In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America by Michael B. KatzReview by: Walter I. TrattnerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 3 (Jun., 1987), p. 734Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1870046 .

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734 Reviews of Books

community studies. Claudia Bushman investigates the movement of the Wilson family from Delaware to Philadelphia and finally to Indiana. Her essay illustrates how the strain of spatial distance coin- cided with the widening social distance between these migrants and their relatives in the East as the Wilson family failed to prosper in their new home in the Midwest. Finally, Walter Kamphoefuer dis- cusses the problems and opportunities of tracing Germans immigrating to Missouri in the nineteenth century.

Overall, this is a very useful and thoughtful col- lection of essays on genealogies as a source of data for the analysis of American social and demographic history. Although the essays vary considerably in their use of sophisticated techniques of statistical analysis as well as in their substantive contributions, both historians and genealogists should find them quite helpful.

MARIS A. VINOVSKIS

University of Michigan

MICHAEL B. KATZ. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. New York: Basic. 1986. Pp. xiv, 338. $22.95.

Simply put, the thesis of this ambitious and very successful work is that, for all its incoherence and irrationality, the American social welfare system has resisted fundamental change. It has done so, and continues to do so, because it was designed to serve a consistent and useful, however contradictory, set of purposes: the relief of misery, the preservation of the social order, the regulation of the labor market, and the mobilization of political power. The strength and persistence of the welfare system have been derived "from its symbiosis with American social structure and political economy," to use the author's words (p. ix).

This, of course, is not a novel proposition. In- deed, students of American social welfare history and policy will find much in this work that is familiar. Michael B. Katz borrows heavily from other scholars of the subject, including Raymond Mohl, Paul Boyer, David Rothman, Roy Lubove, William Graebner, James Patterson, Frances Piven, and Richard Cloward. He also relies a good deal on his own previously published work, especially on the demography of poorhouse populations and other related matters.

This is not to say that there is nothing new in this ";social history of welfare in America." Thus, for example, Katz's critical comments about the widely applauded New York State Care Act of 1890, which for the first time provided complete state care for the insane poor, are revealing. So, too, is his argu- ment that the removal of children from poorhouses

in the latter nineteenth century, another broadly acclaimed development, was designed more to break up poor families than to help needy young- sters. His discussion of the negative impact that the lack of a permanent governmental infrastructure had on the American welfare system during the Great Depression also is an important contribution, as is his informative analysis of a closely related matter-the shortcomings of public works as a wel- fare policy. Katz is at his best, however, in the last part of the book, entitled "From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare," a brilliant account of the more recent assault by the localities, the states, and especially the federal government on what he refers to as the "semiwelfare" state that had emerged in America by the 1960s.

Katz's major contribution is to synthesize an enor- mous amount of material, some of it new and much of it not, in a very readable, meaningful, and per- suasive manner. Indeed, so persuasive is he that the reader is left in a rather uncomfortable, if not enraged, position. As Katz makes clear, welfare policies and practices in America have not been inevitable; they have been the products of choices made among possible alternatives. As he makes equally clear, America has the resources and the knowledge to eliminate poverty and dependency. Yet readers of this book can only conclude that the nation does not, and will not, have the will to do so. Most Americans will continue to deny that poverty and dependency are structural in nature, products of the political economy. And, at best, the nation will maintain a partial welfare state that continues to make clear distinctions between social insurance and public assistance and provides more aid and security to the middle and upper classes than to those who need them most.

WALTER I. TRATNER

University of Wiscons, Milwaukee

RONALD P. FORMISANO and CONSTANCE K. BURNS,

editors. Boston 1700-1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics. (Contributions in American History, num- ber 106.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 1984. Pp. viii, 296. $35.00.

With the loss of a synoptic vision of urban history in the 1950s, historians abandoned the effort to pro- duce single-author "urban biographies" covering the entire span and scope of a city's history. Editors, teachers, the promoters of civic anniversaries, and- it is presumed-general readers continue, however, to ask for comprehensive works on individual cities. In response, several groups of historians have re- vived a nineteenth-century form, the municipal Festschrift. Among recent examples of this genre, the

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