Reflections on the History of Social Policy in America

Abstract

Since the Second World War scholars have become increasingly interested in the concept of A vague term, generally refers to actions taken by government to deal with social and economic distress and other problems of an urban-industrial society. More specifically, social policy has a variety of different but related goals: (1) to mitigate or to abolish poverty; (2) to provide for groups unable to survive without some form of assistance; (3) to improve and to humanize conditions of work; (4) to grapple with the sanitary and hygienic problems resulting from modern technology and urbanization; (5) to control and punish crime; (6) to establish surrogate structures for functions once performed by family, church, or the immediate community. Historians have long been concerned with the manner in which American society dealt with dependent groups. For the most part, however, they did not produce policy-oriented studies nor were they concerned with the formulation, implementation, or administration of social policy. Generally speaking, historians during the first half of the twentieth century were primarily interested in politics and elections and tended to study social problems within a conceptual framework that emphasized alternating chronological periods of liberal reform and conservative consolidation. Such an approach was not conducive to differentiating between dependent and distressed groups on the one hand and the general population on the other. The history of social policy, to the degree that it was studied, remained an adjunct to political history. Other barriers also inhibited the systematic study of social policy issues. Overlapping and fragmented political jurisdictions made it difficult to treat social policy in a coherent manner. Leaving aside the role of the federal government, the care of dependent groups was subject to a multiplicity of state and local governments. The resulting variety of political jurisdictions complicated the task of defining public policy as an entity. The important role played by private philanthropy only compounded the problem. Moreover, a lack of economic sophistication led historians to ignore fiscal issues