Social Welfare and Society the Brutality of Dissertation or Thesis Complete

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Social Welfare and Society

The Brutality of Laissez Faire Capitalism and the Minimal Welfare State.

For Chapter 5, the main point is that the U.S. went through a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization in the Gilded Age of 1870-1900 that was downright brutal in its treatment of immigrant workers, blacks and Native Americans. In this era, which resembles out own in many ways, racism was endemic, political corruption was common, and inequality in wealth and incomes was extreme. All of this is very similar to what has been happening in the U.S. For the last thirty years, which could well be thought of as a Second Gilded Age. Of course, in the late-19th Century only a very "primitive welfare state" existed with "a minimal set of poorhouses and mental institutions," as well as public hospitals and charities funded by religious organizations (Jansson, 2009, p. 159). In the cities, corrupt political machines supported by immigrants provided "patronage jobs in sanitation, fire, police and other departments," and also in public works, transportation and the post office (Jansson, p. 160).

Ethnic and immigrant communities in the big cities today still follow these same patterns, and official welfare state institutions are often linked to various religious and nonprofit groups associated with them. This era also left many unresolved problems in the South and rural areas, where blacks did not really receive the land, education and civic equality promised at the end of the Civil War, and the federal government acquiesced to the rule of the Ku Klan and former Confederates after 1876. In this case, the social needs were absolutely desperate, but the federal government did little to meet them.

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Even the Freedman's Bureau of 1865-72 received "virtually no funding" because of the reigning laissez faire ideology that opposed making the lower classes 'dependent' on the state (Jannson, p. 155). Just as disastrous was the Dawes Act of 1887, which attempted to abolish the Native American tribes and turn them into communities of individual land owners, although in the end white "speculators and crooks" acquired most of the native land and resources (Jansson, p. 134). Policies like these left long lasting legacies for minority groups in the United….....

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