Search Results for: war on poverty

Temporary Emergency Relief Administration

In 1930, with unemployment rising and jobs becoming increasingly scarce, American citizens began to feel the effects of the economic downturn that began with the Stock Market Crash the previous October. The Great Depression was just beginning. The problem of unemployment in New York State and in its major cities grew increasingly critical, and it was obvious that neither local funding nor privately-supported agencies could handle the crisis. Despite the lack of accurate statistics, all cities had reported that unemployment had reached unprecedented proportions. New York, as the leading industrial state, had an especial need to maintain and develop the wage-earner market. With the support of both labor and business, Frances Perkins, the state industrial commissioner, told Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt that public works projects were “the greatest source of hope for the future,” and she recommended the immediate implementation of local public works programs along with public employment clearinghouses.1

Freedmen’s Bureau

At no time was the federal government more involved with African Americans than during the Civil War and Reconstruction period, when approximately four million slaves became freedmen. No agency epitomized that involvement more than did the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually called the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Community Service Society of New York City

The Community Service Society (CSS) was formed in April 1939 by the merger of two of New York City’s most prominent nonprofit social welfare organizations: the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP), organized in 1843 and incorporated in 1848, and the New York City Charity Organization Society (COS), founded in…

Christodora Settlement House

Written by Dr. June Hopkins, this article presents a well-documented history of an early settlement house serving immigrant families living in the crowded slums of the Lower East Side of New York City. It is an especially important part of American social we

Children’s Aid Society of New York

The New York Children’s Aid Society January 21, 2011 Introduction: The New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS) was founded in February 1853 by a small group of clergymen and social reformers concerned about the general conditions of homeless, neglected and delinquent children. One of the principals of this group was a young Congregational minister, Rev….

Children of Circumstance: Part II

A History Of The First 125 Years Of The Chicago Child Care Society (1849-1974). By: Clare L. McCausland (Note 1: The material that follows consists of long excerpts from the book and copied here with permission of the Chicago Child Care Society.) (Note 2: The Chicago Child Care Society is the oldest child welfare organization…

Conservative Transition in American Social Policy

Although American corporations have blasted off in the application of Internet technology, the research that led to the development of the Internet was done in the government sector of the United States, not the business sector as you might expect

Great Depression: American Social Policy

One observer pointed out to Franklin D. Roosevelt upon taking office that, given the present crisis, he would be either the worst or greatest president in American history. Roosevelt is said to have responded: “If I fail, I shall be the last one.” By the time Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the traditional ideologies and institutions of the United States were in a state of upheavel. Americans who had grown up promoting the ideology of the “deserving and undeserving poor” and the stigma of poor relief were now standing in line for relief.

Widows and Waifs

Written by Dr. June Hopkins, Armstrong Atlantic State University. This essay investigates the connections between the child-saving movement to reform orphanages and the widows’ pension movement in New York City during the Progressive Era.

Christodora Settlement House, 1897-1939

Written by June Hopkins, Ph. D., History Department, Armstrong Atlantic State University. “Almost one hundred years ago, when Christina Isobel MacColl and her friend Sarah Carson founded Christodora Settlement House in the slums of New York City’s Lower East Side…these two indomitable women, inspired by such social activists as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, intended to settle in the slums and form bonds of “love and loyalty” with their immigrant neighbors while helping them adjust to the mean streets and squalid tenements of urban America.”