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other developed industrial nations, "child
allowances" are universal state subsidies to parents.
In the United States, however, such relatively centralized approaches to social welfare have only
reluctantly caught on. And so it was in Illinois in
the first decades of the twentieth century.
Universality, for example, didn't happen. Deserving
widows with "relatively manageable" problems
received help. Deserted women however fared less
well. They were "nearly half" of the mother-only
families without dependent children under 14 from
1905-1927, but received only 15 percent of the
openings in the Chicago caseload. Divorced and
unmarried mothers, meanwhile, received no regular
"mothers' pension" cash payments at all, but had to
make-do with "in-kind" benefits including shoes,
medical care, coal, and other poor relief. Public
programs were infinitesimal. Public social welfare
didn't exceed private in Chicago until 1928. Several
tens of thousands of families of all kinds received
all forms of public relief in any one year in the
1920s—at a time when the population of the city of
Chicago was about 3 million people. The mothers'
pension program Illinois pioneered had strict eligibility rules and work requirements to control
expenditures. Illinois' legislation was more liberal
than that of most of the 40 states that passed
"some form of aid to single mothers in an era in
which women could vote. But, by contemporary
standards, efforts were marginal.
Why? There was no women's (or feminist)
political agenda, strongly and effectively held,
before or after women's suffrage arrived nationwide
in 1920. Reformers were split along strategic and
tactical and programmatic lines. "Pensioned" motherhood was of no interest to social insurance advocates or Socialists or women trade unionists.
Women advocating programs were not the politicians taxing people and businesses to pay for them
or the ones losing patronage and favors opportunities to judges, social workers, and "theoretical
mothers" in elite professions. Class, race, ethnic,
religious, and other diversities affected women, as
much as anyone else in U.S. society. Anti-statist
habits of mind—including among reformers—were
hard to break. And fear of centralizing anything (or
of child allowances paid for, for instance, out of
vastly increased general tax revenues by government) was common among upper crust reformers
in Chicago who despised and feared the city's
machine politics as organized pillage. A country
which did not even allow the central government to
tax incomes until 1913 or to spend more than 25
cents per person for all forms of civilian social welfare combined until the 1930s New Deal, was not
likely to look upon the non-contributory "pension"
predecessor to AFDC any more kindly than most
Americans look at AFDC now.
First, academic books are often like first dates.
The new author is anxious to put on a good show
and make a good professional impression. It's too
easy to forget that they are talking to anyone who
isn't a professor very much like themselves. So it is
here. To avoid possibly confusing scholarly language, artifice, and overthink, the best thing to do
is to start at almost the end of this book (to see
how the social welfare program operated down on
Chicago's grassroots) and to ignore most of the
beginning-where the author engages in classification and definition exercises of little relevance to
anyone who is not out to make a good impression
in contemporary academia. Used selectively, the
book is a good volume for those rare students
whose concern for history extends to the era of
their grandparents and before.
Copies of Joanne Goodwin's Gender and the
Politics of Welfare Reform (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1997) can be obtained by contacting the Press. The price is $45.00 in cloth and
$17.95 in paperback.
Notice Regarding Book Reviews
Editor's Note: The editor will publish book notices and critical reviews of newly published and forthcoming titles that examine topics related to the history and culture of Illinois. Guidelines regarding form,
length, and style may be obtained either at the ISHS Web Site or by contacting the editorial staff.
Completed reviews or material for review may be sent to: Jon Austin, Editor, Illinois Heritage Magazine,
The Illinois State Historical Society, 210-1/2 South Sixth Street, Suite 200, Springfield, Illinois 62701-1503.
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