Welfare Reform in the Early Republic: A Brief History with Documents

by Seth Rockman

In the decades following the American Revolution, elected officials, moral crusaders, and relief administrators scrutinized the public welfare programs that assisted thousands of impoverished people. Seth Rockman uses documents ranging from sermons to almshouse admission rolls to show how reformers investigated the causes of poverty and pursued solutions that ranged from massive institutionalization of the poor to the total abolition of public charity—issues that are remarkably similar to the welfare debates of today. Also included are headnotes to the documents, questions for consideration, an annotated chronology, suggestions for further reading, and an index. Table of Part Poverty "in a Land Flowing with Milk and Honey" Poor Relief in Early America / The Growing Problem of Poverty and Its Victims / Religious Reform and Moral Benevolence / Public Responsibility for the Poor / Structural Solutions for Poverty / The Legacy of Welfare Reform / A Note about the Text Part The Documents Elite Perceptions of Poverty as a Moral and Social Crisis 1. The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Public Economy, 1817 2. The New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1818 3. On Doing Good to the Poor, 1818 (Heman Humphrey) 4. Of Intellectually and Morally Neglected Children, c. 1828 (Joseph Tuckerman) Private Benevolence and Moral Cures for Poverty 5. The Friendly Society of St. Thomas's African Church, 1797 6. The Providence Female Society for the Relief of Indigent Women and Children, 1801 7. The Female Humane Association Charity School, 1803 8. Preacher to the Poor in New York, 1811 (Ezra Stiles Ely) 9. The Boston Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Poor, 1819 10. Subjects of the New York House of Refuge, 1825 1830 11. Letter to Graduates of the House of Refuge, 1829 12. Subjects of the New York Colored Orphan Asylum, 1837 1838 Public Institutions 13. Rules for the Government of the New York Almshouse, 1801 14. Rules and Regulations of the Salem Almshouse, 1816 15. The Boston House of Industry, 1821 16. Inmates of the Baltimore Almshouse, June 1825 17. Report of the Trustees of the Baltimore Almshouse, 1827 18. Philadelphia Board of Guardians of the Poor, 1827 Structural Explanations and Cures for Poverty 19. Petition of New Jersey Working Widows to the U.S. Senate, 1816 20. The Working People of New Castle County, Delaware, 1829 21. Rights of Man to Property, 1829 (Thomas Skidmore) 22. Lecture on Existing Evils and Their Remedy, 1829 (Frances Wright) 23. Address to the Wealthy of the Land, 1831 (Mathew Carey) 24. The Manayunk Working People's Committee, 1833 25. On Wage Slavery, 1836 (Philadelphia National Laborer) A Chronology of Welfare Reform (1788 1840) / Questions for Consideration / Selected Bibliography

Genres: History

187 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2002

About the author

Seth Rockman is associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore and coeditor of Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Rockman serves on the faculty advisory board of Brown University’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. He lives in Providence. His new book Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery will be published in November 2024.

Reviews

[Marie]

Assigned this for my US Survey course, and will definitely do it again. The introduction is clear, and thought-provoking for my students on the cause and responses to being poor in the Early Republic. There are a lot of documents (too many?) but they show a wide chronological range of responses, and a wide range of ideological and thematic responses to poverty.

[Frank Stein]

I know this was intended as a primer for an undergraduate class but I saw it in the school bookstore and it looked promising.

The short introduction by Rockman actually does a great job clarifying some of the shifts in early American reactions to poverty, such as the creation of a number of public policy advocacy groups in the late 1810s (like New York's "Society for the Prevention of Pauperism") which sought to limit "out-door relief" to the poor. But the real value here is in the copied documents, from the "Rules and Regulations of the Salem Almshouse" in 1816, which limited visitors to coming from 9-4 on Wednesdays, and prescribed the number of bells to be rung before meals, to the "Report of the Philadelphia Board of Guardians of the Poor," in 1827, which warned that indiscriminate welfare could lead to more illegitimate births, this book gives one a real sense of how poverty policy was conducted in antebellum cities. Even seemingly mundane documents like the "Register of Inmates of the Baltimore Almshouse" from 1825 give one a real feel for the conditions (often intoxication, disease, or the death of a spouse) that lead people to appeal for public relief.

After reading so many secondary sources, it was good to get down in the weeds and see how people of the period really dealt with their poor.