Fighting Poverty with Virtue: Moral Reform and America's Urban Poor, 1825-2000

by Joel Schwartz

Fighting Poverty with Virtue Moral Reform and America's Urban Poor, 1825-2000 Joel Schwartz The emergence, decline, and resurgence of moral reform in addressing urban poverty in the United States. This book is both a historical and a contemporary study of attempts to promote the self-reliance and prosperity of America's urban poor by encouraging the practice of familiar virtues such as diligence, sobriety, thrift, and familial responsibility. In Part One Joel Schwartz considers the efforts of four 19th-century moral reformers who expounded this strategy--Joseph Tuckerman, Robert M. Hartley, Charles Loring Brace, and Josephine Shaw Lowell. Schwartz examines what they did (and why they did it), the obstacles they faced, their successes and failures in confronting them. Part Two describes the 20th-century critique of moral reform. Drawing from the work of figures such as Jane Addams, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Frances Fox Piven, Schwartz traces the rise of a belief that the virtues promoted by the moral reformers were individualistic and "bourgeois," hence inapplicable to the lives of the poor. Part Three assesses African Americans' historical commitment to the virtues of the moral reformers, which are apparent in the writings of figures as divergent as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Malcolm X. Moving to the present, the author discusses the renewed commitment to a self-help strategy for fighting poverty evident in the widespread interest in the work of faith-based charities and in recent shifts in public policy. He concludes by assessing the reasons to be hopeful, but also to be skeptical, of the success of that strategy. Joel Schwartz is a program officer in the Division of Research Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities and a contributing editor of Philanthropy. In addition to teaching political science at the universities of Michigan, Toronto, and Virginia, he has served as executive editor of The Public Interest, visiting research associate at the Statistical Assessment Service, and research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He has published widely in political philosophy and public policy. Contents Introduction: What Moral Reform Is, and Why It's Important Part One: Moral Reform in the Past Principles and Intentions: Why Moral Reform Was Undertaken The Virtues Taught by the Moral Reformers Why Moral Reform Was Hard to Achieve Part Two: The Critique and Rejection of Moral Reform The Decline of Laissez-Faire and the Critique of Moral Reform The Rejection of Moral Reform African Americans, Irish Americans, and Moral Reform: Historical Considerations The Contemporary Climate for Moral Reform The Contemporary Practice of Moral Reform Urban Ministries, Public Policy, and the Promotion of Virtue

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253337712
• ISBN13: 9780253337719
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A Pointed Look At America's Efforts to Urbanize the Poor

"With this book, Schwartz seeks to shed "light on our contemporary efforts to remoralize the poor by looking at the rhetoric and actions of some of the nineteenth century moral reformers" (p. xvi). The book will be of immediate interest to the nonspecialist. The style is agreeable (in a way to which American academics have conformed), and the conclusion is easy to understand: Schwartz believes "we should and must" encourage "diligence, sobriety, thrift, and familial responsibility among the poor" (p. 237). -The "Independent Review," Spring 2002

The timely uses of history

Mr. Schwartz summarizes clearly how reformers in the past tried to fight poverty with spreading virtues such as thrift. Since this idea is a resurgent one especially with the welfare reform movement, this book is unusually timely. It is also very well written and fairminded and non-polemical. I recommend it to anyone concerned with these issues.