In the early twentieth century, an era characterized by unprecedented industrial strife and violence, thousands of employers across the United States pioneered a new policy of labor relations called welfare work. The results of the policy were paternalistic practices and forms of compensation designed not only to control workers, but also to advertise the humanity of corporate capitalism to thwart the advance of legislated reform. In a burgeoning literature on the development of the U.S. welfare state, Andrea Tone offers a new interpretation of the importance of welfare capitalism in shaping its development.
Andrea Tone is Assistant Professor of History in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Institute of Technology.
What People are Saying About This
Lawrence Glickman
Tone has produced a first-rate book that uses welfare work as a window through which to examine a wide range of important topics that range from the philosophical and political to the social and the cultural to the quotidian. The general themes of the book deeply resonate with current debates in American political life and will help us place our current welfare difficulties in a complex historical contexts.
Alan Dawley
Tone has written the most encompassing study of welfare capitalism to come along in a quarter century. Brilliantly locating welfare work in the complex matrix of Progressive era forces, it makes a powerful case for an interpretation hinged around business strategy to fend off a more labor-sympathetic welfare state. Rarely is gender (not just women) so well integrated into the overall analysis.
