Almost Worthy

Brent Ruswick

Description

Rationalizing poor relief in Victorian America

In the 1880s, social reform leaders warned that the "unworthy" poor were taking charitable relief intended for the truly deserving. Armed with statistics and confused notions of evolution, these "scientific charity" reformers founded organizations intent on limiting access to relief by the most morally, biologically, and economically unfit. Brent Ruswick examines a prominent national organization for scientific social reform and poor relief in Indianapolis in order to understand how these new theories of poverty gave birth to new programs to assist the poor.

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Big Moll and the Science of Scientific Charity
2. "Armies of Vice": Evolution, Heredity, and the Pauper Menace
3. Friendly Visitors or Scientific Investigators? Befriending and Measuring the Poor
4. Opposition, Depression, and the Rejection of Pauperism
5. "I See No Terrible Army": Environmental Reform and Radicalism in the Scientific Charity Movement
6 The Potentially Normal Poor: Professional Social Work, Psychology, and the End of Scientific Charity
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Human Services
• Social History
• Social Science
• Charities
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Charitable organization
• Philanthropy
• Social sciences

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 décembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253006387
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Almost Worthy
PHILANTHROPIC AND NONPROFIT STUDIES Dwight F. Burlingame and David C. Hammack, editors
Almost Worthy

THE POOR, PAUPERS, AND THE SCIENCE OF CHARITY IN AMERICA, 1877-1917
Brent Ruswick
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2013 by Brent Ruswick
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ruswick, Brent. Almost worthy : the poor, paupers, and the science of charity in America, 1877-1917 / Brent Ruswick.
p. cm. - (Philanthropic and nonprofit studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00634-9 (clo : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00638-7 (eb)
1. Poor-Services for-United States-History. 2. Charities-United States-History. 3. Nature and nurture-United States-History. 4. Poverty-United States-History. I. Title.
HV91.R87 2013
362.5 57632097309034-dc23
2012026049
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13
For my students
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Big Moll and the Science of Scientific Charity
2 Armies of Vice : Evolution, Heredity, and the Pauper Menace
3 Friendly Visitors or Scientific Investigators? Befriending and Measuring the Poor
4 Opposition, Depression, and the Rejection of Pauperism
5 I See No Terrible Army : Environmental Reform and Radicalism in the Scientific Charity Movement
6 The Potentially Normal Poor: Professional Social Work, Psychology, and the End of Scientific Charity
Epilogue
Appendix 1. Course Syllabus, Alexander Johnson: Study Class in Social Science in the Department of Charity
Appendix 2. Course Syllabus, Mrs. S. E. Tenney: The Class for Study of the Friendly Visitor s Work
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The kernel that grew into Almost Worthy has been with me since October 2000. As the project grew, it touched every significant element of my life. Too often, I fear, it intruded into space that ought to have been reserved for dear friends, family, and colleagues. It is fitting that they now have the opportunity to encroach upon Almost Worthy s turf.
Victor Hilts, Lynn Nyhart, Joyce Coleman, Christina Matta, Joshua Kundert, Neil Andrews, and Steve Wald have been with me since my arrival in Madison, Wisconsin. As advisors and friends, Vic and Lynn have been unerring in their guidance, unfailing in their support. Along with my closest friend, Joyce, I can see their influence on the entirety of my book and life. Christina, Joshua, Neil, and Steve similarly deserve a special place and recognition for more than twelve years of insight and laughter.
The University of Wisconsin provided a seemingly endless source of critical and sage advisors. Chucho Alvarado, Libbie Freed, Jonathan Seitz, Dan Thurs, Rebecca Kinraide, Erika Milam, Paul Erickson, Rima Apple, Ronald Numbers, Richard Staley, and John Milton Cooper all offered formative insight. John Rensink, Peter Susalla, Bridget Collins, Kristen Hamilton O Neill, Judy Kaplan, Dana Freiburger, Jocelyn Bosley, Amrys Williams, Jessica Goldberg, Fred Gibbs, Kellen Backer, and Mitch Aso have all been sources of timely help. Dan Hamlin and Katie Reinhart possess an uncanny ability to offer their encouragement and enthusiasm when it is most needed. The John Neu fellowship and University of Wisconsin fellowships provided much needed financial support.
At the University of Central Arkansas, Mike Rosenow s comments on my work have been most helpful and his friendship most appreciated. Kimberly Little, Dave Neilson, and Pat Ramsey deserve special acknowledgment for their humor and support. Chris Craun and Lorien Foote have offered fine insights, and Ken Barnes has generously offered access to departmental funds to assist my work. Most important, I have loved every minute of my work with the students at UCA, and there would be no book were it not for the inspiration I have found in them.
The research for Almost Worthy benefited from the kindness and professionalism of many librarians and administrators. At the University of Central Arkansas, Alicia Suitt and Addie Bailey in Periodicals and Microforms and Elizabeth DiPrince and Rosalie Lovelace in Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery offered unsurpassed support in the friendliest manner. Jane Linzmeyer and Robin Rider patiently helped with all sorts of materials in the Wisconsin libraries. Susan Sutton, Susan Hahn, and Paul Brockman at the Indiana Historical Society aided in securing permissions and hunting down a difficult citation. Mark Vopelak and Brett Abercrombie at the Indiana State Library similarly helped with permissions and working through the McCulloch diaries. Edie Olson and the Family Service of Central Indiana were most accommodating in the use of COS files. Judy Huff, Charlene Bland, and Lila McCauley at UCA and Eileen Ward at UW are first-rate administrators who kept their eyes on every last little thing so that they never became big things.
I am indebted to Indiana University Press for vital support and input from Robert Sloan and David Hammack, who improved Almost Worthy in ways too numerous and significant to count. Sarah Wyatt Swanson always was helpful. Elaine Durham Otto served as an excellent and good-natured copyeditor.
Several people who offered critical support do not neatly fit in any larger category. Alan Lessoff sharpened my thinking toward charity applicants. Dawn Bakken improved my understanding of McCulloch s Open Door Sermons . Angelo Louisa was my first inspiration to be a historian, and he remains an inspiration to this day. Bre Schrader s friendship has kept me moving forward. Marydale Oppert s singular enthusiasm has helped sustain me.
Finally, I offer a special acknowledgment to my family. Don and Eleanor Gould, my grandparents, are the most remarkable people I know. Their intellectual curiosity and optimism are admirable. My aunt and uncle Rita and Grant Allison never stopped listening. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. My aunt and uncle Nancy and Paul Thorn-blad and their family, and my stepmother and stepfather, Mari Petersen and Mike Sorensen, are dear and reliable friends. I could not ask for better siblings than Greg and Jannelle Ruswick, whom I love more than I can express. To Jim Ruswick and Carol Sorensen, my parents: thank you for introducing me to and cultivating my interest in reading and learning and supporting me as these interests led me to strange new places. You are the best.
Almost Worthy
1
INTRODUCTION: BIG MOLL AND THE SCIENCE OF SCIENTIFIC CHARITY
Big Moll, Pauper
In June 1881 a council of concerned Indiana citizens filed a petition with the Board of County Commissioners of Marion County, asking that they investigate the rampant abuse and negligence rumored to be infesting the Marion County Poorhouse. Thomas A. Hendricks, a former Indiana governor, U.S. senator, vice presidential running mate to Samuel Tilden, and later vice president to Grover Cleveland, headed the petitioning council. Their case rested on four contentions: that the poorhouse overseers did not differentiate between the different types of people residing in their facility, that their negligence and improper training had resulted in abuse of the inmates, that the poorhouse was part of the local Republican machine and coerced its residents to vote the party ticket, and that biology and statistics proved that the poorhouse s system perpetuated pauperism, or willful dependence upon private charity and public welfare.
In spite of concerns voiced to the board by the Reverend Oscar C. McCulloch, a member of the committee that wrote the petition, that the inmates feared they will be thrown in the dungeon of the poorhouse if they offered critical testimony, several residents chose to share their experiences. 1 Their remarks brought forth sordid examples of neglect, especially of beatings, solitary imprisonment in the cellar, rancid food and drink, as well as inadequate ventilation, heating, blanketing, medical care, and other injustices. Ed Akins testified that he had been given the diabetes from drinking a peculiar kind of tea offered to him by the steward, Dr. Culbertson. With the approval of Peter Wright, a farmer who with his wife and daughter supervised the institution, more a poor farm than poorhouse, Culberson then refused to provide the necessary medicine to Akins. 2 Samuel Churchwell recounted how his two-year-old child had been separated from its mother, left so underclothed during winter that its legs had been frozen, starved to the point of being unable to recognize its parents upon being returned to them, then caught a cold and died. 3 A newborn died when, allegedly, the professionally inexperienced Dr. Culbertson (whose legal record already included a conviction for assault and battery) waited two days before attending to its illness. Reports suggested that other than to receive beatings or solitary confinement, the insane residents warranted even less attention than the infants. 4
Hendricks also alerted the com