Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America, 1877-1917

Epilogue

EPILOGUE When asked what my historical study of scientific charity organizers and their struggle to end poverty can teach us about the problem of poverty today, I prefer to demur. My reluctance to connect the dots between past and present tends to disappoint those undergraduate students who begin each semester by eagerly telling me that the value of studyinghistoryisthatitteachesuslessonstohelpusavoidthemistakes of the past. Almost as frequently, they tell me that history shows us the stepping-stones to the present, generally with the unstated assumptions that everything was a stepping-stone and that the present is a very good thing. But when I think about how proponents of scientific charity organization pursued the incredibly difficult challenges of understanding and ending poverty and chronic dependence, I find myself wondering if we learned any lessons from their mistakes—or even what the lessons were that we ought to have learned. While I see places where scientific charity helped to pave the way to our current thinking about poverty, I am more impressed by the number of dead ends and doubtful that the stepping-stones did in fact lead anywhere good. The more idealistic of the scientific charity organization enthusiasts, who so confidently predicted the discovery of iron laws governing dependence and the right methods for ending want, seem not just naïve but alien. I struggle to fathom their confidence and optimism. Instead, I am more impressed by observations I regularly heard from my dissertation advisor, Victor Hilts: that the social sciences have been more no204 Epilogue 205 table for their scientific failures than successes, that the most notable theories have been as much a reflection of personal philosophy as of scientific content, and that purportedly scientific laws governing human behavior, therefore, tend to have a much shorter shelf life than other scientific laws. The history of scientific charity reformers’ efforts to solve the poverty problem, I think, validates this skepticism. The poor are still with us; the scientific charity organizers are not. No doubt the last forty years of scientific investigation have yielded far more objective, useful, sophisticated knowledge of the complex weave of factors that cause and perpetuate poverty, keeping even the most worthy and best-intentioned ofsoulsinabjectwant.Wesimilarlybetterunderstandwhatsortsofpolicies are more or less effective in helping people out of poverty and keeping them out. Historians of social welfare have documented a seemingly endless series of well-intentioned mistakes made in the past that, if my earnestly hopeful students are correct, ought to help us in the present . But as a depressingly steady stream of events suggest—Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, childhood poverty rates approaching 25 percent—we have failed to translate much improved knowledge of poverty , its causes and relief, into much improved results. Wedding knowledgetoactionandgettingthedesiredresultshasturnedouttobeamore difficult task than the Oscar McCullochs of the world imagined. I, therefore, am reluctant to judge the scientific charity enthusiasts too harshly. It turns out that effectively studying and relieving poverty in a compassionate manner that respects the dignity of the relieved and the democratic institutions of American society is difficult work. Of course, I feel moral revulsion at their authoritarian, eugenic worldview that saw a certain type of poor people as subhuman parasites: instead of seeing parasites, I am inclined to see anyone who is suffering as worthy of relief . As a matter of both moral philosophy and good policy, I am unimpressed by their opposition to pensions and just about every other form of what we now refer to as welfare. Yet in spite of my sharp personal disagreementsanddisappointmentswithkeyelementsoftheirideology, myanalysisofscientificcharitypresentedinAlmostWorthyisamongthe more charitable interpretations of the movement. This is especially true of my view of the Reverend Oscar McCulloch. The most personally compelling, intellectually demanding, and longest 206 Almost Worthy running challenge in my study of scientific charity has been making sense of McCulloch. The Tribe of Ishmael is a nasty document. It expresses a view of poverty and dependence that advocates of eugenic sterilization of the “unfit” saw as validation for their work. In ways McCulloch never could have appreciated, we can now appreciate the horrific similaritiesbetweenhisrhetoricaboutarmies ofparasites and theeliminationist rhetoric characteristic of genocide. But I cannot judge the man orhishistoricallegacywithreferenceonlytothisonestatement.Instead of indicting McCulloch for publishing bad research in 1888 that echoed the logic behind the first sterilization laws in 1907, I would rather understand how, in the course of three years, one man could write both some of the vilest statements I have ever read about humanity and some...