| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Dorothy M. Brown and Elizabeth McKeown. The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1997. PP. viii, 284. $45.00.

When future historians regard the Republican Congress elected in 1994, they may count its dismantling of welfare programs initiated by the New Deal as a tragic reversal in American social legislation. Once again, women, the poor, and the young have been victimized by the political seesaw that has characterized the relations between private charity and the capitalist state. 1

Since 1865, Catholic charities have adapted to such challenges yet have remained admirably consistent in their advocacy for the poor, a position assailed by the conservatives presiding over the welfare funding cuts of the 1990s. Ironically, while the umbrella organization, Catholic Charities USA, now represents the largest coalition of private social care, the majority of its current clients—homeless, immigrant, and refugee—are not Catholic. 2

Dorothy M. Brown and Elizabeth McKeown evaluate the relatively undocumented role of the Catholic Church in building a national network of voluntary charitable institutions between the Gilded Age and the New Deal. Insisting that charity address spiritual as well as material needs, agencies such as the National Conference of Catholic Charities, founded in 1910, attempted to influence public policy accordingly. Gradually, Catholic efforts have been superseded or supplemented by state-run social welfare that was created as a consequence of the Depression's mass unemployment and bank failures. In some cities, Catholic staffs and volunteers were simply folded into public efforts. Elsewhere, Catholic charities remained independent of community chest funds, but, nearly everywhere, they were obliged to accept city or state, if not federal, relief. . . .

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