The Politics of Poverty
Miller, S. M.
A few short years ago it was widely assumed that poverty was declining in the U.S. Indeed, to think about the poor was to reveal an inability to overcome the "trauma of the 1930's," for the vast...
...The youthful poor possess limited or out-moded skills and inadequate educational credentials in a hightechnology, certificate-demanding economy...
...Many from "old America" move to the slum areas of large cities where they join the left-over third-generation immigrant population and the other poor of the metropolis.3 Farm and rural areas push people toward the cities, but the metropolitan areas are not prepared to accept them...
...I find this portrait misleading...
...These are communities which have very little internal dynam ics of control and no real momentum...
...Yet in wartime it was discovered that the accurate figure was 100,000...
...A Negro Mayor in one of our large cities is a distinct possibility in the next years...
...During and immediately after the war, great numbers of them left for the North, and in the following years there was a steady if not spectacular movement of Negroes out of the South...
...In all, one-fifth of the poor are supported by "welfare...
...Farms and small-town America are large producers of the poor...
...when they do work, wages are low...
...The concept of "unemployables" was largely abandoned and many people who had not been able to work for a long time, and perhaps regarded themselves as unable to perform on a job, discovered that their abilities and effort were needed...
...Keynesian traditionalism has emphasized "heating up the economy" as the way to eliminate poverty, but it ignores the large numbers of our poor who are not attached to the main economy and will not benefit from its advances...
...But in the next months the political pressures will come from the "colored" poor...
...In many cities, the young and adult poor have organized to protest their conditions, as recently in Chicago where women on welfare strongly demonstrated against the cessation of allowances...
...If there is no concerted effort to bring Negroes into unions, whether by organizing new industries or opening up existing unions, the result may well be the demise of the unions as a strong force in the United States, for there would then be no moral basis for the claim that they represent the under-represented...
...The middle-class Negro who does not want his children to have contact with low-income, educationally-deficient Negro children is a frequently cited example...
...The aged poor, who are a large percentage of the "non-workers," are less characterized by an orientation to work but continue to share many economic and political interests with the new working class...
...either way, they have common interests in banding together to improve their conditions...
...Negroes then are beginning to develop a political "clout" which will give them the ability to demand and get services and rights at both the federal and local levels...
...The aged poor are economically unacceptable and are sustained on inadequate social security and old-age assistance programs...
...Many of the poor shift back and forth between low-level unskilled work and government support...
...Vast technological change (subsumed under the loose term "automation") further reduces employment opportunities for the displaced and the poorly educated...
...Again, a war led to a rapid change...
...Linking local issues to broader national concerns and building an orientation to the national political scene is one of the most difficult and important tasks facing local leaders...
...they are not aimed at reforming the economy and society so that poverty is prevented...
...We are searching for economic aspirin and cosmetic surgery when sweeping changes in the structure and control of our economy are needed...
...labor force was needed in the beginning stages of Britain's industrial progress and, as E. H. Carr argues, public policy permitted market forces to starve people off the land...
...Only around 175,00 to 200,000 jobs a year were created in the private sector in this five-year period...
...In our case, we do not have cities needing much of the labor of the migrants or the older urban poor...
...193-211...
...The concept of the "new" working class is more a fishing net than a hard container...
...For example, rat infestation in certain areas was a great problem: the community stewards organized to exert pressure on City Hall to provide services...
...This self-centering pressure and inter-ethnic hostility may, however, be overcome by the large number of issues which are common to all of the poor...
...it does not guarantee that any kind of labor will be employed in a rising economic market...
...On the other hand, the marginal sector centers around low-level service trades and occupations, filled by individuals of low skill who are from minority groups or left-over immigrant populations, receiving relatively little of what the economy produces...
...Robert Lampman, Gabriel Kolko, and Leon Keyserling have revealed its extent...
...The importance and power of Negroes in the large Northern cities was demonstrated in the 1960 election in which an almost solid Democratic vote in many Negro districts swung the populous industrial states into Kennedy's column...
...1 Robert J. Lampman, "The Low Income Population and Economic Growth," Study Paper No...
...This base is now lacking: increasing income differentiation places those union members who are well-paid at an advantage, while the low-paid improve their conditions at a slower pace...
...Saul Alinsky in Chicago, Jesse Gray in Harlem rent strikes and others elsewhere have demonstrated the possibilities of social action and self-help programs...
...From pamphlet of same title, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions...
...At first, the issues may very well have to be local and immediate, directly affecting the new working class...
...If I may draw an example from a union beyond the pale, the St...
...At the present time, this new working class, largely "colored" in composition, is barely touched by the unions...
...And the result is further inequality...
...Once they are in unions, it may be important to have closer relations between unions and communities than is common...
...known...
...Coupled with a limited economic growth, the effects are to prevent new jobs from emerging and to increase or maintain unemployment, especially of the disadvantaged...
...Relative deprivation" points to inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth rather than to those living below a specified income level who cannot purchase an adequate basket of goods and services...
...This same process is beginning with Negroes and at a slower rate with many other members of the new working class...
...The rural non-farm, small town and small city poor suffer from the decay of local industry, whether it be the coal mines of West Virginia or the one-industry textile towns of the East...
...The first position is the "economic growth" argument of the Council of Economic Advisors and Leon Keyserling...
...The term "new" working class implies that low-income people are trying to get a foothold into urban industrial life...
...Consequently, we are moving into a situation where a largely white union movement covers less and less of the labor force, and the new "colored" labor force suffers outside of both the unions and the main economic structure...
...For if the unions fail to be concerned about the new working class, economic issues will less effectively bind together the various groupings of the poor against cross-cutting ethnic and racial ties...
...But while poverty is an American problem, it has not yet reached its full stature as a political problem...
...Indeed, to think about the poor was to reveal an inability to overcome the "trauma of the 1930's," for the vast improve...
...A high sustained demand for labor may encourage more youths to stay in school and be trained for skilled jobs...
...Thus far political mobilization among the new poor is more potential than real, and for this potential to be realized the labor unions will have to respond far more than they have thus far...
...The interests of Presidents Johnson and Kennedy in poverty results from the potential importance of the votes of the poor...
...soon, a majority of Negroes will be living in Northern cities...
...There has actually been an increase since 1949 in the concentration of wealth assets owned by the upper one per cent 6 The income advantage of the "diploma elite" over those who have only "some college," high school diplomas or are school dropouts is increasing...
...In World War II, the percentage of unemployed was reduced drastically...
...for today economic issues are political issues...
...Formally, these rights have almost always been available to all...
...Twelve per cent of all those receiving welfare assistance in New York City, including the aged, are in families whose head is employed, but who does not earn enough to support his family...
...And what the Negro has done in recent years constitutes a virtual revolution in American life...
...Nevertheless, it emphasizes some common economic issues which many low-income people face in affluent America and raises the possibility that they might act politically to do something about it...
...Community stewards, it is reported, served to help members living in neighborhoods to organize with others...
...A move toward the new unskilled minority worker would propel the unions to examine new issues in American political life by providing them with a broad class base...
...The welfare poor, particularly in families headed by women, probably have a limited relation to work, but the reluctance should not be as casually assumed as it is by many commentators today...
...Industrial centers like Detroit and Pittsburgh suffer from high productivity and Iimited demand...
...Whatever the definition, the poor range from about 16 per cent of the population to a maximum of 25 per cent...
...How many Americans can be considered "poor" depends on how poverty is defined...
...To be effective, they will need allies...
...In the immediate future, the poor are the most likely to provide leverage for significant change...
...In this "colonial" situation, contrasting a successful "white economy" and a meager "bush economy," there are wide disparities...
...High production might not draw people into those industries requiring high skill, but it would lead to an increased demand in service and other industries in which labor requirements are less rigid...
...12, Joint Economic Committee of Congress, December 16, 1959, p. 12...
...A temporary "heating up" of the economy combined with special projects and social services may prevent the emergence of programs for deeper changes that will reduce inequality as well as poverty...
...It is an issue as to what level of economic product we will attain and how it gets distributed through the marketplace, the tax system and the social services...
...5 The cohesion which comes from racial issues might serve to separate each of the poor ethnic groupings from one another, leading each to be concerned only with issues peculiar to it...
...Bayard Rustin's suggestion that white students might best work in poor white areas rather than Negro areas is important...
...Other unions have had community involvement in a variety of ways, but it is an emphasis that needs to be deepened and broadened...
...It is the confluence of class and race issues which gives the poor a much greater political potential than is usually true of low income, depressed populations...
...The "income curtain" which separated the American haves from the American have-nots has been drawn back, and we can no longer assume that poverty is dwindling or is far less destructive than it used to be...
...The high rate of unemployment among the new working class, their 5 Obviously, contrasting patterns exist among Negroes and other ethnic groups of the poor...
...With the rapid concentration of Negroes in central cities, they will increasingly become a power group there...
...And some of the poor, especially the aged, are unlikely to work regardless of the demand for labor...
...Now a spate of books has upset this complacent picture: Michael Harrington has feelingly portrayed the strain of poverty...
...But it is they who are the likely "movers and shakers...
...Inequality as well as poverty is a central issue...
...As the whites—first the Irish, later the Jews and still more recently the Italians—strengthened their organizations, they were able to obtain a more equitable share of political and economic rewards...
...Mexican-Americans have recently won political control in Crystal City, a small Texas town...
...Moreover, • Nom: A fuller version of this essay will appear in Irving L. Horowitz, ed., The New Sociology, Oxford University Press, a collection of essays in honor of C. Wright Mills...
...When the welfare poor work, they are in the occupations which characterize the "new" working class...
...This group might be described as a "new" working class...
...Upper-level blue collar workers who were improving relative to lower-level white collar are now losing ground to these white-collar groupings...
...The aged have been active in political movements—from the Townsend Plan to the fight for Medicare...
...is increasing...
...To understand these possibilities, we must first understand the economic situation...
...The opening of the craft occupations to Negroes and unionization of the low-paid service industries is of utmost importance...
...These are the groups that seem most likely to be politicized...
...Those in the marginal economy frequently are unable to get jobs...
...Yet the aged and welfare recipients frequently have long-run interests in common with the new working class...
...And the growing affluence of the upper and middle classes is increasing the relative deprivation of the poor...
...Whether poverty becomes the issue that it should, will largely depend on what the poor themselves do...
...And if you add up the people in uniform, those employed in the armament industries, those on public payrolls, and those who are unemployed, a full 25 percent of our labor force is outside the normal processes of what we call our free enterprise economy...
...Less and less does "going up" mean "going out" of the Negro community: even those who can and do move out of the Negro ghetto frequently maintain ties with it and are deeply and actively concerned about the Negro poor...
...The "old" working class, who still comprise the bulk of skilled and semi-skilled union members as well as the majority of blue collar workers, is made up of "old-settler" Protestant recruits largely from farm and rural areas and the second and third generation of the predominantly Catholic Eastern and Southern European nations .4 The "new" working class is more likely to be "colored," unskilled, in low-wage service and nonunionized industries, e.g., hospitals...
...But with rapid technological change and low economic growth, the value of further training is frequently problematic...
...The intermeshing of a variety of economic and class factors will lead to political mobilization...
...The United States today is increasingly moving into a dual economy in which the main sector is characterized by the provision of high standards of living, somewhat stable employment, and other rewards for those who are able to stay in it...
...The emphasis in most reports on the frequency of poverty—i.e., what percentage of a given group is poor—has obscured some important facts about poverty...
...The situation is not, of course, an easy one...
...The Negro is no longer primarily a rural resident...
...these are the areas in which a counter-movement seems likely...
...The political awareness of the Negroes already has been realized, and it is a distinct possibility for others of the poor as well...
...Robert Theobald: What is even more startling is that between 1957 and 1962 about six or seven out of every ten jobs were created in the public sector, practically all of them in teaching...
...Both kinds of programs are needed today and the likelihood is that too little will be done along both lines...
...during and after World War II, there was a rapid movement of Negroes into urban centers, both North and South...
...74, National Bureau of Economic Research, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 24...
...In many communities of the new working class the immediate prospect of concerted action toward political or any other kind of goals seems unlikely...
...The 1960 statistics show that well under half of the labor force is engaged in productive work as distinguished from distribution or white-collar employment...
...4 For a more detailed analysis of current sociological terminology, see S. M. Miller and Frank Riessman, "The Working-Class Subculture: A New View," Social Problems, IX, 1961, pp...
...The lower the income level employed, the more unlike the general population are the poor...
...Similarly, while a high percentage of farm people are poor, almost 50 per cent of the poor live in cities...
...High economic growth does not automatically assure jobs for the unskilled...
...Harrington has pictured the poor as passive, inert and apathetic, lacking generally the capacity for action...
...Many of the leaders of the "colored" poor will probably come from middle-class families providing qualities and abilities that may not emerge early among others of their group...
...The increase in the number of Southern Negro voters accentuates the national role of Negroes...
...Finally, there are areas in which local control is imminent and even to a limited degree already present...
...The farm poor live in areas where economic sustenance has withered with the demise of the family farm and the development of capitalistic farming...
...low wages, their inadequate housing as they suffer the ravages (and reap little of the benefits) of urban redevelopment, the poor schooling offered their children, the neglect of public services in their neighborhoods, the frequent callousness of the police and welfare departments, the bilking by merchants—in short, their second-class economic and political status—provide the issues which may mold the new working class into a potent political force...
...Indeed, increasing productivity has meant that many people are being squeezed out of the affluent economy (e.g., auto workers in Detroit who are permanently laid off despite the high production of cars...
...It promises to be the decisive political condition of the sixties in this country...
...Despite their diversity, the poor in the largest urban centers are rapidly evolving into a "colored" poor of Negroes and Spanish-name persons...
...furthermore, gains in the main economy do not rapidly trickle down to those in what Harrington has called the "other America...
...In present-day America the expansion of what C. Wright Mills emphasized was a new middle class no longer reduces the number of the poor...
...Increasingly, our concern should be with inequality as well as poverty...
...Lampman employs $2500 for a family of four as his base, while Keyserling uses a $4000 income cut-off without reference to family size...
...Willingness to be an adventurer grows when there is some reason for confidence in the outcome...
...But many of the problems facing the new working class cannot be resolved at local levels...
...While indigenous leadership in the poverty areas of the large city is an important consideration, the thing that can be done most effectively by outsiders—non-colored, non-poor—coming into the impoverished areas is to try to develop the kinds of issues which encourage the growth of indigenous leadership...
...More than a third of the heads of low-income families are not in the labor force—that is, they are not classified by Census statisticians as currently employed or actively engaged in looking for work if they are unemployed...
...Gerard Piel: In the decade from 1950 to 1960 the Gross National Product increased by between 70 and 100 percent, and the factory labor force remained almost constant...
...Despite the great incidence of poverty among Negroes —for example, 35 per cent of Negro adults in Detroit were reported as unemployed in 1960—most of the poor are white (this is true even in the South...
...The income spread between skilled workers and unskilled which was narrowed during this century is now beginning to widen...
...But when jobs are scarce, and there is no assurance as to what kind of skills will be necessary, it is unlikely that many youths will risk preparing themselves for the un 6 Robert J. Lampman, The Share of Top Wealth-Holders in National Wealth, 192255, No...
...the second is the "structural" position of Galbraith and many social workers...
...Legislative reapportionment, which will increase the importance of the urban vote, though not as much as it will the suburban vote, should make the Negro vote more effective in state elections...
...Political action for the poor implies action at the grass roots—in the community...
...Nor should we ignore the possibilities of political organization of the poor whites...
...By contrast, those who advocate special programs aimed at specific groups of the poor underestimate the effect of general economic conditions on the prospects of the poor...
...We must, however, recognize that today's problems are increasingly complicated by the growing skill requirements of our complex industrial machinery...
...The great decline in inequality took place during World War II...
...It is difficult to say where the "poverty line" is...
...they need national action...
...the rich discussion in Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs, Glencoe: Free Press, 1960, pp...
...But I would venture that many of the adult poor who are "outside" of the labor force have worked and would work if jobs were available...
...ment in levels of living was supposed to have eliminated all but a "hard core" of poverty...
...In Britain, Peter Townsend has remarked, it was believed in the thirties that 500,000 of the unemployed were "unemployable...
...There are other communities of the poor which are controlled largely by the police...
...Nevertheless, a high level of employment would increase opportunities for the poor...
...The number of poor may be slowly declining but the extent of inequality (e.g., the differences in the percentages of gross national product going to the upper 5% and the bottom 207...
...E. Franklin Frazier's notion of a "black bourgeoisie" that in rising cuts itself off from the mass of Negroes, was probably overstated when he expressed it a few years ago...
...Those who can make the affluent economy—and making it depends largely upon education—do relatively well...
...and in many communities, low-income Negroes have been drawn into civil rights actions...
...World War I was the breakthrough for the Southern Negro...
...the big cities are increasingly the receivers of the poor (as well as generating a poor class themselves...
...The beginning efforts of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations are small-scale programs...
...86-97...
...The poor are a varied group...
...Moreover, job insecurity is great and individuals are frequently unemployed for considerable periods of time...
...Raising the problems of poverty and inequality to a political level and the encouragement of the new working class toward political articulateness are the bases of a revived liberalism in the sixties...
...Louis local of the Teamsters, directed by Harold Gibbons, tried the innovation of having community stewards as well as shop stewards...
...Those who live in the marginal economy do not automatically progress with the gains of the affluent economy...
...Poverty, like most other economic questions, is now a political issue and its elimination demands political measures...
...The Census Bureau expert, Herman Miller, has shown that the income of the poor generally and Negroes in particular, has not increased relatively...
...The "gripes" of low-income neighborhoods—whether about unemployment, the welfare department, the regulations of public housing, the behavior of the police—are political issues, and will emerge as such if the new working class acquires a political style...
...Projects that can only be successful over a long period will be used as though they have immediate pay-offs...
...A few short years ago it was widely assumed that poverty was declining in the U.S...
...No," New York Times Magazine Section, November 11, 1962...
...it undoubtedly is today...
...2 Herman Miller, "Is the Income Gap Closing...
...Since then, the rate of decline in the degree of inequality (as well as the percentage of the population who are poor) has sharply slackened...
...The urban poor is composed of many strata: refugees from the land and older settlers of the urban slums, Southern mountaineer whites and Southern Negroes, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans...
...The common need for decent employment and social services, which binds together the various groups of the poor, can be satisfied only through political action...
...While older successful Negroes are less likely to be identified with poorer Negroes and are more likely to emphasize "progress," they frequently are pushed along by the dynamism and pressure of the younger generation of Negroes...
...Usually, the long-term economically depressed are unlikely candidates for a dynamic political movement, but the racial as well as economic factors are propelling the poor toward politics, whether they be Negro, Mexican-American or Puerto Rican...
...In undeveloped societies, the rise of a middle class is expected to mitigate the extreme variation in standards of living...
...The service industries—hotels, restaurants—of large cities are the main employers of the urban poor...
...True, the Second World War stimulated a great economic change in the United States, bringing some advantages to low-income groups.' But since 1944 the income gap between the poor and the better-off has not narrowed at all .2 Income inequality seems, if anything, to be increasing...
...in practice, only to whites and more slowly to working-class whites...
...in New York City, it now seems a Democratic Party practice that the Borough President of Manhattan be Negro...
...Special programs might be used as a substitute for the general charging up of the economy...
...By contrast, an urban 3 Cf...
...And the lower-level white-collar occupations are falling behind the upper white-collar occupations...
...Problems of poverty, urban redevelopment, discrimination, political representation—all the issues which are central to the new working class in American society—will again come to the political fore if the unions move toward this group...
...Ralph Helstein: The total figures for that five-year period show that of the millions of jobs required only a million or so were produced by private industry...
Vol. 11 • April 1964 • No. 2
