Timeline
Poor
Laws of 1601
Elizabethan
laws lay the groundwork for
social policy in America.
Puritan
Beliefs and Charity
Religious
beliefs of the Pilgrims shape attitudes .
A
New Nation
Democratic
spirit and new religious fervor.
Early
Reforms
"Outdoor" relief moves "Indoor".
Civil
War
War
redefines balance between state and federal.
"The
Gilded Age"
Industrialized
economy booms, for some.
Cities
and Settlement Houses
Immigration,
urbanization challenge cities.
The
Progressive Era
Government
gets involved.
The
Social Worker
The rise of the profession
The
Great Depression
Millions of unemployed; "alphabet soup" of agencies
Social
Security
Wisconsin economist directs effort.
War
and Post-War
Wartime factories retooled for prosperity.
The
Great Society
War on poverty, and war in Vietnam.
1996
Welfare Reform Bill
Ending welfare as we know it.
The Poor Laws of 1601
America's foundation
for social welfare comes from the laws and traditions of England. Less than
two decades before the Pilgrim's arrival in the New World, English welfare
practices had been codified into law by Parliament during the reign of Elizabeth.
Main principles
included local control, with administrative units made up of parishes, and
select residents of the parish designated "overseers of the poor."
These overseers had responsibility for the poor of the parish, including finding work, taking care of neglected children and providing relief for "the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them, being poor and not able to work." Emphasizing care for the disabled and aged made a distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor.
For neglected children, whose parents were found by the overseers to be unfit to "keep and maintain" them, care took the form of being apprenticed to a local tradesman.
Local control of social welfare under the Poors of 1601 also meant local financing, with overseers given broad authority to levy taxes on parish residents
The 1601 Poor
Laws were the basis of English social policy until the mid-1800's. Their influence
on American practice, particularly in New England, was tremendous. In fact,
until recent times, New Hampshire welfare case-workers were called "overseers
of the poor."
top of page
The Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to worship as they chose, and to establish a community based upon their religious principles. As other early groups like Scottish Calvinists and French Huguenots settled elsewhere in the colonies, their similar Puritan beliefs became the foundation for early America's social welfare philosophy.
These Puritans believed in an ordered, hierarchical universe with God reigning supreme. The world, as God's creation, reflected this hierarchy and the presence of a permanent underclass fit into this world view. Believing in predestination, Puritans could look at poverty as revealing a flaw in the poor person's character; a sign that he or she was out of favor with the higher power.
While acts of
charity to help the needy were an important part of religious practice, there
was not an expectation that such charitable acts would raise the underclass
out of poverty. Charity was viewed as comfort to those unfortunates doomed
to suffer in this world, and the charitable act a sign of the goodness of
the giver.
top of page
The newly independent United States of America enjoyed great prosperity and expansion in the early nineteenth century. An invigorating democratic spirit influenced all aspects of society.
Responsibility for governing was now in the hands of the people. The nation's elite saw a need to educate, improve, and uplift the people to best prepare them for this new challenge. The creation of societies for civic improvement was widespread and social movements like temperance and abolition got their start.
A similar spirit of optimism and hope was alive in the Church. A movement called "The Great Awakening," begun in the 1700's, had challenged the deterministic view of the Puritans. Emphasizing spiritual rebirth and salvation, this view held more hope for the underclass.
Monarchy had
relied on rigid class distinctions that allowed no upward mobility. Religion
had reinforced acceptance of a permanent impoverished class. With its space
and abundant resources, egalitarian philosophy, and a renewed religious vigor,
America enthusiastically tackled social ills.
top of page
Early Reforms
The social welfare practices of colonial America and the early United States were a legacy of English practice.
Appointed overseers of the poor in each community made provision for the needy: securing pensions, apprenticing wayward youth to tradesmen, and, in some cases, auctioning off care of people to the lowest bidder.The low bidder would be paid to care for an indigent person in his home, with little financial incentive to provide quality care.
This decentralized
system was called "outdoor" relief because care took place in people's
homes, outside an institution.
While at times abused by its disinterested overseers, outdoor relief was also
criticized for delivering service in homes, instead of motivating the needy
to get out and help themselves.
Reformers of the time stressed the environmental factors that shaped social ills, such as poverty and alcoholism. They built institutions to provide corrected, safe environments. Homes for the disabled, mental institutions, even prisons grew out of this movement.
Many states
created institutions for the impoverished. "Indoor" relief was born,
and the era of the poorhouse began.
Civil War
The US Civil War was a conflict between state and federal power. One consequence, though perhaps coincidental, was a change in the federal government's role in social welfare, particularly in public health.
At the War's outset, appalling numbers of troops succumbed to disease, due largely to poor sanitation. A very effective Sanitary Commission was established to disseminate proper health practices.
Though it was not a government agency, the Commission demonstrated to federal and state governments that a nationally led organization could be effective in promoting the public welfare.
It also demonstrated that some issues, like public health, were larger than local concerns and required cooperation between units of government.
The Commission
also created new roles for women by putting nurses near the front.
top of page
The Gilded Age
In 1869, the just-completed transcontinental railroad connected the West to the East.
With North and
South no longer at war, the nation moved solidly in the direction of commerce.
The railroad united new industries and vast fortunes were made in steel, oil,
and banking.
While some tycoons, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, would become
legendary philanthropists, so-called "robber-barons" viewed the
world exclusively as a competitive arena where every possible advantage should
be exploited.
These
"Social Darwinists" extrapolated the "Survival of the Fittest"
theories of Charles Darwin to mean the pursuit of individual wealth was natural
and right.
Darwin's work
challenged prevailing religious views about Man's origins. Just as some religious
interpretation had led to acceptance of a permanent underclass, this interpretation
of Darwin's work served the purpose of the wealthy.
top of page
Cities and Settlement Houses
Post-Civil War industrialization and immigration lead to enormous city growth, as many newcomers to America were crowded into cramped and filthy tenements.
The settlement
house movement sought to relieve the pressures of urban immigrant life by
providing community social services in an informal, neighborly setting.
The most
famous example is Chicago's Hull House, founded by social reformer Jane Addams.
Less concerned with providing the moral improvement charitable organizations
sought, Hull House offered some practical services to its community, like
the first childcare and kindergarten in Chicago.
top of page
The Progressive Era
Around the turn of the last century, the excesses of the Gilded Age became politically unpalatable. The laissez-faire style of government that had allowed unrestricted commerce did little to protect the rights of workers or provide for the needy.
In Wisconsin,
Bob LaFollette fought political corruption. In Washington, President Theodore
Roosevelt broke up the trusts that had monopolized whole sectors of the economy.
And around the country, farmers and laborers organized for political unity.
Journalistic
endeavors in this era of muckraking shed light on dangerous work conditions
and squalid housing. Famous examples include Jacob Riis's photography and
writing about tenement life and Upton Sinclair's exposure of unsafe meatpacking
practices.
A 1909
White House Conference on Dependent Children signaled a change in government
interest in children's welfare. Previously considered a local or private charitable
concern, children's welfare received federal attention with the creation of
a US Children's Bureau.
top
of page
The Social Worker
In 1921, at a Milwaukee conference, the American Association of Social Workers was established. This movement toward a more professional approach evolved throughout the early decades of the 20th century.
The complexity of modern life and the social ills associated with city growth were thought too daunting for the traditional untrained charity worker. The social work profession devised standards and training and advocated social research and scientific methods.
While such professionalism
lead to more consistent and focused care for individuals in need, much of
the reformist zeal and desire for social change, so vital in the 19th century,
fell by the wayside.
top of page
The Great Depression
After the 1929 stock market crash, and President Hoover's ineffectual response, America faced its greatest economic crisis. Millions of newly unemployed were exhausting private relief organizations.
In New York
state, Governor Franklin Roosevelt viewed the unemployed as a vast social
problem that could only be fixed by government. An emergency temporary relief
agency delivered funds to local work projects and relief providers.
As President, Roosevelt's first major act was creation of the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration (FERA, the first of an "alphabet soup" of
relief agencies) to fund locally administered unemployment relief.
The principle
of locally funded, locally controlled welfare dates back to America's colonial
era and the Poor Laws of 1601. But the problems of the Depression proved too
great for local governments or charities. Federal funding came with guidelines,
including the hiring of social workers. Many private charity social workers
now entered government service.
top of page
Social Security
After the Band-Aid work of emergency relief, Roosevelt turned to developing a more permanent safety net to keep Americans from destitution in the future.
A Committee of Economic Security was established with University of Wisconsin Professor Edwin E. Witte as its director. Witte was an economist who had worked on Wisconsin's pioneering unemployment insurance program. The committee devised a widespread program of social insurance that became law in 1935, little more than a year after the committee began its work.Old age pensions and unemployment insurance were funded by payments from both employers and employees. Funding was provided to states to administer relief to the disabled, widowed, and to single-parent families in a program that would become AFDC.
For the first time in US history, a certain amount of assistance was federally guaranteed to all citizens as an "entitlement."
top of page
War and Postwar
"The more
women work, the sooner we win" read this recruiting poster from World
War II.
Millions
of men were away in the military. To keep them supplied in the field, factories
hired women for jobs that had previously been only done by men.
After so many years of widespread unemployment, the enormous needs of the national war effort brought unprecedented opportunities for women and for minorities.
Just a few years before, aid to support single mothers at home had been passed as part of the Social Security Act. Now a very different public image of women was being projected. Although "Rosie the Riveter" was expected to return to homemaking after the war, seeds of social transformation were planted.
Wartime production gave way to postwar prosperity, as factories turned out consumer items for a growing middle class. But amid the apparent affluence and anti-Communist fever of the postwar era, there was a growing "Other America" – rural areas and inner cities that had not enjoyed an economic boom.
top of page
The Great Society
Having grown up in the remote Texas Hill Country, Lyndon B. Johnson understood the "Other America" – places like Appalachia where poverty persisted. Having seen electricity come to the Hill Country, Johnson felt government could do great things.
A die-hard New Deal Democrat who had idolized FDR, LBJ wanted to make a similar mark. Taking many initiatives started under Kennedy, Johnson created a program dubbed the "Great Society." Central to the program was a "War on Poverty."
Although Edwin Witte was able to devise Social Security in a matter of months, speed worked against the War on Poverty. The crisis mentality of War meant many programs were poorly conceived and badly administered.
Meanwhile, another war, a real one in Vietnam, consumed more of Johnson's attention. Protests against the war and urban rioting showed that Johnson was ineffective at providing either guns or butter. His effort to fight Communism overseas divided the country. A riotous underclass destroyed the image of a prosperous, united nation. Government seemed impotent at quelling rebellion, on one extreme, and a failure at providing economic justice for the largely minority underclass, on the other extreme.
While there were some Great Society successes like Head Start and adding two-parent families to AFDC, Johnson Era programs would become the prototype of the "Big Government" approach neoconservatives would fight against for years to come.
top of page
1996 Welfare Reform Bill
The 1994 Congressional elections would be dubbed the "Republican Revolution," as Newt Gingrich engineered a majority-taking election effort. Republicans united by the "Contract with America" made welfare reform a top priority.
Core to these
Republicans' philosophy was a belief in "devolution" – the
ceding of federal power to state or local government. Local government should
be more empowered and more responsive than a federal bureaucracy could ever
be.
History
had expanded the federal role in social welfare through the Civil War, Progressive
Era, and greatly so during the Depression.
This new approach called back upon the principles of local control codified in the Poor Laws of 1601, the original model for American social policy. As Gingrich praised the idea of orphanages, he approached the reformist zeal of early American "indoor" relief advocates.
Negotiating with a Republican Congress, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996.
Wisconsin had
for many years been experimenting with programs to emphasize work over welfare.
The bill's passage paved the way for even more bold experimentation, and for
states to follow Wisconsin's lead.
top
of page
Sources
From Poor
Law to Welfare State
Walter E. Trattner
Fifth edition published by The Free Press
A History
of Social Welfare
and Social Work in the United States
James Leiby
Columbia University Press
In the Shadow of the Poorhouse
Michael B. Katz
Basic Books
Social Welfare:
A History of American Response to Need
June Axinn
Harper and Row
The Tragedy of American Compassion
Marvin Olasky
Regnery Publishing
Poverty and
Policy in American History
Michael B. Katz
Academic Press
The assistance
of Dr.
Bruce Rocheleau,
Department of Public Administration,
Nothern Illinois University,
is gratefully acknowledged.
top of page
What Welfare Reform Did For Me... home
WPT Home
©Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.
comments to:comments@wpt.org