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III. Social Reform and State Intervention (from1898 to 1914)
- Central European University Press
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III. Social Reform and State Intervention (from 1898 to 1914) At the latest by the 1890s it was increasingly felt that political action on what contemporaries called “the social question” in its many diverse branches and aspects could no longer be avoided. Hungarian society seemed in some regards to have gone off the rails; new social problems and conflicts loomed, and existing social relations and problems began to be perceived in new ways. The central intersection of the novel efforts for social reform was undoubtedly the capital, Budapest, where the “social question” began to take the center stage in the most intense and visible manner. Against this background, in 1906 a new generation of reformers came to the fore in the Budapest city hall. Driven in part by the wave of social tensions that was growing in the city, the professionally minded group around Mayor István Bárczy pushed through a number of reform projects in the final years before World War I. It was with a focus exclusively on the most extreme “hubs” of material and political tension that the economically liberal-dominated municipal council—in which the old encrusted and highly elitist political structures dragged on—accepted these reforms carried out by the otherwise at best tolerated reformers. Mayor Bárczy canvassed a few highly motivated professional into the municipal administration, and this group transformed Budapest into a municipality which tried out a number of new and, in contemporary international context , progressive socio-political reforms.1 In national politics a similar rejuvenation did not take place, yet between 1906 and 1910 there was a marked change of government on this level too. In the era of the national liberal coalition government under Sándor Wekerle (April 1906–January 1910), social-conservative and paternalistic forces in the interests of controlling some aspects of the “social question” and some consequences of economic liberalism—via a combination of social-integrative and law-and orderbased reforms—played a bigger role than before or hereafter. 1 According to Imre Ferenczi, who can be considered as a key figure of the social reform efforts in the capital. Imre Ferenczi, “A főváros szociálpolitikai programmja” [The sociopolitical program of the Capital]. Munkásügyi Szemle 2 (1911): 3–7, here 7. 48 Divide, Provide, and Rule Against this backdrop, new social reforms and policies began to be pushed through. Partly these became only possible due to new state legislation , partly it was the capital city, Budapest alone, and to a much smaller extent municipalities elsewhere in the country, who took the lead, and in some policy fields new forms of cooperation between state and local government unfolded across the country. While Budapest’s municipal policies on unemployment, and even more so with regard to public housing, led the field in social reform and innovation throughout the country, in the area of child welfare and child protection, due to the powerful grasp of the state, the capital city played a complementary role at best. III.1. Child Protection The new regulations introduced in connection with the establishment of the State Healthcare Fund, by which the funding of institutional healthcare for the poor and (in part) the care for “abandoned” children was nationalized in 18982 , were preceded by many years of debate. With regard to child protection, at the heart of these discussions was the system of care for “foundlings” and the possible establishment of a state home for foundlings , together with the problem of children born out of wedlock and abandoned (especially in the capital). From 1898 the costs incurred for the care for children under the age of 7 declared “abandoned by the public authorities were covered by the State Healthcare Fund. At first the authorities tried to bypass the construction of state institutions caring for these children. Any institutional involvement of the state in solving the “social question” was a highly controversial issue in general. In this case it was feared that parents would exploit such institutions and that their sheer existence would damage the sexual morals, especially of women, i.e. stimulating sexual relations that were not sanctioned by the law and were socially inacceptable. Against the backdrop of these fears and related debates, private associations were entrusted with the institutional care of what became known as “state children.” But as the related costs exploded and municipalities succeeded in gradually extending further and further the circle of children under the age of seven classified as abandoned, so as to ensure...