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The Voluntary Sector's War on Poverty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Affiliation:
Union College
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Extract

In 1970, Elizabeth Wickenden, a longtime activist on behalf of public social provision and a broker between voluntary social welfare agencies and the federal government, despaired of a quiet revolution occurring in social service provision. “Virtually unchallenged and undebated,” she observed, “the principle established with the first large-scale federal welfare program, the Federal Emergency Welfare Administration [sic], that public funds should only be expended by public agencies, was quietly repudiated.” Through a series of domestic initiatives, including the Economic Opportunity Act of 1965 and amendments to the Social Security Act in 1967, the federal government had begun to channel a significant amount of money through nongovernmental organizations. To older activists like Wickenden, who had fought hard to build the public infrastructure of the welfare state, such a trend was troubling, as it seemed to indicate a dwindling commitment to public social provision that had informed New Deal social policy.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 275 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2004

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References

Notes

1. Manser, Ellen, Project ENABLE: What Happened (New York: Family Service Association of America, [1968]), iGoogle Scholar.

2. Wickenden, Elizabeth, “Purchase of Care and Services: Effect on Voluntary Agencies,” in Winogrond, Iris, ed., Purchase of Care and Services in the Health and Welfare Fields (Milwaukee: School of Social Welfare, University of Wisconsin, 1970), 43Google Scholar. Wickenden referred to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, or FERA, created by the Roosevelt administration in 1933.

3. Salamon, Lester, Partners in Public Service: Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State (Baltimore, 1995)Google Scholar, has emphasized the intermingling of the nonprofit and public sector. See also Kramer, Ralph, Voluntary Agencies in the Welfare State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981)Google Scholar. Lipsky, Michael and Smith, Steven Rathgeb, Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting (Cambridge, Mass., 1993)Google Scholar, address some of the issues raised by public contracting by voluntary agencies generally, and Fabricant, Michael B. and Fisher, Robert, Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City (New York, 2002)Google Scholar, examine the impact of contracting on one particular set of social agencies since 1975.

4. Critchlow, Donald T. and Parker, Charles H., in Critchlow and Parker, With Us Always: A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare (Lanham, Md., 1998), 7Google Scholar. On pre–New Deal voluntarism, useful starting points are Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar; Beito, David T., From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967 (Chapel Hill, 2000)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (Cambridge, Mass., 1994)Google Scholar. Judith Trolander shows how one set of voluntary institutions co-evolved with an expanding welfare state in Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to Present (New York, 1987), and Cmiel, Ken, A Home of Another Kind: One Chicago Orphanage and the Tangle of Child Welfare (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar, is a case study of one particular voluntary institution over the course of twentieth-century public-policy shifts. A recent wave of scholarship has addressed the “mixed” post–New Deal welfare state in other policy arenas, notably pensions and health insurance; see Hacker, Jacob, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Klein, Jennifer, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton, 2003)Google Scholar.

5. Standard works on the limits of the War on Poverty are Moynihan, Patrick, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Aaron, Henry, Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective (Washington, D.C., 1978)Google Scholar, and Matusow, Allen, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. Recent explorations of the impact of the Great Society on local politics include Germany, Kent, “Making a New Louisiana: American Liberalism and the Search for the Great Society in New Orleans, 1964–1974” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 2000)Google Scholar; Clayson, William, “‘The Barrios and the Ghettos Have Organized!’ Community Action, Political Acrimony, and the War on Poverty in San Antonio,” Journal of Urban History (01 2002): 158–183Google Scholar; Hazirjian, Lisa, “From Intimidation to Mobilization: The Impact of Neighborhood Organizing among Working-Class African Americans in Rocky Mount, North Carolina,”presented at the Southern Historical Association annual meeting, Fort Worth,Texas,November 1999Google Scholar.

6. Important exceptions are Alice O'Connor, “Neither Charity Nor Relief: The War on Poverty and the Effort to Redefine the Basis of Social Provision,” and Donald Critchlow, “Implementing Family Planning Policy: Philanthropic Foundations and the Welfare State,” in Critchlow and Parker, With Us Always; and Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change.

7. Cloward, Richard, “Social Class and Private Social Agencies,” in Education for Social Work: Proceedings of the Annual Program of the Council on Social Work Education, 1963 (New York, 1963), 128–134Google Scholar. Cloward revised and expanded the paper with Irwin Epstein, presenting it as “Private Welfare's Disengagement from the Poor: The Case of Family Adjustment Agencies” at the SUNY–Buffalo School of Social Welfare in May 1965.

8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Social Welfare Assembly, and U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Salaries and Working Conditions of Social Welfare Manpower in 1960 (New York, 1960), 35–36Google Scholar; McCurdy, William, Characteristics of the Professional Staff of Family Service Agencies (New York, 1960), 2Google Scholar; “Facts About Manpower in Family Service,” 2 March 1964, Folder 38, Box 17, Family Service Association of America Records, Social Welfare History Archive, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; on social work education, see Hollis, Ernest and Taylor, Alice, Social Work Education in the United States (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; on early professional social work, see Lubove, Roy, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880–1930 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.

9. The history of the Charity Organization Societies has been treated extensively; for starting points, see Watson, Frank Dekker, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States (New York, 1922)Google Scholar, and Katz, Michael, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1996), 60–87Google Scholar. For the connection between the Charity Organization Society movement and the family service agencies, see Rich, Margaret, A Belief in People: A History of Family Social Work (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

10. Brown, Josephine C., Public Relief: 1929–1939 (New York, 1940), 186Google Scholar. Brown had previously worked as a field agent for the Family Welfare Association of America, the national organization of family service agencies, and the predecessor of the Family Service Association of America.

11. For the reaction of these voluntary agencies to the expansion of public welfare in the 1930s and beyond, see Morris, Andrew, “Charity, Therapy, and Poverty: Private Social Service in the Era of Public Welfare” (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2003)Google Scholar.

12. Brown, Dorothy and McKeown, Elizabeth, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 155–156Google Scholar. For an examination of legal challenges to the subsidy of sectarian child-care institutions in New York in the 1970s, see Bernstein, Nina, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

13. Berkowitz, Edward, Mr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen (Lawrence, Kan., 1995), 191–198Google Scholar; Davies, Gareth, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, Kan., 1995), 41–42Google Scholar; O'Connor, Alice, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, 2001), 158–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank Mankewicz, quoted in Gillette, Michael, Launching the War on Poverty (New York, 1996), 151Google Scholar.

14. Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 109–19; Patterson, James T., America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1985 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 138–141Google Scholar; Kravitz quoted in Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 111.

15. Yarmolinsky quoted in Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty, 77.

16. The Office of Economic Opportunity During the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, vol. 1, p. 106, Box 106B, Entry 14, RG 381, National Archives, College Park, Maryland; Boone quoted in Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 117.

17. “Fund Waste Laid to Health Units,” New York Times, 23 May 1961, 43; “Charities Scored on Fiscal Report,” New York Times, 31 July 1961, 1; “U.S. Curbs Urged on Charity Funds,” New York Times, 11 October 1961, 32; “Family Agencies Chided on Funds,” New York Times, 15 November 1961, 36; Hamlin, Robert H., Voluntary Health and Welfare Agencies in the United States: An Exploratory Study (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; FSAA, Board of Directors Minutes, 12 November 1961, Folder 3, Box 5, FSAA.

18. Swift, Linton, New Alignments Between Public and Private Agencies in a Community Family Welfare and Relief Program (New York, 1934)Google Scholar; Brown, Public Relief, 413–19.

19. Sidney Hollander to Elizabeth Wickenden, 23 May 1961, Box 74, Section III, Hollander Papers, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. Hollander was on the board of the FSAA and the National Conference of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, among many others, and had helped underwrite staff positions at the FSAA and the National Social Welfare Assembly (an umbrella organization of national voluntary welfare agencies) in order to sharpen their attention on “public issues.”

20. Lindenberg, Ruth, “Hard to Reach: Client or Casework Agency?” Social Work (10 1958): 26Google Scholar.

21. Wilensky, Harold and Lebeaux, Charles, Industrial Society and Social Welfare, 2d ed. (New York, 1965), 172Google Scholar; FSAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Executives' Workshop, 6 May 1960; Notes on Committee on Range and Emphases, 16–17 September 1960, both in Folder “Function 1958–1960,” Box 31, FSAA; Family-Centered Project Group Discussion Minutes, 7 January 1955, Folder 8, Box 1, St. Paul Family-Centered Project Records, Social Welfare History Archives.

22. Young, Whitney, “The Racial Crisis—Implications for Family Service,” Family Service Highlights (02 1964): 35–44Google Scholar; FSAA BoD, 27–28 April 1964, Folder 5, Box 5; Dickerson, Dennis, Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young Jr. (Lexington, Ky., 1998), 125–126Google Scholar.

23. “Family Service for a Changing World,” FSAA Western Workshop, October 1962, Folder “Function 1961–1964,” Box 31, FSAA.

24. Levin, Herman, “The Future of Voluntary Family and Children's Social Work,” Social Service Review (1964): 167Google Scholar.

25. FSAA Executives' Conference, 8–10 May 1958, Folder 20, Box 7, FSAA; “Selected Data on the General Population and on FSAA Member Agencies in the Ten Most Populous Standard Metropolitan Areas in the United States,” January 1960. Folder 12, Box 33, FSAA; FSAA BoD, 11–12 May 1961. According to the United Community Funds and Councils of America, federated fund-raising had grown slightly faster than disposable personal income (from which charitable contributions would presumably be drawn) from 1945 to 1961; see UCFCA, Trends in Giving, 1962 (New York, 1962), 2Google Scholar.

26. FSAA Ad Hoc Committee on Use of Public Funds, “Report,” 28 April 1964, Folder 5, Box 5; FSAA Executives' Conference, 8–10 May 1958; FSAA Committee on Public Issues Minutes, 16 April 1963, Folder 1, Box 14; FSAA BoD, 29–30 November 1962, FSAA. Most representatives of voluntary agencies testifying in 1962 cautiously endorsed the idea of purchase of service, though they stipulated that government funding should not be the majority of any given agency's funds. See testimony of Blackburn, Msgr. Raymond Gallagher (National Conference of Catholic Charities), and Brad Mintener (National Conference of Churches of Christ), in Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives. Public Welfare Amendments of 1962, 87th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, D.C., 1962). The House removed from the 1962 bill the provision allowing purchase of service from voluntary organizations; see Derthick, Martha, Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants (Washington, D.C., 1975), 10Google Scholar.

27. “The 1956 Budget Request,” July 1955, in Folder Board of Directors 1955, Box 2, Family Service of St. Paul Records, Social Welfare History Archives; James Turrentine, “A Historical Perspective,” in “Family Service for a Changing World”; Clark Blackburn to Member Agencies, 26 October 1961, Folder FSAA Biennial 1960, Box 3; Stanley Davies, Memorandum, 11 May 1961, Folder 27, Box 22, FSAA.

28. Elizabeth Wickenden to Theodore Shuchat, 5 February 1964, Folder Wickenden Social Policy, January–April 1964, Box 57, National Social Welfare Assembly Records, Supplement 2, Social Welfare History Archives; FSAA BoD, 27–28 April 1964, Folder 5, Box 5.

29. “Explanation of Budget Request,” July 1947. BoD 1947 folder, Box 2, FSSP; “Preventative Casework,” Journal of Social Casework (May 1948): 193–94; Hill, John G. and Ormsby, Ralph, “The Value of Cost Analysis to the Family Agency,” Journal of Social Casework (10 1952): 330–337Google Scholar; FSAA BoD, May 13–14, 1963, Box 5.

30. Clark Blackburn, “A Family Agency's Role in Programs Combating Poverty,” 18 September 1964, Folder “Function 1961–1964,” Box 31; Marian Schmitz to Franklin Parks, 1 December 1964, Folder 37, Box 41; FSAA Board of Directors, 29–30 April 1965, Box 5, all FSAA; Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 265.

31. Manser, Project ENABLE, 5–9. Kravitz's office was funding at the same time a controversial organizing project by Saul Alinsky in Syracuse, New York, that used OEO money to organize poor voters to challenge the local political establishment. See O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 167–73, Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 248. Kravitz had an intimate understanding of the world of private welfare, having finished his social work dissertation on voluntary-sector welfare planning councils in the early 1960s (at the same time he was working on the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency). The dissertation criticized such councils, particularly their elite lay leadership, for their distance from and ignorance of public welfare. Sanford Kravitz, “Sources of Leadership Input for Social Welfare Planning” (DSW, Brandeis University, 1963).

32. Sanford Kravitz, personal communication with author, 29 October 2003.

33. Manser, Project ENABLE, 7; FSAA BoD, 29–30 April 1965.

34. Manser, Project ENABLE, 13–15. Head Start had also emerged by the spring of 1965 as an easily implemented, popular program that community action agencies could use to absorb unallocated funds, so the sense of urgency to fund ENABLE evaporated.

35. Whitney Young to Sargent Shriver, 4 August 1965, Box 6, Entry 1036, RG 363, National Archives; Kravitz to author.

36. Manser, Project ENABLE, 16–21; Minutes, FSAA ENABLE Advisory Committee, 20 October 1965; 16 December 1965; 12 January 1966, Folder 28, Box 21, FSAA. Shriver singled out San Francisco and Chicago as two cities where his hands were tied from helping ENABLE. San Francisco's community action program had been thoroughly radicalized, whereas Chicago's was the province of a handpicked appointee of Richard Daley. Chicago did, however, agree to sponsor an ENABLE program. See Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 248–49, 260–62, for brief discussions of community action in those two cities.

37. In fact, in forty communities, Councils of Social Agencies, dominated by the voluntary sector, were designated as the official community action agencies by early 1965, with another 150 heavily involved in planning and running antipoverty programs. XXX People and Events, 165.

38. This section draws heavily on the reports filed by evaluators employed by the ENABLE national office. Tal Fowler, Baltimore Program Evaluation, 19 September 1966, Folder 32, Box 21, FSAA. Baltimore's community action agency, however, itself was criticized for its “middle class” orientation by the OEO staff; see Judith Segal, memo, 22 April 1966, Folder “Poverty Program Baltimore City,” Box 30, Entry 1031, RG 381, National Archives.

39. Lawrence Brown, Colorado Springs Program Evaluation, [4 October 1966]; Juanita Dudley, Stockton Report, 9 September 1966, all Folder 30; Mildred Roberts, St. Paul Report, [21 September 1966], Folder 31; Fowler, Lancaster Program Evaluation, 19 September 1966; Felton Alexander, Beaumont Report, [1 November 1966]; Selma Belewky, Philadelphia Report, [28 October 1966], all Folder 32, Box 21, FSAA. In many cities, conflict with the community action agencies centered on casework aides, as the agencies sought to supervise or absorb ENABLE aides into their own programs; see Houston and Dallas reports.

40. Fowler, Baltimore Report, 19 September 1966; Eunice Clay, Baltimore Program Evaluation, 23 September 1966; Dudley Cawley, Pittsfield Program Evaluation [5 January 1967], all Folder 30; del Valle, Houston; East Orange Report, [26 September 1966]; Cawley, New York Program Evaluation, 16 September 1966, both Folder 31, Box 21.

41. Alexander, Tulsa Report, [26 September 1966]; Folder 31; Jean Bryant, “A New Circle,” filed with Salt Lake City reports, 1966, Folder 32, Box 21, FSAA; Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 251.

42. M. Roberts, Minneapolis Report, [16 September 1966], Folder 31; del Valle, Austin Report, [26 September 1966]; Alexander, Dallas Report [10 October 1966], Folder 32, Box 21; Fowler, Baltimore; Simulatics Corporation, Evaluation of Project ENABLE (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. V-1Google Scholar. 38 percent of the ENABLE participants in the first parent discussion groups said they had personally known a member of the ENABLE staff prior to the meetings. Simulatics, p. III-16.

43. Don Hoke, Chicago Report, [26 September 1966], Folder 30; Cawley, Newark Program Evaluation, 6 October 1966; Bertha Shier, Omaha Report, 30 September 1966, both Folder 31; Philadelphia Program Evaluation, 7 November 1966; Clay, Pittsburgh Report, 3 October 1966, both Folder 32, Box 21; Roberts, St. Paul. In Pittsburgh, they found the target population had been “subject to many surveys and programs” and were suspicious of ENABLE.

44. Dudley, San Diego Report, [12 September 1966], Folder 30, Box 21; Roberts, Mildred and Johnson, Josie, “‘More Than Meetings’—The Impact on Parents,” Social Casework (12 1967): 618–625Google Scholar. New Orleans quote from Folder “Family Service Society, Current 1966–71,” Box 25, Community Services Council Collection, Special Collections, University of New Orleans. Thanks to Kent Germany for this citation.

45. Carter Lowe to Cawley, 11 July 1966; both Folder 30; Mary Guaridani to Dudley Cawley, 28 July 1966; Newark Report, [26 September 1966]; both Folder 31, Box 21, FSAA; “The Enabler” (October 1966), Folder 29, Box 21, FSAA; “A New Way to Help Families Through Personal Involvement of the Poor,” Family Service Highlights (September–November 1967): 8–12.

46. Franklin Parks to Manser, 24 November 1965, Folder 37, Box 41, FSAA; Lancaster Report; Beaumont Report.

47. FSAA ENABLE Advisory Committee, 2 May 1966, Folder 28, Box 21; Memo, Ellen Manser to National Staff, 28 June 1966; Manser to FSAA Agency Executives, 25 August 1966; Helen Weisbrod to Manser, 16 September 1966; Manser to Urban League and FSAA Executives, 9 December 1966, Folder 26, Box 21; Poverty Knowledge, 167–73.

48. Simulatics Corporation, Examination of Project ENABLE, p. IV-2.

49. Minneapolis Report, 16 September 1966, Folder 31, Box 21; Oklahoma City Report, 4 October 1966; Udell La Victoire to Manser, 4 January 1967; Simulatics Corporation, Examination of Project ENABLE, p. IV-(33–35), V-8.

50. Kansas City Report, 26 September 1966, Folder 31, Box 21; ENABLE Executives' Meeting, St. Louis, 16–17 March 1967, Folder 21, Box 27; Manser, Project ENABLE, 73.

51. Blackburn telegram to Shriver, 14 March 1967, Folder 21, Box 27, FSAA; FSAA BoD, 15–16 May 1967; 17 November 1967, Folder 9, Box 8, FSAA.

52. “Report of FSAA Contact—New Orleans,” 28 February 1968, Folder 39, Box 41, FSAA Supp. 1; Firmin, C. Michael Jr., “Characteristics of Clients at Family and Child Services Prior to and Subsequent to the Establishment of Neighborhood Centers in 1965,” Part I (MSW, Catholic University, 1968)Google Scholar; Gilbert, Neil, Clients or Constituents? (San Francisco, 1970), 45–49Google ScholarPubMed; Heineman, Kenneth, “Model City: The War on Poverty, Race Relations, and Catholic Social Activism in 1960s Pittsburgh,”paper presented at the Policy History Conference,St. Louis,2002Google Scholar.

53. Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, 185–87.

54. Catholic social service agencies received 15 percent of their funds from government agencies in 1960, which increased to 50 percent by the mid-1980s. Oates, Mary J., “Faith and Good Works: Catholic Giving and Taking,” in Friedman, Lawrence and McGarvie, Mark, eds., Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History (Cambridge, 2003), 291Google Scholar; Critchlow, “Implementing Family Planning Policy.”

55. Derthick, Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants, 12–14; Gilbert, Neil, “The Transformation of Social Services,” Social Service Review (12 1977): 624–661Google Scholar; Mueller, Candace, “Purchase of Service Contracting from the Point of View of the Provider,” in Wedel, Kenneth R. et al. , Social Services by Government Contract: A Policy Analysis (New York, 1979), 46–54Google Scholar; Levin, Herman, “Voluntary Organizations in Social Welfare,” Social Work Year Book (New York, 1971), 1520Google Scholar; idem, “Voluntary Organizations in Social Welfare,” Encyclopedia of Social Work (Washington, D.C., 1977), 1578; Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change, 186.

56. Community Health and Welfare Planning Council of St. Paul, “Purchase of Service at Catholic Social Service, Family Service, and Jewish Family Service,” 21 12 1972Google Scholar; Citizen's League, “Overcoming Obstacles to Purchase of Service,” 14 January 1974; both in Minnesota Historical Society Library, St. Paul.

57. Booz, , Allen, , and Hamilton, , Purchase of Social Service: Study of the Experience of Three States in Purchase of Service by Contract Under the Provisions of the 1967 Amendments to the Social Security Act (Washington, D.C., 1971)Google Scholar; Netting, F. Ellen, “Secular and Religious Funding of Church-Related Agencies,” Social Service Review (12 1982): 588–589Google Scholar.

58. Manser, Gordon, “Implications of Purchase of Service for Voluntary Agencies,” Social Casework (06 1972): 421–427Google Scholar; Rice, Robert, “Impact of Government Contracts on Voluntary Social Agencies,” Social Casework (07 1975): 387–395Google Scholar.