In Pursuit of Economic Citizenship

In autumn 1967, the U.S. Congress passed legislation designed to encourage states to require wage work among mothers who received welfare payments on behalf of their small children. The provision was hotly contested, and the Senate hearings and subsequent debate drew delegations of supporters and protesters to the nation's capital to plead their case. Among them were a group of mothers from New York City who came to petition the Senate committee charged with drafting the bill to preserve their capacity to remain at home with their young children. Failing to get on the Senate's agenda, the mothers made something of a fuss inside and outside the hearing rooms. Senator Russell B. Long, who chaired the subcommittee, responded angrily. Labeling welfare mothers "female broodmares" and "riffraff," he declared his distress at being besieged by "mothers who sat around this committee room all day and refused to go home." Along with their claims, Long rudely dismissed the rights of these mothers to petition Congress: "Why can't those people be told that if they can find time to impede the work of the Congress they can find time to pick up some beer cans in front of their house?" (Kessler-Harris 2001, 273)