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Care Of The Insane In New York (1736 – 1912)

Written by Linda S. Stuhler. “…the hospital was an institution of great public utility and humanity, and that the general interests of the state required that fit and adequate provision be made for the support of an infirmary for sick and insane persons.”

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National Youth Organization

“I hereby prescribe the following functions and duties of the National Youth Administration: To initiate and administer a program of approved projects which shall provide relief, work relief, and employment for persons between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five years who are no longer in regular attendance at a school requiring full time, and who are not regularly engaged in remunerative employment.”

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The Problem of Unemployment : January, 1935

Speech given by Aubrey Williams, Assistant Works Progress Administrator and Executive Director of the National Youth Administration before the Buffalo Council of Social Agencies. “You and I know that the problem of unemployment does not stem directly from industrial depression…it was spawned in an era of giddy expansionism…it is an inescapable concomitant of our type of civilization…its roots are now sunk in the very bedrock of our capitalist society.”

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Social Worker and the Depression

At this moment what are social workers saying concerning economic and political theory or the need for fundamental social changes to eliminate the cycles and seasons of unemployment? With infrequent exception, exactly nothing at all. On the whole, social workers know little and care less about economic or political theory and practice. Their lack of understanding can only be described as abysmal, tragic. Ignorance in very young social workers, of whom there are many, may be forgiven. It is hard, however, to defend the silence–sometimes the deception–of the old-timers….The poor themselves, when they are not so persistently protected from publicity by their social workers, are taking a somewhat more practical view of their situation. Nowadays, when relief is inadequate and they are hungry, they turn to stealing, begging, and standing on the public streets in bread lines. In fact, in one city where the professional social workers are too “ethical” to disclose the distress of those receiving charitable relief, the unemployed are participating in demonstrations, petitioning the city administration for more food, and in turn are being arrested by His Honor, the mayor of the city, on charges of vagrancy and disorderly conduct.

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Plessy, Homer A.

Homer A. Plessy was the plaintiff in the middle of the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the concept of “separate but equal” in U.S. law which then opened the door even wider for legal segregation, commonly known as “Jim Crow” laws.

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Brown, Mary E. (1865 — 1948)

In January, 1919, Mary E. Brown was one of the suffragists who picketed the White House during President Woodrow Wilson’s Administration. She was arrested for her efforts advocating for the 19th Amendment designed to allow women the right to vote. Mrs. Brown was subsequently sentenced and spent five days in the District of Columbia’s jail.

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Will the Codes Abolish Child Labor? (1933)

Written by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee. “WHEN President Roosevelt on July 9 signed the Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton-Textile Industry, which bars from employment children under 16 years, he virtually removed from that industry several thousand children who will be replaced by adults. Had this action been taken in the spring of 1930, before unemployment became so acute, the number displaced would have been over 10,000.”

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National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was enacted by Congress in June 1933 and was one of the measures by which President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to assist the nation’s economic recovery during the Great Depression.

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