Holdings Information
Bibliographic Record Display
-
Author/Creator:Birk, Megan, 1979- author.
-
Title:The Fundamental Institution : Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms / Megan Birk.
-
ISBN:9780252053375
9780252086458
9780252044380
-
Publication:Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2022]
-
Manufacture: Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2022
-
Copyright notice date: ©[2022]
-
Physical Description:1 online resource.
-
Links:Online book
-
Yale Holdings
Holdings Record Display
-
Local Notes:Access is available to the Yale community.
-
Notes:Description based on print version record.
- Access and use:Access restricted by licensing agreement.
-
Summary:"By the early 1900s, the poor farm had become a ubiquitous part of America's social welfare system. Megan Birk's history of this foundational but forgotten institution focuses on the connection between agriculture, provisions for the disadvantaged, and the daily realities of life at poor farms. Conceived as an inexpensive way to provide care for the indigent, poor farms in fact attracted wards that ranged from abused wives and the elderly to orphans, the disabled, and disaster victims. Most people arrived unable rather than unwilling to work, some because of physical problems, others due to a lack of skills or because a changing labor market had left them behind. Birk blends the personal stories of participants with institutional histories to reveal a loose-knit system that provided a measure of care to everyone without an overarching philosophy of reform or rehabilitation. In-depth and innovative, The Fundamental Institution offers an overdue portrait of rural social welfare in the United States"--
-
Variant and related titles:Project MUSE complete collection 2022.
- Format:Book
-
Series:Book collections on Project MUSE.
-
Contents:The founding of community institutions -- Populations and conditions -- Farming for the county -- Poor farm women -- The poor farm and mental health care -- Old age and poor farm residency -- Poor farms and health care -- Crisis and transition.
-
Subjects: Agriculture--Social aspects--United States.
Rural poor--United States--Social conditions.
Rural poor--Government policy--United States.
Almshouses--United States--History.
Social conditions.
Rural poor--Social conditions.
Rural poor--Government policy.
United States--Social conditions--1918-1932.
United States--Social conditions--1865-1918.
United States--Rural conditions.
United States.
-
Genre/Form:History.
-
Also listed under:Project Muse. distributor
Link to this page: https://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/16707675