Working on Welfare: The Art of Survival in Mid-Twentieth Century America

Through the case records of dependent families, this paper explores the history of general relief between 1935 and 1962.  As a welfare program that predominantly served the working poor, general relief compels us to revisit key scholarly assumptions about this period in American history.  In the context of tightly-stretched family economies, understanding the “work” demanded of the working poor cannot be limited to predominantly-male wage work alone.  As I explore in this paper, the vicissitudes of low-wage work meant that actually making ends meet hinged as much upon women’s unpaid work and work in the informal economy as it did upon formal employment. Understanding the history of capitalism from the Depression through postwar prosperity mandates that we consider the “work of survival” rather than “wage work” alone. Broadly, this focus on the ongoing millions of poor, working families who relied on general relief highlights a persistent precariousness and subsistence orientation that continued to thrive comfortably alongside the eventual postwar expansion of the economy and the welfare state. This paper’s chief intervention, then, is to highlight the ongoing and overlapping failure of either economic growth or the social safety net to guarantee the bulk of the population any sort of substantive social or economic security.  By highlighting continuities in the gendered work of survival, this paper foregrounds the millions of families left behind by both economic prosperity and the welfare state in the increasingly affluent society.