Toward a National Minimum

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-260
Author(s):  
Anya Jabour
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Child Labor ◽  
Federally Funded ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 9 traces Breckinridge’s contributions to the nascent welfare state during the Great Depression. Breckinridge and other activist women made it their mission to establish a national minimum for all Americans by crafting a federal welfare state. Building on the groundwork they had laid in the Progressive era, Breckinridge and her allies in the New Deal administration--especially in the U.S. Children’s Bureau--insisted that it was the federal government’s responsibility to care for all its citizens. They worked to establish federally funded social services, ban child labor, and establish a minimum wage under the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Depression and the Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Social Provision ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ◽  
High Place

This chapter navigates the 1930s and groups two impulses into it: responding to the Great Depression and building a welfare state equipped with instruments of social provision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats blended these two impulses when they executed their New Deal in the 1930s. However, on current inspection, the blend is confusing and sometimes contradictory, and there is a difference in time span. Responding to the Great Depression was clearly a 1930s drive; whereas the Social Security Act of 1935 still enjoys its high place at the top of the American welfare state. The chapter shows how the timeline on building U.S. social provision runs a lot longer before and afterward.

Social Services

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip R. Popple
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Social Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
American System ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S

Formal or institutional social services began in the United States in the late 19th century as a response to problems that were rapidly increasing as a result of modernization. These services were almost entirely private until the Great Depression in the 1930s when the government became involved via provisions of the Social Security Act. Services expanded greatly, beginning in the 1960s when the federal government developed a system wherein services were supported by public funds but provided through contracts with private agencies. This trend has continued and expanded, resulting in a uniquely American system wherein private agencies serve as vehicles for government social service policy.

The Birth of the Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The University ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines the rise of the welfare state in the United States following the Great Depression. It begins with a historical background on the welfare state, tracing its origins to Germany under Count Otto von Bismarck and discussing Britain's social welfare legislation that was passed in 1911. It then considers the views of Arthur C. Pigou, who published his basic work on economics, The Economics of Welfare, in 1920, and a host of factors that sparked the movement toward the welfare state. In particular, it looks at the role of the institutionalists, led by John R. Commons, and the University of Wisconsin as the source of both the ideas and the practical initiative basic to the welfare legislation. Finally, it describes the Social Security Act of 1935 and the business reaction to it.

Women Riot for Jobs

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-139
Author(s):  
Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
National Campaigns ◽  
To Receive

During the 1930s, many black women who had been engaged in national campaigns turned toward the economic crisis that was unfolding in the nation’s capital. The crisis of the Great Depression inspired activists to amplify their demands for economic justice, to argue that black women deserved the opportunity to work in a job of their choice, earn a living wage, provide for their families, and enjoy full participation in government programs that regulated hours and wages and provided a safety net in old age. Black women critiqued New Deal programs for marginalizing domestic workers, whether through their exclusion from the National Recovery Administration’s industrial codes, limited access to government relief programs, or their ineligibility to receive benefits from the Social Security Act. In 1938, 10,000 black women rioted for charwomen jobs in the federal government, which illustrated their desire for economic justice in the nation’s capital.

New Deals

2017 ◽  
pp. 62-87
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Severs
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Great Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The U.S

This chapter demonstrates the deep importance of Wallace’s collegiate study of U.S. economic policy, especially in the Great Depression, to his early short stories. What if, I ask, we locate Wallace’s “origins” not in the post-World War II moment or 1960s ironic postmodernism, but instead in the crash of 1929, a less predictable moment of cultural crisis in which he took a quieter but subsuming interest? Key elements that emerge in this chapter are the U.S. Treasury (surreally portrayed as the issuer of a post-gold-standard currency – and post-metaphysical meaning – in the uncollected gem “Crash of 69”) and, in “Westward,” the governmental remedies of social insurance and economic reconstruction in the New Deal. While attending more briefly to other stories in Girl With Curious Hair, this chapter also provides sustained readings of Dust-Bowl metaphysics in “John Billy” and Johnson’s Great Society in “Lyndon.”

The Transformation of American Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Social Security Act

With passage of the Social Security Act, in 1935, the American government took on new social welfare functions, which have expanded ever since. As a work of political theory “on the ground,” The Transformation of American Liberalism explores the arguments American political leaders used to justify and defend social welfare programs since the Social Security Act. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, the arguments of America’s political leaders fall well short of values of equality and human dignity that are often thought to underlie the welfare state. Individualist—“Lockean”—values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America’s leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and individualist assumptions inherent in American political culture. The American welfare state is notably ungenerous in its social welfare programs. To some extent this may be attributed to the shortcomings of public justifications. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in America’s political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

Resignation at the Treasury: the Social Services Committee and the Failure to Reform the Welfare State, 1955–57

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Constructive Development ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Main Protagonist ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Expenditure

ABSTRACTBetween 1955–7 welfare expenditure in Britain came under serious attack. The main protagonist was the Treasury and its chosen implement a five-year review of the social services, to be presided over by a ministerial Social Services Committee. The attack rebounded, for the Committee provided the opportunity for the consolidation of the defence of welfare expenditure and for a frontal attack on Treasury assumptions. This neglected episode in Conservative government social policy places in historical context the early defeat of monetarism (with Thorneycroft's resignation in 1958) and provides the background to the establishment of the Plowden Committee and of the Public Expenditure Survey Committee. It also raises questions about the degree of post-war consensus and the failure to make the constructive development of the welfare state an objective of ‘conviction’ politics.

scholarly journals The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History

2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jefferson Cowie ◽  
Nick Salvatore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
New Deal ◽  
American History ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract“The Long Exception” examines the period from Franklin Roosevelt to the end of the twentieth century and argues that the New Deal was more of an historical aberration—a byproduct of the massive crisis of the Great Depression—than the linear triumph of the welfare state. The depth of the Depression undoubtedly forced the realignment of American politics and class relations for decades, but, it is argued, there is more continuity in American politics between the periods before the New Deal order and those after its decline than there is between the postwar era and the rest of American history. Indeed, by the early seventies the arc of American history had fallen back upon itself. While liberals of the seventies and eighties waited for a return to what they regarded as the normality of the New Deal order, they were actually living in the final days of what Paul Krugman later called the “interregnum between Gilded Ages.” The article examines four central themes in building this argument: race, religion, class, and individualism.

An Emerging Resource in U.S. Social Work—Professional Education of Bachelor Degree Personnel

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Allie C. Kilpatrick ◽  
Gary L. Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education ◽  
The U.S

Baccalaureate social work personnel in the United States have gone through a significant transformation during the past decade. Always a significant part of the social work labour force, they are now being prepared to assume a profes sional role. The two studies discussed in this paper highlight some of the current trends in Batchelor of Social Work programmes which have been accredited by the Council on Social Work Education since 1974. As this transition continues into the 1980's, the Baccalaureate practitioner will play an increasingly important role in the delivery of social services in the U.S.

The Corporate Role in the Not-So-Great Society

1983 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 151-159
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Rivlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Corporate Philanthropy ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Social Service Delivery ◽  
The Social ◽  
Partial List ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Direct federal support and corporate philanthropy are two of the many mechanisms of social service delivery in the U.S. The ongoing federal retrenchment reflects both a public decision to reduce the overall level of spending and a pressure to reallocate responsibility for providing some social services from one source to another. The success of this reallocation depends on the match between provider abilities and incentives and the characteristics of the social programs demanded from that provider. The author draws from theory and recent history a partial list of criteria for policymakers to consider in deciding who should be responsible for providing various public services.

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