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Public Pensions : Gender and Civic Service in the States, 1850–1937 / Susan M. Sterett.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2003Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) : 4 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501717772
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 331.25/29135173
LOC classification:
  • JK2474.S74 2003
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter One.Social Welfare In The States -- Chapter Two.Independence And Dependence Under The Public Purpose Doctrine -- Chapter Three.Payments To Firemen And Soldiers, 1854-1876 -- Chapter Four.Military Pensions In The Courts, 1877-1923 -- Chapter Five.Civil Service Pensions, 1883-1924 -- Chapter Six.Mothers' Pensions In The Courts, 1911-1923 -- Chapter Seven.Pensions For The Blind And Workmen's Compensation, 1906-1917 -- Chapter Eight.Old Age Pensions, 1911-1937 -- Conclusion State Constitutions And Public Spending -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index
Summary: In Public Pensions, Susan M. Sterett traces the legal and constitutional structures underlying early social welfare programs in the United States. Sterett explains the status of state and local government payments for public servants and the poor from the mid-nineteenth century until the Great Depression. The most visible public payments for service in the United States were directed to soldiers, who risked death for the nation. However, firemen, not soldiers, first captured local governments— attention; social welfare programs for soldiers were modeled on firemen's pensions. The dangerous work of firefighting and of combat provided the fundamental legal analogy for courts as governments expanded pensions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nothing about the state court doctrine approving payments for dangerous, local service would allow pensions for indigent mothers and for the elderly, which states began to consider after 1910. Counties and railroads that objected to the new taxes could fight programs based on the old doctrine, established for firefighters, soldiers, and finally civil servants. State litigation provided one of the many grounds for contesting expanded welfare states in the early twentieth-century United States. Sterett demonstrates that state courts maintained a gendered division between the service that marked citizenship and the dependence that marked indigence, even during the promising ferment of the early twentieth century.
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Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501717772

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter One.Social Welfare In The States -- Chapter Two.Independence And Dependence Under The Public Purpose Doctrine -- Chapter Three.Payments To Firemen And Soldiers, 1854-1876 -- Chapter Four.Military Pensions In The Courts, 1877-1923 -- Chapter Five.Civil Service Pensions, 1883-1924 -- Chapter Six.Mothers' Pensions In The Courts, 1911-1923 -- Chapter Seven.Pensions For The Blind And Workmen's Compensation, 1906-1917 -- Chapter Eight.Old Age Pensions, 1911-1937 -- Conclusion State Constitutions And Public Spending -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index

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In Public Pensions, Susan M. Sterett traces the legal and constitutional structures underlying early social welfare programs in the United States. Sterett explains the status of state and local government payments for public servants and the poor from the mid-nineteenth century until the Great Depression. The most visible public payments for service in the United States were directed to soldiers, who risked death for the nation. However, firemen, not soldiers, first captured local governments— attention; social welfare programs for soldiers were modeled on firemen's pensions. The dangerous work of firefighting and of combat provided the fundamental legal analogy for courts as governments expanded pensions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nothing about the state court doctrine approving payments for dangerous, local service would allow pensions for indigent mothers and for the elderly, which states began to consider after 1910. Counties and railroads that objected to the new taxes could fight programs based on the old doctrine, established for firefighters, soldiers, and finally civil servants. State litigation provided one of the many grounds for contesting expanded welfare states in the early twentieth-century United States. Sterett demonstrates that state courts maintained a gendered division between the service that marked citizenship and the dependence that marked indigence, even during the promising ferment of the early twentieth century.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)