| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression. By Jeff Singleton. (Westport: Greenwood, 2000. x, 243 pp. $65.00, ISBN 0-313-31400-4.)

In this detailed, fascinating, and well-researched study, Jeff Singleton of Boston College points out the rarely examined rise in relief caseloads between 1930 and 1935. His subtle revisionist interpretation challenges current understanding of the central importance of the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 in arguing that the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations intended to end "the dole"—direct cash or in-kind relief to the unemployed. 1

Drawing on earlier examples from Liberty Loan drives and Community Chest fund raising, Herbert Hoover avoided a public, national system of unemployment relief by relying on private and public agencies at the local and state level. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins hoped to forestall demeaning relief by substituting jobs for the dole. Singleton traces Hoover's efforts in the President's Emergency Committee for Employment, the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, followed by study of New Deal efforts in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the second FERA, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and social security programs for the elderly, the unemployed, and the needy. . . .

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