This Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940The South has been largely overlooked in the debates prompted by the wave of welfare reforms during the 1990s. This book helps correct that imbalance. Using Richmond, Virginia, as an example, Elna C. Green looks at issues and trends related to two centuries of relief for the needy and dependent in the urban South. Throughout, she links her findings to the larger narrative of welfare history in the United States. She ties social-welfare policy in the South to other southern histories, showing how each period left its own mark on policies and their implementation--from colonial poor laws to homes for children orphaned in the Civil War to the New Deal's public works projects. Green also covers the South's ongoing urbanization and industrialization, the selective application of social services along racial and gender lines, debates over the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the professionalization of social work, and the lasting effects of New Deal money and regulations on the region. This groundbreaking study sheds light on a variety of key public and private welfare issues--in history and in the present, and in terms of welfare recipients and providers. |
Contents
Colonial Origins The Elizabethan Poor Laws in Virginia | 9 |
POOR RELIEF in Early Richmond The Poor and Workhouse | 22 |
Antebellum Richmond From Poorhouse to Almshouse | 40 |
The Civil War Redefining the Worthy Poor | 68 |
Reconstruction The Contest over Poor Relief | 85 |
The New South Part I Scientific Charity and Confederate Commemoration | 103 |
The New South Part II Progressivism and the Welfare State through the 1920s | 128 |
On the Margins The Lives of the Poor | 153 |
Other editions - View all
This Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940 Elna C. Green Limited preview - 2003 |
This Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940 Elna C. Green No preview available - 2017 |
This Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940 Elna C. Green No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Admissions Registers African Americans agencies Annual Report antebellum assistance Associated Charities Benevolent budget Byrd casework Charities and Corrections Charity Organization city almshouse city council City Home city's Civil colonial committee Confederate pensions Confederate veterans Confederate welfare County Daily Dispatch Deal December depression dollars economic efforts entry evangelical Executive Papers expenditures facility federal government Females FERA folder Freedmen's Bureau Freedmen's Bureau Papers funds George Campbell Peery Governor Harry Hopkins Heinemann Henrico County Ibid inmates institution January June 30 labor large numbers Lorena Hickok Lost Cause maternity homes Minutebook mothers numbers outdoor relief overseers parish percent poor laws poor relief poorhouse poverty private charities progressivism public and private public relief public welfare records reform residents Richmond City slaves social workers social-welfare Society soldiers South southern state's superintendent tion Tyler-McGraw unemployment urban vestry Virginia Virginia Commonwealth University White Males women workhouse York