What does it mean when the governmental, voluntary, and corporate sectors all co
ID: 3491248 • Letter: W
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Social welfare is one of the accepted goals of the United States and of the entire free world. Great interest attaches, therefore, both in this country and elsewhere, to the status of social welfare
programs in the United States today. The standard of living and general welfare of the American people derive from the multiform activities of a free people, working individually, through voluntary groups, and through their government. This article is concernedprimarily with the development and current status of public social welfare programs.
For this purpose, the term social welfare is broadly defined to include education, health, social security, and veterans’ programs-the major programs that are directed specijically to promoting the well- being of individuals and families. The data are presented in such a way as to permit exclusion or reclassification of specific programs by those who would find a diflerent classification more useful.
FROM the beginning of its history as a Nation, the United States has been committed to a policy of positive action by government to advance the public or general wel-fare. When society was largely rural and economic organization relatively simple, the circumstances in which government was called upon to safe- guard or promote social welfare were fewer than today; they were, however, important.
As early as 1785 the Federal Government set aside land from the public domain to be used for the support of public education. In 1789 the Federal Government accepted the responsibility of providing pensions to disabled veterans of the Revolutionary War. Another special group for which the Federal Government early made sl;ecial provision was merchant seamen, for whom in 1798 Congress established a system of health insurance. Compulsory de-ductions from seamen’s wages were used to establish and maintain hospitals for the care of sick and disabled seamen in the various ports. In 1884, the payroll deductions were replaced by a tonnage tax and later by general revenue financing. The Marine Hospital Service established by this early *Division of Research and Statistics, Office of the Commissioner.
Throughout the nineteenth century, however, it was the State and local governments rather than the li’ederal Government that carried the major responsibility for the various programs that are included in the term social welfare. The growing complexity and interdependence of our society have multiplied the number of problems calling for national rather than local solction. Yet even today, considerably more than half of all public expenditures for social weifarc are made from State and local funds, and about two-thirds of all the money (Federal, State, and local) spent ior social welfare goes to programs admimstered by the States or localities.
Development of Social Welfare Programs In the colonial period and in the early years of the Republic, security for the dependent members of society - children, old peopie, the sick and disabled-was regarded as primarily the responsibility of the family, backed by the mutual assistance of neighbors aad friends. The community always recog:lized a final responsibility for the destitute, which it carried out through the local poor relief system, workhouses, or the inclenture of orphaned or deserted children or adult vagrants to “worthy” families of the neighborhocd.
Nineteenth Century Beginnings By the middle of the nineteenth century, growing social dislocations and the inadequacies of general almshouses and lcjcal poor relief led to action by some of the State governments. Difierentiated treatment of special groups began in the 1850’s with separate State institutions for the mentally ill. During the next few decades, special institutional arrangements were made in many States for children, the aged, and such groups as the blind, the deaf, and the mentally retarded. State departments of welfare with limited authority to set standards for local relief activities were established in a number of States.
In the 1870’s and 1880’s there was a rapid growth of private charity organizations with paid workers in many areas. The settlement house movement, beginning at this time, focused attention on the terrible living conditions and insecurities of the urban poor and provided the inspiration for many of the reform movements of the early twentieth century. An attempt to prevent some of the conditions leading to poverty and dependency-as well as the advance of scientific medical knowledge-was reflected in the public health movement that had begun in the 1850’s and that got well under way in the 1890’s with the establishment or development of State boards of health in a number of States. Environmental sanitation and general pcblic health services gradually became an accepted function of local and State governments in most parts of the country.
In spite of the early support given to public educction by the grant of Federal lands, the movement for tax-supported public schools available to all groups and classes met substantial opposition, and its success was not really assured until well into the second half of the nineteenth century. The first compulsory attendance law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. It was 1920 before all States had such laws, and they could not be effective while child labor was accepted and widely used. Tax support of high schools began but the widespread developmect of secondary education did not occur until after 1900.
From 1900 to the Depression The great upsurge of economic, social, and political reform, which began at the end of the ninoteenth century and had its greatest impact before 1917, led to the development of a number of new social welfare programs. The most important were workmen’s compensation and m&hers’ aid and old-age pensions.
Workmen’s compensation. - Long before 1900, the toll of accidents in the mines and factories of the new machine age had begun to arouse concern. Studies of workmen’s compensation legislation in Europe, published by the U. S. Bureau of Labor in 1893 and 1899, influenced the thinking of persons concerned with social reform in this country. A workmen’s compensation bill introduced in New York in 1898 while Theodore Roosevelt was governor and one introduced in Illinois in 1905 were defeated.
The passage in 1908 of a Federal Compensation Act covering civil employees of the Federal
Government gave stimulus to the movement for State laws. The first law to be held constitutiofial by the State courts was enacted in 1911; altogether 10 laws were enacted in that year, three in 1912, and eight in 1913. By 1920, workmen’s compensation laws were in effect in 43 States, Alaska, and Hawaii. It was not until 1948, however, that all States finally had such legislation.
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