Social Welfare History Project Eras in Social Welfare History Page 41

Long, Huey

As the Great Depression worsened, Long made impassioned speeches in the Senate charging a few powerful families with hoarding the nation’s wealth. He urged Congress to address the inequality that he believed to be the source of the mass suffering. How was a recovery possible when twelve men owned more wealth than 120 million people?….In 1934 Long unveiled a program of reforms he labeled “Share Our Wealth” designed to redistribute the nation’s wealth more fairly by capping personal fortunes at $50 million (later lowered to $5 – $8 million) and distributing the rest through government programs aimed at providing opportunity and a decent standard of living to all Americans. Long believed the programs he initiated in Louisiana were effective in lifting people out of poverty, and he wanted to implement this philosophy nationally.

The New Deal: Part II

The public’s acceptance of New Deal programs and services initiated by President Roosevelt in his first term was to a large extent a result of the pain and fear caused by the Great Depression. How bad the conditions were is worth remembering, since this is a means of gauging the enormous pressure for significant changes in government policy. One of the worst thing about the 1929 depression was its length of time. Men who had been sturdy and self-respecting workers can take unemployment without flinching for a few weeks, a few months, even if they have to see their families suffer; but it is quite different after a year, two years, three years. Among the miserable creatures curled up on park benches, selling apples on the street corner or standing in dreary lines before soup kitchens in 1932 were white men who had been jobless since the end of 1929. This traumatic experience marked millions of people for the rest of their lives, and made them security conscious.

What is Professional Social Work? (1923)

Social work does not consist of maintaining any social activity which has become standard and permanent. Social workers are continually originating certain activities and vindicating them and making them standard and permanent but after they have reached that stage they are not rated as social work. At one point kindergartens which are now a regular part of our educational system were promoted and maintained as social work. Some activities that are more or less permanent and standardized in regard to their procedure such as the relief work of old family welfare societies are nevertheless exceptional activities because the circumstances of the different individuals require and receive special treatment in each case. Even relief giving may pass out of the realm of social work if it is put on the basis of flat pensions and paid for out of taxation, as in the case of soldier’s pensions; or if pensions are given as a part of a fixed policy of a big corporation toward its employees, there is no reason to class the administration of these pensions as social work.

Corrections: Part IV – Reformation As An End In Prison Discipline

“Reformation as an End in Prison Discipline: Report of The Standing Committee,” by F. H. Wines, Chairman. ,A presentation at the Fifteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1888. “We assert, therefore, that there can be no recognition of reformation as an end in prison discipline in any prison where the warden or superintendent is not, by his education, habits of thought, personal character, and conviction of duty, qualified to administer to convicts the moral treatment which they require.”

Corrections: Part II – Background and Jails 1878

Presentations and reports of standing committees at the annual meetings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction during the late 19th century reveal that social welfare leaders and progressives were actively involved in efforts to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.

Corrections: Part VI – The Treatment of The Criminal: 1904

By F. H. Wines, LL. D., Chairman of Committee on Treatment of Criminals. “The subject assigned to this committee is the treatment of the criminal, a subordinate phase of the larger problem of the treatment of crime. The criminal is the concrete embodiment of the abstract conception of crime. Crime is an act, while the criminal is the agent of the act; but there can be no act without an actor, and it is through the criminal that the law strikes at crime, which it is the aim of the law to prevent or to suppress, caring little for the criminal actor, but much for the victim of his deed.”

Hart, Hastings H.

Hastings Hornell Hart (1851-1932): Prison Authority, Children’s Advocate and President the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1893 By John E. Hansan, Ph.D. Introduction: In 1884 the Minnesota Board of Corrections and Charities submitted its First Report to the Legislature. It was compiled and written by Hastings Hornell Hart, the Secretary of the Board….

State Boards of Charity: Early History

History of State Boards (1863 – 1891) Report of Committee at the Twentieth Annual Session of the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1893 Committee Members: Oscar Craig, New York; W. F. Slocum, Jr., Colorado; Herbert A. Forrest, Michigan; Samuel G. Smith, Minnesota; M. D. Follett, Ohio. Ed. Note: This entry was condensed…

National Conference of Charities and Corrections: Part II: Progress 1874-1893

The Relation Of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction To The Progress Of The Past Twenty Years — Part II By Hastings H. Hart, President Ed. Note: This entry was condensed and divided into two parts from the original text of the President’s Address at the National Conference of Charities and Correction Twentieth Annual…