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Alms Without End?: A History of Welfare in America
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20722 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
5,694 Words |
| Author
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Hugh Heclo
Hugh Heclo is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Political
Science at George Mason University and coauthor of The
Permanent Campaign and Its Future (American Enterprise
Institute, 2000) |
For anyone seeking to reform the welfare system, the history should be sobering. For at least six hundred years reformers in Western societies have been trying to rationalize public assistance so as to help the truly needy while denying a free ride to work-shy scroungers. And always the latest new idea to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving has failed to live up to expectations. Some critics claim the prevailing welfare system is too punitive, hurting people who are poor through no fault of their own. Others respond that welfare is too permissive, creating dependency among those it seeks to help. The cycle of reform, argument, and counterargument seems to repeat itself from one generation to the next.
Until roughly the fifteenth century, "welfare was scarcely considered a social problem as we understand the term today. Idealized views of Christian poverty and the religious duty to give alms coexisted with fear of rebellious paupers and distrust of troublesome beggars. In either case, almsgiving and other charitable acts were routine customs justified mainly by the good they did for the giver, not the recipient or society at large.
By the 1400s traditional religious charity was increasingly being supplemented by civil authorities' efforts to cope with the surges of pauperism and wandering beggars brought about by urban growth and economic changes in the countryside. As the Reformation accelerated the secularization of poor relief, the now familiar arguments began to be heard. Reformers criticized individual almsgiving as an encouragement to begging and ineffective in dealing with the needs of the poor. The fundamental question, they recognized, was how to keep the genuinely needy from starving (or rioting) without breeding a class of paupers who chose to live off public charity. Civil authorities evolved a variety of techniques to distinguish the "true pauper" from the "unworthy beggar," and these became known collectively as the old poor law.
Early America
Early settlers to America brought with them this bundle of traditions, laws, and social regulations. In general, each township or county (parish in the South) was legally responsible for organizing relief for any destitute in habitant who did not have kin to care for him or her. Rough classifications were applied such that the aged or infirm without relatives might be offered alms or a place in an almshouse, orphaned children apprenticed out to farmers or artisans, and the able-bodied set to work or threatened with punishment. As a typical saying
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