THOUGH privation and hardship were fairly general throughout the Dutch Colonial period, the number of actual dependents was small, and relief, when needed, was administered by the officers of the Dutch Reformed Church. Churches of other denominations were expected to care for their own poor, and in localities lacking a religious organization relief was a function of the civil authorities. Funds for the poor were raised through church collections, individual donations, and court fines for misdemeanors and violations of the excise laws.
Soon after the organization of the Colonial Government, several sieckentroosters, minor ecclesiastical functionaries, were sent to the Colony charged with the duty of visiting sick persons in their homes. These were the first social workers in what is now the Empire State.
For the dependent aged, almshouses were established by Dutch Reformed congregations at New Amsterdam, Rensselaerswyck, and other settlements, and a company hospital was erected in New Amsterdam in 1657 to care for sick soldiers and Negroes. Orphanmasters were appointed at New Amsterdam, Beverwyck (Albany), and Wildwyck (Kingston) to protect the interests of propertied widows and orphans, but when the latter became destitute they were turned over to the care of the deacons.
After the Colony came under English rule, poor relief in the southern counties was regulated by the Duke’s Laws (1665), which made each parish responsible for its own poor and for raising funds by taxation. The few general poor laws enacted were directed against vagabonds, beggars, and others moving from their places of legal settlement. Until formally accepted as an inhabitant of a town, a newcomer might at any time be ‘warned’ to depart by the authorities. An undesirable was ‘passed on’ from constable to constable until he reached his place of legal settlement or the border of a neighboring colony.
The prevailing attitude toward dependency was stern, cold, and strait-laced; in many places the pauper was made to wear a brightly colored badge on his sleeve inscribed with a large letter ‘P.’ No attempt was made to segregate the types of dependents: the insane and the physically handicapped, the aged and the young, the inebriates and the sober were housed together. The first public institution for ‘the employing of Poor and Indigent People’ was established in New York City in 1734 and opened two years later under the name ‘House of Correction, Workhouse and Poor House.’ The only method of caring for destitute children was through apprenticeship and indenture, by which children were bound out singly or in groups with the specification that their masters have them taught to read, write, and cipher.
During the Revolutionary War the local poor relief system broke down in many communities. Refugees from areas controlled by the British or ravaged by raids, not being chargeable to either county or town units, became the first ‘State poor,’ cared for by State commissioners. In the wake of the Revolution a great wave of humanitarian reform surged over the new Nation. Private philanthropic organizations were set up, the most important being the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism established in New York City. A sweeping revision of the penal code in 1796 reduced the number of crimes punishable by death from thirteen to two and established the first State prison. Corporal punishment, such as confinement in the stocks, whipping, and branding, was gradually abolished. Reforms were made in the laws against debtors. Public poor relief was completely secularized: the office of overseer of the poor was made elective instead of appointive; and towns too small to maintain individual almshouses were permitted to join others in town unions for the purpose of providing institutional care. Poor funds continued to be raised by local taxation supplemented by income from fines.
Several severe yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the century resulted in such public health measures as systematized quarantine, general sanitation, isolation of patients, and appointment of public health officers. The Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children was established in New York City in 1797 to help surviving dependents of fever victims. An offshoot of this Society founded the first orphan asylum in 1806. But child aid grew slowly, and for many years dependent children were herded indiscriminately with all other classes of dependents.
In the same period the insane were recognized as a separate social problem. In September 1792 the first mental patient was admitted into the newly opened New York Hospital, but treatment remained custodial rather than curative. The Bloomingdale Asylum, opened in 1821 as a separate unit of the New York Hospital, was the first institution for the insane in the State operated primarily on therapeutic principles. It received annual State grants for many years. The New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb—second of its kind in the United States—was incorporated in 1817 and later received State grants.
In 1824 the secretary of state, J.V.N. Yates, published under legislative authority the first State-wide poor law survey, which revealed that besides almshouse and home relief, the indigent were being cared for under the ‘contract system,’ whereby the dependent poor were let out to householders at a fixed rate, and under the ‘auction system,’ whereby the poor were bid off to persons offering to maintain them for the lowest cost. After summing up the chaos, cruelty, and waste arising from prevailing poor law practices, Yates recommended a State-wide system of county poorhouses, where all paupers were to be maintained at county expense, the able-bodied to be set to suitable work and the children to be given adequate education.
As a result of the Yates report the legislature in 1824 passed ‘An act to provide for the establishment of county almshouses’; but so many exceptions were allowed that, although poorhouses were established in all but four counties during the ensuing decade, the attempt to put the county system into effect eventually collapsed and relief was returned to local responsibility. However, the indiscriminate herding of dependents resulted in abuses so shocking as to lead to constant pressure for proper classification and segregation of different groups. The earliest effective changes took place in the field of child welfare. In 1824 the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, the first juvenile reformatory in the country, was established in New York City by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. It was supported mainly by State funds. In 1849 the Western House of Refuge (now the State Agricultural and Industrial School at Industry) was opened in Rochester as the first American juvenile reformatory under complete State financial and administrative control. The Asylum for Idiots (now the Syracuse State School) was established in 1851, the first of its kind to be opened under State ownership and control.
Several other important child welfare organizations were founded in the middle years of the nineteenth century, including the New York Juvenile Asylum (now the Children’s Village at Dobbs Ferry) and the Children’s Aid Society, which inaugurated the placing-out movement. The Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indian Children was organized in 1855 under private auspices and taken over by the State in 1875. By 1866 the total number of privately managed orphanages exceeded 60.
A distinctive feature of this period was the development of State institutional facilities for the mentally and physically handicapped. The State Lunatic Asylum at Utica was established in 1836 and opened in 1843. The New York City Lunatic Asylum (now the Manhattan State Hospital), founded in 1834, was the first municipal mental hospital in this country. The blind had received separate care as early as 1831, with the founding of the New York Institution for the Blind. In 1865 the State Institution for the Blind (now the New York State School for the Blind) was established at Batavia to serve the western counties.
Mass immigration in the nineteenth century brought in its wake grave problems of public health and poor relief. Large numbers of immigrants needed medical care upon landing; many were poverty-stricken; others were mulcted of their meager savings by thieves and swindlers. Without friends or funds, they soon found themselves drawn into the slums or the poorhouse, or were obliged to engage in the meanest forms of work for low wages and under conditions that exposed them to vice, disease, and death. Alarmed by the growing hordes of indigent aliens, poor-law officials demanded State and Federal legislation to protect local communities. In 1847 a State board was created to help and advise newcomers and to reimburse local communities for immigrant relief. Funds for this purpose came out of head taxes and indemnity bonds imposed on immigrants. The agitation against ‘alien pauperism’ culminated in 1882 in an act of Congress regulating immigration and containing a provision intended to exclude persons likely to become public charges.
The effects of repeated economic depressions provoked increased dissatisfaction with the organization of public welfare. Following the crisis of 1837–42 the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was founded, with emphasis on individual and moral, rather than mass and material, relief. Horace Greeley and others raised the slogan ‘Go West’ as an alternative to the demands made for setting up public work projects for the New York unemployed. In the crisis of 1857–8 the jobless militantly demanded the ‘right to work’ and the ‘right to relief; and demonstrations, sometimes reaching threatening proportions, became almost daily occurrences.
After the Civil War, the increase in the number of institutions for dependents and the mismanagement of some institutions receiving State funds gave rise to the demand for adequate supervision, leading to the establishment in 1867 of a body later known as the State Board of Charities. The State Charities Act of 1896 defined the powers of the Board as including the right to visit, inspect, and supervise all welfare organizations except those under the supervision of the State Commission in Lunacy, established in 1889, and of the State Prison Commission. It was also empowered to correct improper treatment of inmates and to regulate the admission and retention of inmates maintained in private institutions at public expense. The Board’s power to inspect private welfare agencies was later contested and restricted, but was partially restored in 1931 and written into the State constitution in 1938.
The last quarter of the nineteenth century was marked by successful campaigns to remove healthy children from public almshouses and to establish State institutions for the mentally ill, mental defectives, and epileptics in order to facilitate the removal of these groups from poorhouses. Another important development was the extension of the reformatory idea to the treatment of adult offenders between the ages of 16 and 30 convicted of a felony. The New York Training School for Girls was established at Hudson in 1881; the Albion State Training School was founded in 1890, and the Westfield State Farm in 1892. Another stimulus to progress was provided by private agencies. The State Charities Aid Association of New York, organized in 1872 by Louisa Lee Schuyler, did much to create public opinion favorable to needed developments in public welfare. The first charity organization society in America was founded in Buffalo in 1877, and was followed in 1882 by the establishment of the Charity Organization Society of New York City.
Recurring economic depressions again overtaxed welfare facilities. During 1873–9 more than 100,000 workers were jobless in New York City. Parades, demonstrations, and riots took place, and demands were made for work relief projects. The migration of thousands of jobless men created panicky alarm among public welfare officials over the ‘tramp problem.’ During the depression of 1893–7, many relief projects were set up under public and private auspices.
The turn of the century saw the rise of social reform movements with such goals as improved factory laws, better wage and living standards, workmen’s compensation, child labor legislation, slum clearance, and improved housing; and attention was concentrated on the care, treatment, and possible prevention of mental and physical handicaps. Important institutions were established, such as the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital in New York City, the New York State Hospital for the Treatment of Incipient Pulmonary Tuberculosis at Raybrook, the State Hospital for the Care of Crippled and Deformed Children (now the State Reconstruction Home) at West Haverstraw, and Letchworth Village for mental defectives at Thiells.
Although new institutions for the dependent and handicapped classes were being established, the twentieth-century trend was away from institutionalization and toward home care and treatment. The field of child welfare drew special attention because of the abuses of private orphanages in the care and placing-out of children. Juvenile courts were established in New York City, Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester in the first years of the century; and in 1922 a State-wide system of children’s courts was established, with sweeping powers in dealing with delinquent and neglected children. The child welfare law of 1915 provided for a board of child welfare in each upstate county and in New York City to administer allowances to widows with one or more children under 16 years of age.
The panic of 1907 and the pre- and post-World War depressions were marked by the usual round of breadlines, soup kitchens, demonstrations of the unemployed, establishment of employment bureaus under private auspices, mushroom growth of citizens’ emergency relief committees, and a sharp increase in the number of destitute migrants. An interesting outgrowth of this series of crises was the inauguration of many organized inquiries into the causes of periodical mass unemployment and methods of amelioration.
A new basic concept of welfare activity was written into the State public welfare law of 1929: ‘As far as possible, families shall be kept together, and they shall not be separated for reasons of poverty alone.’ Furthermore, the prevention of destitution, where possible, was expressly acknowledged to be a public duty. The new approach was evident in the creation in 1929 of a State commission on old age security, upon the recommendation of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the purpose of inquiring into the condition of the aged. The findings of the commission were embodied into the Old Age Security Act (Chapter 387, Laws of 1930), providing for allowances to needy persons 70 years old and over who were citizens of the United States, residents of New York State for at least ten years immediately preceding application for old age assistance, and proper subjects for noninstitutional relief.
The depression that began in 1929 overstrained the normal relief machinery. The number of those needing public relief in New York State rose 32 per cent in 1930, and 80 per cent more in 1931. The legislature, responding to a special message from Governor Roosevelt, unanimously passed the Wicks Act in September 1931, providing State aid to localities for unemployment relief. A Temporary Emergency Relief Administration was created to carry out the provisions of the law, and $20,000,000 was voted for a seven-month period. Not long after the establishment of the TERA it became apparent not only in New York but throughout the Nation that even State and local resources combined were not sufficient to cope with the human needs of the crisis. The Federal Government stepped in, first through advances made by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, then through the establishment of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress (now the Work Projects) Administration, under which it assumed full administrative and financial responsibility for work relief. Under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1939 the State and its subdivisions must bear at least one fourth the total cost of projects. A revealing index to the tremendous needs arising out of the depression is afforded in the final report of the TERA, dated June 30, 1937, which shows that, during its five years and eight months of existence, expenditures for public relief in the State totaled $1,155,000,000.
The result of all these efforts was the realization that relief was not enough, and that a firmly grounded system of security must be established to absorb the shock to the individual, and to society as well. With this in mind, President Roosevelt, in June 1934, created a committee on economic security, whose recommendations served as the basis of the Social Security Act, which became law in August 1935. New York State proceeded to enact legislation conforming to the Federal act in order to derive from it the maximum benefit.
A far-reaching reorganization of the State’s public welfare administration system took place during 1936. Chapter 873 of the Laws of 1936, amending the public welfare law, provided for the appointment of a new State Board of Social Welfare consisting of 15 members, with power to name the commissioner of social welfare. A permanent system of State participation in home relief was established, to the extent of 40 per cent of the costs. Chapter 358 of the Laws of 1937 provided State responsibility for all Indians and nonsettled persons and State reimbursement of 40 per cent for salaries of local public welfare personnel.
The extent of the public welfare program in New York State is indicated by the annual report of the State Board of Social Welfare for 1939, showing that in the last month of that year 434,530 cases involving 1,076,812 individuals received some form of public assistance at a total cost of $16,741,739. Of this expenditure it is estimated that localities paid $8,762,842, the State $6,243,816 and the Federal Government $1,735,081. In the same month the Federal Government spent approximately $10,109,000 in wages paid to about 154,300 persons employed on projects financed from WPA funds.
Constitutional amendments approved by the people of New York State in November 1938 broadened and deepened the definition and scope of social welfare for the State and widened the powers of visitation and inspection by the State Board of Social Welfare. Provision was authorized ‘for the aid, care and support of the needy directly or through subdivisions of the State; or for the protection by insurance or otherwise, against the hazards of unemployment, sickness and old age; or the education and support of the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the physically handicapped and juvenile delinquents . . . ; or for health and welfare services for all children . . . ; or for the aid, care and support of neglected and dependent children and of the needy sick . . .’ In this amendment the people gave recognition to the broader aspects of social welfare evolved under the pressure of events since 1929.
