Political and Institutional Constraints of Reform: The Charity Reformers' Failed Campaigns Against Public Outdoor Relief, New York City, 1874–1898

Abstract

One of the United States' most enduring social policy conflicts in the nineteenth century concerned the controversy over the provision of municipal outdoor relief. J In the last third of the century, New York City, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia abolished the program. The actual political struggles over outdoor relief, however, have not been closely studied. Most accounts assume that the fierce opposition of the charity reformers to outdoor relief caused this long-standing social provision to be abolished. Instead of a story of “reform success,” this study of the outdoor relief conflicts in New York City between 1874 and 1898 documents the reformers' long years of frustration and ineffectiveness in the city's relief politics.