The Pauper Problem

...The real trouble with such a journalist as Elman, and others like him, is that they have been enchanted by the conventional rhetoric about our "affluent society...

...Not only did the state welfare authorities crack down on Mitchell, but it soon became apparent that there were very few loafers and free-riders on welfare, and that Mitchell could only save the taxpayers' money by increasing the misery of the poor-and especially of the children of the poor, who form so large a proportion of the "people" on welfare...

...Mississippi is another case entirely-would raise vexing questions of equity, and even more vexing questions of political prudence...

...Wilfully to refuse to recognize this is to indulge in cheap dem-agoguery...

...In the North they are both visible and articulate...

...These are disproportionately, but by no means exclusively and sometimes not even primarily, Negroes...

...Elman labors under the illusion that a shrill statement, no matter how mindless, is effective journalism...

...Indeed, for Elman's purposes they are too well done, too realistic...

...But, aside from the inflated quality of most of these estimates-they ignore the fact that military expenditure includes feeding, clothing, training and doctoring soldiers: not all the money goes up in smoke-there remains the dual fact that (a) the number of people below the poverty line is many times the number of people on welfare, and (b) the number of people barely above the poverty line is also very large...

...What are these realities...

...And the sad truth is that we do not know what to do about these families...

...As we know, these efforts quickly turned sour...

...This hasn't happened, either...

...and no program for improving matters, whether it be reactionary or liberal in complexion, has as yet had any noticeable effect...

...They are many and complex, of course, but I should select three for emphasis: 1. There has been, is, and will continue to be a massive migration of "welfare-prone" people into the cities...

...Specifically, welfare budgets do not include an allotment for alcoholic beverages...

...They are well done, on the whole, in the sense of being vivid and realistic...

...In welcome contrast, The Despised Poor (Beacon, 215 pp., $4.95), Joseph P. Ritz's book on New-burgh, and its notorious "war on welfare" which made headlines a few years back, is a competent and informative job of reporting by a newspaperman who was living and working in Newburgh at the time...

...But, in fact, he does provide the necessary facts and figures...

...In addition, there is a foul conspiracy by New York's welfare officials to rob their clients of their meagre, just deserts...

...But Elman's book moves me to regard the average social worker with infinite tenderness and pity...

...It is questionable whether these expensive services "pay off," from a cost-effectiveness point of view...

...Indeed, time itself-and the changes wrought by time-is the only "solution" one can now envisage...

...When a corporation reaches such an impasse, it floats stock or obtains a defense contract...

...the new muck-rakers glide smoothly along on one easy proposition, which is that everything, everywhere, is just too awful...

...If one takes into account both welfare payments (in cash or kind) and the time spent by social investigators, parole officers, family counsellors, etc., it is probable that the large multi-problem family costs the governments-city, state, and Federal-close to $7,500 a year...

...I also never thought I should be rushing to the defense of the social work profession, of which I have always taken a rather dim view...

...If I thought The Poorhouse State (Pantheon, 305 p.p., $5.95) had any chance of achieving a wide circulation, or being taken seriously, I would be alarmed at the prospect of a backlash that could sink the Great Society without trace...

...Thus, he points out that a family of four in New York City, in 1916, received $25.09 a month as against $25.62 a week today, and blithely concludes: "It is anybody's guess whether the citizen of the Poorhouse State is much better off now as compared with then...

...Newburgh is a small city (population: 31,000) which has, in the postwar years, lost much of its white, taxpaying middle class to the suburbs and has absorbed an influx of poor Southern Negroes and Puerto Ricans...

...The costs of welfare are soaring...

...That was not his intention, it goes without saying...

...And all of these people need, not only more money, but also more schools, more hospitals, better transportation, etc...

...What's wrong with our welfare system, according to Mr...

...Elman writes of the poor: "Their desires to consume have been overly stimulated, but their economic capabilities are undeveloped...

...The relief budget for a single man in New York comes to about $27 a week-plus rent, medical care, and occasional "extras" on demonstration of need...

...It is easy to talk glibly about "rehabilitation" and the like...

...But the new muckraking makes one positively nostalgic for the old...

...My own guess is that most of these cases have simply drifted away...

...There are a lot of people in this country who work hard for such a wage...

...I never thought I would have an approving word to say about the original Muckrakers, whose heritage of oversimplified journalism has so needlessly complicated our handling of social problems...

...To begin with, it "standardizes bare subsistence in a country in which luxuries become necessities...

...And it is extremely difficult simply to give them the money, in the form of increased welfare allotments, because of point 3. 3. At the present, welfare payments in a city like New York are pushing up against the ceiling represented by what the poor working people earn...

...They have, over these past years, liberalized the city's welfare policies, in the hope that this would help people "get on their feet" and off the welfare rolls...

...The majority of these people are seen to be shiftless, unreasonable, unstable, and unlikeable...

...At least, I hope they are...

...Elman's point is really a simple one: The people on welfare, the citizens of our "poorhouse state," are (a) poor, and (b) dependent, instead of being (a) as well off as everyone else, if not more so, and (b) as independent as everyone else, if not more so...

...No matter how compassionate and liberal a statesman might be, he would certainly have to think twice before increasing welfare payments much above the prevailing minimum wage...

...What can one say to this except: well, yes...

...they avoid work...

...He wants us to pity the paupers and to despise social workers as parasites and exploiters of the poor and helpless...

...We are not as affluent as all that...

...But there are also the "hard core" cases, the many-childrened, multi-problem famihes-unemployable because of physical or mental illness, alcoholism, moral disorganization-who have been transported from Southern slums, urban or rural, to Northern ones...

...I see no way of coping with this exasperation other than by an insistence on the objective realities that we are simply going to have to live with...

...It seems never to have occurred to him to interview a welfare official as to what this statistic signifies...

...It isn't even muckraking...

...As an officer of a small corporation, I have news for Elman: for corporations there is also bankruptcy -a recourse far more common than stock issues (who would buy them...

...or defense contracts (which are rarely given to shaky firms, for obvious reasons...

...In New York-despite the impression Elman tries to convey-the authorities have reacted in quite the opposite way from Newburgh...

...and his tone throughout is temperate...

...On the surface, this doesn't make much sense...

...2. The presence of these people in our cities has given rise to an enormous expansion of our social and welfare services...

...What is true of Newburgh is true of many other towns and cities throughout the nation...

...Our national wealth increases every year-but not nearly fast enough to satisfy the many legitimate claims on it...

...Moreover, it enforces "involuntary servitude" in that it does not recognize the absolute freedom of its clients to accept or reject work, as they wish...

...Elman is indignant, too, at the fact that, in New York City, 1,000 cases of home relief are closed every month for "unspecified reasons...

...I am sure these are not typical of people on welfare: Elman, in his misguided extremism, has clearly headed for the most far-out and intractable cases...

...They were patient and industrious in their research, and aimed to shock by supposed fact rather than by mere rhetoric...

...The case of Newburgh is interesting for what it tells us about the "welfare problem" and the limits within which we can do anything about it...

...They neglect their children, they spend their clothing allotments on drink...

...Nor will Elman permit facts and figures to sully the purity of his passion...

...But it is a fact that, though many experimental programs have been tried, none has worked much better than no program at all...

...This does not sound particularly generous, and it isn't...

...But insofar as there are such people on welfare, and I do not doubt they exist, one's heart goes out to the social workers who have to cope with them...

...At least the muckrakers of 60 years ago were serious students of their subjects, even if they were not very good ones...

...Their research is hasty, their knowledge minimal, their sense of fact and actuality underdeveloped, their attitudinizing uninhibited...

...or, rather, what has happened is that, for every welfare dropout, there is a bit more than one recruit...

...For many of these migrants, welfare status is temporary and transitory...

...What we have here, then, is an extraordinary nationwide problem which, precisely because it is so impervious to policy, engenders such unreasoning exasperation...

...But it is the equivalent of a salary of about $60 or $65 a week, taking into account taxes, deductions, and necessary job-connected expenses...

...Furthermore-but why continue...

...Fortunately, there is little risk of either of these ghastly possibilities being realized, since the absurdities of the book are just too gross and flagrant...

...In the South, no one paid attention to their miserable condition...

...To which one can only reply that this is nobody's guess: It is a simple arithmetical fact that, in dollars of constant purchasing power, they are better off today...

...The bulk of The Poorhouse State consists of "profiles" of people on welfare...

...True, his preface is offputting: He explains that he has omitted much statistical material in order not to diminish the reader's anger at the shabby way the people on welfare were treated...

...At the moment, one can only say that we shall be living with, and supporting, these families for a long time to come...

...This is the scandalous situation he is exposing...

...Any effort to distract us from these realities-by mobilizing irrational passion in favor of people on welfare, as Elman is trying to do, or mobilizing such passion against them, as Mitchell attempted in Newburgh-is a disservice...

...But one must do something for these people...

...But, to rephrase my opening statement: When a social worker has Elman for an enemy, he really doesn't need any friends...

...Thus he denounces all of us affluent types because "we want [the poor] to go the hard route, to be our taxi-drivers, restaurant employes, secretaries, and factory hands so they can support their families and thus improve their lives...

...Not surprisingly, the citizens of Newburgh were unhappy about this situation and a majority were quick to acclaim Mitchell's policy of "getting tough" with people on welfare by putting "the loafers" to work, dropping those who really didn't need welfare but were merely taking "a free ride," and so on-the litany is familiar...

...and it is going to take far more than simple-minded indignation to abolish the Poorhouse State...

...for people there is only welfare...

...popular resentment at these costs is mounting...

...Any sharp increase in welfare payments-at least in New York...

...It is easy for Elman to point out how much money could be spent on welfare if we called off the Vietnam war...

...The new muckrakers are mainly posture and passion and self-dramatizing declamation...

...In 1961, when city manager Joseph Mitchell began his ill-starred crusade, Newburgh's welfare budget represented almost one-third of the city's total budget...

...It is the responsibility for supporting these famihes according to acceptable Northern standards that has pushed up welfare costs so dramatically...

...The older muckrakers set out to demonstrate that something, somewhere was rotten...

...Mitchell departed, and Newburgh's welfare problem today is no different from what it was five years ago...

...There are an awful lot of people who leave the welfare rolls-the total figures do not fairly represent the turnover within them...

...In Newburgh, Mitchell discovered to his astonishment that only 40 per cent of those on welfare were Negro...