By  Tamara  K. Hareven, Associate  Professor of History

Clark  University, Worchester,  Massachusetts

The century  of the existence  of the National Conference  on Social Welfare spans the most crucial developments in the changing conditions  of poverty and in the concerted response to social problems in American society. The changes in the name of the National Conference from  “Charities   and  Correction” to  “Social  Work” and  finally  to  “Social Welfare” symbolize  major  stages in  the  history  of social welfare in  the  United States. They  represent   transitions  from  the  “old” view of  poverty  to  the  “new” view, from charity  to  social security,  from  private  benevolence to public welfare, and from voluntarism to government responsibility.

The  history  of these developments  has often  been interpreted as a linear progression from  the Elizabethan Poor Law to the modern welfare state. While historians have follow­ed  an  evolutionary   pattern,   policy  makers  have  generally exaggerated  the novelty  of social problems  and the originality  of welfare-related  policies. Poverty  seems to be con­stantly  rediscovered by each succeeding wave of reformers, and programs aimed at solving the problems of poverty  make a claim to originality which historically  they do not have.

The  usefulness  of a historical  perspective lies not only in providing a developmental model for the present,  but also in pointing  out how misconceptions  of the past tend  to hamper  creative responses to contemporary problems. This paper will trace certain con­tinuities  in  the  responses to  poverty and social problems in America over the past cen­tury. It will show that despite the emphasis on  “novelty,” “discovery,” and “invention,” there  have been  continuities  in  the  treatment   of  dependency  and  poverty  in America, which have affected the development of the social welfare system, especially where the traditional  attitudes have handicapped  creative responses to social problems.

Poverty: Old and New

Historians  of social  welfare have outlined  several metamorphoses in the attitudes of Americans  towards  poverty  over the  last  century:   first,  in  the  pre-industrial  and early industrial  period,  poverty  was seen as a form  of  personal failure. Under the impact  of rapid industrial  and urban growth in the 1880’s  and the development of new sociological theories,  the  explanation   of  poverty  shifted from  an individual  to a social and environ­mental  perspective.  The new interpretation of poverty as socially determined  was ac­companied  by new responses. Rather than merely distributing  temporary  relief, reformers looked  for ways of adjusting  the social and economic system, thus eliminating the causes which tended  to perpetuate  poverty. There occurred,  therefore , a shift from the treatment of symptoms  of poverty  to its prevention.  Instead of concentrating strictly on individual reformation, the new approach  attempted to reform  the entire social context, emphasiz­ing housing reform, the regulation of working conditions, elimination of health hazards in industrial  labor,  and the abolition  of child labor.  Next followed the movement for social security,  through  workmen’s  compensation,  aid  to  widows,  and  family allowances. Al­though this movement had started at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not until the 1930’s  that the federal government institutionalized social security. Thus, the foundations for the welfare state  were laid in the 1930’s  by building permanent  guarantees into the system.

Despite  these  transformations the  traditional  stigma attached  to poverty  as personal failure  has  not  been eliminated.  The  work  ethic,  which  developed  in colonial  society where work roles were less complex, and where unemployment was virtually unknown, is in many respects an atavism in modern  industrial  society. Long after  the “new” view of poverty  was accepted  by social reformers  and its principles had been incorporated into the program of some state  governments  and into federal policies, the stigma of personal failure continued  to shape attitudes toward poverty. As William Leuchtenberg  has point­ed out,  during  the Great  Depression unemployed  men  committed  suicide because of a sense of  personal  failure,  even when  the  collapse of  the  economy  had dramatized  the failure of the system.

The  new view of  poverty  did not  change the prevailing attitude towards the poor as passive agents. Earlier they were seen as victims of their personal degradation; now they are seen as victims of economic forces and social prejudice. Many progressive reformers still perceived them as socially inferior, and as potentially  dangerous. The New Deal temporarily removed  the  stigma of degradation  from  relief, because the depression had affected the middle classes as well. While formally  the Roosevelt administration  viewed relief and social security  as rights, the local relief administrators  and social workers continued  to see them as handouts  and treated  the recipients as “clients.” The view of poverty as personal failure was transferred  into  the welfare programs of the 1960’s,  even if the promotional rhetoric  denied it. Recent  critics of the War on Poverty have presented evidence that the principles of “Poor-House State” have survived into the 1960’s.

Nor  did  the  new  view of  poverty  succeed in  separating  economic  from  moral  de­finitions of want. Despite a variety of attempts to define poverty, there still is a confusion as to whether it should be treated  as an economic  condition,  a cultural phenomenon, or both.  The  terms  “class”  and  “culture” have been  used interchangeably  and in tandem when  referring  to  the  poor.  Early  nineteenth-century  charity  workers  and  reformers regarded the poor as the vicious underclass, and lumped into this category most forms of dependency, delinquency, mental illness, and destitution. Since Americans first “discover­ed”  poverty  through  the influx of large  foreign  population  groups into  their cities, and since its presence has continued  to be dramatized  by the problems faced by the successive groups  of  racial minorities,  poverty  became stereotyped  as an ethnic  or  racial  phenomenon.  Robert  Hunter,  one  of  the  most  articulate  exponents  of  the  “new” view of poverty, in the early 1900’s  came close to describing what Oscar Lewis diagnosed later as the  “Culture of Poverty.”  Although  Hunter  saw poverty  as being socially and environ­mentally  determined,  he articulated  nevertheless the strong anti-immigrant  bias of many of his contemporaries in his explanation of the prevalence of pauperism.

The  “culture  of  poverty”  rhetoric  in  the  War on  Poverty  of  the  1960’s  reflects  a similar reluctance  to separate economic from cultural criteria. The confusion between the two  has been  particularly  acute  because anti-poverty  programs have been directed  pri­marily  toward  Black Americans, and have been inseparable from civil rights reforms. In their  respective  critiques  of  the  War on  Poverty’s  uses  of  the  “culture   of  poverty,” Richard  Valentine  and  Peter  Rossi  have  argued  that  this  approach  emanates  from  a general  inability  to  differentiate   between  “class”  and  “culture,” in American  society. They  saw the  major  weakness of  this  position  in the need to interpret  the lives of the “poor” with  what  S. M. Miller calls a “vague  and  misleading potpourri  of  tastes  and judgment…” As a result, poverty is seen not only as an economic phenomenon, but as a whole network  of ethnic,  racial, cultural,  residential and social relationships. Such a conglomerate  view provides an  escape  from  treating economic  problems with economic measures.

There has been a historical continuity  not  only in the stigma attached  to dependency but also in the judgment that the poor are different and in the fear that they might persist as a separate  subculture.  Nineteenth-century reformers  feared  the  emergence  of a per­manent  class of paupers; progressive reformers feared the perpetuation  of an alien culture in  their  midst;  and  social  planners  in  the  1960’s  warned  against  the emergence  of a separate society in Northern ghettoes.

The Relationship Between Social Reform and Social Control

One of the major handicaps  which has limited imaginative planning in social welfare is the consistently  strong element of social control  underlying most efforts directed at social reform.  The  view of  poverty  as a form  of  social breakdown  is rooted  in the historical circumstances  of  its  discovery.  As Robert   H.  Bremner  has shown,  poverty  was first discovered in  America  under  the  impact  of  urbanization   and industrialization, and has been  periodically  rediscovered  during  times of  social conflict,  economic  depression  or rapid social change. As a result, social attitudes towards poverty in America over the last one  hundred  and  fifty  years  have been crisis-oriented. The first concerted  response to poverty  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth-century, was stimulated  by the influx  of Irish immigrants  into  Northern  cities. The social justice movement in the Progressive era arose in response to the large concentration of the “New Immigration” in major urban centers. The response to poverty in the  New Deal came in times of a generally recognized econo­mic emergency. Finally, the War on Poverty  of the 1960’s  came as a belated response to the emergence of black ghettos in Northern cities, and to the threat  of social upheaval. In all these  instances,  responses to  poverty  were stimulated  by  anxiety  over social break­ down.  Even  the  New Deal,  Leuchtenberg   points  out,  had  to  employ  war emergency rhetoric  to  mobilize  support  for unprecedented  emergency  relief  and  social  reform measures.  Without  questioning  the  humanitarian   motives of the founders  of the National Con­ference  on  Charities  and  Correction,   it  is  clear  that  efforts  at  social control  loomed highly in their determination to administer  to the “poor  and delinquent  classes.” Among these, neglected  children  and  youths  were singled out  as the most  dangerous elements, and the fear of the gang as a destructive force in the city haunted  nineteenth-century reformers.   Throughout  the   nineteenth-century  there was  little   separation   between “charities” and  “correction.” Poverty,  crime,  juvenile delinquency,  and  mental  illness were defined  along ethnic  and  class lines. As Gerald Grob has pointed  out,  the mental hospital  and  the  reform school were not  created  merely for rehabilitation  and reformation.  By segregating deviants from  the rest of society,  they served as safety valves. Irish immigrants  made  up  the  majority  of  inmates  in  prisons,  reform  schools,  and  mental hospitals,  between  1850  and 1880. They  were superseded by Italians  and Slavs, who in turn have been replaced by Blacks. The Lyman School for Boys in Massachusetts, the first state reformatory  for juvenile delinquents  in America, labelled inmates as “a  typical Irish delinquent,” by 1920,  “a  typical  Negro delinquent.” The emergence of modem anthro­pology, sociology, and criminology  did not  undermine  racial stereotypes of dependency. As is  evidenced  in  the  reports  of  the  United  States  Immigration  Commission,  social science tended to legitimize earlier stereotypes.

The “new” view of  poverty in the Progressive Era did not  dissolve the link between social reform and social control.  It tended to increase the fear of the “dangerous  classes,” instead. As long as deviancy was seen as a form of individual failure, it could be cured by treating  the individual; once it was seen as socially determined,  it was necessary to reform the  societal  factors  that  caused  it, or the entire  system might break down. This is why Progressive reformers stressed social control as the underlying common denominator for a variety of reforms. They insisted  that  American society was faced with a series of irrevo­cable choices. The alternatives were: child labor reform or juvenile delinquency, adequate housing or tuberculosis,  the protection  of women workers or prostitution, humane working conditions  or  crime. With the development  of major public social welfare measures during the  New Deal, the pressure to cite crime as the price of neglect was temporarily removed. The potential  threat  of revolution  was so obvious that  it was not  necessary to employ  the old threats of crime and social breakdown, although these did not completely disappear from the New Deal’s jargon.

The  advocates and architects  of the War on Poverty in the late 1950’s  and 60’s kept alive the  emphasis  on  the  direct  relationship  between  social reform and social control, especially the focus on youth  and the fear of the gang. Fear of the explosion of juvenile delinquency  in the  Northern  ghettoes  provided a major spur for the War on Poverty of the 1960’s and especially for its youth programs. Lloyd Ohlin and Richard Cloward’s formulation of  the  relationship  between  delinquency  and  the lack  of  opportunity  has now  become  a classic. Much of  the  rhetoric  of  testimonies  before  congressional  com­mittees  and  especially  those of Robert  Kennedy  and Hubert  Humphrey  dramatized  the causal  relationship  between  the  unemployment   of school  dropouts  and  juvenile delin­quency,  and  James  Conant’s  “social  dynamite” became a built-in slogan of the war on poverty. In the 1960’s  the lines between social reform and social control  in government programs were sometimes even more blurred  than in the activities of the Conference on Charities   and  Correction,  especially  where  reform  measures were employed  to disguise what  were  basically policies of social control:  urban  renewal  was used  as a means  to destroy  black  neighborhoods  in large cities when whites felt  threatened  by the growing concentration of blacks in their vicinity.

The  relationship  between  social reform  and  social control  reveals one  of  the major weaknesses of  the  welfare  system  in  the United States.  From its inception,  it has been crisis-oriented  and  has  been  justified  on  emergency  grounds.  Since  it  has  developed through  a series of piece-meal measures in response to social and economic  crises, it has lacked a systematic plan.

The Urban Astigmatism of Social Reform

Poverty  was first  discovered in the  city,  and  has been continuously  identified  as an urban problem. From  mid-nineteenth-century on, charity  workers and reformers saw the city  as  the  source  of  all  social  problems.  The  National  Conference  on Charities  and Correction  was founded in response to perceived and real social crises in urban life. In the Progressive Era, the city continued  to be the locus as well as the subject of all major reform  effort.  Poverty  was identified  as an urban  phenomenon, and all social problems connected  with  it were  diagnosed  in  an urban  setting.  The New Deal was less urban­ oriented   than   its   predecessors,  both   because  of  the  agrarian  idealism  of  Franklin Roosevelt and his advisors, and because the impact  of the depression on rural areas was too  severe to  be overlooked.  Although  the War on Poverty of the 1960’s  “discovered” rural poverty in Appalachia and in the South,  the spotlight  continued  to be on the city.

The  urban  orientation of social reform  in  the United States  had several lasting con­sequences:  1.  It undermined  the possibility of treating social and economic problems in a regional and integrated  way. 2.  It further  isolated large groups of small-town and rural inhabitants   from  the  concern  of social welfare reformers.  The  classic example  of  this oversight is the crusade for child labor  reform. The concerted  effort  of an entire genera­tion of reformers  between c. 1890  to 1914 was dedicated to the abolition of child labor. The  reforms  they  advocated  would  have protected  industrial  and urban child laborers, who constituted only  about  40  per cent of the entire  child labor force at a time when industrial  child labor  was already on its way out for economic and technological reasons.

The  other  60  per cent  were ignored because the census listing of “rural” child laborers was construed  to mean children working on their fathers’  farms. In reality, the majority of these rural child laborers were employed as migrant laborers in harvesting or in proces­sing plants. Similarly, in the case of female workers, major reform efforts concentrated on industrial laborers and on urban slum dwellers. The drudgery of rural poverty was largely ignored, as were the life and work conditions of migrant laborers. The New Deal tempor­arily discovered rural poverty and passed a series of measures designed specifically to alleviate  rural  distress.  The  Social  Security  Act,  however,  did  not  cover  agricultural laborers. Migrants and sharecroppers, immortalized in the photographs of Dorothea Lange and in the writings of John Steinbeck, all but disappeared from social consciousness until their “rediscovery” in the 1960’s.

Ironically,  the urban focus of American reformers did not generate a more systematic plan for urban  reform. Rural and small-town values have lingered on and have interfered with  a fresh,  creative approach  to  urban  problems. The anti-urban  bias, which in some instances has survived into  the 1960s, is deeply rooted  in the American tradition.  In the case of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century reformers it derived from a con­fusion  of  the  process of industrialization  with  urbanization.  This was also true of Pro­gressive reformers  who  saw  the  exploitation  of  workers,  especially women  and  child laborers, as urban rather industrial phenomena.

Reformers’  bias against the city  was influenced  by a misperception  of the past. Since they  idealized  the small town of  the  past  as a perfect,  self-sufficient, harmonious  com­munity,  they  blamed  the  city  as the  progenitor  of  the  evils of modernization, and re­jected, therefore,  the pluralism which was characteristic of the modern city.

Nineteenth-century  administrators   of  charities  and  correction  met  dependency  and delinquency  by removal and isolation from  the city in an effort  to prevent the “cancer” from spreading, instead  of coping with the factors that generated social problems. Refor­matories and mental hospitals were generally located  in the allegedly redeeming environ­ment  of the countryside. Charles Loring Brace, founder  of the New York Children’s Aid Society,  identified  poor urban youths  as the “dangerous  classes” and saw the solution in their removal to farms in the West.

Despite the fact  that most Progressive reformers  tended  to respond to the complexity of the city with an  integrated  approach  to solving urban problems, they continued  to try to impose the values of small-town America on urban immigrant populations as part of an Americanization   and “uplifting” campaign. Even the  Settlement  workers  who showed respect  for  immigrant  traditions,  were trying to assimilate and to  “elevate”  them into the middle class. It  was not  surprising, therefore,  that  immigrant folkways which should have been respected  and  utilized  to  facilitate  adjustment  to American life, were inter­preted,  instead,  as obstacles to the molding of a common  culture,  and were seen some­ times as forms of social breakdown.

With the exception  of tenement  reform, the Progressives developed no overall plan for urban  reform  that would integrate  the organization  of urban space with social life. The City  Beautiful  Movement which emerged  at  the  turn  of  the  nineteenth  century,  never joined  forces  with  the  general  social  welfare  movement.  It was  more  absorbed  with aesthetics  than  with  the  social quality  of urban  life. Under the New Deal, the one city planning experiment  with  social reform  overtones  failed  to  deal directly with the prob­lems  of  the city. The series of Greenbelt  Towns  planned by the Resettlement  Administration  offered  an escape from  the big cities, instead  of providing any solution  to their problems.  The  ideology  underlying  the  New Deal’s planned community  movement  was that  of the  “ideal” self-sufficient  democratic  community  of  the historic  New England town; it represented  an abandonment  of the modern  city, and a search for the lost past.

Recently,  urban  renewal  has  effectively  blasted  out  the core  areas of many  cities, destroying their historic integrity and urban individuality as well as causing the disintegration  of viable ethnic  and racially homogenous neighborhoods,  to replace them with the anonymous  shopping centers, industrial “parks” and office “plazas”  common  to the surrounding suburbs. Practically every government program directed at reforming the conditions  in  the  cities has instead  demonstrated  the  triumph  of  anit-urbanism in this country  by counteracting  the pluralism which commonly gives a city its strength.

The Double Standard Towards the Family

From  its  inception,   charity,  reform  and  welfare  work  has  been family and  child­ oriented.  While the  integrity  of  the  family  is  one  of  the  most  continuously  upheld American ideals, authorities  did not hesitate  to break up the families of the poor and the dependent.   “Down  to the  end  of  the  nineteenth-century,” writes Oscar Handlin, “the dependent  faced a cruel dilemma; a request for help was an invitation  to the destruction of the  family.”  During  the  pre-industrial  period,  when  the family functioned  as a self­ sufficient  economic and educational  unit, it also served as a correctional institution. Throughout   the  colonial  period, magistrates placed dependent  and delinquent  members of society  with other  families. In the nineteenth-century, after welfare and correctional functions  had  been  transferred  to  the  poor  house,  and the reformatory, dependent  in­dividuals were placed in institutions.

It was only towards the latter part of the nineteenth-century that social workers began to  debate  the  relative  merits  of  the  family  and  the  institution  for  the  placement  of dependent  children.  Although  the  preference  for  strengthening  the family of the poor, rather  than transferring its members to institutions was beginning to win favor during the Progressive Era,  it  has  not  become  standard   policy  to  the  present  day. In  taking an integrated  view towards social reform Progressive reformers  realized that the family unit could  not  be  protected   merely  by  a  change  in  methods  of  child  placement.  It was necessary to ameliorate  the social and economic conditions  which constantly  threatened its integrity. These involved adequate  housing decent working conditions,  the protection of women and children from industrial hazards, adequate  pay to the head of the family, and the health  protection  for mothers and children. As reformers were agitating for these environmental  and  social changes, social workers  developed  an integrated  approach  to aiding  whole  families,  rather  than  isolated   individuals,  through  the  family  casework method.  In this respect the Progressive Era was characterized by the reversal of the earlier tendency  to break up dependent  families.

In their efforts  to preserve the structural  integrity of the family, Progressive reformers represented a departure  from the nineteenth-century position. On the other hand, they continued the  traditional   interference  with  the  autonomy  of  the  immigrant  and low­ income family. Their attitudes  expressed a double standard towards the family, especially towards women and children. While they respected the privacy of middle and upper-class families they  dictated  standards  of  behavior  and child rearing to lower-class families. In their campaigns for the abolition of child labor, they ignored the fact that immigrant and working-class families had a different  perception  of children’s  work than the native mid­dle class. While upholding  privacy as one of the sacred values of the middle class, they invaded  the  privacy of immigrants and Black families. In their eagerness to homogenize social behavior, they attempted to teach American middle class ways to immigrants and “urban” ways to rural black immigrants in Northern  cities, and dictated  practices which challenged traditional family roles and patterns  of child-rearing.

The fact  that  women constituted the majority  of social workers and reformers in the twentieth-century, did  not  result  in  a more balanced view of lower-class women. Class, culture,   and  color   biases  were  more  powerful  than  feminist  solidarity.  Middle  class women reformers were first of all members of their own class and representatives of their culture.  Like  male  reformers,  they  attempted  to  impose  American  standards  on  im­migrant women, and saw the goals of reform not  only in social justice, but also in acculturation. Women reformers  and social workers were perhaps more eager in this role than  their  male colleagues because they acted  in self-appointed  custodians  of social and cultural purity.

Ironically,  this double standard  still applies to lower-income families. As critics of the contemporary welfare system have pointed out,  the existing system of Aid for Dependent Children  indirectly  encourages  further  break-up  of  the  black family, and subjects it to surprise raids by social workers. While white middle class women are insisting on equal pay and equal employment  opportunities, women in welfare families are expected  to take on any job, at any pay. Lower-income families are encouraged  to limit  the number of their children, while affluent suburban  families have considered birth control their private prerogative. The middle class commitment to the nuclear family, the universality of which has been recently  questioned  by sociologists, is still so powerful, that alternative forms of family  organization  are interpreted as symptoms of social breakdown and  disintegration. Traditional  sociological theory  has also saddled social welfare with the view of the family as a dependent agent. The family has been treated as a victim of urbanization, migration, and  poverty.  What about  the role of the family as an agent of stability  and continuity, and as a source of resilience in times of crisis?

Conclusion

Perhaps the most persistent continuity underlying the development of social welfare in American  society  is the  application  of traditional  values and myths  to social problems. Reformers  and  social workers  have been agents of change only within  the limits of the existing  system  and  the  traditional  values of  American  capitalism.  Radical  alternatives which could  have changed  the  system  have been  continuously   rejected. Discussions of social welfare focus on “poverty” and “welfare” rather than on “equality” or “economic rights.”  Graduated  income  distribution and flat welfare rates have not been pursued as viable alternatives  because they are in conflict with traditional  values. The legislation and implementation of social welfare and social reform measures had to be continuously defended  against the American creed of self-reliance and the ethic  of work and minimal government interference. Social security and labor reform measures in the 1930s and Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s had to be justified by the grim alternatives of social disintegration, revolution, or race riot.

All welfare  programs also had  to  be defended  as efficient.  The  major thrust  of the Charity  Organization  Society  in  the  nineteenth-century was efficient  organization  and depersonalized  giving. From  the 1930s  to the present, as welfare measures have become bureaucratized, the  concern  with  procedure  has often  replaced  attention to substance. The  methods  of  distribution  have  become  more  important  than  the needs of  the  re­cipient.

The crisis approach  to social welfare, especially the concentration on urban problems, has undetermined systematic  social planning. Over the  past century,  the spotlight has been discovering different  groups and  types  of  poor,  depending  on  where  the  pressure was greater, where the crisis was most explosive, or where the implications were most reward­ing politically. The  procession of “the  poor”  included immigrants, unemployed  youth, Blacks,  women,  old  people,  Appalachian  Mountain  whites,  migrant  laborers,  Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos. Different  groups of “poor” were abandoned  and forgotten,  once they  were removed from  the  spotlight.  Their  temporary  disappearance  from  the  stage tends  to convey the false impression that  their  problems had been solved. The spotlight approach  is as dangerous as complete  neglect, because it disappoints  rising expectations and leaves other groups, such as native whites or second-generation immigrants, in the shadow.  The pattern  of “reverse  discrimination” underlying  the spot-light approach  can stir up social conflict  just as traditional  discrimination has done in the past.