Social Welfare

SOCIAL WELFARE

A New Profession

Prior to the 1900s what we now know as social work was done by amateurs, well-intentioned women and men who lacked formal training but possessed a desire to help those they viewed as less fortunate than themselves. But in the 1900s the field was transformed by the application of new knowledge and methods to the problems of poverty, vice, disease, alcoholism, and other social ills. Many of these new approaches were generated by social scientists such as Edward A. Ross at the University of Wisconsin, who had been trained in Europe, and in turn trained a young generation of men and women in economics and sociology. While many were educated at what were still known as schools of philanthropy, social workers made every effort to distance themselves from their roots in the voluntaristic tradition of the rich helping the poor. Instead, they saw themselves as professional investigators equipped with tools that nineteenth-century charitable organizations did not possess.

Middle-Class Values

Social workers were mainly middle-class whites. During this decade it was one of the few occupations in which men and women had relative parity. And although one of their motives was to control those they aided and mold them into more-acceptable behavior, social welfare reformers did much to improve people's health and well-being. They also tried to teach people how to keep house and how to stretch their bud-gets to ensure that they had healthy meals. They brought women and children out for seaside or lakeside excursions, providing a rare escape from the often confining existence in urban tenements. But even those social workers most attuned to objective social science and most willing to defend the character of the urban poor some-times slipped into old patterns. Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City, while rejecting the anti-immigrant sentiment of many native-born Americans, nonetheless held "coming-out parties" for the daughters of her immigrant neighbors when they turned eighteen.

The Pittsburgh Survey

In spite of their cultural blinders, social workers made substantial contributions to an improved understanding of urban life. Their main method was to gather statistics on slums, and the most famous effort was the 1907 Pittsburgh Survey, which was carried out primarily by New York City social workers with funding from the new Russell Sage Foundation. Workers fanned out in ethnic communities and looked at housing conditions, counted members of the household, and asked questions about employment and income, housekeeping standards, diet, clothing, education, and recreational activities. Statistical evidence was accompanied by hundreds of photographs of workers and their families by Lewis Hine. His photographs portrayed the mostly immigrant workers as proud individuals willing to do their part to provide for themselves. In the Pittsburgh Survey and other similar efforts the work was mostly descriptive and was used to advocate reforms. After seeing families where every member had to work in order to pay the rent and buy food, reformers used this information to lobby state legislators to adopt minimum-wage laws and maximum-hour laws. They used the information about housing to try to change laws regarding the size and type of buildings that could be erected. They worked with doctors to encourage states and municipalities to undertake vaccination programs using the information they gathered about the spread of disease.

Housing Reform

One of the consequences of the rapid and largely unplanned urbanization of the late nineteenth century—and one of the major challenges for social workers and urban reformers—was the prevalence of substandard housing with inadequate provision for light, air, privacy, and sanitation. Urban tenements were built to make use of most of the plot of land upon which they stood, resulting in dark and airless rooms. Tenements were crowded, often fitting large families into two rooms, one for sleeping and the other for cooking, socializing, and work. Most lacked indoor plumbing. In 1901 New York City passed a Tenement House Law, which became a model for other cities. Builders had to use larger lots and create large courtyards for tenements, which would ensure that some sunlight and air reached dwelling spaces. In addition, indoor plumbing was mandated, as was fireproof construction. These innovations materially improved the lives of thousands of city dwellers, though the demand for housing would continue to outstrip the supply in most American cities.

Sources:

John D. Fairfield, The Mysteries of the Great City: The Politics of Urban Design, 1877-1937 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993);

Joshua Freeman and others, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture and Society, volume 2 (New York: Pantheon, 1992);

Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969);

Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967).