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The Protestant Ethic
That attitude is a far cry from the 1930s and Ben Isaacs in Studs Terkel's Hard Times: "Shame? You tellin' me? I would go stand on that relief line, I would look this way and that way and see if there's nobody around that knows me. I would bend my head low so nobody would recognize me. The only scar it left on me is my pride, my pride."
Despite the growing notion of welfare by right, the "work ethic" is not dead for either the poor or nonpoor; a stigma still attaches to the jobless, just as a "P" was once pinned to paupers in Philadelphia. The force of the concept comes through clearly in the view of Nicholas Kisburg, legislative director of the Teamsters Union Joint Council 16 and a self-made man. Despite his seventh-grade education, he now gives courses in labor and politics at Fordham University. "I'm a strong believer in the Protestant ethic," he says. "Work and discipline are necessary. One reason why blue-collar guys hate welfare so much is that they feel, psychologically, that it threatens them. Working, bringing home the check each week, is one way of establishing their supremacy to themselves and their families. Work is the one thing they have. When they see a guy getting a check for doing nothing, they go crazy."
The modern concept of state welfare is indeed drastically different, not only from private charity, however massive, but also from the largesse distributed by governments to appease a mob. In the past, sustenance by right existed in the tribe, the medieval church and between master and serf. The belief that the state owes each citizen care in times of distress, and ultimately a minimum living, is a byproduct of 19th century industrial society. The gradual accumulation of social legislation, beginning with Dickensian workhouses, was necessary not only to keep the new working class working amid the fearful uncertainties of early capitalism. It was also a kind of vaccination against socialism. Underlying it was the most radical faith of all, though unrecognized for a long time: that poverty was no longer inevitable as an act of God, that the industrial age could create universal plenty.
Paper Triumphs
The idea of welfare ran strongly against the American grain. During the early decades of the 19th century, many of the poor were virtual chattels. Under a system called "outdoor relief," they were auctioned into the service of those who would support them at the lowest cost to the community. But not all were that fortunate; only the "virtuous" unemployed entered the system. In the industrialization that followed, the poor became civic wards. Through it all, receiving was a stigma and giving was a personal or institutional act of grace and only grudgingly a community necessity. It could hardly be otherwise in a country with a strong Puritan heritage, a nation still conquering and transforming a new continent on sheer nerve, on a fierce faith in self-reliance, individualism and opportunity.
It was the Depression of the 1930s, the first great shock to America's nerve, that brought about the New Deal welfare legislation. Yet even this only established minimum safeguards. The original model was not designed to help the needy or their descendants off the floor by ending the conditions that