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Public Assistance and Social Welfare
Contents
The Poorhouse > Outdoor Relief > Children's
Law of 1875 > Child Saving > Home Relief > The New Deal > Aliens
and the WPA > The War on Poverty > Welfare Policy Today
Outdoor Relief
Outdoor relief, or public assistance to people
outside of the poorhouse, took a number of forms during the 19th
century. If in need, individuals and families received help in the
form of small amounts of cash, relief in kind-mainly food and fuel
during the winter. Despite the apparent necessity of outdoor relief
to relieve the suffering of helpless widows, the elderly, and those
thrown upon hard times by seasonal work or periodic fluctuations
in the economy, late 19th century politicians and reformers orchestrated
an attack on the practice in the interest of curtailing public spending
and deterring the "able-bodied" poor from becoming dependent
on public assistance.1
A customary response to poverty, outdoor relief had been dispensed
in New York State for over a century. While the New York poor laws
were intended as support for the sick and elderly who could not
be consigned to the poorhouse, it also served to help individuals
and families through periods of unemployment, avoid starvation,
and speed vagrants through town. In an era in which the line between
the working-class and abject poor was not clearly drawn, the average
working-class family of four received aid for about three weeks
every year. In most cases, aid typically consisted of food or coal,
but never in the same week. Nonetheless, relief never consisted
of an adequate amount of food or fuel, and never any luxuries, only
flours, potatoes, and rice.2
Throughout its existence as a measure of assistance, outdoor relief
faced considerable hostility on the part of those who believed that
most of the people being aided did not need help. Rather, they held,
individuals and families needed an incentive to work, while those
truly in need could be best helped by private charity. Motivating
this attack against outdoor relief were concerns about the social
order, labor supply, public spending, and political corruption.
Rarely, it seems, did reformers ever have the easing of human suffering
as their primary goal.3
Opposition to outdoor relief escalated during the 1870s. In the
wake of the Panic of 1873, thousands of New Yorkers were thrown
out of work, amounting to over a quarter of the city's laboring
population. The number of New Yorker's on relief skyrocketed from
5,000 in 1873 to nearly 25,000 in early 1874.Three years earlier,
revelations of unprecedented political corruption at the hands of
Tammany Hall heightened calls for municipal reform. Offering outdoor
relief, reformers believed, would demoralize the "able-bodied"
poor, accustoming them to idleness and robbing them of the will
to work. In addition, outdoor relief promoted immorality and increased
public spending in the form of increased taxes.4
Helpless widows and the elderly were clearly not targets in reformers
campaigns against outdoor relief. Instead, the major object of their
attacks was those considered "able-bodied," men capable
of work but used to handouts from the public authorities. Although
they comprised no more than a fraction of individuals and families
assisted outside of the poorhouse, reformers were troubled by their
presence on relief rolls. Indeed, outdoor relief was not viewed
as dangerous because of who it helped, but because of the lesson
it taught by example. In the eyes of reformers, its existence was
a threat to productivity, morality, and the tax rate, because the
respectable working class might learn the possibility of a life
without labor. Opponents not only feared people on relief, but those
who might be.5
Largely successful, opponents helped abolish outdoor relief in ten
of the forty largest cities during the last two decades of the nineteenth
century. New York City eliminated its dispensation of outdoor relief
in 1875, at the height of what was to that point the worst economic
contraction in the nation's history. It still assisted the needy
blind and, until prevented in the 1890s by a successful Charity
Organization Society crusade, distributed free coal. In doing so,
reformers hoped to curtail public spending and end municipal corruption,
drive away paupers, and reeducate the worthy poor. In the absence
of public outdoor relief, voluntary, private organizations continued
to distribute food, but only after a careful investigation of the
applicants by the Charity Organization Society.6
In the end, however, the attack on outdoor relief failed to accomplish
its goals and, worse, actually increased the suffering of those
in need of assistance. Most importantly, it saved the city only
a small amount of money and did not significantly curtail the scope
of dependence in many American communities. While some managed to
come through the hard times of the 1870s, hunger and cold caught
up with many. Relatively few went to the poorhouse, as it was already
filled to capacity. Parents often coped with the abolition of outdoor
relief by breaking up their families and sending their children
to the orphan's asylum. The social and economic forces that made
dependence common in working-class life did not disappear because
reformers denied their existence.7
In reality, ward politicians, small businessmen and professionals,
and the poor were linked through the dispensation of relief. Each
depended on their role in this interrelationship for their survival,
where they were tied together through the exchange of food, cash,
and votes. As such, outdoor relief was enmeshed in the overlapping
worlds of politics, labor markets, and economies. In some ways it
was its place in this interrelationship, rather than the suffering
it alleviated, that secured outdoor relief its permanent, if unwanted,
place in most American communities.8
The most persuasive arguments for the reinstitution of outdoor relief
in many localities came from those that dealt with the poor on a
day-to-day basis, the county superintendents of the poor. Marshalling
a wealth of experience, they cited cases where, they claimed, a
small cash handout helped a family avoid the poorhouse and regain
its independence. The two most common cases summoned by superintendents
to make their arguments evidenced the family man thrown out of work
or injured, and the worthy widow.9
Seeking a compromise between the opponents of relief and the need
for the practice in most American communities, they discovered it
in a persistent effort to discriminate between the worthy and unworthy
poor. One means instituted was the work test. Nonetheless, unemployment,
sickness, death, and crop failure continued to drive people to periodic
dependence and thwarted efforts to do away with outdoor relief.
In addition, its long-standing ties to local politics and economies
prevented opponents from ever ending the practice completely.10
1 Michael Katz,
In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America
(1986), ch. 2.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
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