The Rise of Scientific Charity

Public Social Welfare  Institutions multiplied  Coordination through state boards of charities  Public relief an opportunity for graft and corruption  Public outdoor relief said to create dependency  Josephine Shaw Lowell

Creation of Great Wealth  1870s, 1880s, 1890s saw the creation of great wealth  Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor  No regulation of unbridled capitalism  Much suffering among working and immigrant classes

Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie’s Fifth Avenue Mansion

A Tenement Apartment in NYC

Rise of Social Darwinism  Proponent was Herbert Spencer  Notion of laissez faire economics  Survival of the fittest  Government should do nothing but protect people and their property  Public education, sanitation, mail, business regulation and aid to needy were wrong

Social Darwinism  Competition was law of life  “work or starve”  Spencer was friend of Carnegie

Herbert Spencer

Rise of Private Agencies in Cities  Deplorable conditions led to many private charities  Private help said to help develop altruism and bonded rich to poor  Embarrassing number of private agencies in large cities, especially during depression of 1870s  1877 first Charity Organization Society (Buffalo)  138 had emerged by 1900

Charity Organization Society  Eliminate fraud, inefficiency and duplication of effort (scientific)  Friendly visitors (mainly) as friends and supporters of poor to improve morals  Lower class will not exert itself if given aid  Investigation of claims for help

COS  “Not alms but a friend”  Patterned after New York Assn for Improving the Condition of the Poor  Focus on causes of poverty being evil acts and personal defects, coupled with excessive relief-giving  Poor would not work if given help

COS  Poor seen as wayward children who needed advice of intelligent friend  Objects of character reformation  Careful records must be kept

What the visitors found  Poverty associated with ill health, premature death, low wages, involuntary unemployment and other structural factors  Investigations provided rich data on causes of poverty  Had little to do with character  Poverty 1904 “Poverty was bred of miserable and unjust social conditions.”

Studies Based on COS Work  1894 Warner said misfortune was more important than misconduct in causing dependency  Columbia study said unemployment, sickness and accident more important than shiftlessness and intemperance  Hunter (1904) ”Poverty was bred of miserable and unjust social conditions”

Devine (NYC COS)1907  “We may quite safely throw overboard, once and for all, the idea that the dependent poor are our moral inferiors, that there is any necessary connection between wealth and virtue, or between poverty and guilt.”

Casework  Profession of social work had its origins in casework  Social service and research  Paid workers shifted to those “in the field”  Volunteers worked behind the scenes on boards and in offices  Private charities became involved in training workers and seeking social reform