phd isaac newton/K3

**BEFORE I BEGIN THE DISCUSSION ABOUT WOMEN AND CHILDREN, I WANT TO ADDRESS SOME OTHER ISSUES TO HELP FRAME THAT PRESENTATION. WHAT DIFFERENCE DO GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND ETHNICITY MAKE IN SERVICE TO NEEDY POPULATIONS?

ON ANOTHER NOTE, ARE THE RATIONALES WE HEAR TODAY ABOUT IMMIGRANTS FROM CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN NEW RESPONSES? HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT FROM OR SIMILAR TO PERCEPTIONS REGARDING 19TH CENTURY IMMIGRANTS FROM EUROPE, RUSSIA, AND ASIA?

FINALLY, ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE TERM “CORPORATE WELFARE?” WHILE WE DO NOT HAVE TIME TO EXPLORE THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT AFFORDED TO CORPORATIONS IN THIS COURSE, YOU MIGHT HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY IN OTHER CLASSES OR AT LEAST HAVE YOUR ANTENNAE UP WHEN YOU HEAR ABOUT CORPORATE BAIL-OUTS AND TAX BREAKS.

The foundations of social welfare in the United States have been and are shaped by perceptions of gender, race, class and ethnicity. It is important to note that these perceptions are constantly shifting and changing.

· Distinctions of worthy and unworthy poor

· Gender & race factored in

· Some ethnic groups were not even worthy of consideration

· Visitors into the homes of the poor in the early 19th century were only men but by the end of the 19th century were predominantly women

· Upper class believed they could determine best what the lower classes needed

· Irish and Italian Catholics were denigrated and ostracized

· English immigrants were accepted more readily that Eastern European Jews

This lecture will not exhaust the subject. Instead, it is intended to introduce some concepts what will be followed up later. PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO INCLUDE THIS ASPECT OF AMERICAN SOCIETY IN YOUR RESEARCH PAPER.

Colonial Era

· Distinction of worthy and unworthy poor was gendered – more likely that women were among the worthy poor because they were not able to support themselves and men were viewed as unworthy as drunks and vagabonds who should support themselves

· Ironic that a legal construct femme covert prevailed – women could not own property, earn wages, or write a will

· Women who were dependent were virtuous; men who were dependent were considered inadequate

· Race & ethnicity

· Codified keeping blood pure

· Laws against miscegenation or marriage among races

18th/ 19th century perspectives

· White middle/ upper class notions – traditional nuclear family

· Man is the protector, defender and breadwinner for women and children

· Women’s role was to bear children and take care of the home

· Men were expected to bring home the wages and women expected to be dependent on men

· Middle and upper-class perceptions that did not play out in working or impoverished classes

· Assumption that family will take care of its children and elderly really means women will take care of children and elderly

· “The home is the social workshop for the making of men” and middle class feared that poverty and demographic change put the American home at risk of ending

· Most economically vulnerable women are those who contribute the most in a patriarchal world even today

· they devote themselves full-time to care for the family and have made no contribution to social security

· taking care of homes & children provides no opportunity for contribution to “retirement” for their labor (not the case in other developed countries)

· women’s poverty is increased by their economic dependence, which is brought on by the dependence of others to take care of them

· 1910 – only 10.7% of married women worked outside the home

· 1987 – 54% of women receiving SS benefits did so based on their own work; 46% depended on benefits based on husband’s contributions

· Race & ethnicity

· Growing anxiety in 19th century about race and ethnicity shaped welfare initiatives

· Post-Civil War and emancipation of slaves

· Perceptions about race and the inferiority of Africans were not unique to the South

· Massive numbers of immigrants from Europe and Russia raised anxiety

· Antipathy toward African-Americans, but also against Irish, Italians, Jews, & Chinese

· Irish need not apply

· Jews forbidden

· Democratic politics (& social welfare) were a matter of exclusion: immigration restrictions, segregation, cultural regulation, barriers to suffrage, and exclusion from unions

· Various initiatives framed as race improvement when what they really meant was white supremacy

· Gender in early 20th century

· Workmen’s compensation – race and class

· for white men in the north employed in heavy industry

· judicial and public with formulas reflecting wage & % of disability

· Significant shift as a result of union workers – whole other field of study

· Mother’s pensions addressed in next lecture were the corollary for women, but only if met certain moral conditions

· Gender as it related to Veterans – set some national precedents

· categorized among the “worthy”

· Revolutionary War Pension Act – 1818

· First military pension program

· combined with poor law principles to provide assistance to impoverished veterans

· Civil War

· Massive numbers prompted significant organized response

· Union army – 2.3 million served; 719,000 died; 280,000 wounded = 43% casualty rate

· Confederate army – 781,000 served, 307,000 died; 100,000 wounded = 52% casualty rate

· 966,012 veterans in 1893

· Enthusiastic charitable response from Americans

· State legislatures in North & South appropriated large sums of money to care for soldiers;

· Local funds for sick, destitute & wounded soldiers

· Homes for disabled veterans

· Aid to widows & orphans

· 1862 federal government extended assistance to include elderly parents of soldiers who died in the war

· 1890 Dependent Pension Act – dropped the requirement that disability be service connected and provided pensions for veterans (& their wives) who had served at least 90 days and were able to earn a living requiring physical labor

· Cash payments

· Medical services

· Housing

· Military pension covered 2/3 of white native-born men over the age of 65 outside the south in 1912

· Federal funds went only to men who had served in the Union army; southern states assumed responsibility for veterans of the confederate army – BOTH ENSURED THESE MEN WERE OUTSIDE THE STIGMA OF POOR-RELIEF LAWS

· Female leadership in social welfare

· Late 19th century witnessed women outside the home, moving into the public sphere

· Claimed personal responsibility for families translated to civic responsibility for families in community

· In addition to direct services, women began to investigate, lobby, and litigate for social reform and services

· Introduced new perspective of poverty because they faced deep and unchanging roots of poverty when they went into the homes of impoverished people

· Growing support for black community among northern female reformers – While the morality of every young person is closely bound up with that of his family and his immediate environment, this is especially true of the sons and daughters of colored families who, because they continually find the door of opportunity shut in their faces, are more easily forced back into their early environment, however vicious it may have been. (supported NAACP and National Urban League)

· Race, class, gender, ethnicity – critical components to all of history of social welfare

The next lecture will focus on women and children, but I will touch on race, class, gender, and ethnicity in many lectures to come and I want you to be alert to issues in your readings.

Axinn, June J. and Mark Stern. Social welfare: A history of the American Response to need. Pearson Education, Inc., 2008.

Christianson, Scott. With liberty for some: 500 years of imprisonment in America. Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Jeffrey, Julie Roy et al. The American people: Creating a nation and a society. Addison-Wesley Publishers Inc., 2001.

Mink, Gwendolyn. "The lady and the tramp: Gender, race, and the origins of the American welfare state." Women, the state,

and welfare. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Trattner, Walter I. From poor law to welfare state: A history of social welfare in America. Simon and Schuster, 2007.