Beyond Benevolence

"Beyond Benevolence is the most comprehensive analysis of a crucial and widely misunderstood turning-point in the history of American approaches to poverty: scientific charity's evolution into social work. With vivid historical details of persons desperately pursuing aid met by skeptical aid-givers, and sophisticated interpretation of the larger dynamics of gender, religion, class, and New York City politics, Greeley illuminates issues in poverty as relevant today as they were in 1900."—Brent Ruswick, author of Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America, 1877-1917

"Beyond Benevolence is a well-researched and significant history of the New York Charity Organization and the ways in which the COS both transformed and was transformed by changes in social welfare and philanthropy at the turn of the century. Greeley brings together the many strands of this story – New York politics, Catholic and Protestant influences, the role of the media as well as all of the actors from client to donor—into a compelling story."—Joan Marie Johnson, author of Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870-1967

"Dawn M. Greeley's Beyond Benevolence offers an incisive and highly readable study of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York from the Gilded Age to the end of the Progressive Era. Overcoming early stumbles, and guided by the idea that the principles of social science could be applied to solve the problems of poverty and homelessness, the NYCOS helped pushed forward the development of America's modern welfare state by 1935. Greeley's command of the sources provides readers with vivid examples of both the successes and failures of the Society's leaders, its largely female "case workers," their working class clients, and the political, religious, and philanthropic world in which they operated."—Joan Waugh, author of Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell

"As the first comprehensive study of the New York Charity Organization Society, Beyond Benevolence is a significant contribution to American social welfare and reform scholarship. Dawn M. Greeley's close reading of "begging letters" and casework records, interwoven with narratives of COS leaders and donors, freshly reveals the complex agency that shaped the practices and policies of organized charity for half a century. In arguing for the COS's evolving commitment to both individual and structural reform, Greeley offers a nuanced historical corrective to longstanding, opposing narratives of benign service and social control. In turn, her analysis is relevant for social welfare practices today."—Elizabeth Agnew, author of From Charity to Social Work: Mary E. Richmond and the Creation of an American Profession