The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages [Hardcover]

Stephen Pimpare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2004

A controversial history of the Victorian roots of today's conservative anti-welfare crusaders.

During the economic boom of the 1990s, arguments about the moral failings of the poor were used to pass welfare reforms heralded as the solution to a system that had failed everyone. Yet, as historian Stephen Pimpare demonstrates in this revealing social history, remarkably similar arguments were used to disastrous effect in campaigns against aid to the poor in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

In The New Victorians, Pimpare reveals the disturbing parallels between the anti-welfare propagandists of the nineteenth century and the elite actors and well-funded policy research organizations of today. Alarmingly, he shows how the New Victorians of today often invoke the rhetoric of their predecessors while ignoring the complete failure of nineteenth-century reforms. The New Victorians goes on to uncover the elite and grassroots resistance in the Gilded Age that paved the way for the counter-reforms of the Progressive Era, revealing urgent lessons toward renewing support for broader state defense of the poor today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his scholarly history of American anti-welfare movements, Pimpare shows how today’s "compassionate conservatives" are repeating the arguments made by Victorian propagandists during the late 1800s, when they persuaded the public that government aid hurts both the poor and the working class. The 1980s and ‘90s witnessed severe welfare cutbacks, culminating in the conversion of welfare to workfare in 1996; the late 19th century saw similar slashes in government aid. Pimpare contends that, while conservatives suggest that Gilded Age "reforms" proved the superiority of private "faith-based" charity over public relief, the historical record demonstrates just the opposite. Victorian rollbacks led to the 1893 depression and to the emergence of a dangerously angry unemployed class; anti-welfare crusaders eventually admitted that their "reforms" had failed and launched pro-welfare campaigns—forerunners of the New Deal and the American welfare state. Pimpare argues that, in both centuries, anti-welfare crusades succeeded through "shrewdly crafted rhetoric," endlessly repeated and reinforced. His comments on the "electoral threat" of the poor are especially alarming. Forty-eight states prohibit prisoners from voting; "in seven states where ex-offenders cannot vote, 25 percent of all black men were permanently disenfranchised." With thorough research and numerous examples, Pimpare challenges the idea that welfare cuts reduce poverty. Instead, he contends, welfare helps the poor and working classes alike: it offers an alternative to low-wage work, raises the minimum wage and gives workers "leverage against the market and their employers." While some arguments may seem dry to the general reader, the book has much contemporary relevance. Welfare, Pimpare writes, allows people "to lead their lives and care for their families in ways that are impossible when their very survival is tethered to the relentless demands of the low-wage labor market."
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Review

A powerfully written and eye-opening book. -- Frances Fox Piven

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1ST edition (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156584839X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848399
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #969,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Pimpare is the author of The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (The New Press). He teaches at NYU's Silver School of Social Work, and lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dismal recurrence of the robber baron assault on the poor, January 31, 2005

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (Hardcover)

This study of the similarity of the current neo-liberal resurgence to the Gilded Age gets down to cases with more than superficial resemblances and echoes by showing how the same strategies (of subtle class warfare)are at work in both cases, with respect to questions of public welfare. In both cases an assault on public intervention was a deliberate strategy to erase the gains of the poor. The concordances seem almost uncanny, and the result is a possible lesson the current regime could learn from, if they could learn. The main point is to pierce through the strategy of propaganda against public relief systems, alert to their faults, to see the class interest involved in the attacks on the poor, e.g. the relationship to wage structures, and the desire to eliminate any softlanding against market mechanics.