| This broad comparative study of the implementation of Progressive-Era welfare practices rests on two basic questions: what were the characteristics of each community's poor relief, and what factors influenced the structure and manner of dispensing assistance. I have applied these questions to the four main areas of Progressive-Era poor relief: outdoor aid (both private and public), indoor aid (both private and public), mothers' pensions, and blind benefits.;Scholars generally view the Progressive Era as an important transformation in America's welfare state. Authors cite mothers' pensions as the period's major welfare reform that laid the foundation for our modern welfare practices. Scholars have also often framed their arguments in an either/or manner that chooses between a state- or society-centered explanation.;This study employes a comparative case-study approach to examine Progressive-Era relief practices. I have selected six diverse Colorado counties (Boulder, Costilla, Denver, Lincoln, Montezuma, and Teller) that differ in their local economies, religious beliefs, settlement patterns, racial/ethnic mixes, governmental jurisdictions, geographies, and philanthropic traditions. Each community brings a different population to the study, including Catholic Hispanic subsistent farmers, Penitentes, Protestant homesteaders, Native Americans on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, hard-rock miners, Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and tuberculous sufferers. I have collected data from each county's pauper books and entered slightly over 5,000 individuals into a statistical database.;I have arrived at three main conclusions. First, the Progressive Era did not, for the most part, transform the welfare state. Mothers' pensions simply reinforced existing practices and failed to alter the implementation of aid. Second, local conditions---local economies, ethnic and racial compositions, settlement patterns, geographies, governmental jurisdictions, religious beliefs, and philanthropic traditions---determined how communities cared for the poor. An interaction between state and societal forces best explains how these local conditions shaped welfare practices. Third, there was, however, one remarkable exception to this trend. Blind benefits, an area previously unexplored by scholars, radically transformed the welfare state by overriding local circumstances for the first time. Activists for the blind ushered in the use of interest-group politics in shaping American's welfare state years before the New Deal. |
