that of white couples ($65,024).14
innovaTionS in Social WElfarE
Expenditures for Social Welfare
Total federal expenditures for social welfare continued to expand during the 1970s and
1980s, but the increase was not steady across the period. Government expenditures for
health, education, and welfare rose from $3.9 billion in the pre-Depression year of 1929 to
Table 8.1 Distribution of Income
Percentage of National Income
Income Class 1947 1980 1990
Lowest quintile 5.1 5.1 3.9
Second quintile 11.8 11.6 9.6
Third quintile 16.7 17.5 16.0
Fourth quintile 23.2 24.3 24.1
Highest quintile 43.2 41.5 46.4
Source: Author’s calculation from Current Population Survey, various years.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 258 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 259
$145.6 billion in 1970, and then almost doubled to $290 billion by 1975. By 1978, expendi-
tures stood at $394 billion. The difference between 1970 and 1978 was almost $250 billion.
Some of the increase was due to inf lation and some due to population growth. But, in
1987 prices, per capita welfare expenditures rose f rom $698 in 1950 to $1,952 in 1970 to
$3,364 in 1978. In 1990, as in 1975, social welfare expenditures were 19.1 percent of GDP
and 56.6 percent of total government outlays. The early 1970s represented a high point in
the expansion of federal spending on social welfare, as Social Security, public assistance,
food, and community development programs all gained widespread support in Congress.
After the middle of the 1970s, however, public support for welfare expansion declined.
Only programs that included automatic cost-of-living increases were able to keep pace
with the high inf lation of the period.
The dualism of the American social welfare system—the split between generous
programs for the worthy and punitive ones for the undeserving—expanded during these
years. About half the $1,045 billion spent for social welfare purposes went for non–
means-tested social insurances and government retirement programs and 25 percent
went for education. Non–means-tested programs are programs for all income groups,
not programs only for the poor. Less than 16 percent went to programs particularly
targeted to the poor: public assistance, Medicaid, food stamps, and some service and
employment training programs.
The conservative resurgence did reverse the trend toward the federal government
accounting for a larger and larger share of public expenditures. In 1929, the federal gov-
ernment contributed 21 percent of total governmental outlays for social welfare. By
1970, the federal share had risen to more than 50 percent. It peaked at 63 percent in 1984
and, by 1990, had dropped to just under 60 percent. With expenditures for education
excluded, the federal government’s share of the cost of public social welfare in 1990 was
76 percent.
The pressure to limit the federal budget highlighted the difference between entitle-
ment programs—for which the government committed itself to providing funding for
all those eligible for a program—and discretionary programs—for which there were no
such guarantees. In large measure, the increases in federal expenditures for social wel-
fare were due to outlays that were not subject to administrative discretion. The bases of
outlays for the social insurances, other governmental health and retirement programs,
public assistance programs, and others are mandated by law.
The persistent effort to limit social welfare expenditure also meant that government
was less ready to meet new social problems as they emerged. Homelessness, although
not an entirely new problem, became more common and visible during the 1970s and
1980s as a result of cuts in general assistance, the increasing cost of housing, and dein-
stitutionalization all increased the numbers of persons without a fixed residence. Efforts
to address the problem typically involved voluntary agencies and local government until
the passage of the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, which provided
funding for a variety of services. The halting commitments of the 1980s focused on pro-
viding temporary shelter for homeless individuals and families, and shelters remained
the dominant response to homelessness for the next three decades.15
The health emergency associated with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),
too, suffered from the budget pressures during this period. First identified among intra-
venous drug-users and gay men in the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS, without any known treat-
ment or cure, quickly spread to other groups in the population. Still, its association with
“undeserving” populations combined with the antigovernment rhetoric of the 1980s
served to slow governments’ response to the epidemic.16
The dualism of the
American social wel-
fare system—the split
between generous
programs for the wor-
thy and punitive ones
for the undeserving—
expanded during these
years.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 259 02/01/17 1:38 PM
260 Chapter 8
Although “cutting welfare” remained a popular goal, identifying who and where
to cut remained a challenge. The efforts of Richard Nixon in the budgets of 1974 and
1975 to eliminate social welfare programs that he deemed unsuccessful and wasteful met
with limited success.17 The campaign to abolish the Office of Economic Opportunity
(OEO) was instructive. OEO itself was abolished, but its major programs—the commu-
nity action programs, community legal services, and Head Start—were assigned to other
agencies and continued with budgets essentially uncut. In the case of Head Start, the
budget was even increased. Gerald Ford also discovered that efforts to cut programs often
failed. Notwithstanding the president’s opposition, Congress refused to postpone salary
increments for federal employees and resisted limiting the increase in veterans’ bene-
fits to the levels suggested by the Ford administration, even when these measures were
touted as anti-inf lationary. President Carter found it necessary to yield to congressional
pressures against withholding funds for a variety of local public works and to respond to
the demands of black organizations and their leaders that funds for the employment of
black youth be restored. The Reagan administration efforts to restructure and cut back
some Social Security benefits were unsuccessful, as were his protracted efforts to elim-
inate community legal services. President Bush continued the effort to reduce health,
education, and welfare benefits, but constituencies for social welfare measures were
organized and acted effectively.
Food stamps were one program that did not suffer from efforts to limit its growth. Start-
ing with a relatively small appropriation of $550 million in 1970, it reached $17.7 billion in
1990.18 The program is funded totally by the federal government. The program’s focus on
reducing hunger, its administrative home in the Department of Agriculture, and the contin-
ued support of agribusiness and farm state legislators assured the program’s popularity. As a
fully federally funded program, Food Stamps—in contrast to AFDC—did not provoke oppo-
sition from governors and state legislatures.
Challenging the Welfare State: Welfare Reform
In 1935, when provision was made in the Social Security Act for aid to dependent chil-
dren, the conviction held that mothers, despite their poverty, should remain at home
with their children. The 1967 amendments to the Social Security Act officially reversed
this historic policy, ref lecting the extent to which mothers of young children had moved,
in public thinking, f rom unemployable to employable. Congress increased appropria-
tions for day-care programs and instituted the Work Incentive Program (WIN). WIN
required that an assessment be made of the employability not only of unemployed
fathers and out-of-school older children, but also of mothers. The transfer of admin-
istrative responsibility for OEO “work experience” programs f rom the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare to the Department of Labor further clarified the new
congressional direction. In 1971, Congress moved again to increase the work incentives
for welfare recipients. Ideological support for this new approach came in 1971, when the
House Ways and Means Committee extolled as a primary virtue of day care its ability to
free mothers for work:
Your committee is convinced that .-.-. the child in a family eligible under these pro-
grams will benefit f rom the combination of quality child care and the example of
an adult in the family taking financial responsibility for him.19
Efforts to reform welfare during the 1970s and 1980s were caught in social and policy
crosscurrents. For a time, the concept of a negative income tax (NIT)—in which low-
income families would be guaranteed a minimum annual income—commanded broad
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 260 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 261
support across the political spectrum. Yet, arguments about how high to set the mini-
mum effectively blocked legislation f rom moving forward. Although both liberals and
conservatives supported expanding the work opportunities of welfare recipients, conser-
vatives were more interested in using “workfare” as a disincentive to keep people off the
rolls, whereas liberals favored the expansion of job training and education as a means of
making recipients more employable.20
The best opportunity for a shift toward a national, NIT system occurred during the
early 1970s after President Nixon’s address to the nation about his welfare reform plan in
August 1969.21 For those “American families who cannot care for themselves in whichever
state they live,” a new program, the Family Assistance Plan (FAP), was proposed as a sub-
stitute for AFDC. “Workfare” would replace welfare. An NIT mechanism was designed
to set a f loor on income while still encouraging people to work. The FAP included a
national minimum income, although it was set so low that only states with extremely
low AFDC payments would benefit. Where working adults were involved, the subsidy
was to be reduced as earned income went up, until a “breakeven point” in total income
was reached. The program would, therefore, be available to the working as well as the
nonworking poor. Mothers with very young children would be permitted to remain at
home. In immediately employable families, however—that is, in two-parent families or
in single-parent families with school-age children—financial aid would be conditioned
upon the willingness of at least one adult to accept training or employment. In the pres-
ident’s words, FAP coupled “basic benefits to low-income families with chil-
dren with incentives for employment and training to improve the capacity for
employment of members of such families.” In essence, workfare became the
ideological base for different levels and plans of support for different groups
of recipients. For poor families judged employable, inadequate grants were
to be the incentive for work.
The Commission on Income Maintenance Programs, appointed by
President Johnson, released its report in November 1969, four months after
President Nixon’s message on reform in welfare. Like the Nixon plan, the
commission’s recommendations involved an NIT, although benefits were
more generous. Although its policy recommendations were similar to
Nixon’s, the commission relied on a more structural explanation of poverty
to justify them. The commission wrote:
It is often argued that the poor are to blame for their own circumstances and should
be expected to lift themselves f rom poverty. The Commission has concluded that
these are incorrect. Our economic and social structure virtually guarantees poverty
for millions of Americans. Unemployment and underemployment are basic facts of
American life. The risks of poverty are common to millions more who depend on
earnings for their income. . . . The simple fact is that most of the poor remain poor
because access to income through work is currently beyond their reach.22
The legislative battles over Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan marked either a missed
opportunity or a critical turning point in the history of welfare policy. FAP was debated
throughout 1970, 1971, and much of 1972. Although both parties were dissatisfied with
the existing AFDC program, they could not agree on the nature of its problems or the
contours of a solution. Ultimately, while moderate Democrats and Republicans sought
to create a compromise that would become law, conservatives and liberals refused to
support the package. Conservatives like Russell Long, senator f rom Louisiana and
chair-of the Senate Finance Committee, pushed for tighter work requirements and lower
benefits while liberals sought more generous payments. The National Welfare Rights
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 261 02/01/17 1:38 PM
262 Chapter 8
Organization—a grassroots organization of welfare mothers and social workers—
pushed liberals to resist a compromise that would attract moderate support. Eventually,
Nixon himself abandoned welfare reform. In its place, a number of piecemeal measures
became law, the most important of which was the creation of Supplemental Security
Income (SSI) to replace categorical programs for the aged, blind, and disabled. The new
federal program became law in 1973.
SSI marked a major policy success in addressing continuing poverty among older
Americans and people with disability. In place of a patchwork of state programs with dif-
ferent benefit levels and eligibility requirements that combined state and federal funding,
SSI provided a uniform program that was federally funded. The program was designed
to supplement old age and disability insurance. Indeed, beneficiaries who were eligible for
both Social Security and SSI typically escaped poverty, although many SSI recipients—
including children and those who immigrated as older adults—did not qualify for the
social insurance program.23
However, public interest in poor families receded once the most favored of the poor
had been cared for. Pressures f rom the states for reform in welfare lessened as the elim-
ination of the Old Age Assistance, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to the Disabled categories
of public assistance lowered demands on state treasuries. Pressures from the elderly and
disabled diminished with SSI’s guarantee of income. Additionally, the introduction of
“income disregards” as work incentive, and expansions of AFDC–UP and of in-kind pro-
grams that reduced inequalities between the working and nonworking poor, lowered
the push for change. In the absence of comprehensive reform, smaller changes like these
reshaped the policy landscape.
President Carter introduced a more elaborate NIT plan in 1978. The Better Jobs and
Income Program, as it was named, was similar to that proposed earlier by Nixon. A fed-
eral guarantee of minimum income was provided; benefit scales provided work incen-
tives; job training and child care were planned. The Carter proposal moved beyond the
Nixon FAP in that its coverage would have included individuals as well as families, and in
its provision of jobs. But, like the Nixon proposal, Carter’s plan failed to receive congres-
sional approval.
The failure to reach consensus on welfare reform during the 1970s had been
attributed to several factors. Arguments had ensued as to whether to pursue an incre-
mental or comprehensive strategy. Incrementalism was meant to improve the current
system without changing its categorical nature and its divided administrative structure.
Proponents of incrementalism pointed not only to the reality of a system in place but
also to the more likely chance that piecemeal change could be achieved. Proponents of
comprehensive reform held the many criticisms of public welfare to mean that a new
package of programs, integrated toward common purposes, had to be devised.24
The Carter proposal had hoped to achieve reform at no increase in costs beyond
those of current public welfare programs. This goal had to be abandoned almost imme-
diately. The job proposal became a source of difficulty, too. Some criticized the plan for
establishing the federal government as a true “employer of the last resort.” And as with
the Nixon plan, there was sharp disagreement about the level of grants. Political agree-
ment among interest groups was impossible to come by.25
The historical opportunity for creating an NIT system had passed by the end of
the 1970s. Welfare had become caught in the vortex of the battle over the “traditional
family.” Public support of single mothers through AFDC became a convenient target
for conservatives who objected to the new values around gender equality and sexual-
ity that were spreading through American society. At the same time, the findings f rom
income maintenance experiments in New Jersey, Denver, and Seattle failed to put to rest
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 262 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 263
concerns over the impact of higher welfare payments on family stability and work effort.
Finally, the new reality of married women’s involvement in the workplace undermined a
welfare system based on the assumption that women’s place was in the home.26
Still, the Family Support Act of 1988—passed after arduous negotiations between
Congress and the Reagan administration—should have laid the basis for a new approach
to welfare. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who earlier in his career had
sounded alarm over the problems of African American families as part of the Johnson
administration and had designed the FAP when he served as a domestic policy advisor
to Nixon, championed the Family Support Act. For social conservatives, the 1988 law
included increased requirements for paternity establishment and child support enforce-
ment. All welfare recipients except those with very young children were required to
either find employment or make efforts to increase their self-sufficiency through educa-
tion or training. To back up the work requirements of the Family Support Act, Congress
made new funding available for training and education through the Jobs Opportunities
and Basic Skills ( JOBS) program. In addition, states were required to provide transitional
child care, transportation, and health care benefits to women who had moved from wel-
fare to work.27
Yet, historical timing was not on the side of the Family Support Act. Within a year
of its passage, the United States had fallen into recession. As unemployment increased,
the number of welfare recipients began to rise for the first time since the early 1980s.
The states found themselves having to contend with a 40 percent increase in welfare
recipients as the total number of individuals on AFDC and general assistance increased
from 10.4 million in 1987 to 14.9 million in 1992. Faced with the increased welfare rolls,
the states largely failed to comply with mandates around transitional transportation and
child care and refused to commit the matching funds that were necessary to make use of
the JOBS funding. By the early 1990s, the rise in recipients set off a backlash at the state
level—tied to reducing the cost of the program—that shifted the welfare reform debate
in a new, more conservative direction.
Changes in family life and in the labor-force participation of women raised ques-
tions about the social insurance program, just as they had about the AFDC program.
The social insurance program—old age insurance—was designed for a nuclear family
with two parents and one (male) wage earner. For non-employed women, in an era of
widespread marital instability, problems arise in a system where benefits derive from the
income of the employed spouse and are not portable. Employed women, too, appear
dissatisfied with the way in which benefits were calculated, feeling that there were often
inequities.28
Yet, there was no way to improve the treatment of women without increasing the
cost of the program. A full recognition of women’s earning through a system of “earn-
ings sharing” that gave women credit for both their and their spouse’s contributions
would benefit many working wives; but to keep the system revenue neutral, the benefits
of stay-at-home spouses would have to be cut. With most of the attention during the
1980s focused on the fiscal soundness of the Social Security funds, increasing the sys-
tem’s gender equity went unaddressed.29
Child Welfare and the Aging
The rejection of welfare reform set federal policies for children and older Americans
on divergent policy trajectories. In place of a system of income support that would
reduce child poverty, Congress showed increased interest in the treatment of abused and
neglected children. At the same time, the elderly benefited f rom increased funding on
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 263 02/01/17 1:38 PM
264 Chapter 8
income support programs—even in the face of public concern about their cost—and
expanded services.
The perceived success of Head Start during the War on Poverty provided momen-
tum for the expansion of federal involvement in early childhood education. The Compre-
hensive Child Development Act of 1971, which was passed by both houses of Congress,
would have provided significant funding for child care and set national standards of
child-care workers. Although the bill would have made it easier for poor mothers to seek
employment, the bill became a lightning rod for conservative concerns about an over-
reaching federal government. When President Nixon vetoed the bill, he suggested that it
would cause the “Sovietization” of child-rearing in the United States.30
Still, the years between 1968 and 1992 were a period of increased federal involve-
ment in child welfare. The identification of the “battered child syndrome” by Henry
Kempe in 1962 has sparked an interest in possible child abuse and the passage of man-
datory reporting legislation in all 50 states by 1968. In 1974, Congress passed the Child
Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which provided the first federal funding
for child protective services. These efforts were expanded by the Adoption Assistance
and Child Welfare Act of 1980, which took a more active role in shaping the nature of
child protective services and efforts to prevent “foster care drift,” in which children found
themselves without a plan for either a return to their parents or another permanent
home.31
The increases in Social Security benefits legislated in the late 1960s and early 1970s
transformed old age insurance into a true “retirement wage” that rapidly reduced pov-
erty among older Americans. Yet, the combination of higher benefits indexed to prices,
high inf lation, and slow wage growth (which reduced the f low of taxes into the system)
generated an incipient fiscal crisis for Social Security.
The 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security concluded that our social insurances
were basically sound.
The Council is unanimous in finding that the social security system is the govern-
ment’s most successful social program. It provides basic retirement, disability and
survivorship protection, which American workers can supplement with their own
savings and private pensions, and it will continue to provide this protection for as far
ahead as anyone can see.
After reviewing the evidence, the Council is unanimously convinced that all current
and future social security beneficiaries can count on receiving all the benefits to which
they are entitled.32
Yet, the fiscal problems of the system continued to mount. Despite some alteration in
benefit calculations during the Carter administration, inf lation and rising unemployment
led to deficits in the OASDI funds in 1978, 1979, and 1980. In June 1980, the trustees rec-
ommended that the retirement trust fund be permitted to borrow from the other trust
funds. For the longer run, there was widespread concern about the distribution of the
payroll tax receipts among the health funds, the disability fund, and the retirement sys-
tem, and a potential need to finance in part from general revenues if benefits were not to
be cut below planned levels. The Advisory Council recommended that health insurance
be financed from general revenues, thus preserving for OAI the image of “contributions”
and “earned entitlements” to retirement income. Conservatives proposed cuts in bene-
fits and increases in the retirement age as ways of “saving” the Social Security system.
President Reagan’s initial reaction was to recommend major cuts in Social Security,
including reductions in benefit payments for early retirement, elimination of the mini-
mum benefit, and a postponement of the annual cost-of-living adjustment. In contrast
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 264 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 265
to its acceptance of other Reagan welfare cuts, Congress almost unanimously rejected
his Social Security proposals. To defuse the controversy, Reagan appointed a bipartisan
National Commission on Social Security Reform in 1981 to examine the entire social
insurance system and make recommendations that would lead to “long-term solvency”
and ensure both “financial integrity” and “the provision of appropriate benefits.”33
The commission considered a variety of approaches to the system’s problems, but
it ultimately recommended a set of incremental proposals that did not alter the basic
elements of the retirement program. It recommended, first of all, that “Congress-.-.-.
not alter the fundamental structure of the-. . . program or undermine its fundamental
principles.” It was to remain a compulsory, non–means-tested, contributory program,
which gave low-income workers a better return on their contributions than those who
were higher up on the wage scale. To meet fiscal need, it proposed a partial taxation of
higher-income retirees’ benefits, a gradual increase in the retirement age (to 67), and
increases in the contribution rate.34
The 1983 Social Security reform law sought to eliminate the short-term financial
problems with the system and to shift tax policy to build up the trust funds with an eye
toward the retirement of the baby-boom generation early in the 21st century. The bal-
ance went up immediately and the assets of the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI)
trust fund grew rapidly. At the time, projections were that the trust fund would rise to
$12 trillion by 2030, the height of the impact of the retirement of baby boomers.
The Social Security Act, as originally legislated, provided work-related benefits
much in the way such benefits would have been provided through private insurance. The
notion of equity was the tie among wages, tax contributions, and benefits. Amendments
to the act have steadily altered this approach to ref lect need and adequacy as well as
equity. The passage of the SSI program in 1972 provided a means-tested income transfer
program that guaranteed a minimum income for the elderly and disabled. Furthermore,
SSI benefits, like OAI benefits, were indexed to keep pace with inf lation. This change
made it possible to rethink the extent to which the insurance programs should be used to
redress inequities in wage and employment patterns. Increasingly, policy focused more
on the “health” of the plan’s finances and less to the income adequacy of the program.
While Social Security was attracting widespread attention f rom policy makers and
the public, a quieter revolution was expanding the public costs of so-called “private” pen-
sions. Economic slowdowns sent many companies into bankruptcy, often taking their
employees’ pension plan with them. These “defined-benefit” plans were generally funded
and controlled by companies. Although they received generous tax benefits for creating
the programs, there was little government oversight of the plans’ financial security.
In response to several well-publicized company bankruptcies, including the Stude-
baker automobile company, Congress in 1974 passed the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (ERISA) that set out new regulations for pension plans and established a
quasi-governmental insurance system—the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation—to
cover losses associated with the termination of defined-benefit plans. However, the real
impact of the events of the early 1970s was to reorient pensions f rom defined-benefit—
in which employers promised specific pensions for workers based on their years of ser-
vice—to defined-contribution plans—in which workers contributed to individual plans,
sometimes with employer matches. Subsequent revenue acts developed a variety of spe-
cial accounts—of which Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k) accounts were the
most popular—to facilitate this shift toward private pension accounts. Although these
plans were attractive to workers, they required workers to assume most of the risk asso-
ciated with retirement planning. Furthermore, except for the highest-paid workers, these
plans rarely assured adequate retirement income.
While Social Security
was attracting wide-
spread attention from
policy makers and the
public, a quieter revolu-
tion was expanding the
public costs of so-called
“private” pensions.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 265 02/01/17 1:38 PM
266 Chapter 8
The implication of these changes during the 1970s was not immediately apparent.
In contrast to the very public debate over the future of Social Security, these “private”
accounts typically passed “below the radar.” Although they involved trillions of dollars
in tax breaks, public policy analysts found it nearly impossible to assess their full implica-
tions. Over time, however, it became clear that the mass of the tax breaks associated with
these plans f lowed to the richest Americans and bypassed those with greater need. Over
time, even without efforts to “privatize” Social Security, American retirement security
began to tilt strongly toward private plans and increased income inequality among older
Americans.35
The issues were joined in the discussions about the provision of health benefits and
long-term care. Medicare was designed to provide the aged with prepaid hospital insurance
financed by payroll taxes and a medical insurance program to pay doctors’ bills, outpatient
hospital care, and some additional health services, financed by a combination of recipient
payments and general tax revenues. It was intended to be a non–means-tested program.
In order to pass Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, Congress had set rules that
gave hospitals and health providers few incentives to contain cost. Between 1965 and
1990, health care expenses as percent of gross domestic product (GDP) more than dou-
bled, reaching 12 percent in 1990. With the rise in health care costs, efforts to contain
expenses increased. In 1983, Congress placed a lid on Medicare reimbursements for
hospital stays with the introduction of the diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) billing sys-
tem. Patients were being discharged f rom hospitals “quicker but sicker.” The concept
of approved reimbursement rates was extended to physicians’ services. In 1988, 37 per-
cent of all Medicare-approved physicians were accepting Medicare-approved rates for
fees. Unfortunately, there was evidence that patients might be experiencing cost shifting
and restricted access to medical care. Premium increases and benefit cuts combined to
increase older Americans’ out-of-pocket health care costs. In 1980, the aged used 13 per-
cent of their income for health care; that figure rose to 18.5 percent by 1990.36
In addition to cutting services, the effort to control public payment for health care for
the aging meant placing a larger share of the cost on middle- and upper-income workers and
beneficiaries. Thus, in 1990, while the maximum wages to be taxed for retirement, survi-
vors, and disability income was set at $51,300 annually, workers with incomes up to $125,000
paid a Medicare tax of 1.45 percent. In 1988, Congress passed legislation, the Medicare Cat-
astrophic Health Care Act, that extended hospital care for all under Medicare, to be paid for
by a surtax on the incomes of middle- and upper-income aged. The bill was repealed just
one year later when older Americans realized that the catastrophic health care bill did not
cover long-term custodial care and was a substantial tax on a small part of the population.
The increased number of Americans over the age of 80 made long-term care a
pressing issue. Yet, in the absence of public insurance for nursing home care, the fed-
eral government backed into its policy. Increasingly, Medicaid—the health care program
for low-income Americans—became the chief funder of nursing home care. However,
to qualify for Medicaid, the elderly were required to “spend down” their assets. Often,
senior citizens would see their life savings quickly evaporate before they became poor
enough to receive Medicaid. In reality, we had a policy for the public funding of nursing
home care, but it required some wrenching economic choices for older Americans and
their families.
The Unemployed
Although the debate over welfare and the fiscal crisis of Social Security attracted the
greatest headlines, some of the sharpest policy changes of the 1970s and 1980s involved
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 266 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 267
provisions for the unemployed. Unemployment remained a problem throughout the
period, largely because of the deliberate use of unemployment as a means of fighting
inf lation. Yet, even though government policy increased the number of unemployed
Americans, the government took less responsibility for their economic security during
the 1970s and 1980s than it had in earlier decades.
Changes in the workplace contributed to the decreasing effectiveness of unemploy-
ment insurance. The economic transition underway during the 1970s and 1980s meant
that fewer of the unemployed experienced temporary layoffs, and more were displaced
f rom their jobs. In addition, a greater share of Americans were working part-time or
temporary jobs. Many who held these jobs failed to qualify for unemployment insurance
when they lost their jobs.
The sharpest changes in the unemployment system occurred in the early years of
the Reagan administration. Before 1981, when the national unemployment rate went
above a certain level, all of the eligible unemployed were entitled to collect unemploy-
ment for an additional 13 weeks after their 26 weeks of basic coverage expired. As part of
his “economic recovery” plan in 1981, President Reagan proposed and Congress enacted
limits on the availability of extended benefits except in individual states that were experi-
encing high unemployment.
The combination of a changing labor market and deliberate government policy
took its toll on the unemployed. In 1980, 44 percent of the unemployed had received
unemployment compensation. By 1985, the percentage had fallen to 32 percent. When
the economy again fell into recession in 1989, less than a third of the unemployed were
eligible for unemployment compensation.37
At the same time, public employment—another means of reducing unemploy-
ment—was shrinking. During the early 1970s, Congress passed the Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act (CETA), which, in addition to providing funding for job
training, funded public service employment for city governments. During the reces-
sions of 1974–1975 and 1980, CETA public service employment provided many jobs
and helped to cushion the impact of the recessions in many metropolitan areas. Yet, the
program was widely unpopular in Congress and was terminated in 1981. Cuts in fed-
eral funding for public service employment combined with the shrinking tax base of
many American cities to severely reduce the availability of public employment. Because
public employment was a significant source of white-collar jobs for African Americans
in American cities, the cuts to public employment fell disproportionately on the black
community.
The last line of defense for the unemployed—general assistance—was also in
eclipse during these years. States eliminated or severely limited their programs. For
example, in the early 1980s, Pennsylvania restricted general assistance benefits to a few
months out of the year, a reform that many commentators tied to the increase in home-
lessness in the commonwealth. In 1990, 22 states had statewide programs; 17 more had
programs in some counties; and in 6 states, there was a program of small emergency
grants in some counties. In 7 states, there was no program at all. General assistance
was concentrated in large cities and provided financial and medical assistance to low-
income individuals and families who were not eligible for federally funded assistance
programs. Maximum cash benefits ranged f rom a low of 5 percent of the poverty line
in Charleston County, South Carolina, to a high of only 77 percent of the poverty line
in Portland, Maine.38 Most of the programs emphasized the necessity to work for cli-
ents deemed employable, but the meaning of employability was not clear. Were those
classified as employable truly capable of sustaining employment? Second, even if they
were employable, were they getting realistic help in a job search? For those who were
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 267 02/01/17 1:38 PM
268 Chapter 8
not immediately employable, what kinds of training programs were to be provided and
who would be admitted?
Veterans
It was hoped that the coming together of women, black and white, rich and poor, on
problems of discrimination might result in common demand for change—change
ref lected in the welfare of poor families. Thirty-five years earlier, some observers
thought veterans would play such a catalytic role. The 1956 report of the President’s
Commission on Veterans’ Pensions analyzed the meaning of the special status accorded
veterans:
Veterans and their families will eventually be a majority of the population of the
United States. Veterans in modern times are better off economically than nonveter-
ans in similar age groups.39
The 1956 commission pointed to the extent to which basic needs of “all citizens,
veterans and non-veterans alike, for economic security are being increasingly met
through federal, state and private programs.” In summary, the commission con-
cluded, “Military service in time of war or peace is the obligation of citizenship
and should not be considered inherently a basis for future Government benefits,”
and “all veterans’ benef its should be meshed with the nation’s general security
system.”
The commission’s report of 1956 wielded little inf luence. But the benefits awarded
in 1966 to veterans of the Korean War (retroactively) and the Vietnam War suggested
some policy shifts. Certainly, the educational benefits for these groups did not compare
favorably with those provided for veterans in 1944. Veterans of Vietnam in particular
paid the price of our unhappiness with that war.
Personal Social Services
The history of social services was a harbinger of the pressure to cut social welfare
spending. Although social services had been included in Social Security since the 1950s,
it had remained a small part of welfare spending through the 1960s. During the War
on Poverty, however, a combination of looser federal regulation and states’ interest
in shifting costs to the federal government led to an explosion in federal spending on
social services. Between 1965 and 1972, for example, total outlays for social services
increased f rom $159 million to $4 billion—a 19-fold increase when controlled for inf la-
tion. Much of this increase resulted f rom a broader interpretation of regulations that
allowed spending on those “likely to become” dependent on welfare. In response to this
increase, Congress added a new title to the Social Security Act in 1974—Title XX—that
imposed a cap on federal spending on social services.40
The Reagan administration used its f irst budget in 1981 to change Title XX
f rom a “capped entitlement” to a block grant (Social Service Block Grant) subject
to the congressional appropriation process. By 2016, the appropriation for
Title XX had fallen to $1.58 billion. When corrected for inf lation, the fed-
eral government’s spending on social services had fallen by 93 percent
between 1972 and 2016.41 The block grant mechanism became a means of
limiting public spending on a variety of functions by making the federal
commitment subject to the vagaries of budget debate.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 268 02/01/17 1:38 PM
Conservative Resurgence and Social Change: 1968–1992 269
Social movEmEnTS
The New Right
Conservative movements drew little support during the early postwar years, but the
social and political changes of the 1960s and 1970s mobilized new constituencies and
organizations. The success of the civil rights movement provoked a white backlash in both
the North and South. The changing status of women and the challenge to traditional
sexual mores and gender roles provoked a powerful antifeminist movement. Underlying
these social and cultural reactions was an insistent economic conservatism that argued
that the welfare state and “excessive regulation” were responsible for the stagnation of
the economy. Meanwhile, antitax revolts mobilized property owners in a
movement against rising property taxes and government expenditures. Poor
urban residents—who had been the focus of policy innovations during the
1970s—now were recast as an “urban underclass” that would require “tough
love” to rejoin the mainstream.
Just as the drive to expand the civil rights of black Americans had
become the model for other civil rights movements, the rearguard efforts of
segregationists provided a vocabulary for newer conservative causes. Segre-
gationists had objected to the trampling of “states’ rights” and the “imposi-
tion” of new requirements at odds with the Southern status quo. In the wake
of the Supreme Court’s guaranteeing a women’s right to an abortion and
the success of feminists in gaining passage of the Equal Rights Amendment
by Congress in 1972, antifeminists saw a plot to undermine women’s traditional role.
Although their claims that the ERA would require same-sex bathrooms and women’s
role as combat soldiers were specious, the charge that women’s purity would be compro-
mised by equality proved powerful (Figure 8.1).
Conservatives had long been suspicious of government action, but by the early
1970s, they had been joined by many traditionally liberal constituencies. The war in
Vietnam, government surveillance of protesters, and the Watergate affair had led
many Americans to view the government in a less favorable light. Ronald Reagan, in
his inaugural address in 1981, seemed to capture many Americans’ cynicism when he
concluded:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is
the problem.42
From the start of the 1980 presidential campaign, the Republican candidate Reagan
argued that the Democratic Party had been unable to meet new and serious economic
and social conditions. As president, Reagan acted to reduce government expenditures
and taxes. Arguing for “supply-side” economics, deregulation of business, and tax
cuts as a means of stimulating economic growth, President Reagan attacked domestic
social welfare programs. President George H. W. Bush (1989–1993), while couching
his arguments in a “kinder and gentler” manner, continued to allow his concern for
interest rates and budget stability to take precedence over considerations of individual
well-being. Changes in the economy, political structure, family organization, and the
age structure of the U.S. population combined to make large social welfare changes
necessary. However, necessary social interventions took a back seat to tax cuts and
budget restraint.
M08_STER9913_09_SE_C08.indd 269 02/01/17 1:38 PM
270 Chapter 8
The Expansion of Civil Rights
The state of the economy was only one factor shaping social welfare. The concern
of the 1960s with the rights of oppressed groups, paced by the militancy of the black
community, led to advances in rights to privacy, due process, and equal protection. The
emergence of many groups—women, students, children, the aging, Native Americans,
prisoners, homosexuals, and others—demanding change resulted in their gaining at least
some basic recognition. The historical value of individualism broadened to a demand for
group-determined rights.
The American Indian Movement organized for militant defense of the rights of
Native Americans. The 1970s saw the formation of a new Council of Energy Resources,
which took to the courts to fight for rights to the development of the coal, oil, and
other resources needed to promote industries on the reservations. There were setbacks,
but there were also victories. Some land claims were won, some land was put in trust
for development for the benefit of Native Americans, and additional sums of money
were appropriated to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for education. Nonetheless, Native
Americans remained the poorest of the poor in the United States.
The period from 1970 to 1990 included conf licting trends in civil rights. In the 1970s,
successes in extending civil liberties were scored in affirmative action programs and in efforts
to replace institutionalization with community-based programs. Judicial decisions required
the payment of reparations to groups who had been shown to suffer from discriminatory
pay and promotion differentials. In July 1980, the Supreme Court, in Fullilove v. Klutznick,
upheld the use of quotas for minority contractors when it decided that Congress could
award federal funds on the basis of race to redress past racial discrimination.43 The courts
Figure 8.1 Anti-ERA demonstration in front of White House, 1977. Efforts to put
a ban on gender discrimination in the U.S. Constitution provoked a strong reaction of
women and men who claimed that the Equal Rights Amendment would require unisex
bathrooms, the abolition of Social Security survivors’ benefits, and women to register for
the draft and become combat soldiers.
/
#$
$”
‘
0.
1
“2
21
“$
, !
$,
‘+
%
3
!4
&+
&5
$#
!4
%
(,
6,
%,
&’
, 1
,7
$#
$8
&
2
*&
‘5
$”
%%
,
1*
-)
9-
::
;;
9#
-:
