WELFARE AND CHARITY

Attitudes toward, and treatment of, the poor in colonial and early national America had obvious English origins. Assistance on both sides of the Atlantic was provided only to the so-called "impotent poor"—the elderly, sick, disabled, and orphaned, who were unable to care for themselves. Among healthy adults only widows with small children received public support. Men were expected to find work to support their families. As in England, poor taxes—-taxes levied on the local population to fund poor relief, where the tax was on property, not income, so it was generally paid by the wealthy—-were raised locally, but only in the South were Anglican parish vestries the preferred administrative body. Elsewhere, town councils, county courts, and orphan courts administered poor relief. The day-to-day distribution of relief was normally delegated to Overseers of the Poor, to whom the poor would apply for assistance. These men made judgments about the worthiness of individual paupers to receive relief not solely on the basis of need; they also

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took into account the reputation and moral character of the applicant. Those who were thought to have brought their poverty down on themselves, perhaps through promiscuity or through drunkenness, might be refused aid altogether or receive a lesser amount than those deemed to have led a blameless life (the "deserving poor").

In general, as compared to England, less emphasis was placed on settlement laws in America, whereby poor relief was available only to those born locally or long-term residents and not to transients or immigrants. In some wealthy southern communities with relatively few paupers, relief policies might even be described as generous. By contrast, some New England communities went to great lengths to deny assistance to those such as recent arrivals or residents of neighboring towns who were deemed to be the responsibility of others. Among those most likely to be "warned-out" (a formal process that indicated to the community that a particular individual would not be eligible for assistance) were nonwhites: free blacks and those of Native American descent. This restriction of relief to whites who were well-established residents therefore helped to foster a sense of community identity among those who were eligible for aid and to marginalize those who were not.

With the ending of the formal link with Great Britain in 1776, the involvement of Anglican parish vestries in poor relief ceased. But in general the welfare policies of the colonial period were continued in the early Republic. The vast majority of public paupers received "out-door relief," goods or cash that enabled them to either feed and clothe themselves or to pay for board and nursing care provided by a third party. In order to keep down costs, rural authorities sometimes auctioned the poor to those who required the least public subsidy to keep them, a practice that allowed some individuals to make their living by caring for public paupers. However, the rapid growth of cities in the eighteenth century brought a commensurate increase in the numbers of paupers, many of whom were immigrants, concentrated in a small area. Authorities in the largest cities gradually determined that the only way to cope with these increases was to open poorhouses. Boston, New York, and Charleston all had such institutions by 1750. However, in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, the trend toward institutionalization accelerated, and many more poorhouses were built—for example, in Baltimore (1773), Savannah (1809), Wilmington (1811), and Mobile (1824)—and for the first time public hospitals were opened—for example in Philadelphia (1752), New York (1790), Natchez (1805), and Boston (1821). These institutions served two functions: they were intended to be cheaper to run than the outdoor relief system, and so save the money of local taxpayers; and they were supposed to reduce the visible number of paupers and beggars on the streets that detracted from a vision of American prosperity that many city authorities wished to project.

Once in the poorhouses paupers were subjected to strict regimens of cleanliness, morality, and education. The managers of these institutions hoped that the poor would be reformed by this experience and, after a short period inside, would be able to live independent and productive lives. Despite the high hopes for institutionalization, it was actually more expensive than out-door relief because salaries had to be paid to matrons, doctors, and poorhouse keepers and new buildings financed. Moreover, poor people showed a marked reluctance to go to the poorhouse. The willingness of Overseers of the Poor to continue out-door relief, despite rules to the contrary, undermined the efficacy of the system.

A new development following the American Revolution was the amount of attention paid to poor and orphaned children by city elites increasingly concerned that the achievements of the American Revolution might be lost by a generation of poorly educated youths. Charleston opened a city orphanage in 1790, but elsewhere residential care for children was normally provided by private benevolent societies. Orphanages gave basic tuition and training to the children in their care, girls as well as boys, to enable them to function as future citizens of the new Republic—boys as workers and voters, girls as mothers. City and state authorities also started to make the provision of education a priority for all children, orphaned or not. Funds were provided for a wide range of private and public school initiatives, and education of the poor was, for the first time, seen as something that concerned society as a whole. These trends of institutionalization and the free provision of education continued to shape welfare policy in America for the rest of the nineteenth century.

See alsoBenevolent Associations; Philanthropy and Giving .

bibliography

Bellows, Barbara L. Benevolence among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

Herndon, Ruth Wallis. Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margin in Early New England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Newman, Simon P. Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Smith, Billy G. Down and Out in Early America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.

Tim Lockley