Beyond Benevolence: The New York Charity Organization Society and the Transformation of American Social Welfare, 1882-1935

by Dawn M. Greeley

Overview

A comprehensive history of one of the largest charitable organizations in early modern America.

Drawing on extensive archival records, Beyond Benevolence tells the fascinating story of the New York Charity Organization Society. The period between 1880 and 1935 marked a seminal, heavily debated change in American social welfare and philanthropy. The New York Charity Organization Society was at the center of these changes and played a key role in helping to reshape the philanthropic landscape.

Greeley uncovers rarely seen letters written to wealthy donors by working-class people, along with letters from donors and case entries. These letters reveal the myriad complex relationships, power struggles, and shifting alliances that developed among donors, clients, and charity workers over decades as they negotiated the meaning of charity, the basis of entitlement, and the extent of the obligation between classes in New York.

Meticulously researched and uniquely focused on the day-to-day practice of scientific charity as much as its theory, Beyond Benevolence offers a powerful glimpse into how the trajectory of one charitable organization reflected a nation's momentous social, economic, and political upheavals as it moved into the 20th century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253059116
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	01/04/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	468
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dawn M. Greeley is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the Community College of Baltimore County, Essex, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. 'Not Alms but a Friend': The Moral Economy of Scientific Charity
2. Organizing Charity in the City of Strangers: The New York COS
3. Neither Alms nor a Friend: Organizational Obstacles to the Practice of Scientific Charity
4. 'Hoping for Your Kind Interest': Donors, Clients, and Uses of Scientific Charity
5. 'I Beg to Call Your Attention to a Very Deserving Case': Entitlement, Respectability, and the Politics of Charity in Working-Class Communities
6. If Not a Friend, Then Alms: Relief and Reform in the Progressive Era
7. The COS and the State: Widows, Deserted Wives, and the Battle over Mothers' Pensions
8. From Friendly Visiting to Social Casework: The Triumph of Professionalism
Conclusion: The Legacy of the New York COS
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Joan Waugh

Dawn M. Greeley's Beyond Benevolence offers an incisive and highly readable study of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York from the Gilded Age to the end of the Progressive Era. Overcoming early stumbles, and guided by the idea that the principles of social science could be applied to solve the problems of poverty and homelessness, the NYCOS helped pushed forward the development of America's modern welfare state by 1935. Greeley's command of the sources provides readers with vivid examples of both the successes and failures of the Society's leaders, its largely female "case workers," their working class clients, and the political, religious, and philanthropic world in which they operated.

Joan Marie Johnson

Beyond Benevolence is a well-researched and significant history of the New York Charity Organization and the ways in which the COS both transformed and was transformed by changes in social welfare and philanthropy at the turn of the century. Greeley brings together the many strands of this story – New York politics, Catholic and Protestant influences, the role of the media as well as all of the actors from client to donor—into a compelling story.

Brent Ruswick

Beyond Benevolence is the most comprehensive analysis of a crucial and widely misunderstood turning-point in the history of American approaches to poverty: scientific charity's evolution into social work. With vivid historical details of persons desperately pursuing aid met by skeptical aid-givers, and sophisticated interpretation of the larger dynamics of gender, religion, class, and New York City politics, Greeley illuminates issues in poverty as relevant today as they were in 1900.

Elizabeth Agnew

As the first comprehensive study of the New York Charity Organization Society, Beyond Benevolence is a significant contribution to American social welfare and reform scholarship. Dawn M. Greeley's close reading of "begging letters" and casework records, interwoven with narratives of COS leaders and donors, freshly reveals the complex agency that shaped the practices and policies of organized charity for half a century. In arguing for the COS's evolving commitment to both individual and structural reform, Greeley offers a nuanced historical corrective to longstanding, opposing narratives of benign service and social control. In turn, her analysis is relevant for social welfare practices today.

Editorial Reviews

"Beyond Benevolence is the most comprehensive analysis of a crucial and widely misunderstood turning-point in the history of American approaches to poverty: scientific charity's evolution into social work. With vivid historical details of persons desperately pursuing aid met by skeptical aid-givers, and sophisticated interpretation of the larger dynamics of gender, religion, class, and New York City politics, Greeley illuminates issues in poverty as relevant today as they were in 1900."—Brent Ruswick, author of Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America, 1877-1917

"Beyond Benevolence is a well-researched and significant history of the New York Charity Organization and the ways in which the COS both transformed and was transformed by changes in social welfare and philanthropy at the turn of the century. Greeley brings together the many strands of this story – New York politics, Catholic and Protestant influences, the role of the media as well as all of the actors from client to donor—into a compelling story."—Joan Marie Johnson, author of Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870-1967

"Dawn M. Greeley's Beyond Benevolence offers an incisive and highly readable study of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York from the Gilded Age to the end of the Progressive Era. Overcoming early stumbles, and guided by the idea that the principles of social science could be applied to solve the problems of poverty and homelessness, the NYCOS helped pushed forward the development of America's modern welfare state by 1935. Greeley's command of the sources provides readers with vivid examples of both the successes and failures of the Society's leaders, its largely female "case workers," their working class clients, and the political, religious, and philanthropic world in which they operated."—Joan Waugh, author of Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell

"As the first comprehensive study of the New York Charity Organization Society, Beyond Benevolence is a significant contribution to American social welfare and reform scholarship. Dawn M. Greeley's close reading of "begging letters" and casework records, interwoven with narratives of COS leaders and donors, freshly reveals the complex agency that shaped the practices and policies of organized charity for half a century. In arguing for the COS's evolving commitment to both individual and structural reform, Greeley offers a nuanced historical corrective to longstanding, opposing narratives of benign service and social control. In turn, her analysis is relevant for social welfare practices today."—Elizabeth Agnew, author of From Charity to Social Work: Mary E. Richmond and the Creation of an American Profession

From the Publisher

Beyond Benevolence is a well-researched and significant history of the New York Charity Organization and the ways in which the COS both transformed and was transformed by changes in social welfare and philanthropy at the turn of the century. Greeley brings together the many strands of this story – New York politics, Catholic and Protestant influences, the role of the media as well as all of the actors from client to donor—into a compelling story.

Joan Marie Johnson

A comprehensive accounting of the work of one of the most prominent city-level organizations engaged in addressing poverty during a span of time when beliefs about how best to fight poverty went through enormous flux. Its comprehensiveness includes unusually rich examinations of the interactions between the charity organization's clients, the "agents" and "visitors" who engaged with them, and the donors who expected certain outcomes from their contributions.

Brent Ruswick